In the past two weeks, I’m not sure if localization or
personalization of a website is a skillset or a concept. For now, I’ll call it a concept because of
the way it can be defined. Let’s call it
an idea. The idea is to collect personal
information on the person’s demographic to personalize the type of information
the individual receives through marketing or other means of communication. With a trend of more people accepting their
personal information being used, they in turn will receive more relevant
feedback from a website informing them of activities, sales and news from where
they are or geared toward their interests.
It is a way to help a person feel more in touch with the pages in which
they interact. Even though this could be
a good idea, at what point are we going too far in collecting data on
people. Can this information cause
damage to those using a particular website?
If there is an information breach, what will happen to the end user? Is there a liability and upon whom does it
land? I like the idea, but if I’m going
to use it to personalize information delivered to the end user, sort of how
Facebook works now, I’m going to want to make sure I cover my bases legally
before venturing into something this volatile.
I believe I’ve learned the concept of content being one of
the most, if not the most, important part of a website. Inside I knew this the whole time. To read it and see how content needs to
interact with key phrases we have within our campaign, it really drives it
home. I think one of our most
challenging tasks is to make sure that the information we use as content in our
blogs and in our ads is to keep it relevant.
We want the search engine to find us.
The research that is needed can be intense. Knowing how to use the tools is one of the
greatest challenges. I don’t have a good
grasp on how these tools work or how our ads will react if we use the criteria
we have at the moment. But content will
help drive what we have home with web search engines. Using keywords and phrases consistent and
accurate to what The Thrifty Wargamer is all about is important. We want people to find the site and to find
it without much effort. We also want our
visitors to intend to visit the site. In
other words, we want to stay away from accidental visits. Traffic should be intentional, and that’s the
challenge we have were content can help.
Good content should drive people to the locations we want and get them
to do what we want. So how do we keep
content interesting and engaging when we don’t know much about the business of
wargaming? There’s a special language
specific to this type of business and society that is unique. It isn’t something we’re going to be able to
pick up in such a short amount of time. A
bit challenge will be to answer this question: How do we to stay relevant and
engaging and not know how to speak the language?
I think one of the skills I picked up these last couple of
weeks was knowing or learning the differences in the four types of display ads –
banner, video, rich media and sponsorship.
I had no idea there were all four types. In fact, I thought that banner
and rich media were the same. Little did
I know! A banner add can look like this. Simple, right?
I like that there are several
ways to reach a target audience and each of the four have a specific target
audience type in mind. I’d like to learn
how to make a display add. If I’m going
to want to drive an idea home or move a customer through an online store or
even to the store homepage, I’m going to have to gain a better understanding of
this skill. Who knew rich media was for
gamers like me?
Well, I’ve already alluded to this, but I’d like to see if I
could create some banner or other type of display add that will move people
from somewhere on the internet to The Thrifty Wargamer website. It may not be easy now, but I can see this
being a lot of fun. It’s the time that’ll
be a killer. The threat of this goal is
also challenged by the direction our class is going. I’m not really sure if that’s an acceptable
goal for the weeks to come given the content our class has in the next half of
the semester. That we will have to wait
and see.
Hi Drue, your post really shows a deep level of reflection on the materials we are learning. You are not just reproducing a list of definition. You are pondering about them, playing with the ideas, and running little thought experiments with them. That's the best kind of learning we could hope for!
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