A home page needs to answer two questions to a visitor, at a glance:
1. Where am I?
2. What can I do here?
The first is essential, and often fudged a bit too much. New Visitors want to know if they clicked on what they thought they did, and if they came to the kind of place they were looking for. So the Home Page needs to be a friendly signpost and a welcome mat. IN short a tightly built Pre sale page.
The second point is the invitation to explore. The issue of information architecture is essential — you want your copy and navigation labels to tell the site’s story, but to tell it very efficiently.
A home page is not the spot to get expansive - it’s a place to say “This website will be easy for you to deal with”
Even though the page needs to be your welcome mat, it’s also not the place to explicitly say “welcome to widget world” or “we are the number one provider of widgets and gadgets in this area”.
No one cares — get down to business for your users, and you will retain a greater share of traffic and see fewer “one hit wonders” in your server logs. The welcome can be implied by your thoughtfulness, and the blowing of your own horn can be tucked away in the “about” section on a small utility menu, in most cases.
A new visitor gets a quick orientation the minute they arrive and then that job is done. On their second click they can be focused on the content, the information, rather than learning the mechanics of the interface — you already gave them that on the home page.

Summarizing the above points are Basic guidelines that we here at WallCann would like to give to our Prosumer Advocates
A) Tell the new visitor at a glance whether or not he’s likely found what he’s looking for and
B) Route the return visitor as quickly and easily as possible to the page devoted completely to the task he came there to perform.
C) An informational website is something else, but when the website that sells something to actual customers, then there’s no substitute for task-driven design.
D) Write down all the tasks people come there to perform. Prioritize them. Then do walkthroughs of each task. You’ll find mistakes like: the most important task has been given the least amount of screen real estate on the home page, there’s no visible way to accomplish a given task from the home page, etc.
E) Worry about the colors and pretty images later (much later), after you can show that the website makes it easy to actually accomplish what the visitors came there to do.

• Simple and accurate KPI tracking
• Fast high quality responses to online enquiries
• Flexibility in website structure to allow easy updating of news and product information
• Clear navigation and clear call to action
• Access to contact information allowing a range of ways to interact with enquirers.
• A desire and willingness to unlearn and relearn
• Digital information staff training to sell your unique proposition,

Does your web developer actually have the experience like WallCann of building and running a commercially viable web sales platform?

Contact WallCann

As Prosumer advocates we drive to supermarkets and pick goods off the shelf and carry them to the check out to pay. We drive into service stations and pump petrol, check tyres, put coolant into our radiators and check our own oil and proceed to the checkout counter to pay. We also visit the online bank or ATM, complete our own direct deposits and payments. We book our own travel and accommodation online and we fill in consumer surveys and then we pay at the purchasing gateways. More and more consumers are doing value added for producers and at the same time sharing our experiences, good and bad, with others.

Have you ever been so happy with an everyday product or service that you have referred family, friends and associates to a particular vendor? Imagine if you found a vendor so appreciative of your advocacy they would be willing to pay you to publish your views. You could learn how to turn your every day experience into an advocate referral activity and earn a steady stream of cash, to save or spend as you wish!

From these few examples of prosumer advocacy, we can see that most consumers have simultaneously become a producer (one who does the work) and an advocate (one who promotes, refers and transfers experience to others). In other words we do a lot of work, generally as unpaid PROSUMER ADVOCATES!!

WallCann has studied this trend and increasing frequency and nature of unpaid work. So, we thought that it was about time for WallCann’s prosumer advocates to be properly recognised and get a better deal! We invite you to find out more about generating a prosumer advocate income stream.

Please visit here and join. Become a WRAPA (WallCann Rewards Affiliate Prosumer Advocate), it is easier than it sounds!

Beginning December 1st the USA FTC (Federal Trade Commission) is bringing in new policy affecting bloggers, social media and affiliates. Anyone who publishes about a product or service on the internet, if they are likely to gain from it, they had better disclose the relationship. Currently improtant is you are marketing to US or hosting in US.

Personally I am not a fan of the new rules as being way too overbearing and impractical. I think the web is very good at self regulating.
As an Aussie I could ignore the new guidelines. However, transparency and integrity are important and also a cornerstone of WallCann. There are good reasons for providing your customers and visitors with all the information they need to make an informed choice.

Steps to take before December 1st 2009:

• If you live in USA or host your site in USA or promote to USA better to comply with the guidelines. As WallCannis a global sales and marketing organisation we will be taking reasonable steps to meet the intentions of the policy.
• If you have affiliate links, partner links or paid advertising banners then clearly add a Disclosure Policy to your site or in your About Us information. Be aware that affiliate links are a form of endorsement for monetary gain.
• If you have results claims in testimonials make sure they comply with the new rules. See this link  to review. http://www.ftc.gov/os/2009/10/091005endorsementguidesfnnotice.pdf
• Watch for developments. Many changes are being made as people apply the policy to the real virtual world.

As for Twitter, the FTC expects you to fit in a disclosure regardless of the 140 character limit. Not sure how this will work as over 80% of tweets seem to be endorsing something, a local restaurant, an ebook, a movie, a holiday.

For twitter and facebook we will be watching to  see how it is managed. However if you apply honesty to your communications online and also make sure to add transparency you will build a more useful site.

The FTC will be after gross infringements like – unproven cures or unproven weight loss endorsements. As in all business choose carefully the products and services you endorse and how you let people know your reasons for endorsing.

Mad Way South, the Sahara Challenge, is like no other - man harnessing the wind pitted against the harshest environment in the world, the Sahara Desert. In September of this year, two Aussies and two Kiwi’s completed the first Buggy crossing of the Sahara Desert. By wind power alone, they traveled 2,500 km of the world’s toughest terrain claiming the world record.

This is truly a great achievement not only for the whole MWS team but also for the team at PerformanceShop who supplied them with reliable power equipment required to make such harsh journey.

The crossing wasn’t all smooth sailing with a host of unexpected incidents. Kiwi Buggier Steve Gurney almost lost his life with a major head injury on day 15. The team had to extract him out of some difficult terrain to get him to hospital. Thankfully he rejoined the challenge a few days later battered and bruised.

“Steve’s strength in getting back in the saddle gave the other buggiers the drive to continue their quest to the finish. They went on to buggy through land mine country and across some amazing flat classic desert reaching speeds of up to 60 kilometres an hour.

All hell broke loose in the teams crossing of the Mauritanian border into Senegal,  300 km north of the City of Dakar, the proposed end of the crossing

“We were in the middle of a desert salt pan when we were hit by a major thunder and rain storm, bogged in mud, threatened with hypothermia and then dehydration. Only in the Sahara! We managed to claw our way out of that one, but not without a major drain on our energy levels.” Quote Steve Gurney

Quoting Lincoln Williams who is part of the MWS camera crew, “the Mad Way South team, powering all our communications and camera gear in the desert using a device called a power inverter. The inverter converted the 12v DC battery power from our 4WD to 240AC so we could use all our equipment.”

Lincoln Williams went onto say “ In such a harsh and dusty environment, we just needed the little 300w  8Zed power inverters fitted to our support vehicles and they didn’t miss a beat.”

The PerformanceShop team is jointly responsible for getting our buggy team across the desert”.

The Mad Way South team were highly challenged mentally and physically during their 30 day adventure, and without the support from all their sponsors this challenge would not have been possible.

The team leader Geoff with his buggy

8Zed Power Inverter powering communications and camera gear for the Mad Way South

The day the guys broke the record, from left, Craig Hansen, Steve Gurney, Garth Freeman and Geoff Wilson

After Crossing the Sahara Desert

This is the photo of the guys stuck in the mud just before the Mauritania border

The Mad Way South Team