Web Presenters: The Little Guy On Your Website

A web presenter is a pretty simple concept: an image of a human being, outside of any obvious frame, pops up on a layer ‘above’ your website, and starts talking to the surfer. You mouse-over the speaker, and a few buttons pop up that allow you to control it like a normal video, including volume, a timeline bar, and an ‘off’ button. If you do nothing, the speaker keeps right on going, telling you about the site.

Why would you ever do anything so annoying to your visitors? Well, actually, if you do it properly, the benefits far outweigh the annoyance. It’s a single-second mouseover and then one click to banish the web presenter forever, so very few people are going to up and leave your site because of it. And those people that are on the fence about your site have a good chance to decide to stick around when they learn that they can get the information they want without scrolling or reading.

And that’s really what a web presenter is all about — pulling in the people that aren’t sure about your site. Remember, it takes the average surfer less than two seconds to decide whether they’re going to pay attention to your site or skim right past it. A web presenter that kicks in during that window and starts their speech with a good hook can almost make that decision for them.

Especially if you’re driving traffic that requires you to pay for every visitor — like using Google Adwords, for example — your PPC management team can tell you about the importance of tools like a web presenter for maximizing the profits from your pay-per-click campaigns.

The particularly clever can even arrange their site so that the web presenter appears to interact with it, pointing at certain links and buttons as they describe the benefits of your product or service. That kind of polish goes a long way with web surfers, who have almost universally seen every kind of cheap, hackneyed sales job in their surfing — having a few details that speak to your level of attention to detail implies volumes about how you’ll treat them as customers.

Web presenters aren’t just little guys on your website — they’re a huge tool for maximizing your website’s profits. That is what you’re here for, right?