Elbo.ws puts a special message at the top of the page for visitors who wind up there via Google.
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Elbo.ws puts a special message at the top of the page for visitors who wind up there via Google.
Benjy
on 30 Jun 09They do it from 37signals, too… they must grab welcome from all referring sites.
Pat
on 30 Jun 09Is that a good thing? B/c it feels pretty generic to me.
Krusty video: Until then, I turn things over to my bestest buddy in the whole wide world, [obviously dubbed] Mr. Black. I want you to treat Mr. Black with the same respect you would give me. Now here’s Mr. Black.
Anonymous Coward
on 30 Jun 09What’s the point? If I click a link, why would I want to go right back to the site I came from? If I made a mistake by clicking, wouldn’t I just use the back button?
Is it some type of SEO trick or something?
ML
on 30 Jun 09I don’t think the execution is perfect here but I do think it’s an interesting idea to welcome visitors who wind up at your site via a Google search differently than people who purposefully seek out your site.
Sites tend to give the same introduction whether someone’s a brand new visitor or an old regular. We don’t treat these people the same way in real life so it’s odd that we give the same boilerplate to both online (if there’s another option).
Rimantas
on 30 Jun 09@Anonymous Coward: the point you are missing are the six aditional links you did not notice besides that one you did. Though I think they are not doing the best job on this, I think this is an underuse of the idea.
Andrew Warner
on 30 Jun 09If it doesn’t show up on your screen, click the link in the post. That worked for me.
Edwin Vlieg
on 30 Jun 09@ML But while this is hard to execute this well, I probably won’t implement it. There are more websites welcoming me as a ‘new visitor from Google’, while I just came from Google Reader and are subscribed to the RSS for years :-)
Benjy
on 30 Jun 09I think it’s a nice touch to acknowledge that people are likely new to the site, and give them some ways to connect… while maybe a bit presumptuous to ask people to subscribe to feeds, follow on Twitter, etc. before they even start to dig into the site, it’s better than the pop-up upon leaving a site that might have been used years ago.
Josh N.
on 30 Jun 09I’m not a fan of these things. How do they know I’m new? I use a lot of different machines, so I get these messages a lot. This one isn’t so bad, but I’ve had sites popup a “welcome” message right in the way of their content. Way to be a pushy used car salesmen! I know how to use Twitter, Facebook and syndication feeds. I don’t need you bugging me to follow you. Makes me feel real welcome.
brandon
on 30 Jun 09We kind of do it as a little reminder for the people who do end up there a lot via Google or various music blogs. If you’re consistently being referred to this site, perhaps you might want to track our updates via rss, twitter, etc.
Zach
on 30 Jun 09Stackoverflow does the same thing if you are refered by google.
They figure that since its a somewhat complicated question and answer type site, that people might need quick access to a FAQ to explain whats going on if they staggered in off the streets.
Ben Mc
on 30 Jun 09I like it. When you arrive from Google, you don’t know what to expect, so they know you don’t know, and help lead you in differently since you are a searcher.
If you arrive from a blog where the service has already been described and the visitor knows exactly what they are looking for – the message should be different (possibly).
Marcos Wright Kuhns
on 30 Jun 09I use a similar technique for my blog except I target image searches specifically since they drive a descent amount of my traffic. I use the following message:
Of course since I target specific websites the message won’t show up for everyone who may need it (Bing searchers aren’t supported yet) but it’s better than nothing.
Ralph Haygood
on 30 Jun 09It’s fairly unobtrusive, and it’s obvious from the first few words what kind of thing it is, so it’s easy to ignore the rest of it if you don’t care for this kind of thing.
An Ominous Coward
on 30 Jun 09It reminds me of those IE security warnings.
Bob
on 30 Jun 09There’s a great plugin for wordpress that shows this only the first couple times that a visitor visits the site. It’s called “What Would Seth Godin Do”
http://richardkmiller.com/wordpress-plugin-what-would-seth-godin-do
Anonymous Coward
on 01 Jul 09Seems pretty dumb to me, “welcome visitor from google.com” I mean who doesn’t use google ffs? the wording of it sounds moronic must just be some seo trick.
This discussion is closed.