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James Morley wrote:


> Does anyone have any evaluation, advice or just gut feelings about putting
> URLs on printed signage and in leaflets etc?  I ask this specifically in the
> context of when you have a lot of in depth information online that people
> could use to follow up after their visit.


Interesting discussion. My instinct would be that very few people will
memorize the URL, whether it's to a specific page, to a 'shortcut' like
/blah, or even if it's just the home URL.  Although this might depend on how
well-known your website is generally - the BBC for instance probably has a
greater recall factor for its bbc.co.uk domain than most websites do,
although they still manage to confuse things by switching branding every few
years (from BBCi to bbc.co.uk to 'Online' - see blog
post<http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2008/12/it_is_a_few_months.html>
).

In short, I'm willing to bet that most people will find your website via
searching (as your web stats probably already show).

This doesn't mean there's no point in putting the URLs anywhere though, as
the most important thing isn't communicating where people can find your
website, but why they should bother. Displaying the URL may help to remind
visitors that you have a website (which you're proud enough of to be
promoting), whethere or not they remember it.

That said, the main thing you can do is to give people a reason to go to
your website when they get home. Saying "there's more information about this
topic on our website" is a start, but is a bit vague, and begs the question
why can't have the information there and then.

Better would be to play on the fact that your website can offer a different,
perhaps more interactive/personalised type of experience, or on the fact
that your website can be updated over time. So, something like "find out how
this topic affects your neighbourhood by entering your postcode on our
website"  or "track this topic as it develops by subscribing to the news
updates on our website".

This is all assuming a print -> online transition, which is tricky. If
you've got interactive terminals, then you can go one better showing your
website and/or letting people e-mail themselves a link to it or subscribing
to e-mail updates. All of which is much more effective than printing URLs on
the walls! (though do that too).

As to 'QR codes' (2D barcodes) - has anyone seen anyone actually use them,
other than as a test? I've got a brand new Nokia phone, and I can't even
find the code-reading application (which apparently is pre-installed
somewhere...).

Frankie Roberto
Experience Designer, Rattle
0114 2706977

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