Welcome (to the family), wijit! | The Lijit Product Diaries No. 2
Think about all those times you visit an unknown place. And I mean this in the analog world…e.g. a ‘real life’ place such as when as you walk into a new building and don’t know if you’re even in the right place, what floor you need to be on, etc etc. You have enough stress in your life, right?
Got the mental image? OK, hold on to it for a sec…
Now repeat that real life process I speak of above. You have your Google map printed and in hand, you generally have building location nailed. You walk in and…behold!…a concierge waiting to welcome you to the property and fundamentally telling you you’re in the right place and where to go and hopefully lots of other insightful information. Makes you feel are warm and fuzzy, right?
Ladies and gents: Welcome to the software equivalent of this example above, now available for your site:
The Lijit Welcome Wijit!
Let me give you a bit of a background on the Welcome Wijit. Frankly, it doesn’t deviate too far from the ‘real life’ example above!
Your content is extremely valuable to you and even more so to your loyal readers. Yet how many times have you done a search on a horizontal search platform like Bing, Google, Yahoo, Ask, etc and clicked on a link in the result set only to land on the page, not dive deeper into the content other than a 2 second eye scan and bail on it via back button to return to the search results and keep on searching. Admit it! What we’re attempting to do with Welcome Wijit is prevent this from easily happening to YOUR content. Fundamentally Welcome Wijit is about….
- Welcoming new readers to your site when they’ve linked in from somewhere else…e.g. a search engine, blogroll that includes your site, etc. They land on your property and they get a true ‘greeting’ to say thanks for stopping by!
- Better content discovery: Readers landing on your site for the first time will have an initial experience right off the bat of mining your content. What is old to you is all new to your new readers! Welcome Wijit will help them find it easily.
- Tools tools tools for your readers: The Welcome Wijit by design is about improved loyalty and return visits. The Wijit offers features to quickly add your feed to RSS readers, My Yahoo and iGoogle home pages to ensure they have you earmarked for return visits.
- Pre-selected search results: When a reader is searching the web for something and they stumble upon your site, Welcome Wijit knows that search term and will provide a pre-selected list of the top 3 relevant items fitting that search on your blog, within your content and throughout your network…given them a true ‘feel’ of the Lijit search experience.
- Advertising opportunities: We’re committed to doing what we can to make you more money! Similar to your Search Engine Results Page advertising, Welcome Wijit provides Google Ads to ensure more relevant ads are seen and clicked through by your readers.
So how does the Welcome Wijit Work? Let’s show ya!
Turning the Welcome Wijit On:
If you have the Lijit Search Wijit installed, Welcome Wijit is ready for use! You’ve got to turn ‘er on though first. You do this by visiting your Wijit management console and you’ll see a new tab for Welcome Wijit. By default Welcome Wijit is turned off. Simply check the ‘Show my readers the welcome wijit’ and you’re done. In addition, the Welcome Wijit management console provides you certain customization features and a preview of the wijit as you see here:
By default, the Welcome Wijit is set to appear above the post your reader is clicking in from via search engine, etc. The position of the Welcome Wijit can be set to be seen below the post, however:
How your readers interact with Welcome Wijit
You’re probably asking: “So how do my readers interact with Welcome Wijit?”. Easy! Assume that the reader has found your site through prototypical means…e.g. a search engine search, a link from someone’s blog roll, a link in an email, etc. The Welcome Wijit determines things like where your reader came from, what search terms if any were used to find your content, etc, before unveiling itself and providing the pre-selected content for your reader.
From a mechanical perspective, Welcome Wijit will invoke and appear within the content post region of your site. In cases where we can not automatically detect this, our team can work with you to ensure this fits to the place you need it to. Welcome Wijit automatically determines characteristics of your blog and assumes styling traits of your Lijit Wijit to inject itself into your site elegantly.
What are the main features of Welcome Wijit?
Let’s walk you through the UI. Note that the screen shot below is what is referred to as ‘expanded mode’, controlled by the reader to unveil more tools (and more of your content!)
1 Welcome Wijit will ensure we say hello to your reader from the place they came from. A Google search in the example above.
2 RSS Subscription feeds have been added to put them front and center. By design we want new readers to come back to your site time and again to enjoy the content your publish.
3 Your Network is key! Providing a link to traverse over to your Lijit user page so readers can see your network, popular search terms, etc is designed to help readers see your larger presence on the web.
4 Like RSS, we’ve added one-click tools to insert your site’s feed into iGoogle or My Yahoo gadgets so your readers can scope out your new prose first thing in the AM with their coffee.
5 The Lijit Search Field is front and center and designed to incentivize readers to search more of your content. It will be pre-loaded with the search term the reader was hunting for on their initial search when they found your site.
6 Pre-selected content based on the search term will be unveiled to ensure the reader will see the historical depth and richness of your content. What’s old to you is new to them! Let ‘em find it easy!
7 Thumbnail previews of the content items will help attract readers to see your content and visually parse its relevance. Plus it’s pretty cool.
8 Advertising like that on your Search engine Result Page are included on the Welcome Wijit in a slim and non-
intrusive implementation. We’re about making you more money and advertising opportunities like this will help ensure this with better and more creative visibility to your readers.
So there you have it folks! The first release of the Lijit Welcome Wijit! The team is pushing to produce more tools for you and your readers, dear publisher! Better discovery of your content, improved time on site as they see really what you have published all yield improved loyalty and more opportunities for you to make money and gain more exposure.
So go ahead and enable your Welcome Wijit! Start giving your readers that big ‘ol warm electronic hug when they enter your domain for the first time. Not unlike when your Grandma used to hug you when you visited. C’mon, you know you have a soft side….
Check out our FAQ if you want more info !
