Comic Shop Web Design Round-Up Part 01: The Bad and The Ugly in one fell swoop.

I’ve been asked if I’d like to redesign my local comic shop’s website, as I do that internet marketing thing for my day job and have been kvetching about the damned thing for ages. As it stands, it uses a Flash landing page and a color scheme that is, at the very least, difficult on the eyes, as it employs orange text on a white background, something I believed the UN declared to be torture in the mid-90s. I have some pretty clear ideas about what I want to do with it: blog integration, easily updated content, improved navigation, and making sure some very basic information (location, phone number, and hours) are available on each and every page, but I also wanted to make sure that I knew what to avoid, so I started browsing.

Names, addresses, phone numbers, etc have been erased to protect the guilty.

This popular comics shop’s site uses gray-on-gray text in its navigation and header (where the address is located) and while I appreciate clean design and white space, but I don’t know if a particularly buxom Mary Jane Watson giving readers a come-hither look is an image I’d use to promote my shop versus, say, a picture of my shop or text that describes the shop or this week’s releases or my shop’s blog, which could include the three previous items. I mean, I like large-breasted redheads as much as the next guy, but if I’m looking to find out what came in this week, that chick’s just in my way, man.

One thing of note: this retailer’s site does feature a well-written, informative blog that manages to sell and point people in the right direction without slapping NOT BUY on things and feeling smug about their superiority. Unfortunately, it’s hosted on Blogspot and displayed in a frame, meaning that the content isn’t associated with the shop in the eyes of search engines. In other words, people who get to the shop through searches looking for reviews and release lists would get the Blogspot version of the blog, not the one that’s on their site. You can also use that blog’s links to go back to the shop’s website in a window on its own website in a recursive loop.

This shop has a domain that I would pay real money for, if I were going to launch an online comics shop.

It also displays what happens when people don’t spend a couple of hundred dollars on getting a good, informative, three-or-four page site on the internet. There’s no proper metatagging and no useful information is available to search engines because of the way they’re using Javascript to display copy on the pages, and worst of all: there is no phone number or address for the business on the homepage. In fact, it took me a little while to realize what the name was.

This is a local shop that’s very well-regarded for being an indie icon, where minicomics and small press books rule while the staff sneers down at you from on high. It’s interesting, then, that a shop that displays the new Kramer’s Ergot it its window has set up its virtual presence in the place where people debate whether Angel would be a top or bottom when having his way with Worf.

That said, at least they’ve got their contact information front and center.

Don’t do this. Just don’t.

These guys have created an ugly, ugly site (seriously, the below-the-fold on-page copy reads like it was created by a keyword-spouting bot) that ranks well for the term “comic shop.” Seriously, here’s a sample:

Comics for sale include collectible comics like Archie, Action, King, Paul Terry, Phantom, Seaboard, Superman, Batman, Detective, Fantastic Four, Green Lantern, Silver Surfer, Iron Man, X-Men, Spawn, Little Lulu, Hot Stuff, Richie Rich, GI Joe, Transformers, Warren Magazines, Wonder Woman, Vampirella. Used comics with genres like Anime, Big Little Books, Crime, Funny Animals, Religious, Romance, Mystery, Horror, Graphic Novels, Manga, TV Comics, Movie, Newspaper Strips, Sci-fi, War, Western and alternate and independent publishers Antarctic, Kitchen Sink, Bongo, Caliber, Valiant, Vertigo, Dark Horse, Whitman and Quality in reading grades as well as collector grade comics for sale.

Big blocks of keyword-heavy text may get you rankings (at least until Google changes its algorithm), but they don’t increase conversions one bit. Especially if the shop’s address is nowhere to be found. Nor did I catch the name of the shop until I noticed the smallish logo in the top left corner.

Finally, here’s a site that I can point out and link to because the shitty, shitty comics shop it was related to finally closed after clinging to the underbelly of the Las Vegas comic book scene for far too long. I went to Kool Kollectables once and hated it enough to write about it. It’s not just one or two things that made this website fail: every single page is an abomination and representative of exactly how most comic shops present themselves both online and in person. Spend some time and click around. Savor the Lady Death background images and suddenly-changing header graphics while you marvel at the the copiously-deployed BLINK tags and poor grammar.

Sometime next week, I’ll point out shops that I think do things very well and why. This time around, i won’t have to obscure any names. I hope.

Comics Marketing: Social Media Is Not The Answer, Even If You Want It To Be.

Facebook is one of the best timekillers/ad display ideas that’s come across in quite some time. Where MySpace reveled in its Geocities-meets-Friendster garishness, Facebook made everyone conform to some sort of design standard and made sure that nobody in the office would know you were visiting the site due to an errant profile blaring “Crank That.” It gives you one “landing page” that lets you see whatever activity your friends wish to share with you and access to the various applications you may want to use.

As a marketing tool, it offers a nice extension of your brand, giving people who enjoy your comic book/strip a place to gather and talk about your projects:

However, this is why I would never, ever use it as my sole online presence versus having my own domain as the primary point of contact between me and the customer base:

Despite the fact that Facebook is free and super-easy to get involved with, that little login section is a barrier between the customer and you. Marketing is, at its core, about eliminating those barriers and making sure that your audience is able to listen to what you’re trying to say with as little work as possible.

More and more I’m seeing creators (such as Billy Tucci in Chris Sims’s comments) using Facebook as their main method of communicating to their fans. While I can see the appeal: it’s free and easy as hell, it’s not an example of reaching out with your message. Instead, Facebook groups and the like are preaching to the choir: people that have already added you as a contact. They know what you’re selling. Throw in the fact that all of your content is hidden from the search engines because of its closed system and it’s plain to see that Facebook is lousy for acquiring active, inquisitive customers unless you’ve got a social media manager doing the heavy lifting and customer engagement for you.

It boils down to this: If you’re serious about your product, you should have your own domain. If you can’t spend $10 a month maintaining your own domain, then maybe you’re not serious enough about your business. Business cards and emails shouldn’t feature a url like http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=26254088540 or http://www.myspace.com/therackcomic on them: they should present something that anyone can type in within seconds and look at what you’re trying to sell, be it www.therackcomic.com or http://www.dccomics.com.

Once you’re up and running, it’s important to note that almost every webhost in the world allows you to add a new domain to your existing account with them for the cost of registering a URL. With Dreamhost, it’s literally two minutes from “I want to buy a domain” to starting the initial stages of development, which in many cases could be a basic WordPress installation, a template that will be customized, and a nice gallery package: perfect for title-specific websites. A great example of this is PhonogramComic.com, even with their “click here to enter” front page.

It’s easier than ever for creators and publishers to have a platform that allows people from anywhere in the world to see what they have to offer. Facebook and the like provide an easy way to do things, but it’s not the best way. Each new project is a chance to sell more of your work to new people – do the lifting so they don’t have to. Use social media and networking sites to fire up your existing base and keep them abreast of things, but use the web to get new people on board.

Comics Marketing: Don’t Advertise What’s Not Yours. Especially if it’s Batman.

Crystal Fractal Comics (which is located, counter-intuitively, at crystalfractals.com and not crystalfractalcomics.com) is a small publisher of superhero comics located in Toronto. They, like a couple-dozen other comics companies (cf Platinum Studios) that have cropped up in the last few years or so, are “seeking to diversify the industry through the dynamic storylines and characters of its titles.”

Apparently, they include Batman among those characters:

The graphic on that sidebar there doesn’t act like an ad on the web should: there’s no way to click through to get more information about The Dark Knight, so why’s it there? Here’s three theories.

• They want people visiting the site to go “Oh, these people are involved in licensing comics properties! Properties like Batman! Maybe they can get me Aquaman!”
  
• Similarly: “Batman endorses them! I trust Batman! I will do business with these people!”
  
• Crystal Fractal Comics offers advertising space on their site and they slapped a graphic in that spot as a placeholder. However, instead of sticking in an ad for said space, they thought The Dark Knight would look nicer there.

I suspect the third, which is the most innocuous choice, but I’m of the attitude that smaller publishers benefit very little by having ads for other companies or products on their site: they likely don’t get the traffic that could command a high enough rate for it to make any real difference in their finances, and their brand impression becomes muddled right off the bat. Someone like me (and likely the sort of person who buys up superheroes and the like for the screen) thinks that if a publisher can’t afford the $12-20 a month that hosting a website like that would cost without throwing ads on their front page, then maybe they shouldn’t be in the game to begin with.

(A side note: If you’ve been to the Marvel Comics site, you might have seen what is an amusing phenomenon: DC animated projects advertised on the site’s homepage, likely through a mass media buy done through Warner Brothers. Right now, Heroes (a Universal property) is sponsoring episodes of X-Men: Evolution on the Marvel site, and the comics related to that series are published by Warner Brothers, so I suspect that at that point, the money becomes impressive enough to ignore pesky things like brand solidarity. This is probably doubly true since Marvel became its own production house and is looking for better distribution deals for the films.)