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Oh joy ... oh joy ... it's Friday and here in the office our connection to the world has decided to become intermittent at best. Oh well after working right through last weekend I really wasn't in the mood to work today so maybe after finishing today's column I might head for the beach.

Oh who am I kidding? Everyone who works in this office knows that when I talk about taking time off and heading for the beach I'm delirious and I'll keep on working even without a connection to the Net.

Responsive drop-down menus
Now if all you're building is free sites and galleries then drop down menus are not going to be something you'll have to think too much about. However, if you are building other sites that have quite a few pages and you want to make navigation fairly simple then obviously you will be thinking about using drop-down menus.

But wait ... don't rush in ... especially if you're folding your website into a responsive design so that it will look good on just about every type of computer. Sure, those drop-down menus like great ... and actually work if you're viewing the site on a PC or laptop ... but once you get down to a tablet or mobile phone those menus may stop working.

The problem is that the mouse-over event is not handled so the drop-down menus simply doesn't appear.

Sadly if those menus do stop working then anyone viewing your site on a mobile device won't see the links to most of your content and solving that problem can be something of a headache. However, if you're building that site on the WordPress then there is a solution in the form of a new plugin from Black Studio.

Jump onto the WordPress plugin page, do a search for 'Black Studio Touch Dropdown Menu' and you should find it. Be sure to read the associated notes before you install it because it is still in beta mode and you shouldn't just take my word that it will work for you.

Selling time or money?
How many of us push the idea of saving money as one reason for someone to buy the product we're selling? We tell potential buyers that if they buy our product they'll actually get more bang for their buck ... more great hardcore action than they might get on some other site that's going to charge them more ... buy this level of membership rather than that level because they'll save oodles of their hard-earned cash.

So if you're using that technique then how is it working for you? Are you actually seeing more sales when you use that approach than you get when you use some other approach?

Some recent research has shown that people aren't so interested in saving money as you might think. What they are interested in is time.

Perhaps advertising fast downloads ... easy to find niche content ... and other things that might mean that people can really save time and still get the best quality content will do more for your sales. It could be worth testing to see if that's what will really work for you.

How much?
And while we're talking about what we should emphasis in our advertising copy I should mention another interesting little experiment run by a major US university recently.

They tested two snippets of advertising copy and found that one brought in 20% more signups than the other. The first snippet simply said "... a $5 fee ..." while the second said "... a small $5 fee ...".

That extra word ... "small" ... increased signups by 20% so what are you saying in your advertising copy and what could you add to increase your signups?

What would you like me to call you?
I somehow succumbed to taking a call from a telemarketer the other day. He wasn't the usual sort of marketer who starts babbling his script from the moment you pick up the phone. This guy was polite, pleasant and spoke like a normal human being ... but he was still a telemarketer.

One thing that really made me stop and listen to him was that he took the time to establish how he should address me. He already knew my name but he wanted to know if I was comfortable with him calling me by my first name or if I would rather be addressed in a more formal manner.

Of course we can't address our target market by name ... but we can really speak to each individual who visits our site just by frequent use one three letter word. So what's this magic word? I've used it twice in the sub-heading and you should use it often in your marketing text.