by Marvin Kane | Sep 12, 2011 | Business, Design
Why treating your website as an afterthought can stall your business before it starts
Don't Make Your Website an Afterthought
The latest statistics suggest that it will take visitors to your site all of 4 seconds to decide if they want to stay or move on. And that’s down from the last study which put the number at 8 seconds. On the web, first impressions count – a lot! That’s why it continues to surprise me when businesses treat their website as an afterthought. You simply can’t think that way anymore. When I ask would-be clients about their current websites, I typically hear some variation of this response: “I just needed to throw something up there quickly.” Ouch!
Your Website is the Face of Your Business
You wouldn’t go to a business meeting in bell bottom jeans and a tie dye shirt (unless you were very certain the theme of the meeting was “remember the 60’s“). Don’t “dress” your website in outdated styles either. And it’s not just about looks. It’s about content, credibility and positive user experience. Remember that for many of your clients, your website will be the only connection they have to your business. If it fails to impress, it may well be the last time they consider doing business with you. Think of it this way: if your website is well constructed, looks professional and polished and is easy to use, it won’t matter if you are actually working out of a broom closet. Why? Because your website gives you the credibility of a well established, successful business. That’s what you really want isn’t it? But here’s the danger. It works the other way too. If you are a long established business with an impressive client list, a poorly designed and executed website will erode your credibility. See where I’m going with this?
Your Website is Huge Part of Your Marketing Effort
It’s true, and a bit surprising, that many business owners still don’t get the power of the Internet and the importance of a website. Why else would they “throw something up there quickly“? If you’re a start up or a new company still writing a business plan, make your website part of the plan. Budget for it. How much should you budget? Hard to say but you should be talking to a web professional early in the process to get a handle on the cost. If you don’t see clients at your office or facility then I would say this. Take the money you might spend on a fancy chair and expensive desk – which your clients will never see – and add it to your website budget. Not only will your clients see your website, they will judge you by it.
The Tragedy of Underestimating Your Website
Here’s why I call it a tragedy.You’ve spent countless hours planning, thinking, forecasting, hoping. You’ve spent hard earned money on equipment, office space, employees. Then you launch a website that squanders the precious 4 seconds you have to make a first impression. That’s a tragedy.
Summary
- Understand your website is the face of your business
- Understand your website is a very powerful marketing tool
- Make your website part of your business plan from the beginning. Don’t treat it as an afterthought.
- Budget for it. Make a web design professional part of your early discussions so you will always have a realistic idea about the cost
Is your website an effective expression of your business? What’s the feedback been?
by Marvin Kane | Aug 1, 2011 | Business, Design
Choose Wisely. Avoid nightmares
For those with limited resources, short time frames and no desire to get their hands dirty, web design services offering a quick, easy and cheap template driven solution may be the right answer. But beware! Make sure you know exactly what you’re signing up for so down the road what looked convenient and easy doesn’t turn out to be a nightmare.
It’s Your Domain Name. Own it.
Working with a company that “takes care of everything” for you may be fine but when it comes to registering your domain name, make sure it is being registered under YOUR name and associated with YOUR contact information. Why is this important? Consider the case of Acme Plumbing [names have been changed to protect the innocent]. They hired a “we’ll take care of everything” company to design their website. The sales rep registered the company’s domain name under his own name and contact information. When the domain name was several months from expiring, the renewal emails were sent to the sales rep. See where this is going? The sales rep left the company. Acme Plumbing had no idea their domain name was expiring until they were unable to access their website. Nightmare number 1.
Can Your Website Grow as Your Business Grows?
Sure it’s tempting to get your three page website up in 24 hours. Especially when all you have to do is email your content to the design company and voila! There it is. Your shiny new website. But if your business plan calls for growth – and if it doesn’t why are you in business – make sure you understand the process of growing your website to match your growing business. Will your web design company add pages for you as part of your original contract? If not, how much will it cost? How quickly will they get to it. How much control do you have?
Another Nightmare Scenario
World’s Best Electricians [again, names have been changed to protect the innocent] went with a “one stop shopping” web design service. The company registered his domain name, built a three page website with stock photos of their choosing, and hosted the site on their servers. Joe, the owner of World’s Best, didn’t have to do anything. What a deal. Except Joe’s business started growing. He wanted to use real photos of his work. He wanted to add testimonials. You get the picture. Not part of the deal said his one stop shopping company. Joe has decided he wants a brand new website but needs to get the domain name transferred to his name. Problem. His sales rep, apparently the only person with any knowledge of his account, has left the company.
Nightmare number 2.
Conclusion
I am not condemning the template driven, one stop, quick and easy web design companies. They offer a valuable service. What I am saying is make sure you understand very specifically what the company will and won’t do for you. It is important for your business to understand the following:
- make sure your domain name is registered to you
- understand your web design company’s policy about updating your site, i.e. adding pages, etc
- make sure the company is reputable and has a measurable track record
- try to find out the average life span of the company’s sales personnel. If there is frequent turnover ask why. Be suspicious.
Chances are you’ve spent a lot of time thinking about your business. Perhaps you have a three year plan, a five year plan or even a ten year plan. Keep that in mind when deciding who will build your company’s website.
Photo credit: fuzzysaurus
by Marvin Kane | Jul 29, 2011 | Design
I was leaving my job at a cable advertising firm on Newbury Street in Boston one Friday afternoon and saw a UPS truck with the characters www.ups.com printed directly under the phone number on the truck’s rear panel. Pretty unremarkable except for one thing. It was 1994. Now I’m not normally known as a prophet but I turned to my wife and said “someday every company is going to have one of those website thingys.” I don’t remember her exact reply but I think it was something about how only the bigger companies would be able to afford one. It all seems pretty funny right now doesn’t it? But as luck, or fate would have it, the very next Monday the IT Director at my company (it was called MIS back then, remember?) asked me if I wanted to “investigate this internet thing”. I was not on the IT staff. I was a temp doing administrative work to bolster my less than illustrious musical career. Turns out no one on his staff believed the “internet thing” would last. DOHHH!! I said sure, they sent me to an HTML class and, to quote the most overused cliche ever, the rest is history.
Tables, Drop Shadows and Scrolling Marquees, Oh My!
Several HTML classes later, and with just enough Photoshop knowledge to be dangerous, I developed my company’s first website. Its hard to remember this but it was so early in the game that Microsoft hadn’t entered the browser wars yet. It was Netscape 4 and that was it. This website had everything, and I do mean everything. Every graphic had a drop shadow, every button looked like an oval race track, every paragraph was a different font color and size, elements were placed in table cells to keep them from moving around, I even had a scrolling marquee going across the page. I was definitely a practitioner of the “kitchen sink” school of design where the answer to the question “why did you do that” is always “because I can”. But the real kick for me was that I had created something that anyone anywhere in the world could see. It didn’t matter that no one was looking. What mattered was that if they were looking, they would see something I created. Pretty powerful stuff!
When it Started Making Sense
I needed some direction. There had to be someone out there who was a thought leader in this new space. For me, and for many others at the time, that person was David Siegel and his seminal book Creating Killer Web Sites, circa 1997. Using what Siegel termed “guerilla HTML” I began to create more visually pleasing websites. David’s book seems dated now, but he has continued to be a thought leader. [Find out what he’s up to these days at Pull and the 21st Century.]
It’s been a fun ride. And with more and more people viewing websites on their mobile devices, the fun is just beginning.
Do you remember some of those early websites? What do you remember about them? How do you think websites have changed?
by Marvin Kane | Jul 25, 2011 | Networking, Sharing, Social Media, WordPress
I just wrapped up a great weekend of WordPress related stuff at the Boston WordCamp 2011 held at Boston University’s Sherman Hall. Man there are a lot of really smart people out there and I’m grateful for their willingness to share their knowledge. For me the sense of community has always been the differentiator between WordPress and the myriad other content management systems out there. Oh I know that there are other CMS communities but I’m talking about COMMUNITY as in the willingness to share, to help, to NOT judge and to make you feel welcome. The T-shirt and the great lunch (sponsored by .tv) were certainly an added bonus.
Who Are all These Smart People?
Okay, I get that you may not care about any of this but if you’re going to hire me to build your website you should feel comforted that I care about it. So, many thanks to the following people who gave their time to make me smarter:
- Alan Bergstein – Converting an old site to a fresh WordPress Site
- Tom Catalini – Tom’s Top Ten Tips for Blogging on WordPress
- Mike Susz – WordPress Theme Construction
- Sara Cannon – Theming & Mobile: Optimizing your WordPress site for Various Devices
- Boaz Sender – Exploding Your WordPress Theme with CSS3
- Chris Penn – How to Market Your Blog
- Joselin Mane – How Blogs Are the Core to Any Social Media Strategy
- Doug Yuen – Improving Your WordPress Productivity
- Jake Goldman – Getting Started with WordPress as a CMS
And a special thanks to C. C. Chapman (who has to be the world’s friendliest human being) for not making me feel like a complete dork for asking him to sign his book, Content Rules.
By the way, Boston University deserves a thank you too for allowing the WordPress community to take over the George Sherman Union building at 775 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston.
City of Champions
Sidenote: On one of the breaks between sessions I stepped outside, and with the sound of delirious Red Sox fans coming from Fenway Park three blocks away, snapped this picture of a poster hanging in the window of the Sherman Union building. Pardon me for gloating.
by Marvin Kane | Jul 11, 2011 | Social Media
Last May I explained why I don’t like to get paid in full and in advance noting that this usually meant the client was more interested in the tax write off than in building a quality website. I added that it was next to impossible for me to do good work when a client is simply not engaged in the process. In reviewing that earlier post it occurred to me that I sounded like a curmudgeon. (Okay, sometimes I am a curmudgeon). So in an effort to soften that perception, let me tell you what, in my opinion, makes an ideal client.
It’s About Engagement
We recently began to hear the catch phrase Web 2.0 – a clever term that signaled the beginning of a new, more collaborative, participatory web and whose fundamental rule, according to Tim O’ Reilly of O’ Reilly Media is that “users have value”. And that is the essence of today’s social web. It’s not so much about a web site as it is about a web presence. If your web site is your online home base, then your social profiles are your online outposts feeding vital information back and forth. But what’s really changed is the underlying objective. It’s no longer about businesses using the web to push their marketing message down people’s throats. It’s about establishing and nurturing online relationships. And like all relationships, listening is more important than talking. The web is a two way street now and smart businesses understand that it’s about using the vast array of social tools at our disposal to engage their constituents.
A Case Study – Victoria Station, Salem, MA
John Andrews, the Executive Chef and Social Media Manager at Victoria Station in Salem, Massachusetts, understands the importance of building relationships. That’s why it’s a pleasure to work with him. He actively posts new status updates, photos and videos to Victoria Station’s Facebook page. Vic’s Boathouse is the new lounge at Victoria Station and John uses twitter on a regular basis to let his customers know about special promotions, musical happenings and more. Victoria Station’s homepage features a Youtube video, a MailChimp newsletter signup form and a dynamically changing calendar of events. In the true spirit of today’s self manageable web, John uses Squarespace to maintain the Vic’s Boathouse website and picnik.com to edit and customize photos. John regularly checks in with his friends and contacts through foursquare, a social site that offers new ways to explore your city, earn points and unlock badges for discovering new things. He is, in a word, CONNECTED. But what really impresses me is the very visible link from Victoria Station’s homepage to its Yelp page. Why does that impress me? Because while the vast majority of what I see there are positive four and five star reviews, a few are less flattering. By letting me see those too, I get the message that Victoria Station is not perfect but that John is willing to listen to criticism and willing to improve. That’s how to build authentic, meaningful relationships. And meaningful relationships build successful businesses.
In his wonderful post titled The Biggest Secret of Social Media, Chris Brogan makes the simple assertion that “if you don’t like people very much, it won’t work very well.” John Andrews likes people.
How are you using social media to build relationships? What has been your experience? Is it working for you? Let’s talk about it.
