Websites. People still need them. New businesses start up all the time, and (believe it or not) there are still people just discovering that a website can make their business visible to the millions of people who use the Web every day. But getting great results is still way too hard.
That’s why I still write about websites from time to time. Lately, people have been asking me for the names of Web designers I trust, so I figure another column might be in order, since looking for a designer is almost always the wrong place to start.
Let me start this column by offering you something for free: an informative e-book by Seth Godin, titled Knock, Knock, Seth Godin’s Incomplete Guide to Building a Web Site that Works. You can download a copy from my website at www.mikeduffy.com or just Google it. To briefly summarize Knock, Knock, Godin believes a website’s goal is to turn visitors into friends and friends into customers. That’s it.
I’ve written before about “thinking like a visitor” (a six-column series on the topic beginning in July 2005—you can find it in the TechTalk archives on the NorthBay biz website). I’m not going to belabor the point here, but you need to remember that a visitor arrives at your site with a goal in mind—and a “Back” button. Make it hard for visitors to reach their goal and the “Back” button comes into play. You may never see those visitors again.
What I really want to talk about is how to go about getting a website you’ll be happy with. Based on my informal survey of people who own small businesses, most aren’t terribly happy with their websites. It may be they had high expectations for business being generated by their site, which hasn’t materialized. In some cases, the person who designed and set up the site has disappeared without a trace, and they don’t know how to proceed. Perhaps they fell prey to Field of Dreams Syndrome (“if you build it, they will come”). Regardless, these small business owners aren’t exactly eager to spend more money. And so, they sit. And nothing changes.
(If you’re really happy with what your website does for your business, drop me a line. I’d like to write about you in a follow-up to this column.)
Quite simply, the most common pitfall is building a website that isn’t designed for updates. There are at least two reasons designing for updates is important. First, it increases visitor interest. When a site looks the same every time, people have little interest in returning. Second, change is inevitable. You’ll get written up in the paper, announce a new product or decide to offer 15 percent off for the month of November. You may even want to try experimenting with different copy or headlines on your site to see what effect it has on converting visitors into leads or customers. Which brings me to my point: if updating is hard, it won’t happen, and you’ll end up with a site that looks (and is) out of date.
Many people start by hiring a designer. A good designer will ask you what impression you want your site to convey (e.g., “professional” or “hip”) and may ask you to name some sites you think convey that impression. He or she should ask you for the Web addresses of your competitors, and your thoughts about the strengths and weaknesses of those sites (if you haven’t already bookmarked your competitors’ websites, well…). And the designer should ask you about the most likely reasons for someone to come to your site (which requires “thinking like a visitor”).
For example, the website for a Healdsburg wine bar will want to address the fact that it’s a destination: hours of operation, phone number, a map. And since the wines offered probably change over time, that’s probably also a page on the site (which will need to be updated periodically). And since that information changes, you might want to offer people the opportunity to get e-mail notifications when wines change or winter hours go into effect.
On the other hand, an interior design store in St. Helena will probably want to show examples of finished designs (and perhaps the “before” picture). If it sells high-end furniture, it will want to call attention to new or one-of-a-kind items in the store. Again, its visitors might want to sign up for notification when new items arrive.
Designers will usually “comp” a couple of home page layouts to give the customer a choice. They’ll provide some rough navigation based on what it seems people are most likely to want to do (another reason to design for update—you’re likely to be at least partially wrong about this). Once you get a home page concept roughed out, they’ll create an interior page (since home pages and interior pages do different things).
This is all well and good. But a design alone doesn’t address the issue of updating. In most cases, you’ll either need to have some technical knowledge of how to edit and update Web pages, or end up paying (and waiting) for the designer to make changes.
What you really want is a content management system (CMS), which lets you make changes yourself using a word processor-like interface. Unfortunately, there are a lot of designers who really don’t have much expertise in this area. And that’s why I recommend you start the conversation by talking about how your site will get updated, because sooner or later you’ll want or need to change things.
(A quick aside: blogs are basically content management systems, which is why some businesses have replaced or augmented their static websites with a blog.)
Things to avoid: anyone who tells you they need to custom-build tools for you to manage your site (there are excellent off-the-shelf choices, many of them open-source) and anyone using cookie-cutter templates (if you’re paying for a designer, you should expect something that reflects the individuality of your business).
If you’re not planning to update your site regularly, you’ll save a lot of money by just having a designer build a single nice-looking page with your logo, address and telephone number. Then you can forget about it (along with most of the business benefits Godin outlines in Knock, Knock).
