In my experience, most small website or blog owners know bad web design when they see it (on someone else’s site, of course). Naturally we all have seen those horrible sites, where the either the owners or the design crew are a bit color-numb and have put up a website or blog that only a mother could love.

For a visual idea of just how bad some site owners and their design teams can go astray, check out the [http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/].  While you are there also check out their “Web Redesign Checklists”.

Now I am not going to beat anyone up over how their website looks…after all there are lots of truly “ugly” websites in cyber-space that make lots of money for their owners. And there are also lots of great looking sites on the Web that have never paid for their monthly hosting fees.

A factor which helps an “ugly” website or blog become a profitable business or income stream is simply its usability or user-friendliness. Usability or user-friendliness is “the ease with which people can employ a particular tool or other human-made object in order to achieve a particular goal.”

The “tool” in this case is your website or blog and the goal can be to share your ideas, educate people about your products or services, or any number of things we discussed in the previous article: http://ncwebdiva.com/2010/blogging-for-business-part-2-purpose-and-goals/

But shouldn’t this “usability” be part of the whole web design thingy? Why can’t the web guys take care of all that stuff? Why do I, a non-technical, person have to even know what it is let alone worry about it? Okay, you are both right and wrong.

How your site or blog is designed is ultimately part of what you made so much money to have done in the first place, but let think of your site as an iceberg…okay bear with me a second, will ya?

Your website is like an iceberg. As you know 90% of the iceberg’s mass remains hidden below the surface of the waves. 10% is on surface. Most of what makes your website functional is hidden from view. Only the 10%, called the User Interface (that the stuff that makes the site user-friendly is visible.

All of the usability stuff or “User Interfaces”, means is the doo-dads and buttons and links you the web visitor sees and clicks on… along with size of the lettering, the colors, the patterns, the photographs, even the words or content  you use (text layout and blocking ).

All of this is basically what is considered the interface or user. This is what typically a visitor sees and uses to move around your site and accomplish those all important goals such as finding your phone number quick and easy so they can call you or printing off a Google map of your business location.

But the main parts of the site, the hidden, geeky bits are what you are paying the big bucks for and what take up the most time in a web designer’s schedule. Without the 90% that makes up the “engine”, your website would be just a pretty picture in cyberspace.

Okay…let’s try this, using an example that is closer to home, think about trucks vs. SUVs for a moment. Almost all SUVs are built around the framework and engine model of its closest automotive cousin; say a heavy duty 4×4 pickup truck.

Despite all its plush interiors, heated leather seats, DVD screens and CD combo MP3 players, all SUVs are built to carry similar size payloads as any truck in its weight class. But most people would naturally be very reluctant to pack 8 kids and their band instruments in a 4×4 truck for a 3 hour trip to an out-of-state band competition.

Nor would most sane folks load 2000 pounds of bricks along with bags of mortar in their SUV to haul to a rural construction site. But both vehicles are structurally similar, inside! Same hauling capability but each has radically different “facades” or user interfaces and different functions.

See where I’m going?

Automotive engineers are responsible for making sure that the 90% of the car you never really see: the engine, chassis, drive train, wheels, brakes, safety features, electrical harness and computer units all work together and play nice.

While the vehicle’s body style, finish, color and interior design features (i.e. the user interface) are handled by an entirely different type of design team. The same goes for web design. Web site design requires 2 different but very closely related skill sets – graphic designing and programming code.

A designer needs to do both in order to create a site that is attractive yet error-free and functional. But unlike in an auto company, your web development crew will probably NOT have 2 separate teams of specialists.

In fact with most small web design teams, you will get the code programmer (i.e. the engineer) and the graphic designer (i.e. the user-friendly or usability person) wrapped up inside a single person. Sometimes you may find a firm that has two people, but you still can’t be sure you haven’t gotten two coders or two graphic art lovers.

Naturally as the owner and usually the only non-technical on the design team, you are not expected to understand the 90% of designing a website. But you do have a responsibility to do more than sign off on the basic aesthetics of the site.

Your job is to approach your website or blog as your prospect visitors will. You need to be able to land on any page on your website or blog and within 3-5 seconds be able to answer these 5 questions:

• Where am I?
• What’s this page about?
• Where have I been?
• Where can I go next?
• Where’s the “Home Page”?

You only have 3-5 seconds because; university studies have shown this is how much time a visitor will spend looking around an individual web page. If your visitors can’t figure the answers to at least 2 or 3 of these questions, then they will click away (probably never to be seen again). This what this usability stuff is really all about – can a stranger come to your site and figure what those 5 questions? If yes, your site, no matter how “ugly” can be successful…if not, no matter how nice it looks, you still have a “dawg” on your hands.

Where am I? – People can get click happy on the web and may land on your site through some obscure link from a site that is sorta-kinda-maybe-vaguely related to yours (web links can branch off funny sometimes).

So the first thing you need to check when you inspect your site…can a newbie person tell what your site is about almost instantly? Internationally known Internet marketer Seth Godin, calls it “Where’s the banana?”  He likens people to “monkeys” that are searching the web for information, i.e. “bananas”.

Godin asks that show your visitors the biggest banana (your website or blog’s main topic or subject matter) right away. If your site is for a non-profit for the white mountain squirrel, then say so…don’t “hide” what you do or who you are…you will miss some visitors who are looking for what you are offering but who clicked away because they were uncertain about what your site is about. Remove anything that confuses them.

What’s this page about? – Similar to the banana theory, how well does that individual page “show and tell” a new visitor what’s it all about? If you have a site that deals with jewelry, don’t talk about necklaces and rings on the same page. One topic (or mini-banana) for page, please. Don’t clutter up pages with multiple ideas.

Where have I been? – Keep navigation links clean, consistent and simple. No one would like going into a room and having the door they just came in suddenly disappear or change color or look like something else all together, but people have sites that do this kind of thing all the time. Have your friends click on all the links and tell you the honest truth about how they feel when moving from one page to another. The navigation links and moving from one page to the next, should be smooth and flawless.

Where can I go next? – What do you want your visitor to do next? You have got to tell them. Yes, you will have to be blatantly obvious and grab their hands (digitally of course) and lead them to the next step of the process.

If you want comments on your blog say…”to leave me comments, scroll down to the bottom of the page and let me know what you think…”.  Or to visit us, print out the Google map to our store and come see us next Saturday for our sale…:

Why be so obvious? Because people are tired, stressed out, in a hurry and distracted. They want to do something (oh, yeah, what was it?….gosh…can’t remember) but before they can remember, they get emails, phone calls, kids, spouses, co-workers and bosses (drat!) interrupting their surfing experiences. Your job is make sure your site helps them when they have those little “brain-fark” moments.

Where’s the “Home Page”? – E.T. isn’t the only one who wants to go HOME. Nothing ticks off people (me) as not being able to find the home link, quickly and easily.

And please, call your home page, “Home”. Do not name it the “index”, “front page” (I know…I did this once…until someone emailed me and wanted to know where the “back” page was), the “Menu” or a cute little image of a “front door”.

Call it what it is…the “Home Page” or “Home”. Make sure it is always in the same place and that it is obvious…no fancy web design tricks like drop-down menus or mouse-overs, or clickable pictures. Use just a plain BIG button or link that says HOME and that takes you the main index page of the site or blog.

Don’t make people roam around like Moses searching for the “Promised Land”. Especially if you have a both a HTML website and a blog. Which ever one is the main site (usually the static HTML) gets to host the HOME page, while the blog is labeled “blog”. If you have more than one blog or site (sub-domains), the one that hosts the domain name gets to be the HOME. Don’t confuse people with a home1 or home2 or something creative.

Well, I hope this article has been helpful. Please feel free to forward it on to anyone that you think may get some use out of it. And as always contact me if you run into any website or blog troubles.

~ Chancer Reese, 828.216.0766, your  NC Web Diva

ReDiscovering Your Purpose & Goals for Your Blog or Website

As you may have noticed this article is just a more detailed continuation of the 6 deadly mistakes mentioned in an earlier article. If you didn’t get your copy or have lost it, an online version can be found here: Part 1.

This time, I want to spend some more time discussing how to rediscover your purpose & goals for your small website or blog.

Defining Your Overall Purpose –

Once I started my own business, my friends and former co-workers always asked me, “So what is it that you do now?” At first I was stumped. After all I had been working as an employee of one kind or another for over 40 years.

And like most working people, when I was asked what I did for a living I would answer them with my current job title. But I have always felt a little uncomfortable saying I was a “president” of a small business since the next question was “Oh…how many folks do you have working for you?”

“Huh…Just one…me.”

“Oh…?” Then other person would look vaguely embarrassed for me. And the conversation would drift off.

Or I would say something like “I am…a webmaster, or web writer, or internet content marketer and trainer”, depending on who I was talking to. Now the other person just looked confused if they weren’t a dyed in the wool geek.

Both type of answers were wrong and actually didn’t embrace what I felt I actually did for my clients. So I decided what I needed was a “mission statement”.

According to Wikipedia “A mission statement is a formal short written statement of the purpose of a company or organization.”

Often corporate mission statements are large, complex and quickly forgotten by both the staff and stakeholders. What originally I wanted was just a simple declarative statement I could use to answer the dreaded, “what do you do?”

But in the end, by defining my ultimate purpose as a business person, I could finally pull all my online and offline products and service under a single unifying banner. I discovered that a mission statement helps tell the world why you exist as business. And this helps to balance your own professional goals in relation to your blog or small business website.

To discover my mission statement, I started off with this formula, “I do specific things for specific people that helps them obtain specific benefits or results.” This little formula can be used by anyone for just about any type of business or service.

For example, if you have a site that supports a retail fireplace store, your objective could become, “I sell quality fireplaces that both beautify homes and provide warmth for families”. Or say you own a pottery business; it could be “I create raku pottery for people who love hand made local crafts and want to fill their homes with these unique pieces”

Or say you have a blog that is designed to be more of a “think piece” or an opinion based site for environmental matters. Your objective could be say, “I write posts that help concerned citizens understand how big business can be unduly influence “green” legislation.”

If my formula doesn’t work for you can try out the “Build a Mission Statement” tool found at http://www.franklincovey.com/msb/. This site has personal and team statement help as well as a couple of others.

Once you have defined your mission statement, you can use it to narrow down and work on developing your goals.

Oh, yeah in case you were curious my mission statement ended up being “I teach non-technical people how to understand and use their technology better.”

Setting Your Goals –

Goal setting is next on the list of things to do. As a mentioned before your ultimate purpose or mission statement is like a road map. It should guide your business or organization’s overall actions and give you and your team a sense of direction. Your goals are just stops along the way.

Here is list of 7 Very Good Goals for Any Small Website or Blog (adapted from larger list I found at http://www.jrlenterprises.com/why_web_site.htm).

• Creating an Online Presence

In 2005 Google announced that it had some 8,100,000,000 web pages in their databases and indexes. In 2009, the UN announced that it reckoned there are just 6,800,000,000 in the world. This means that the Internet has over a page of stored data for every man or woman or child in the world.

As you can see the Internet is huge. It has become the largest archive and potential repository of human knowledge in all of recorded history. And when counting eCommerce, it is also the largest marketplace ever invented.

This trend to move more and more commercial sales and human knowledge online will increase. The wave is coming.

• Connect with Your Clients, Customers and Prospects

It’s a matter of high tech vs. high touch. Internet technology allows you to connect with people faster, and easier than ever before. People want to know more about you and your business.

It is natural for folks to want to bond with and stay in contact with other people who they feel they know, like and trust. You can learn to use the Internet to create viable communities around your products and services.

• Share Your Organizational News and Information with the Public and the Media

Ask Tiger Woods…right or wrong, Tiger has “hidden” behind his personal blog statements since his scandal has broken out. Making contact with the media via an online presence is a lot less nerve racking than a personal interview or live press conference, especially if the news is negative.

• Sell Company Products or Services, Locally or Internationally

eBay paved the way and now people from around the world routinely buy and sell products and services from each other. While international import/export laws still must be enforced, small items from small seller to individual buyer pass through customs quickly and easily.

And digital products can pass even the most hostile borders with the click of mouse. And with Paypal and other online based payment processors, money all nations can be turned into little digital bits for easy payment.

• Provide Customer Service & Support 24/7

No more costly call center or technical support processes. By archiving information in FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) or knowledgebases and by using simple web forms, you can now handle a majority of your customer support issues cheaply and quickly.

• Service a Local or Global Niche Marketplace

While many licensed professional services are bound by laws of geography and a specific governing body, many other services can work with a much wider market than ever before.

Small service professional can either work with a specific niche market (like web design just for dental practices in the US, Canada) or web design for non-profits in a specific state or region say North Carolina or South Carolina.

• Educate the Public about Your Products or Services

As I mentioned before, one the reasons people surf the web is to obtain information. And over and over again, people have discovered that online “teaching sells”.

By taking the time to create educational materials and content, you can attract attention to your business, organization or cause. A saying from Japan goes like this, “When you light the path for another, you also light the path for yourself.”

If you liked this article and want to learn more about online promotions then I invite you to enroll in the “Blog Mastermind Training Course“** by Yaro Starak

I have always enjoyed all the blog training courses I have taken from Yaro in the past.  I think you will enjoy this one as well: Blog Mastermind**

~ Chancer

Remember this was at the peak of the dot-com bubble, when eBay was new and nerdy teenagers were selling websites that were being snapped up by the likes of Yahoo! and Google for millions of dollars.

Yes, sir’ree, we were going to conquer the Internet…

So I set up a website that showcased our budding technical talents and offered our freelance services to the world. The site was named TwoOldLadies.com because both of us at 40+ were often the oldest students in our information technology classes.

Soon I had the site up and running…just waiting for the job offers to come pouring in. And we waited and waited and waited. We told everyone we knew about the site. We emailed anyone who had an email address…several times…can we say “spam”. I even had business cards made up and handed them out, but still nothing happened.

No job offers, no work, no million dollar offers, no nothing. Not one single person ever called or contacted us as a result of that website. Okay…I finally had to face it, TwoOldLadies.com sucked and this internet marketing stuff was harder than it looked!

The site finally went down, when the Silicon Valley web hosting company I was using went belly up during the eventual dot-com bust in 2003.

Well, I took my lumps and slunk off into the dark. I messed around with some personal websites and later with blogs. Eventually, I moved from in-house computer support tech into webmastering and web content writing for several online marketing companies.

As a webmaster/web writer, I learned a lot about creating and promoting websites. From my work experiences, I finally discovered what it took to put a website or blog in the top Google rankings; how to create quality web content that attached potential customers and how to convert visitors into customers.

Basically, I discovered the “secrets” of how a make a website or blog successful. But I still kept in mind all those mistakes I made with that first website. And once I went freelance and I worked closely with clients, I began to notice that they too made the same mistakes I used to do.

This article delves into what I consider to be the top 5 deadly mistakes that most website or blog owners make and shows you how best to avoid them.

Deadly Mistake #1 – Not Having Direction

The mistake is actually two a combination of two different issues: not having a clear purpose and a lack of focus. Let’s see why these problems can be such a website killers. First, most small website or blog owners really don’t know why they are creating a site, except to say “Everyone needs one!” or “My competitors all have one…?”

Every website or blog must have a main goal, stated target or object that you want it to achieve. You can have a site just for the purpose of establishing your online presence, making information about your business available 24-7; selling items online or building up brand awareness.

Of course a website can support more than one purpose, but you should ideally have one ultimate goal in mind and design your site around it. Now the second part of this problem is a lack of focus. Small site owners often see the Internet as a world-wide mass market for their business

Unless you have a million dollar budget, this is a very bad belief to hold. In actually, the web should be thought of as a global, niche market. People go online to find 2 things: information and entertainment.

Basically people want answers, sound advice and factual information about a “specific” problem, pain, issue or question. This is why being focused on an “inch-wide but mile-deep” subject is so important to a small web publisher. You will position yourself as a go-to-expert on your topic area.

For example, if you were planning a road trip from North Carolina all the way to the West Coast, think of purpose as being your road map…you can’t just set off without one unless you want to spend days lost and wandering around the interstate system.

Focus would be your trip itinerary along the way. You would limit your travel to Interstate 40 since you want to stop off at Graceland, Elvis’s home, dig for gems at the Crater of Diamonds State Park near Little Rock, and explore the Texas panhandle, etc. Focus prevents you getting too far off track from your main topic.

How to Avoid: You must know your specific purpose or goals when publishing a website. Sit and write down all the reasons why you want a website. Then ask, what are your long term goals? And finally ask yourself, what is the primary purpose for this site? Now rank your reasons and goals in order of importance from first to last.

With this list in hand, you can now select the subject matter or topics your site is going to concern itself with. If you own a rug store, are you going to teach visitors what to look for in a good rug? Or are you be focusing teaching folks how to decorate a house or apartment using rugs, with your products as the centerpieces of course? Or is the site just going to supplement your television advertising by offering coupons, sales pieces, store hours, etc?

Deadly Mistake #2 – Not Having a User-Friendly Interface or Web Design

This problem involves the process of leading your visitors from one location on your website to another without overwhelming them or losing them to confusion. A user-friendly design is simply about making certain that your website is easy to understand and easy to navigate by your visitors.

This problem happens most often during the design process. Your web team may be uncertain as to your ultimate goals or your purpose and basically try to make your website be and do everything for everyone.

Now this is technically possible, (think of college or university websites – they must appeal to students, instructors, parents and alumni) but this kind of design takes a good deal of planning before hand. However for most small site owners, it is simpler and less expensive for you and your staff to design your site around just a handful of objectives or specific target goals.

How to Avoid: As I mentioned before user-friendly design and architecture is actually a function of your web design team. This is why you should take extra care to be certain that the design firm you choose not only makes beautiful looking websites, but also makes websites or blogs that are fun, functional and have good usability and work flow (the logical and efficient process of moving visitors from one task to another.)

Deadly Mistake #3 – Not Understanding the Importance of Content

Frequently on the Internet, you will read that “Content is King”. This slogan has come to mean that quantity content the key factor to keeping visitors coming back to your site.

Websites are not about putting up some information about your company and hoping the customer calls you. Good content is all the text, images, graphics, videos, audio files and other information published on a website or blog.

And it attaches the attention of visitors. Quality content connects with people on the emotional level. It lets them know about your products or service and understand how you can make their lives easier or better through your business or organization.

People return again and again to websites that offer them quality information that is useful, relevant and easy to access. And it’s this popularity that Google and other search engines like to see. The better the content the higher the rankings can become.

But while “Content is king”, don’t forget that “Conversion is Queen”. Once visitors come to your website and successful browse around and access the quality content you have provided, like a fish nosing around a baited fishing line, you also need to hook’em.

This is where copywriting or web sales content become vital. Without the ability to convert visitors into customers or clients, all the visitor traffic in the world is almost worthless to you. So visitor conversion is the second part of this important formula.

How to Avoid: Dale Carnegie said it best with the title of his 1938 bestseller, “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. The Internet is just a technology-powered way for you create online “friends” for yourself and your business and then later on “influence” those friends into visiting your shop, buying your products or services. And just like in the offline world, people like being friends with people; they know, like and trust.

Deadly Mistake #4 – Not Building Rapport or Relationships

This is one the hardest issues, most small owners have a problem with. Not everyone is a social butterfly, I know. I’m not…that’s why I am such a geek, but you (or someone on your staff or team) must take up the job of this very important task.

Like I mentioned, people like working with folks they feel they know, like and trust. It’s this lack of trust or creditability that is the main stumbling block with almost any online encounter. People are skittish and the seemly anonymity of the web makes them even more cautious.

This is why you must take the time to build rapport with your visitors and setup the technology so that people can connect with your company and have real “conversations” with you. And you do this by sharing your ideas, experiences, and expertise and business advice with your visitors. Yes, I want you to just give this stuff away!

How to Avoid: Yes, I know is seems counter-intuitive that ‘giving” away all your hard won knowledge can increase profits. For example, in the grocery store, if someone gives you free sample of a new product, you automatically look favorably upon them.

By sharing ideas and information freely with visitors, you automatically start building a relationship with them and this keeps drawing them back to your website.

Deadly Mistake #5 – Not Being Consistent

This is all about showing up. Don’t start a website or blog unless you have the time or money to keep it properly updated and maintained. There are currently over 190 million websites and blogs on the web.

The search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing (formerly known as MSN) have way too many sites to index and keep track of and will gladly drop your unattended website straight away into the trash bin without a care in the world.

Yes, I know that sounds harsh, but without consistent work and effort, your website will drop lower and lower in the search engine page rankings (SERPs) until no one will can find it without keying in your URL (web address) directly.

This is not what you want to happen. You want visitors who type in certain search terms or keywords that are relevant to your site to find your site somewhere in the top twenty spots or so.

How to Avoid: Be prepared to never stop adding or updating content to your website or blog. And be prepared to never stop promoting your site. While over time, you will not have to put as much energy or effort into it, you must still understand that a website or blog is almost a living thing (think house plant) and must consistently be fed and tended to in order to stay healthy and grow.

Of course, you can choose to turn your site into a low maintenance “cactus” or a higher maintenance “fern” that requires lots of daily mussing and fussing but in either case, you must be ready to put the work in before you see any success.

Bonus – Deadly Mistake # 6 – Being Impatient

If you are as I was, you will subconsciously believe in an idea that says “if you build it, they (the customers) will come”. Hey worked for Kevin Costner, right? One online wit even called this belief the “4 P’s”: “Put it online; Put it on your business card, Put up your feet and Pray!”

As I explained earlier this is a sure path to failure. But everyone believes that their stuff is so great and so much better than what’s out there, that somehow people will find you and your site and then buy all kinds of products and services from you.

And when this doesn’t happen, people get frustrated and disappointed and this is when the site becomes abandoned and is left to become another expensive cyber-boondoggle.

How to Avoid: Even if you avoid all the other mistakes and you do everything right, a small site will not show a return on investment to you overnight, despite what the marketing gurus tell you. It takes either time or money to grow a website or blog.

Sites that seem to hit the big time overnight had a huge marketing budget (can we say hundred of thousands or even millions of dollars). On the other hand, a small site can be developed using the most basic of marketing tools at a very affordable price, but this takes TIME and effort.

Think family gardening vs. commercial farming. The average family can grow almost all the food they need on an acre or less of garden space using simple hand tools and cheap seeds. But it takes a good deal of time and sweat equity to make that happen.

On the other hand, the same family can spend several thousands each year and buy food from the grocery without wasting precious hours weeding and watering. Like I said TIME vs. MONEY.

Naturally, I can’t tell you which one is best for you or your business, but I prepared to either teach you how to grow your blog or website using affordable tools and techniques or if your time is limited, I can help you with content development and with other web marketing methods.