1. Unique Selling Proposition (USP). What is it that you’re selling? Why should people buy from you, instead of someone else? What problem are you solving for people, and how do you solve it? If you’re starting out, you’ll also need to affirm that there are enough people in your niche who actually need what you have, by doing market research. This should be reflected in your tagline. A generic-sounding tagline reflects a lack of thought in the problem-solution-result department–”Providing You with Excellent Service.” “You Can Count On Us!” “Only the Best!” Yeah, right. You need a tagline that expresses your core marketing message.
2. Market Research. Lots of startup companies, or companies branching out in new directions, don’t seem to do any market research first. But without verifying that you have a market, and that your USP is speaking to your market, you may waste a lot of time and energy. (See How to Use Social Media for Keyword Research, and also 5 Free Powerful Ways to Conduct Online Consumer Market Research to Find a Profitable Niche that has nothing to do with Keyword Research.)
3. Logo. People often forget that a logo design is a completely different thing than
   a website design. A logo is an expression of one’s entire branding, and
   should be easily reproduced over a large variety of media, to reinforce
   your image–letterhead, business cards, website, etc. (For a good
   discussion of this, see Why Logo Design Does Not Cost $5.) It will be repeated again and again ana again.
4. Site Maintenance. If you don’t want to have a stale site, you’re going to have to designate someone–at least once in a while–to update the site content. Will this be you, one of your employees, or your web design company? If it’s you, you’ll likely be using a content management system, or CMS. Are you trained in using these systems? Is training included in your plans and budget? Let’s be realistic: Even the easiest-to-use systems need to managed by someone, and mistakes can be made. Therefore, they will be made, unless some system is put in place to prevent this. (See Post-CMS Training.)
5. Copywriting. This is one of the most notoriously under-valued things of all time. The words that describe what you do, what you sell–why it’s different; how it helps solve people’s problems; what it will do for them–will make the difference beteween lots of business, and no business. Someone is going to have to write all the copy for the “About Us,” “Services,” and “Contact Us” pages. People really do want to know what you’re about, who you are, and why they should buy from you. They’re searching for credibility signs. If you can’t articulate this, why should they buy from you?
6. Photography. Now, most sites have some photography. But a lot use stock photography that is less than inspiring. Classic photos of generic people in business suits shaking hands over a conference room table, who don’t seem to have anything to do with what you are really offering, for example, are less than inspiring. The right choice of images can reinforce your brand and really help tell your story. And don’t forget to include a good photograph of yourself and your staff, especially if you’re providing services. The photo should be professional, but not too professional. It should express the image of yourself you want to convey to people.
7. Marketing Strategy. This is a whole topic unto itself. But,
   many people make an assumption that putting up a website will somehow
   bring them business on its own. Nope. Online marketing is efficient, but it is not without effort. People who succeed with it do so because it’s efficient.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

http://www.usertesting.com/

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

When I started this business, I figured I’d better be competitive, in order to get more business. And I figured I would have to start with smaller clients. And that those smaller clients wouldn’t have as much money.

Therefore, I figured, I would have to charge them less money, and so, I would have to take less time doing what I did.

But the result of this, sometimes, has been that–yes–people have been able to get a good “deal” from me; but not necessarily exactly what they wanted.

I realized that it suits me to treat myself like a craftsman–like a fine cabinetmaker, for example. He makes sure every join is true. He finds just the right stain. He polishes every detail. Because he does these things, he feels great about his work. To the extent that he puts this much care into the thing he is doing for someone else, he puts this much care into his own life, and so his life feels worthy of him, and his work feels worthy of his time.

It doesn’t do for the craftsman to make sacrifices to his craft, justify that “the client would not be able to afford it, if I did everything I know to do, to do the job right.” To ignore details that he sees, presuming the client doesn’t care enough to notice them, or won’t spot them anyway. This makes him small, and makes him appear like a lot of other people–just getting by, cutting corners, and making do with second best. A lot of people out there never notice those little details anyway, and this makes him, like them, and so it makes him like a whole lot of other people.

And this confirms the belief that he was avoiding (and living)–that he is small, and not worthy to charge for doing top-quality work. It makes the work less fun, and therefore harder. The time spent in this way is tiring, and feels like a waste.

I have in part to thank Brandon Sinclair, who wrote The Web Design Business Kit, for this insight. He points out that, in a very crowded field of web design, one of the only real differentiators you have is really good customer service. Think about it: even if you have no real idea what the answers to the following two questions are, what do you imagine they would be:

1. Roughly how many web designers would you guess there are in your area?
2. Roughly how many web designers would you guess there are in your area, who:

• You know you could trust to handle every detail of your site with the utmost care, and make sure it gets done right?
• If something is not right, you could trust to fix the problem with the same urgency he would treat it as if it were his own?
• Who start and end every project centered around handling every detail towards achieving the following goal: to assist you in making more money from your business?

After having tried for a year and a half to “cut a few corners here and there,” I have realized that, every project I do where I treat myself like a craftsman, and care for every detail, will become a piece that my client will rave about, and make me successful that much quicker. But just as important: I feel excited about doing the work, because I am testing my edge, rather than slumming around the boring middle.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

1. Sojourner Farms All Natural Dog Food

I just love the slightly rough, 1930’s style banner of this site, and the sweetness it creates. The use of CSS dotted lines to demarcate areas of the text, and the reddish brown color of the type, add to the effect very nicely.

Link: http://www.sojos.com/affiliates.html

2. Electric Pulp

The two watercolor trees in the background are very nice! This firm has created a backdrop to highlight the various designs they have done for clients, where the frame is not too overpowering, but still allows them to express some of their personality.

Link: http://electricpulp.com/

3. Fuze Creative

Here is a very nice design, incorporating elements of “sloppiness,” with a clear layout gridl. The color and the feel of the brown background scan is echoed nicely in the color and pattern of the border lines, and the type. Once again, this conveys a sense of playfulness that is under the control of the designer. For me, this would inspire confidence that they were able to be creative, playful, and original, but also had a handle on what they were doing, and weren’t doing it just to show off.

Link: http://www.fuzecreative.com/

4. Noémie Chevaux-Tavernier

So playful and sweet. The black and white photo of the woman, that looks almost like it was cut out of a photo from an old scrapbook, and her look could almost suggest she was from a long time ago. I’m not sure if that was intended, but it creates a magical effect, for me.

Link: http://www.noemie-chevaux.com/

5. Nut and Bee

This artist creates a wonderful series of characters, and sells them in the form of stickers, magnets, and so on. The design is a nice, simple backdrop for her various characters.

Link: http://www.nutandbee.com/

6. Orange Coat

I just think this artist came up with a very cute logo, and utilized it well at the top of his/her site. The choice of Georgia for the type, and a sweet and soft brown color palette (with a turqoise secondary color) creates a very nice feel.

Link: http://www.orangecoat.com/

7. The Ditty Bops

Along with being a great band, these women have a wonderful website. Check out the links within the site as well, as they are awesome as well. It’s kind of seeming like I like an almost post-Victorian sensibility in design, doesn’t it? That, combined with a penchant for the juvenile.

http://www.thedittybops.com/

8. The Pug Automatic

I like this weird pen and ink drawing of a dog, and how it’s integrated into the banner of this blog. The drawing is just weird–there’s no chance of it looking like any other site! Coupled with that, he’s standing over an iBook, there are zeppelins flying overhead, and mysterious, organic-looking gears in the other corner.

http://henrik.nyh.se/

9. WhyTheLuckyStiff

I really like this guy, and he’s written a very good, extremely entertaining guide to the Ruby language. He’s a brilliant guy who’s not afraid to be weird (very weird), but is also sane. The banner is playful and silly, and integrates beautifully with the standard CSS elements of the site. When I was younger, I wanted to do things like this, but I never did, because I thought it would mean people wouldn’t take me seriously. But I think people do take him seriously, because he’s providing a lot of valuable information at the same time that he’s choosing to be silly.

http://whytheluckystiff.net/

10. Holly Hue DIY Clothing

Here’s a brilliant site, that features an active text area comprised of a piece of brown burlap fabric, hand-stitched to the striped white and blue background fabric. The navigation buttons, too, are hand-stitched pieces of fabric. They become a deeper purple when you hover over them with your mouse. You really have to do something like this to discover what a feat it is! To make something this organic look seamless, no matter how long your text area may grow, or shrink, to. Nice work!

http://www.hollyhue.com/

These are some of the top sites I have found that have this sort of naturalistic, sweet flavor. Do you know of others? Please post them in the comments!

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

So, I think there is actually a market space here for channels that give less information. I think the art of attention management is going to get more and more prominent.

This opens up a whole new area of possibility, which for the moment I will call minimism, or the art of deliberate extraction. I don’t even know what I’m talking about–but there’s something to it:

• While there’s just way too much information to ever process, we are still pumping it out as though there were a shortage.
• Everyone wants their information to get out there; let’s say that is natural.
• Our biology still predisposes us to pumping out as much information as possible, as though there were a shortage of it. I remember when my mother told me that you could die of drinking too much water. At first I didn’t believe her, but then I realized that it was probably true.
• People are just beginning to develop technology such as RSS feed aggregators that allow us to sort through this information.
• Often, we would rather have a trusted friend tell us what the important things of the day, in their special area, are. It’s the trusted part that makes this relevant.

So–I invite your thoughts on this. Please add your comment below: What kinds of technologies, cultural traditions, or methodologies do you think we need to adopt, in order to adapt our systems for the unusual experience of too much information?

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Choose a font size that makes your text readable. A lot of web designers are very young-in their twenties. I’m not (I’m 41), so maybe this comment reflects this. But this is not a bad thing! The majority of your audience-depending on who that is-may well not be in their teens and twenties. A number of web fonts do look kind of cool at small sizes. Here is an example:

But they are going to be a lot easier to read at a higher font size, like the one you are reading now. Ultimately, your site visitors will thank you more for being able to convey the information quickly, than by looking “cool”.

Pay attention to the width of your text column. The wider the column is for your body text, the harder it will be to read. You just need to weigh this against the other factors that affect readability, such as: the age of your target audience, the readability of the font you are using, the length of your material and its complexity, etc. Just be sure the overall effect of all these choices leads to easy to read body text. And remember: nobody likes to read as much text on a web page as they do on the printed page!

Remember: people don’t “read” a web page, they scan it. Countless studies, as well as common sense, indicate that when people go to a web page, they don’t sit and “read” it in the way they might read a page in a book. And yet, it’s easy to forget this when we’re writing our copy and putting it up. Therefore, remember these things:

• Utilize lots of visual “cues” that will help your reader scan for the information that’s most pertinent to them; this can include bulleted and numbered lists, bold sections of a paragraph, and boxed sections-like “callouts,” for important take-away information.
• Write in shorter, simpler sentences than you might otherwise.
• Write in shorter paragraphs.
• Put yourself in the shoes of a busy person who’s searching for relevant bits of information.

Leave plenty of “air” between text and other elements. When I started doing graphic design in the early 90’s, I was taught by a very anal, meticulous friend, who schooled me to become very attuned to the amount of spacing between different elements of the page. A problem I often see is: for some reason, an otherwise decent design has too little “air” (white space) between text and design elements. Here’s an example:

Before: Not enough air between the text and the element above.

After: An appropriate feeling of air between the element and the text.

Just take a moment to “feel” the two examples. Doesn’t the second one “feel” more balanced, more relaxed? There are many ways in which you can play with giving your design this feeling of air, and ultimately, playing with the spacing between elements, until it all “feels” right-airy, roomy, and balanced-can go a long way to creating the impression of a professional, well-put-together design.

I hope this gave you a few more ideas for good website design. There are plenty more, but these are a few that you may not have thought of.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

The client never really fully appreciates that you are giving them a “deal,” and therefore still wants all the bells and whistles that they would expect if you charged them “full price”.

Because their budget was low, I tried to “scale back” the design to a reasonable amount; but, what’s reasonable? That’s totally subjective, and what ended up happening was when they weren’t happy with the original idea I threw out there, I ended up spending 4 times as long as I’d budgeted to make them happy; they still weren’t. Once again, by trying to give someone a deal, I think I set myself up to make the client not be happy, by trying to give that client a special deal. No matter how little a client pays, there’s still going to want what you’d give them if you charged them a lot of money.

I really can’t stand the idea of just using some generic template–it feels like a disservice, since most of them seem really ugly to me, and have no personality. They can go somewhere else for that. But once you’ve opened up the door to design, you’ve opened up the door to someone’s subjective view of what something should look like, and you’d better budget for the time to make it that way. You can have simpler or more complex designs, you’d better budget some time for it either way.

Chris Pearson points out that all of his clients have a compelling reason to want a custom-designed blog:

My clients all have one thing in common. They have a concrete, business-based reason for hiring me to design them a killer site. Thus far, there have been no exceptions to this rule. All of my clients are doing one of the following:

• Using their site to sell a product
• Building a subscription list for marketing purposes
• Building links and increasing exposure to help with ad/referral conversion

One of the mistakes I have made, is trying to bring my prices down to the point where people who don’t have a clear business case for using my services, could afford me. What a mistake! These people–bless their hearts!–may still call me with a thousand questions, and ten thousand little tweaks and modifications, before they consider the project done.

As John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing has said, you’ll always find someone who’s willing to go out of business faster than you are, so there’s no sense competing on price. My repeated experience–much to my surprise, at times–is that there’s absolutely no sense in providing a professional product at a substandard price. Moreover, your clients are going to see you as substandard, not as a good value. Furthermore, whenever I produce a “discount” site like this, I don’t give myself the time and opportunity to produce something as beautiful and just right as I could; and here again: when people see your work, they’re going to judge it assuming this was the best you could do–not that it was the best you could do on a cheap budget. And therefore, you will gradually limit yourself to doing this kind of work, as people come to expect that this is the best you can do.

Best solution, from all that I have read, is: decide how good you want it to be, and base your prices (and efforts) on that. Do the best you can, and charge for it; find people who are willing to pay that. And if you ever discount your prices, start by setting their expectations based on what you really want to charge; and if you’re giving them a discount, make it very clear that you are doing so, and why.

Best of luck!

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

But this technique could be applied lots of places; for a comprehensive list of how-to sites, see this list.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

I say this because I frequently have the following experience: I am surfing the web, and come across a potentially interesting resource. I sign up for the person’s email newsletter, or subscribe to their blog feed–I may or may not read their newsletter. I am “very busy,” like most people. Their information may be great, but I just cannot pay attention to it right now. In today’s world of attention management, this is the way it is.

But what I realize is this: I often sign up for newsletters or RSS feeds to keep someone in my mind, for if I need them later. It’s easy enough for me to file away, mentally, what they do. In other words, I am deliberately putting a “hook” out to their “feed,” to allow them to keep reminding me that they exist, and to inspire me that they exist.

As long as I am happy to receive their email or blog posts, and at least scan them occasionally, to inspire me to remember why I signed up in the first place,  this function–planting the memory hook–occurs transparently, along with the more obvious functions of their marketing.

But occasionally, I have the experience of just becoming overloaded with information, e-zines, blog posts, etc., and realizing I don’t have enough attention left to pay attention to any of it! At this point, I’ll trim my subscriptions so that I can manage my attention better. But the problem is this: In this process, I often lose “hooks” into sites and people I don’t really want to lose. Often, I then go back and wish I could remember–who was that guy again? What was his URL? And if the field is too crowded, or the business’s name is too hard to remember, they may just fall right down the memory hole, and be lost.

What I wish I could do, in these cases, is say, “keep reminding me about you, but not in such a way that it overwhelms my attention.” This could take the form of:

• Instead of having to choose between (a) a weekly subscription, or daily blog posts, and (b) nothing, provide a third option–such as, a setting that allows me to get an email every three months?
• Mail me a colorful card that has their name on it?

Harry Palmer, author of the Avatar materials, came up with this image of attention particles. In this view, we only have so many attention particles, and various things start to use them up. In this sense, the approach I am looking for is: a way of receiving just enough attention particles–say, one or two–every so often–to allow me to call that person up into memory when I need to. Maybe it would be nice, in theory, for the person in question to be able to send me ten, or twenty attention particles every week. But maybe all I need to be able to call them into memory when I need them is, say, one or two a month. (The numbers here, are, obviously, totally arbitrary!)

The point is, because my only choice it to unsubscribe, I lose this person, even though I didn’t want to. Somehow, we need to come up with a way to allow people to keep their “hook” into our information, but allow them control over how much of their attention we take up.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

I put an ad on Craigslist, for potential collaborators in my business. It gives me a lot of good perspectives, from the “other side”.

First, you really don’t know what the other person is thinking. One guy replied to my ad, and when I did not reply back within 24 hours, he sent me a belligerent email insluting me for being so rude as to not respond. I was just busy, of course; but I think he must have read all sorts of things into my not responding instantly.

Second, I really want to have people work with me who I like. Who feel like me, in some ways. People who I might like to be friends with.

Also, it makes me much more responsive if that person seems generally interested in life. The degree to which people are aware, awake, or whatever you want to call it–the degree to which they’re thinking about and/or observing what they’re doing, what they want to do next, and where they’re going, varies tremendously from person to person. There are plenty of mechanisms set up in our culture to encourage people to just follow along and do what everyone else is doing. In spite of this, some people insist on doing it there own way, again and again.

When someone says, “and if you don’t hear back from me in a week or so, feel free to give me a call,” what they’re saying is, “I see potential here for a relationship, but I am not convinced yet, because I haven’t felt the click. I might feel the click; and if I hear back from you, that will demonstrate an important quality in your character: follow through. And interest.

But again, I sense that people’s degree of interest in anything varies a lot. That is, the degree to which they’re even aware of what they’re interested in.

Also, I think we’ve become so used to not doing what we really want to be doing, that we don’t even necessarily see that as a hindrance to doing it. But when I talk with someone– a potential client, or a potential team mate–and it sounds like they’re a bit ambivalent about whether they want to be doing the thing I’m talking about doing–I start to wonder whether it’s going to be serving either one of us by encouraging them to go forward with this thing they’re maybe not even interested in.

Another thing I notice is: If you have potential work for someone, they’ll really pay attention to you! I was honest when I said I had potential, future work. But still–a lot of really neat people responded. And it turns out that this may end up being a good way to enlist teammates and collaborators in what I do.

You don’t necessarily want a genius, or the best person in the whole world. You want someone who feels like you. And, of course, feels like they’d be just the right fit for the job. One repondant had a very impressive resume–and I will definitely call that person–but there is this little piece of me that goes “gosh, maybe this person is even more energetic and knowledgeable than me, and I’ll feel kind of intimidated.” The truth is, I’ll call them because they sound enthusiastic, and obviously basically know what they’re doing. That their basic intelligence, general industry knowledge, and enthusiasm, will probably take them wherever they would need to go in their role with me. But something that never occured to me as a job applicant is that I might sound too impressive, or that the number one quality someone was looking for was this: I am looking for the person who seems the most likely, “out of the box”, to fit into my image of what I would want that person to be in the role I am envisioning. Because this will be the easiest for me, and the most likely for me to succeed with.

Another thing that I would never have thought of, is: the person you are responding to may very well have less confidence than you think about picking the right person. They may be looking for as many hints as possible to tell them that they are making a right choice; but they may have all sorts of doubts about this. This is one of the reasons they’re probably looking for the right “out of the box” person (above).

Therefore, feeling into what, exactly, this person is probably really looking for, and carefully tailoring your message to that, is probably far more important than having a gazillion software programs listed in your reply, or sounding completely and totally together.

I wrote in a very conversational, down-to-earth, straightforward tone, that I think conveyed that I wanted (a) to treat people as equals; (b) to be relaxed, but results-oriented; (c) I strongly emphasized the character traits I was looking for, and in fact barely mentioned anything about software requirements, etc. — Let alone degrees, blah blah blah.

And this would go for your tone on the phone, as well. You could tune into what that person really seemed to be wanting to get out of the conversation. In my case, I’m hungering for someone to tell my business ideas to who might listen, so people who seem able to communicate about this got a great response from me. People who did not feel engaged in a peer-to-peer conversation with me got a cooler response.

And like any situation, the reason someone reaches out is their “presenting problem”–the thing that got them off their duff to make the call/send the email/put the post up on Craigslist. But there might be all sorts of things underneath that presenting problem that they can’t even necessarily articulate. In my case, once I made the post, I realized how much I’d love to have collaborators in my business, and how excited I was getting about the possibility of helping to create a team.

So, if someone starts bending your ear about things that don’t seem directly related to the reason you’re calling, you might consider that a compliment–it probably means they like you, or are exploring if they like you, and using this conversation to get a sense of that. If they’re so hungry to express… whatever, and you are genuinely giving them an opportunity to do that, then you’re actually meeting a need for them–and therefore, proving that you would be able to meet that need if they hired you. Now I’ve met some blowhards in my day, and I hope I’m not one of them. Still…

Really think about this: What does it mean when someone decides that you are a “good fit” for a job?

• Seem aligned with their philosophy of the world?
• Feel relaxed?
• Sound present?
• Seem like someone they’d like to know?
• Sounds like you’d be able to take the job on, and figure out how to do it without too much fuss?
• Seems like you care about this kind of work as much as they do?

Maybe for people who make degrees important in their lives, having degrees would be up on their list. But I don’t, so they’re definitely not on mine.

Oh, one more thing: Sometimes there are things you might say that could make someone think that you might be crazy. It’s probably a good idea not to say those things until you know them a little bit.

So: If you want to make a great impression, line up your presentation, in every way you can, with what you sense the person you are responding to is looking for–and forget about all the “rules” of what that you’re supposed to do to make a good impression. It’s how you make the person feel.

Addendum:

• Part of the reason people ask what your overall plans are, or whatever, is because they want to know that you have some plans, of some kind.
• People are really evaluating you as a person. I know that may sound harsh, but it’s the whole person they’d be working with, so they need to.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites