It's All In The Details

Biz On The Web: Forget Search Rankings!

2007-06-29T09:42:00.000-06:00

Are you just starting out with a business on the web? If so, step 1 is easy:

Forget Search Engine Rankings!

To many this might seem like crazy talk, but give me a moment to explain myself.

Many businesses have been influenced by SPAM and the media to think that the single most important aspect of a successful website is a high search ranking. Is that what you think? (In a previous post I described some of the common misinformation spread in such SPAM.)

Don't get me wrong, search engine rankings are one of the elements of a successful website, but they are only one element and not the first one you should focus on.

Why Search Engine Ranking Isn't Step #1

Let's just imagine for a moment that you instantly flash onto the search engine ranking scene with all #1 placements for your selected keywords.

Instant success, right? Not necessarily.

High search engine ranking will result in visits to your website. But what is the business goal of your website? Are you simply looking for visitors? In most cases no. In most cases you have a more specific business goal, such as:

Sell an item
Get a new sales lead
Convince the user of your qualifications

Does high search engine rankings directly help you achieve those goals? No. Search engines can send traffic your way, but it is up to your website's content to turn those visits into valuable business results.

So instead of focusing your initial attention on high search rankings, focus on your content. Focus on providing content that is of value to your audience. Focus on effective marketing copy. Focus on usability that will allow your users to easily navigate through your site and complete your defined business goals.

By doing so you can create a "website that means business". And as a side-effect, your business goal focused website will rank better in the search engines.

Tell Me What You Think

Which is more important, content or rankings? Which do you think should come first? What do you think?

Branding: Focus on Value.

2007-06-12T09:22:00.000-06:00

What brand are the pearls to the right?

Does it even matter?

When shopping for diamonds, pearls or gems - it is the quality of the item, not the brand, that determines it's value.

What about your "brand"? Do you focus on providing diamond level value to your customers?

A recent post (branding - the even more dismal science) over at advertising practitioner, had the following interesting tidbit regarding branding:

They're turning from the people who create perceptions of value to the people who create actual value - the designers, technologists, innovators.

I don't know whether that is a large scale trend or not, but I think it is an important change in focus.

Branding and marketing certainly play important roles in modern business. Nevertheless, perceptions of value will not provide a lasting foundation for your business unless those perceptions are well supported by real value.

Your Website: Be an educated consumer.

2007-06-06T11:59:00.000-06:00

So what's the deal with the castle photo? More on that later.

Do you have a website that you would like to improve? Are you creating a new website for your business? Likely you will be looking for an outside specialist to assist you with this endeavor.

How will you evaluate the various service providers?
How can you make sure you get the most for your money?

These are the questions we will answer in this article.

Evaluating Web Service Providers

There is no shortage of web service providers from which to choose. The skill and professionalism of these providers can vary drastically.

I recommend to begin your search with the right goal. You are not simply looking for a service provider who can "design your website". Your website is an important part of your business and likely will become more so as time goes on. Begin your search with the idea that you are looking to develop a new business relationship.

This means some due diligence is necessary on your part. A few things worth researching are:

How long has this individual or company been in business?
Does their portfolio suggest they can complete the level of site you want?
Can they provide referrals of satisfied customers?
How quickly do they respond to your communications?

Only requests proposals from service providers who can pass this first level of screening.

Getting The Most For Your Money

You have screened potential providers and are now ready to proceed to the proposal phase. If you have past experience in this, you have likely found that determining what is a good value for a website is not easy. As the consumer you may receive wildly varying prices.

Let me give you some inside information to get the most for your money.

First and foremost you need to know what you want. Not from a technical stand-point, but from a business standpoint. What business goals & expectations do you have for your site? What exactly will this site need to do for you to consider it a success? Be as specific and detailed as possible. Unless the service providers know what you want, the bidding phase is just a big guessing game. Despite our various talents, reading minds is not one of them.
Have a budget and let the service providers know what it is. If you keep your budget a secret you just make things more difficult for everyone involved.
Consumer: I want the best website for my money.
Vendor: And how much is that? What is your budget?
Consumer: Well, I'd rather not say.
Why is this bad? Imagine you have a secret budget of $5,000. One service provider bids $1,000 and another $10,000. It's unlikely that either are proposing what you want. No one wins in this scenario, your time and theirs was wasted.
"But how can I have a budget? I don't know how much websites cost!" Ok. That is a legitimate concern. So here is the answer,
"Websites are like houses. Tents can be houses and castles can be houses. Some websites cost nothing, others cost millions. Your needs are probably somewhere in the middle."
There is no one right answer to "How much do websites cost?" Thus a budget is necessary. How much can you afford? How much do you want to spend? If what you want to spend is less than the maximum you can afford, request that the proposed solution be within the price you want to spend.

However, explain to the service provider that if they have any suggestions that cannot be included within that "want to spend" budget, that they be listed as optional itemized add-ons in the proposal. Perhaps there will be a gem of a suggestion that will make you want to spend a little more.
You told the service providers your budget and magically their proposals come in just under your budget. This doesn't mean you are getting ripped off. This is not a bad thing, after all that is what you wanted to spend - right? Now you have multiple proposals all offering services for a similar cost. Great! Now you can compare them apples to apples and see which one provides the best value for the money.
Understand the proposal. Make sure you thoroughly understand what the proposal is offering and how it will benefit your business. If you have questions, ask! Not only will this help you to make sure you get the most for your money, it will also give you some early insight into what it will be like to work with this provider.

In Review

Remember this isn't a poker game. It is a business relationship that should from the start be based on open and honest communication.

Screen providers and only request proposals from those that meet your standards of professionalism.
Define what you want and how much you want to spend.
Provide this information to all who will be submitting proposals.

Following those three steps you will be better equipped to get the best value for your money.

This is your website. This is your business. Be an educated consumer.

Biz On The Web: Productivity Through Transparency

2007-06-01T07:26:00.001-06:00

I remember as a kid my mom giving us our daily vitamins. I don't remember if they actually tasted that bad, or if it was just a first grader's way to assert some independence, but I tried very hard to avoid actually ingesting those vitamins.

If there was just a moment when her attention shifted elsewhere, I could win. The vitamins could be concealed, later to be safely disposed of in the soil of house plants or flushed down the toilet.

But under my mom's watchful eye I would soon tire and just bite the bullet, or in this case bite the head off of my Mr. Flintstone vitamin.

Sometimes being in the sight of others can help us to do the right thing even when we don't want to.

The web offers us the ability to make much more of our business transparent to the public. In doing so we put ourselves and our business in the open sight of anyone with an Internet connection in the world.

For example, for the last two days I have been working on meeting a project deadline. During those days I had a few different ideas for blog posts. How did transparency influence my actions?

For all I know my client may subscribe or visit my blog. How might they have reacted if I told them that I was working hard to get everything done on schedule, but they see I have time to write on my blogs? How would you have reacted?

In this case the transparency helped keep me on task. In the end I was able to get the project done on schedule, and the blog posts are still in my head to be written another day.

The web offers many ways to increase the transparency of your business. Wisely selecting appropriate ways to do so can not only help to better educate your audience about your brand, but can even be a helpful reminder to use your time in harmony with your customer's best interests.

Technorati Tags: blogging, business on the web, business owners, productivity, small business

Good Business: Empower Your Staff

2007-05-28T13:08:00.001-06:00

The ability for individual teams and even individual team members within your organization to make decisions is important.

I had a good example of this recently. I had purchased a new camera from NewEgg to replace one that was stolen on my trip. The unusual set of circumstances was that I was still out of country at the time, and thus had the camera shipped to a friend in the US who would be meeting up with us later on in Central America. She would bring the camera along. So far so good.

Unfortunately after the camera arrived at her house and she inspected the package, she found that the box did not have the battery charger as it should. Her plane was leaving in 96 hours, 72 of which were a National Holiday!

How would NewEgg handle the situation?

I was able to go to the NewEgg site and chat with a rep online. They confirmed that the package should have had a charger. They would overnight the replacement charger, but because I was calling after hours Friday and with the coming 3 day weekend the soonest it could possibly arrive would be hours after my friend's flight left. Solution A: No good.

At this point I figured that it was simply going to be impossible get a charger in time, and I would have to wait until I returned to the US to use my new camera. Afterall, that is the type of response most company's customer service desks have taught us to expect. "Sorry, there is nothing we can do" is too often the answer.

Much to my surprise that was not the case at NewEgg. Not at all. The rep told me what he "could do". All I would have to do is have my friend purchase a charger from a local retailer, and NewEgg would reimburse me the cost. That was a workable solution!

Obviously NewEgg had provided the customer reps certain limits within which they could work to make things right with their customers. Good job NewEgg! Next time I go to make an electronics purchase you can be sure I will think of NewEgg first.

But the real questions are:

How would your employees have been able to handle such a situation? Would they have had the ability and company support to make everything alright?

Biz On The Web: What can you learn from a search engine?

2007-05-27T15:31:00.000-06:00

If you think search engines are only useful for finding a website... I have to disagree. Search engines are research tools which can yield many diverse and interesting bits of information.

For example, I am located in Odessa, TX. What can we learn about Odessa, TX that might be of interest to a business local to the area?

Here is some data from the search engines:

The most popular search term that included "odessa texas" was "ford odessa texas" with an average monthly volume of 21,581 searches.

I doubt anyone who has visited this part of the country would be surprised to see that American make cars beat out the foreign (closest foreign is Toyota with 6,692 searches).

It is interesting that the majority of searches geographically targeted to the area are for vehicles. In fact, car searches completely dominate the search list.

So we could deduce that a large percentage of the Internet using population of Odessa have an active interest in purchasing a vehicle when they head to Google. Depending on your industry, that might be useful information.

For example, although an average of over 20,000 searches are performed by people interested in Ford vehicles in the Odessa area, neither Rogers Ford nor Sewell Ford (the local dealerships) are listed on the first page of Google results. Nor are they taking advantege of PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising on the search engines. I wonder if they are even aware of the opportunity they are missing out on?

After vehicle searches, Real Estate is the next "hot search" market - although it was unexpected to see that "office chair odessa texas" (2,513 searches) had more than double the searches than "real estate odessa texas" (1,159 searches). Apparently there is a huge seating shortage in town! If you are in the office furniture business this could offer a great business opportunity.

If you are a Realtor it might be of interest to know that while the above mentioned search term "real estate odessa texas" had 1,159 search, only 263 searches were performed for "odessa texas realtor". Might this indicate a marketing need to better educate your audience about the usefulness of a Realtor?

Without a doubt, search engines can be a powerful tool to research your local market.

Technorati Tags: business on the web, business owners, midland, odessa, search engine research, small business

Blogging 101: I messed up.

2007-05-25T20:20:00.000-06:00

I have had a blog for about 6 months, but just this month I have put some real effort into getting things rolling.

Unfortunately in the excitement I totally messed up.

A number of ideas for articles came to mind, and so I wrote. I wrote and I published. The error? In doing so I was wrapped up in the writing and forgot my audience.

Forgetting your audience is a huge mistake.

So at the end of a month I looked back over my posts and realized, “Who would want to subscribe to this?”

While hopefully I have been able to produce some material that will be of interest to readers, it failed to address a single audience. My current or potential business clients would have no interest in the more technical articles. Fellow designers and developers would have little interest in the articles aimed at educating business owners about websites.

I made a mistake. Fortunately when working with the digital medium, it is not terribly difficult to fix mistakes - especially if caught early on.

Thus, what I have done is taken my single group of posts and split them into two separate blogs.

All articles which I think will be useful to businesses interested in creating, updating, expanding or improving their website will be kept at this blog, "It's All In The Details".

All articles which are aimed at the web designer & developer community have been moved to the "Just In Time" blog.

I hope this separation will make it easier for readers to quickly find and subscribe to the stream of information most interesting to them.
The lesson of which I was reminded? Whatever it is you are doing, always stop and think about your audience.

Your Website: Series Intro

2007-05-25T06:11:00.000-06:00

The majority of my clients tend to be small to medium sized businesses. In these types of organizations the internal personnel assigned to the website project may have little to no previous experience with a business website.

This can present a number of challenges.

For the internal personnel it can be difficult to accurately assess which service provider will best meet their needs and provide a good value.

For the web designer it can be difficult to accurately estimate costs or meet expectations when the client isn't sure what they want.

Educated purchasing & marketing decisions require at least some measure of understanding. I always prefer an educated customer. In fact I would say that is the best possible client.

Whether you currently have a website or are considering one in the future, the subsequent articles in this series will help address some issues that a small business should consider.

Don't just have a website. Know your website. Put your website to work.

Technorati Tags: small business, your website, web design

The self-fulfilling website prophecy of doom!

2007-05-22T06:16:00.000-06:00

If you are a business owner, how do you view your website?

Is it an important, even vital, part of your business or is it an after-thought... perhaps even a necessary annoyance? In many ways your perception of your website will greatly influence it's results.

For example, if you start your project with the idea that your website is something you have to have (because everyone else does) but of no real practical value, how are you going to treat that website? You are going to treat is as something of no practical value. That means no time or budget to keep it up-to-date, to promote it, or to make it have any practical value to yourself or your audience. You've just created your very own self-fulfilling prophecy. You already decided it wasn't going to be a success, how could it ever become more than what you thought it was?

Successful websites have enthusiastic and active support from within the company.

Technorati Tags: small business, business owners, web design

Keeping Track of To-Do's

2007-05-17T09:09:00.000-06:00

Maybe I'm an exception in the world of web workers, but I generally prefer a desktop application over a web-based one.

However, one online web app that I have found to be useful and well put together is the GTD-friendly to-do application Vitalist. The basic service is free, has a pleasant interface and completely meets my needs.

If you are looking for an on-line to-do application, be sure to check Vitalist out.

Technorati Tags: gtd, getting things done, productivity, online applications