Web Design and the Secret Budget
Why are we so reticent when it comes to discussing money? Clients will send out request for proposals looking for the sun, moon and stars but give no indication as to how much they have to spend.
Most web companies will try to accommodate both large and small-budget jobs but they really need to know what they are dealing with from the outset. You don’t have to give them your exact figures, just floor and ceiling ballpark amounts so that they are not working in the dark.
If someone is costing a job for you it is important to know what end of the scale they are dealing with because:
- If your budget is small, you should let them know so that they don’t spend hours putting together a proposal that you are not in a position to accept.
- Equally, if your budget is large, they should know that as well because there are cheap solutions and there are expensive ones and you don’t want them trying to sell you open source low-cost solutions that don’t fit your requirements when you can afford to pay for an all-singing-all-dancing custom-built solution.
Staying Fresh and Getting Noticed
No, it’s not an ad for deodorant! It’s the headline of my contribution to an article that appreared in last weeks Sunday Tribune Business supplement entitled ‘Moving Online’
THE potential offered by the Internet to the business owner is enormous. If you have a product or service to sell, you need a successful online presence. This means more than just getting the company website up-and-running – it means using the internet to market directly to consumers.
Having a focused and attractive website is a solid starting point for building your online profile, but you also need a web designer who will take the time to meet you and get to know your business, because they will only be able to project your image favourably if they understand it.
Keeping the site content fresh will attract return visitors, while having a blog and using social media (such as LinkedIn or Twitter) will get your business talked about online.
The rush to get online is on. Remember to:
- Keep your content fresh
- Use traffic analysis to monitor your website’s progress
- Use social networking to engage directly with customers and raise awareness of your brand
- If you have a product or service to sell, show your wares through online demos
The Internet is there to be used
The more you put into it the more you will get out of it.
Can’t Wait to Get Online
The recession has thrown up a whole new interest in using the Internet as a promotional tool. Business owners who, just a couple of years ago thought they didn’t need a website are now scrambling to get online.
Having an informative website allows you to communicate your message to a much wider audience as well as enabling you to instantly provide updated information about your products or services to your existing customer base.
Getting Your Message Out
You may know your products or services like the back of your hand but does your website describe what you do well enough for potential customers to want to contact you?
Below are a couple of things to keep in mind when planning your website:
- Keep the home page as simple as possible with links to pages with more information. Visitors to your website should be able to tell from the information presented on the home page what your business has to offer and shouldn’t have to search to find out that basic message. The Internet is vast and consumers have greater choices than ever before, most will very quickly move on if they can’t make sense of your website straight away.
- Describe what it is you do in your introductory paragraph. If your product or service is not easy to describe in a few short sentences, you might want to consider making a short video to demonstrate your services. This way you can explain visually how your product or service works.
- Write your content for the uninitiated. Don’t assume visitors to your website understand the lingo within your industry.
- Make sure your website is attractive, has a clean design that’s easy to navigate and keep your content up-to-date. You can optimise your site for Search Engines, start an AdWords campaign and get thousands of hits on your site every day but if your material is out-dated, your design unappealing and your layout cluttered and confusing you will get very little more than that.
Blogging for Business
Maintaining a blog allows corporations to personalise their profile, engage directly with customers and to openly deal with criticism on their own turf. SMEs can use blogging as a means of building their brand and quickly post updates about products and services.
Some tips on business blogging:
- Decide how you want to portray your business image and stick to that style
- Try to write a new article at least once a month to keep the content fresh
- If you have more than one person contributing articles, make sure that you have a system of moderation in place
- Use keywords in your articles that you would like to see your site rank well for in Google and other search engines
Micro-blogging & Social Networking
Using social media websites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter can help you to build a network of others in your industry as well as related business that can be a source of leads for you.
There are tools available to help speed up the process. For example, TweetDeck allows you to post to Twitter and Facebook simultaneously, while LinkedIn and Facebook have RSS feeds that can automatically publish your blog postings.
Finally, and most importantly, if you are going to delegate the job of blogging and social networking to a member of staff, make sure that you select someone you trust, someone who knows your business intimately, is passionate about it, will stick to the image you want to present and will write appropriate material.
The Write Stuff
Content is King!
Of course it is. What is the point in having a website for your business if the content is poor and doesn’t relate your products or services well?
So many business owners get caught up with how their site will look, and if it will be listed on the first page of the search engines. Then when it comes to filling up those beautifully crafted empty pages, there’s very little, or worse, too much and nothing that the uninitiated would understand.
You may know your product well and write about it with great passion, but will the visitors to your website get it?
Think about your audience and write for the lowest common denominator. If you don’t have time or are unable to do this, get someone who can to do it for you. Ask your website designer about copywriting services and get the job done properly.
The initial outlay is nothing compared to the value your business will gain from having a quality website.
Hosting Headaches
Your client wants to work with you but is happy to use their existing hosting provider. Fine. You ask them for the FTP and/or control panel access. They don’t have a clue what that is, so you explain and then they go off to look for it.
Days or weeks later, they send you a copy of the original email from when they signed up with the provider, when the default passwords where sent. You know these will probably no longer work but you try them anyway. Email back to the client.. “no, the password must have been changed since, do you know who holds the current password?” “Hmm, well it might have been Jim, but he left last year, or Bob, ah yes, Bob did some work on our original site. I think he lives in France now or someplace. Leave it with me..”
More days go by. In the end you offer to contact the hosting provider yourself to ask them to reset the passwords. You email them. You get an automated response. Days later you re-send the email. You get another automated response. Eventually, you telephone them, they’re based in another time zone so you have to wait until their offices open. They can’t send you the passwords because you’re not the account holder, so they send the passwords to the email address they have from when the account was set up, which belongs to Bob who now lives in France or someplace. You have to phone them again, explain about Bob going missing and give them the client’s current contact email. They then send the passwords to the client who passes it on to you.
Then when you finally get to upload their files, you find that their hosting doesn’t include a database, the control panel doesn’t work or their security settings won’t allow your scripts to run… you have to contact the hosting provider and more time wasting begins.
Eventually, maybe, you get the site working and set it live. The client is happy and you are relieved.
A few months later the client wants to make some changes. They email you the changes they want. You make the changes and go to upload. The FTP login doesn’t work. You look for where you save the password, re-enter it, it doesn’t work. You look for the control panel password, it doesn’t work. You email the client to ask them if they changed the passwords. They don’t know what you are talking about… and round and round it goes.
