Your Website is Not a Piece of Paper

This very famous cartoon by Edward Koren has the caption, "Well, there's your problem."

I thought of it immediately when I looked at a new client's website today with Shan Pesaru over at Sharp Hue, Inc.

The client has a very attractive website, as you can see from this little piece of it. All the words there, by the way, are graphics.



There is the phrase "tissue lysates" at one point, but this is essentially a content-free page.

Shan and I were admiring it, thinking what a nice print ad it would make. It has an elegant design, and apart from the navigation buttons at the bottom, there's nothing about it that would cause you to think it was a website.

The client isn't happy with the website's performance. They don't show up for search for any of their keywords, and they don't get the kind of sales they'd like.

I instantly thought of Koran's mechanic.

From the point of view of the search engines, this is a page that says "tissue lysates." The fine graphic design, the carefully-chosen words incorporated into the graphics files -- those have no meaning at all for the search engines.

Our client isn't ranking for their keywords because Google has no clue what's going on at that page, and no way to guess.

From the point of view of the human visitor, this is a lovely page. You can sit and admire the spiralling DNA and the happy bunny and the dedicated scientist, but there's no indication of what's happening here or where you're supposed to go.

The navigation bar is composed of the bottom row of butter-colored squares with subtle white words on them, and human visitors will eventually find them.

Imagine walking into an elevator. You step in, turn to face the front, reach out with your right hand for the tidy row of buttons that is always in the same spot -- and it isn't there. Instead, the designers have decided to put the buttons in subtle swirly patterns on the opposite wall, near the floor.

This is roughly the effect of the yellow squares with their delicate suggestions of words on them. Perhaps "contact" and "search" are part of the artist's concept, just like the mouse on the calendar? Oh, no -- now you can see that this is actually the navigation bar, cunningly disguised.

Your human visitors just aren't supposed to have to work that hard. And the search engines won't work that hard. So the diagnosis of the problem was really easy: this page needs some content. Shan's going to put the navigation where web users expect it to be, and I'm going to write some words that will let the search engines in on the secret of what these good people do, and their results ought to thrill them.

The problem for many websites is that they've been designed as though they were a literal print page for someone to look at. That's just not the case. People don't interact with a web page the way they do with a print page. And search engines, of course, don't interact with print pages at all.

If you've forgotten that when you planned your website, then you really don't need to look any further when seeking the reason for your website's disappointing results.

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Basic SEO for All Websites

I worked on fifteen websites last week. That's not counting the websites I take care of an ongoing basis, either, but fifteen websites needing to be written, rewritten, or optimized.

If you know me IRL, then you may know this, because it came up a lot in conversation, like this:

"Have you graded our papers?"
"I'm working on fifteen websites."

"How's the Brahms coming?"
"I'm working on fifteen websites."

"What's for dinner?"
"I'm working on fifteen websites."

Fifteen websites is a lot to work on at once. Busy is good, of course, and I'm not complaining. I got drafts of all of them turned in, and quite a few of them have gotten their final polishing and tweaking, and some have actually launched. I enjoyed them all.

But working with that kind of volume caused me to notice something.

You are of course special, unique, and completely different from everyone else. So is your website. No two of those websites needed exactly the same treatment, and no two got the same strategy, structure, or wording.

But there are some things that need to be done for all websites.

• Check to see how people use your website before you make final decisions about planned changes. If you have Google Analytics, use that data. If not, or if for some reason that data isn't sufficient, then test the site.
• Check your navigation and make sure that you have a reasonable number of options on your navigation bar, and that they link in reasonable ways.
  
• Look at the source code for the page and make sure you have titles, descriptions, and alt tags for all your pages. Whether you believe that meta keywords are good for search or not, the source code is still a handy place to store them, so you'll remember to use them.
  
• Make sure the major search engines know about your website. Here are their links:

Yahoo!
Google
MSN
DMOZ

• Make sure the major local search options know where you are. Speed that process by visiting Get Listed.

After you do these five things, there are plenty of other things that will benefit your particular website. But every site needs these five things.

DIY vs. Hiring It Done

Seed catalogs are arriving in the mailboxes of gardeners. It's about time, therefore, for those humorous essays to appear -- the ones that talk about how a neophyte gardener created his first garden, and ended up with one $5,000 tomato.

My family grows organic fruits and vegetables every year. My husband grew up on a farm, and we have a couple of strapping teenage sons, and we're completely successful. Our produce is delicious and cheap, and there's nothing like stepping out the door to get some nice fresh herbs and vegetables when you're cooking dinner.

I tell people, when they ask, that they can of course grow a garden. Anyone can.

Since I wrote about my favorite DIY web design books last week, I've gotten quite a few calls from eager neophyte website creators, and I tell them with equal blitheness that of course they can make their own website. Anyone can.

I give suggestions for which free or low-cost service to use, and link them to posts here in this blog that might help them, and I answer their questions about the best software to use, too.

But one such caller asked me a different question: not "What software is best?" or "Which free service should I pick?" but "What's the difference between having you write my website and my doing it?"

I didn't know this caller, so I couldn't answer her question on the basis of her knowledge of SEO or her writing skill, and that's probably a good thing. In general, a website for which I've written the content will tend to appeal to the search engines, to encourage visitors to follow the path you want them to follow, and to get good results with visitors, but she might have equally good results herself, for all I know.

So I thought back on all the DIY websites I've heard about in the past year. All the plans I've heard for a cool new page on the web. All the repetitions of, "I'm going to make a website..." And I realized that they all have one thing in common: none of them actually currently exists. The businesses, groups, and organizations that figured they'd be better off doing it themselves are still waiting around for their websites to launch -- unless they came back and hired me.

Not because they couldn't have done it. Not because it's impossible. Probably for the same reason those humorous essayists end up with a single $5,000 tomato. It's easy enough when you know how, when that's your job, when you have all the tools, when you have the help you need. Without those things, it's hard.

So, in the end, I told her, "The biggest difference may be that, if I do it, it'll get done."

You're #1 on Google: Now What?

My new client over at Stage Hypnosis Center is in an enviable position. If you wanted to become a stage hypnotist, and you went online to look for some training for the purpose, you would find the Ronnings' website at the top of your search results page every time.

What's the next step when you've achieved high visibility for the logical searches for your particular marketing niche?

• Go after minor keywords. The school-supply store I work with has found that people are just as likely to search for "polka dot Bordette" or whatever individual item they're looking for as they are to start with "school supply store." We routinely work on getting her high on search for as many of her thousands of products as possible. Another of my clients posted some of her articles in Spanish, a move which put her at the top of search for her main keywords in Spanish as well as in English -- reaching a population she wanted to reach better than she previously had. Do a little testing to discover what lesser keywords might be worth working on.
• Keep your content fresh. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, your visitors may find you during informational search, not just when they're shopping. I'm working on a website for a scholar of Torah right now. Nobody's going to Google "deeper meaning of the book of Esther" with their credit card in hand, but reading his insightful article on the subject will very likely bring them back in future. Then, when they're ready to make a donation or buy a book, they'll head back to the website. There are so many surprising searches going on every day that we can't plan to choose all the keywords our visitors use to find us. Having plenty of useful, relevant content will increase the chances of reaching audiences we'd never have thought of. I wasn't actually counting on being on the front page of Google for "avoiding piracy," but now that I am, I figure I may be reaching some practitioners of ethical SEO I might not otherwise have met.
• Work on conversion. My stage hypnotist client has results in search that his competitors have to envy, but there are things he can do for his website that should make a big difference in the number of people who come to visit and stay to subscribe or purchase. Increasing your conversion rate with your current traffic level is an excellent goal to keep in mind while you're working on search and traffic.

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Pricing, User Behavior, and Your Website

As consumers, we have a lot of things about prices in our heads. We have some price points stored, for one thing. These vary from one person to another, and one community to another, but they're surprisingly fixed for each of us.

For example, in my neighborhood, $15 is the price of a birthday gift for a kid's birthday party. When we go shopping for that kind of thing, we pretty much just look at items in that price range.

It's almost a definition: the price of a sandwich is $6.00, the price of a haircut is $30... It's not that we don't know, if these are our definitions, that 99 cent sandwiches and $200 haircuts exist. They're exceptions to our rule, though, and we're less likely to consider them than people whose schemata for the world include the price of a sandwich is 99 cents and the price of a haircut is $200.

We also have information about how prices are presented on websites. If it's a good price, then it'll be in large numbers on the homepage: ONLY $9.95! If it's on its own separate pricing page, then we're looking at a moderate price. If there are no prices anywhere on the website, then we're in "If you have to ask, you can't afford it" territory.

One of my clients has a problem with this issue. She has one product essentially, with two different delivery systems. One option is $24.95. To me, that's the price of a haircut, a pizza, a book. If I'm convinced that I need the item, I'll just click on it and buy. The other option is $600 plus a per-use fee. $600, to me, is a month's groceries for a family, a modest vacation, a nice software package. I'm not going to click on that and buy it just like that. I'd want more information.

Here's the problem: the website currently gives the same user experience for both options. The prospective buyer goes to a contact form. Fill it out, a salesperson will call.

If I'm going for the $24.95 option, I don't expect a sales call. The possibility of a sales call, in fact, will cause me not to buy it. I don't expect a personal pitch and a cup of coffee every time I buy a book. If I have to fill out a contact form in order to buy something at that price, I suspect that there's more to it -- a forceful upsell, a pricey subscription, modeling school?

But if I'm going to invest $600 and then also pay a per-use fee, I figure I deserve that cup of coffee. I have questions to ask the salesperson.

The solution is two different paths for the two different prices.

I'm working on a non-profit website that has a similar situation. Visitors are asked to enjoy lots of wonderful resources for free. They're also asked, if they want to help keep those resources free, to consider contributing to the project in a number of different ways: become a fan on Facebook, give $5 a month, sponsor a book to the tune of $54,000.

You don't have to woo people much to link to your excellent resource. You have to impress them a whole lot to contribute what some people would define as the price of a year's work. You don't want to alarm the casual visitor with a donation request like that. Neither do you want to make it difficult for the enthusiastic donor to offer that significant donation.

One of the designers I'm currently working with,Tom, sent me a link to an ecommerce site that finesses the whole question of price by leaving that information out -- but also describes the product as "affordable." Oh yeah? Yet the website that Tom and I are working on says nothing about price. It's about custom-developed software. Visitors won't expect such a product/service to be the equivalent of a sandwich or a haircut, even if it's affordable custom-developed software. Nor will they expect to be able to put such a thing into a shopping basket with a click.

Check your website with this in mind. Does the mechanism you offer your visitors jibe with the mental set-up they have for your product and its pricing? Does the path fit the level of investment you're asking for?

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Using Video for SEO

I'm currently working with several clients whose websites use video, and another who's considering doing so.

In general, I'm not a great audience for video. I like to control the speed at which I get information, I'm not a visual processor, and I'm easily bored. As a consumer, I just skip videos. As a content writer, I look for ways to let the search engines in on the content of videos, and otherwise leave them to the people who are good with them. As a web strategy advisor, of course, I have lots to say on the subject.

As an example, I'm going to use Scissorboy's Cutting Edge Hairshow video on basic blow-dry skills. If you happen to be a hairstylist, you'll find this 15 minute video stuffed with useful information. If you're looking to learn how to make your website work better for your business, that's all just lagniappe, because Scissorboy is an excellent example of using video for the purpose.

Let me give you some advice on how to use videos well, from the point of view of the hard-to-please video viewer:

• Stand out for excellent production quality. Scissorboy's series is more like a mainstream TV program than like your cousin holding a camcorder for you. Now, plenty of people have had great online success with their cousin's camcorder work, so if that's what you've got the budget for, you can still use video. Just make sure to set things up so that the choppy quality looks like an intentional part of your story. Personally, I'd pay for a top-quality 30 seconds of intro, to which I could then attach a whole series of lower-budget stuff, thus implying that I could have made the whole thing slick looking but that for artistic reasons I chose to go in another direction.
• Insist on excellent content. Scissorboy's 15 minutes on blow drying offers not only blow dry techniques, but health information (carpal tunnel syndrome is an issue for hairstylists, I now know), suggestions for training an assistant, reminders about customer care, and product information for Monroe hairbrushes. If I were the hairbrush maker, I'd happily sponsor the video, but if I were a stylist, I would never feel that I was watching an ad. In fact, I'd gather my colleagues together and watch the episode (probably with popcorn) and discuss it as a professional development moment. As a cranky consumer of videos, I especially appreciate the fact that there's no wasted time -- every minute contains useful content.
• Use text. If Scissorboy were a client of mine, I'd probably be telling him to add some text on the page, but he is using Twitter to full advantage. He's also using text within the video to emphasize and organize the information -- good for distractable viewers like me, and also for those salon-wide professional development sessions I'm imagining. I'd take the text from this video and make an outline of it, and post that along with a quick description of the content on the web page, for the search engines of course, but also to encourage casual visitors to subscribe by giving them a preview of the value of my video.
• Include a call to action. There has to be some obvious action your viewer ought to take after seeing your video. If you want visitors to sign up, subscribe, email a link to a few hundred of their closest friends, or embed your video on their facebook pages, say so. Make it easy, too -- put a nice, large imperative statement telling your visitors what action you'd like them to take in a spot where they are most likely to notice it. If your video carries the viewer outside your website -- to YouTube, say -- then you need some very good way to get them back. I've seen people during user testing of websites sitting helplessly staring at the screen, and that's never a good thing. If nothing else, use the words "After watching the video, use your back button to return to this website" before you send them away.
  

My thanks to Scissorboy for helping me avoid dissecting my clients' videos here.

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Do It Yourself? Best Books for Web Design

I've been working with a couple of local web designers on a whole bunch of websites lately. It's so luxurious to sit down with a designer and work out all the details of navigation and then write and design together to create something that's just what the client wants.

Not that I don't enjoy working with designers at a distance (have I mentioned lately how much I like Adobe screen sharing?). Not that I don't enjoy the challenge of making a difference for a website that perhaps wasn't so much designed as cobbled together. Not that I don't like the surprise of sending content off and only later seeing what the designer comes up with from the words. But there is something very right about starting from scratch with a computer and some paper and ideas.

At the same time that I've been reveling in the luxury of doing websites in this way, I've had a message from an old friend who wants to make her own website for her llama farm.

Now, I'm all for DIY. At my house, we grow our own vegetables, bake our own bread, make our own soap, play our own music, fix our own cars, and knit our own sweaters. But I don't make my own websites. I don't cut my own hair, either. I know my limitations.

I have, however, studied about the making of websites a lot. I need to know what's possible, I need to be able to tell what's been done at a website, and I need to know how one would go about making a website so I can work usefully with designers. So I can recommend some good books for web design. Here are my favorites (and click the links for samples and stuff):

• Head First Web Design, by Ethan Watrall and Jeff Siarto, is a step-by-step, hands-on, fun guide by the clever people at O'Reilly. I love the Head First series -- I've actually got a proposal with them right now -- and I strongly recommend this book for beginners. It goes through site architecture, color choices, and navigation, and on to podcasts and user testing. At 463 pages, this is a big, heavy, expensive book, but by the time you read through it, you'll know most of the important things about web design. Pair this book with Head First HTML with CSS and XHTML for true confidence.
• Build Your Own Web Site the Right Way Using HTML and CSS by Ian Lloyd from Sitepoint is less playful, but has the basics of html and css right there in the book. It's complete and straightforward, and a particularly good choice if you learned some html way back in the past and need an update. It's slightly less heavy and slightly less expensive than the Head First book, and it really doesn't go into aesthetic issues. This book will let the serious-minded among us build a website with Notepad and some free online tools.
• Don't Make Me Think, by Steve Krug, is a terrific guide to usability. It doesn't tell you how to write html or put your website online, but it does tell you how to make your website work for visitors and search engines, which is largely the point. if you're already a hobbyist web designer or you know css but find that your websites turn out looking disappointing, this book will be extremely useful. It's also a good reference if you're going to be working with a designer who knows art but not SEO. This book will allow you to speak in the computer guy's language when the flights of artistic fancy threaten to overwhelm practical factors in designing your website.

The honest truth is that making a good, successful website takes a lot of study and a certain amount of talent to begin with. I'm not a graphic artist, and I know it. That's just not my medium. But if you're determined, these three books are a great place to start. If you want to know enough about design to make good decisions in collaboration with your designer, they're just what you need.

My friend with the llama farm? I'll keep you posted. She's pretty talented, and I guess a person could do a good deal of study while minding a passel of llamas. She may turn out an excellent DYI website.
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SitePoint Bushfire Relief Fund

I didn't mention Sitepoint's bushfire relief sale here because I figured most of my visitors don't want The Art and Science of CSS, let alone five equally technical books. However, Sitepoint has collected a very useful amount for bushfire relief, and they are now accepting donations to add to their total.

If you've been looking for a way to help, click that link and get the details.

Freelance Communication

I'm currently working on fifteen different websites.

My clients are all over the place, ranging from the Texan who calls me "ma'am" even in emails to the fellow from parts unknown whose most elaborate communication to date is, "Please start work."

If you work with freelance talent, you are likely to find that your combined skill at communication is one of the most important elements of a successful project outcome. With this in mind, I have some suggestions to offer.

• Be aware of cultural differences. Where I live, the first step in doing business is to establish rapport, and it isn't unusual for a local client to ask on first meeting whether I'm kin to So-and-so. I have clients from parts of the country where the first step in establishing a business relationship is to make it clear that you won't allow yourself to be screwed over. As you can imagine, it is very easy for people working together from these two areas to offend one another deeply first crack out of the box. Since we can't be expected to speak everyone's language or understand everyone's cultural background, we workers in the global marketplace need to operate on the assumption that any offense is inadvertent, and to be prepared to cut each other some slack.
• Provide clear parameters. If you know exactly what you need, say so -- and get the plan in writing, if possible. I'll provide html or English, as you prefer, and I'm happy to write your blog in the third person or the first. If you don't really know what you need, but just that your website isn't doing what you want, I can help you with that, too --that's a service that I offer. But having someone code your new web design and then saying, "Oh, I just needed a logo" doesn't make anybody happy. If you end up with something completely different from what you asked for, then it's your freelancer's fault and he or she should make it right. If you end up with something different from what you imagined because you didn't share that image with the worker, then it's your fault and you should pay for the wasted time involved in making it right.
• Keep in touch. One of the reasons to hire a professional rather than getting someone in the office to take a stab at it is so that it gets done right without your having to study up or stand over the worker. However, getting a draft of the work at an intermediate stage, signing off on the design mockup before it's finalized, or approving a strategy before it's implemented -- these are common sense steps to take to ensure your satisfaction with the work.

Hiring a freelance worker gives you economical access to specialized skills and talents, especially when you don't always need a lance of any kind hanging around the office. With a little attention to effective communication, people like me can make your outfit look as good as the companies that are big enough to have a Creative Services department. It's worth doing.

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Getting the Most Out of the Web Content You've Bought

Once you've produced or paid for an article, a blog post, a video -- then you own it. It's yours. You can post it and forget it if you like, but you can also work on getting the maximum mileage from it.

Here are some ideas for things to do with your web content:

• Set up a Free Stuff area at your website with your favorite pieces. Make sure to have a call to action there so you can convert browsers to buyers.
• Offer an e-book. It can be free or you can charge for it; either way, you can go ahead and do publicity for yourself or your company as the producer of the e-book.
• Create a print book, pamphlet, or other physical object to sell or to offer as a premium for buying your product or signing up for your service.
• Use it as the basis for other media. Your web content can be the starting point for your print ad campaign, brochure, or promotional video. Brief snippets of a video or sections from a longer piece of writing can be used for blog posts. Text and images you've used online can become posters in your brick and mortar shop or display pieces for trade shows.
  
• Change it up. I'm working right now on a piece about the benefits of online billing. Once the research and basic writing has been done, the piece could be adapted to different audiences and used in presentations for professional organizations or mailings to local businesses.
• Spread it around. A video can be added to your web site, but also used at company meetings, mailed on DVD to prospects, or licensed for others to use. An article can be placed in your waiting room or added to your newsletter.

Enhance the value of your investment by making the best use of the content you own.

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Marketing like Pepsi

When Pepsi (or Coca-Cola -- I don't care) make a marketing plan, they are secure in the knowledge that the great majority of their visitors know these two things:

• what they offer
• how to get it

Practically everyone is aware that Pepsi is a soft drink. They know how to go to a store and buy it off the shelf.

Now, here's a really important question to ask yourself: are you Pepsi? Are you so familiar to your visitors that they will know, immediately upon seeing your website, what you offer and how to get some of it?

Here's another way to think about this question: do you want strangers to visit you?

When someone sees your website on the search engine's results page and clicks through to check you out, you have about fifteen seconds to capture their attention before they click back to the results page and try someone else.

You don't want them to spend those fifteen seconds saying, "Huh?" Make sure that your visitor can tell what you have to offer, and what they need to do to get it.

Have that information right there at the top of the homepage. Not on the About Us page, not at the bottom where people who won't scroll won't find it, and not tucked away on a sidebar on the lower right.

I'm currently working with two websites which need this particular change made. Their owners are smart, talented people. I figure if two smart, talented people are on my list this week for that one particular change, then some of you smart, talented people might also need that done.

Here's how you can tell: get a stranger to visit your website.

I leave it up to you to determine precisely what you will do to entice strangers to do this. I just ask them.

Then, once they've looked, say, "What do you think this person/company/organization does?"

If they can't tell right away -- like, as clearly as "It's a soft drink and I can buy it in the grocery store" -- then you need to fix that.

On the other hand, if you are as famous as Pepsi, then you can have anything you like on your web page. Pepsi, in case you're wondering, has nothing about soft drinks or grocery stores at all.

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Narrowing Your Website's Focus

You know how sometimes a particular topic comes up repeatedly, as though it were forcing itself on your attention? The question of focus has been that way for me lately. I found myself writing about focus on the papers from my writing class so frequently that I ended up spending the whole hour on it this morning.

Focus has also been coming up in the context of websites a lot lately, too. One of my clients, a New York software developer, is adding a new service to the broad range of things he does already. He's planning a redesign of his website, adding a new section for the new service.

This could, for some websites, be a simple enough task. We look at the menu of services and add a page for the new one. Problem is, there isn't any listing of services now. So how can he distinguish the new section from the old one?

I suggested making a list of services to which we could add the new one. The client was hesitant: he doesn't want to limit himself.

I completely understand that. Another client, a music arranging service with a specialization in orchestral arrangements for brass, is actually quite capable of doing gospel choir arrangements, or jazz violin, for that matter. The local web design firm I work with mostly builds and hosts websites, but they can also do fine print work, and templates for PowerPoints.

Talented people like these have a high level of flexibility, and they don't want to miss out on exciting business adventures by giving too narrow an image of their abilities.

In person, this flexibility is a great advantage, and a great selling point. On a computer screen, it can look like vagueness, uncertainty, or an unwillingness to commit oneself that leads the visitor to search in frustration for the answer to the question, "Can these guys help me, or not?"

How can a business show agility without sacrificing clarity?

The musicians went with a clear focus on their biggest market, combined with a front and center statement, "We arrange for all types of ensembles." This, combined with samples of the music, gives an idea of their versatility, but still lets them focus in for search on their most important market.

The designers went with a design solution, logically enough -- they've listed a wide range of services on their homepage, but used visual containers to keep from ending up with a confusing assorted look. Visitors can easily find what they need and travel to a more narrowly-focused page before frustration has a chance to set in.

For the developer, I'm thinking of a language-based solution. I know from my own experience that people often have only sort of a vague idea that tech people are "computer guys." People ask me to do design work, hardware repairs, software installation... you name it. So I reminded my client that there probably are limits to what he wants to do, even if there aren't limits to what he can do.

He allowed as how he didn't really want those midnight calls saying that the server was down.

So once we've looked at the kinds of work he prefers to do, we can come up with some phrases that encapsulate his preferences broadly enough to keep him from feeling inhibited, but narrowly enough to direct visitors to the right parts of his website.

Does your website need a bit of narrowing?

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Who's Your Reader?

I'm working right now with three websites, and it struck me that they make a perfect example set.

One is brand new: I'm writing the content for it before it goes online.

One is a beautiful site, already up, with elegant web design and good stuff for the human visitor. It wasn't really set up with search in mind, though. A lot of the cool design elements actually prevent search engines from recognizing what the site does. The challenge there was to fix the content so that the robots -- who really don't care how handsome your web site is -- can tell what it's for, without compromising the beauty of the design.

The third is written for the robots, essentially. The company is #1 at Google in their country for a very competitive search term, and the site is just bristling with relevant keywords. Unfortunately, the average human visitor is going to stare at the site thinking, "What the heck do these people do?" and maybe then head off to some other website. The challenge here is to improve the experience for human visitors without disturbing those enviable search results.

The one that I'm writing from scratch presents neither of these challenges. The challenge there is simply to write for both the human and the electronic visitors at once.

How's your website? Are you making both the people and the robots feel welcome?

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Animated Intros

I've been talking with a designer recently about flash intros and animated intros, and mostly about what's wrong with them.

They are hard to work with, when it comes to search. They irritate people, especially on multiple visits -- and multiple visits are what you want, right? They limit accessibility. Fast web surfers won't wait through the intro to figure out what you're offering them. People who will come and admire your intro are not necessarily the same people who want your goods and services, unless your goods and services are related to animation, so even if it actually brings visitors, they may leave right after the show.

So, having made all these general complaints on the subject, I now have to link to a seriously cute animated intro that I really like: Greenshires.com It's witty, informative, in keeping with their brand, and I actually sat and watched it for a while.

I'd be very interested to know your reaction -- is it just that I finally met an animated intro that I liked, or is this a rare example of a good one?

And if you have your own favorite animated website intros, please share them with me. Your most hated ones, too. I plan to do a comparative analysis, in hopes of finding something besides random whim that distinguishes the beneficial animated intro from the ones that drive visitors away.

I'm going to go watch those fish again, first.

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Winning Web Design

A new website for the University of Arkansas Master Chorale went live a couple of weeks ago. I wrote the copy for this website, and worked on it with the web design class at the university. Each of the students created and coded a design, and director Graeme Langager and I chose one for the new site. Dr. Thomas Hapgood, the prof for the course, described the design we chose as the "winning" web design.

This was true in the sense that there were competitors for the opportunity to have a design published online -- a great way for a new designer to start a portfolio. Joel McCourt, the designer of the final version, doesn't yet have a website or an online portfolio, but he can refer prospective clients or employers to this design. That's a nice prize. I assume he also got a good grade.

But it's also a winning design in the more general sense of being a really good design.

What characteristics make Joel's design a winner?

First, I have to say that I enjoyed working with the class and seeing all their designs. I hope to see more of their work in the future. The process for choosing the design for the website was simple, though it wasn't easy to choose just one.

Out of all the designs submitted, I narrowed it down to the ones that were the most user-friendly.



Ashley Keirksieck created this design. The navigation is clear, the look is elegant, and visitors can easily find what they're looking for. The pale gray background provides almost the same degree of contrast and readability as black-on-white, with the luscious color on the banner giving a bright and elegant look.



Corinna Aguilar went with a more daring color scheme, but kept readability with high contrast in the text area. She used arresting navigation buttons to help visitors find their way around.



Tim Graves used horizontal navigation across the top. Since people are accustomed to looking for the vertical left-hand bar, or for the horizontal top bar, either choice works well. Again, dark letters on a light ground give us good readability. Since the audience for this site includes older people, this was a particularly important characteristic.



Julie Lungaro created a more modern look, but again the navigation is very clear and the text is highly readable.

From these options, Dr. Langager selected McCourt's, with Kiersieck's design as a second choice. His reason was "the overall cleanness." Joel's design has the most basic elements, with a rhythm and movement that make it elegant rather than just minimalist. The decoration of the pages supports rather than competes with the images and words.

Cleanness is a quality highly prized in websites. We went through a spell of being all impressed by the fanciness possible in websites, but that time is past. Modern users spend a matter of seconds at a page determining whether it contains the content they're looking for. They may then settle down for many minutes or even hours if they've found what they want, but the initial demand is for an uncluttered page where the eyes can light immediately on the information sought.

The reaction from the chorale? In the words of a board member, "Awesome website! You rock!"

Thanks once again to Dr. Hapgood, Joel McCourt, all the students who participated, and webmaster Philip Shane Richey for their hard work on this deserving project.

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Choosing Realistic Keywords

In discussing the choice of keywords, I've said before that your keywords have to be things that people are actually looking for, things that are in the content of your website, and things that you can compete for.

There's another point, though, that I haven't mentioned before. The keywords that you're really pushing for ought to be things that you would actually want to rank for. In the real world.

This point arose with a new client of mine, a Fargo, North Dakota web design firm. In thinking about which keywords we should work on, we decided to go for local search first and then move toward bigger goals. But could the firm expect to rank at the top of Google for "web hosting"?

The first hit for "web hosting" -- and indeed most of the choices on page one at Google for that term -- won't be a web hosting firm at all. The first web hosting firm to show on that page is GoDaddy, a company which had a couple of commercials on the Super Bowl last night. Competing with them would be a challenge.

Challenges are fun. But would it be a good use of our time and energy to try?

Google tells us that people search for "web hosting" an average of five million times a month. If one in 200 of those people becomes a customer, that's 25,000 new accounts a month through that one keyword phrase.

That might be good news for my new client; I'll have to check on that. For me, it wouldn't be good news at all.

I'm well-ranked for "online marketing" in my geographical region. Say I was at the top of the search engines for "online marketing" without local parameters. 450,000 people a month make that search. If one in 200 of those people made a query, I'd be fielding about 107 queries every business day of every month.

I'd need a staff.

Working toward high rankings for competitive keywords is fun. I wouldn't discourage anyone from doing it. For all I know, it might also be fun to prepare commercials for the Super Bowl. For my own business, I know that working toward top ranking for my highest possible keywords wouldn't be a good use of my time. I don't want to have a staff. I like working closely with every client. I like spending most of my work hours writing, not managing my business. I like having time to teach as well. I never want to be placing commercials for the Super Bowl.

You might want to. I have some clients who would quite like to have an enormous empire, and I'm prepared to help them accomplish that.

As we move into the second month of the year, it's a great time to look at the competition for your keywords. Find the page you really want to be on.