Can You Do Without a Homepage?

Okay, maybe you're not thinking of putting your contact form up all by itself on the internet. But I have had some conversations lately about websites without the traditional homepage.

First, of course, there are blogs that are just blogs. They may have an associated "About Us" page or other related pages, but a blog can be the heart of the website, and the primary landing page. Shan Pesaru and I have been talking about a site that could end up like that.

A site of this kind can be limited in its function. Seth Godin has a site centered on a blog, with additional satellite sites for his books, his services as a speaker, and so on. A vet trying to reach a local audience? It might not work. However, if you want to avoid a home page, this may be an option.

Then there are splash pages -- a page that has little more than the name of the company and a bit of rudimentary navigation, sometimes no more than "enter."

Lee Ann Larkan and I are working on a site right now for an artist who has this idea in mind. She's thinking she can use a nearly blank page to direct people to her portfolio and her blog in a creative and unusual way. One concern with this type of page is that it's hard to get enough content on the splash page to get good rankings with the search engines. The client may not care about search right now, but it could become an issue in time.

Then there are mini sites or commerce-oriented landing pages living at a main site's domain. They may be almost an ad or sign-up sheet for a particular event or project. Marcel Sendrea and I are contemplating how to do a couple of these.

In each of these cases, we're currently thinking about how best to approach the site, and the big question is: do we need a home page?

I think the answer has to come from the user journey.

How is your user going to approach your site, and what will he or she do once arrived? Another site I'm working on right now is for a brick and mortar store. We think that someone going to this website is likely to want the location or phone number of the store, information about their products, or perhaps a look at any current special offers. Customers wanting to get that data quickly would get tired of an artistic splash page pretty quickly. They don't want to click repeatedly to get what they want.

But the visitor to the mini-site we're working on will likely approach it by searching for the product, and that will be an appropriate landing page for that visitor. Should they have to go in through a homepage introducing the company and all the other things they do, or would they perhaps like to get right to the product?

Make a guess, and test the guess before you make up your mind.

I'm late, I'm late!

I'm late in drawing your attention to this year's  Bad Usability Calendar. It's great anyway. You can have it in many different language, and you can download it and post it up somewhere as a bad example. Or a good reminder. Look at previous years, too. If you want 2009 in Ukranian, you can have it.

Many thanks to Net Life for this excellent annual project.

Analytics Results Can Be Deceptive

I think you know that I love web analytics. With data about your visitors, you can make strategic decisions based on information, not on guesses. You can tell whether your new promotion works or not. You don't end up making decisions on the basis of a conversation with one person who feels strongly (and I think we all know that businesses do that with startling frequency).

But that doesn't mean that analytics always give us a full and accurate picture.

Leave aside for a moment the question of whether anyone is actually trying to deceive you or not. Most businesses -- or at least most of the businesses I work with -- don't see a lot of malicious messing around with their web results. Instead, they see anomalous results requiring some kind of explanation. Here are some of the surprises you might see, and what they might mean:

• Surprising direct traffic. Direct traffic always deserves a closer look. If you have a simple, obvious URL (lucky you!), people may be just as likely to type it into the address bar at the top of the screen as to type it in at a search engine -- even if they've never visited you before. My friends at Onsharp (Onsharp.com) get lots of direct traffic, and it's fair to assume that many of those visitors are guessing correctly at the web address of their local web firm. But lots of direct traffic, or surprising patterns or changes in direct traffic can also mean that your staff hasn't been filtered out of your analytics properly, or that someone has been working on your website. Ask around the office before you start formulating any new strategies in response. 
• Self referrals. We've seen several examples recently of sites getting a lot of referral traffic from themselves. In one case, there were thousands of visits a month, so it was worth tracking down the path. Usually, you can safely ignore it. It's usually a shopping cart, a place customers check in -- some part of your website that involves some engineering.
• Surprisingly limited visits. One case last summer really stands out as an example of this. A website reported receiving exactly the same number of visits every day for months. It looked to me as though the code was installed on all the pages, and indeed when I kept saying, "This can't be right," the engineers all reported that everything was as it should be. After weeks of tweaking, we discovered that the analytics were picking up only the activity in the administrative part of the site -- where the business owner had a very methodical routine. More recently, we've been struggling with a site that seems to have visitors only on the homepage. Further examination shows that this is not the case -- so we're having to look at the analytics and figure out what the error is.

When seeing this kind of odd behavior at your analytics reports, be sure to consider that you might have technical issues. Once that possibility has been eliminated, dig deeply into your data-- and your real world information sources-- to find the explanation.

Above the Fold

The term "above the fold" initially applied to newspapers, which put their most important stories literally above the literal fold in the paper. In talking about websites, we say "above the fold" in reference to the part of the screen that's visible without scrolling down.

While there's widespread agreement that things like the primary call to action, especially buttons we want people to click, should be above the fold, there are differing viewpoints on how far we should go.

First, there's the position that an increasing number of people won't scroll, so we should not expect them to.  Sites like the one above, designed by Tom Hapgood, are intended to be seen on most browsers without any scrolling necessary.

Then, there's the view that above the fold is for initial visitors -- but below the fold is for the search engines, returning visitors, etc. This site, designed by Littlefish, has everything essential right at the top of the screen, and then relaxes and spreads itself into another 480 words or so, comfortable with the idea that not everyone will see it.

Robert Flournoy, of Blue Cedar Marketing, points out that "Nowadays the below the fold idea is a bit difficult to comply with because of the many variations of screen dimensions and resolutions," and this will only become more of an issue in the future as browsers and devices proliferate.

However, it's clear that most viewers aren't going to read to the bottom of the page. The behaviors in the video below are typical, in our tests: the young man does scroll, but spends only about 4 seconds total zooming down and back up before deciding whether to stay at the page, while the young woman never scrolls at all.





What's the best solution?

• Test your site design without scrolling. It doesn't have to look the same on everyone's computer, but it should look good to non-scrollers, as much as you can manage that. We have every reason to believe that the average user of the internet decides whether or not to stay on the basis of an immediate impression, even if they'll stay and scroll through your page once they've decided they're in the right place. So avoid a design that requires scrolling for full appreciation, even if you decide to go with longer content.
• Put your essential content at the top. We're currently working with a site that has business hours and contact info so low on the screen that only the largest monitors will show it without scrolling. Don't do that to yourself. Your logo, your business name and location, your primary selling point and call to action -- these things need to be at the top of the page.
• Check your analytics. The site overlay feature of Google Analytics, as well as heat map features of services like crazyegg, will show you whether people are clicking on items at the bottom of your site. Notice that Google Analytics won't show, if you have a link in two places, which one is clicked. However, when you have a link below the fold only, you can see whether your particular visitors are clicking it (nine times out of ten, the answer will be "no"). Your analytics can also show you what kind of screen resolution your visitors use, and what kinds of browsers. While I have sympathy for the school that would embrace and encourage "biodiversity" online, knowing who's actually looking at your site lets you know how broadminded you have to be.

Once your visitor has decided to stay and explore your site, you can relax a bit. Inner pages, for example, can be longer.  Just be sure to welcome the non-scrollers to your homepage.

The Van Halen Method

This morning I read that Van Halen was known for rock diva irrationality because they insisted on having M&Ms brought backstage with all the brown ones removed. The authors explained that it was actually  a quick check: the contracts the band worked with included lots of technical details, and they figured that people who followed through on the "no brown candy" clause would also have paid attention to the technical specs.

It makes sense to do the same thing when you hire someone rather than doing a task in-house.

I don't hire designers who don't write html code that's easy to get into and work with. When I post a job at a freelance marketplace, I put in a phrase like "Please provide links to a similar project you've completed. Since we want to be sure of excellent communication, applicants who fail to do this will not be considered." If I were hiring writers, I would eliminate any candidates who weren't clear on the correct use of apostrophes.

Less eccentric than requiring an M&M sort, but then I'm not a rock star.

Are there items you can build into your hiring process to ensure that you're getting someone who reads the contract or specs and shows sufficient attention to detail? It could save a lot of trouble later.

Why Are All These People Following Me?

 

"Who are all these people following me? I don't know any of them." The speaker was a client of mine, a high-tech guy. Some people think that IT specialists are all deeply into social media, but in fact the technorati often aren't at Twitter, Facebook, or MySpace at all. This client had checked in on his company's Twitter page and felt slightly alarmed. "None of my staff are following me."

I acknowledged that this was so. "None of them have Twitter accounts," I explained. "I tried to follow them all, but they aren't here."

"Then who are these people? Why are they following me? Do they want jobs?"

I allowed as how it was possible that they wanted jobs, but likely not. "They're interested in what you have to say. They find your links useful."

There was silence. The explanation obviously didn't compute.

"Following someone on Twitter doesn't necessarily mean that they want anything. It's less than being Facebook friends," I explained. "It's the smallest commitment one human can make to another. It just means they're kind of interested in you, and willing to see what you have to say."

"Should we talk to them?"

"We could. Sometimes we do. If we have something to say to them. Sometimes they answer, even." I pointed out how we had wished 37signals a happy birthday. "I get job offers on Twitter sometimes, but I'm in an industry where everyone's on Twitter. Your industry is a little behind the curve on this. But when they get there, you'll already be established."

I assured him that I went and blocked people who wanted him to look at their smutty pictures, and followed back those who seemed interesting. "You're getting new followers, you're getting listed. This is good."

We moved on at that point, but it brings up a question: who are those people following you, and what should you do with them?

• Check them out. When you get a new follower, go visit and see if you can tell why they're following you. If they say interesting things, if they seem to be a human being and not a bot that followed you automatically because you used the word "software," if you actually know them -- well, follow them back.
• Read their tweets. If you always post automatically from somewhere else and never make time to visit your Twitter page and see what people are saying, you're missing out on networking opportunities. Set aside a block of time occasionally to visit your followers, including the ones whom you don't follow back, and see what they're up to.
• Talk to them. Watch for opportunities to join conversations. This doesn't mean you should spam your followers with sales messages. It does mean that when you have an opinion, or some encouragement or sympathy or a birthday greeting, it's completely appropriate to have a little conversation.

Twitter is more valuable for some companies than for others, and the  degree of value you receive should inform your decisions about how much time you spend on Twitter. But it's worth it for all of us to pay a bit of attention to our followers.

The Cost -- and the Value -- of a Website

Last night I went to talk with Joe McCoy's marketing class about online copywriting. In among the discussions of keywords and effective web copy and calls to action, the question of money and pricing arose.

"I have a small family business," one student said. "I don't have time to run my business and keep up with all these things. And I can't afford to hire someone."

I have sympathy for this point of view. But only limited sympathy. If your prospective customers go to see your poor quality website, which you haven't updated and don't promote, and they choose to go to your competitor instead, then you'll lose a lot more money than you would have spent on having a good quality website and someone to take care of it.

And I, personally, paid for a professionally designed website and the software to take care of it myself as part of starting my own business. I earned that money back quickly, and I know that it was far less than the cost of opening and maintaining an office.

But let's suppose that we're talking about a very small business, barely squeaking by, which simply can't scrape up the funds for a website. What can they do? Joe and I had some thoughts on this for the class:

• You can get a website up and sort of running for a very small amount of money. It will probably fail. It doesn't make sense to throw that money away. You're better off going ahead and getting your domain name registered, and saving the rest of the small amount toward the actual cost of a website.
• A web firm will be happy to give you a specific proposal and estimate including the complete cost for getting your site up and running, and they'll be able to give you the costs for a full year if you ask them to. You can then, as the student herself suggested, put that into your business plan as a cost you'll have to cover.
• Joe made the point -- and others have said this from their own experience, too -- that businesses trying to squeak by on the least expenditure sometimes don't have the level of commitment they'd have if they went ahead and put some funds into the process. Could that be true for you?
• If you can't afford a good website, then you can rely on social media while you save up. I wrote about a business that did just this in "Doing Social Media Right." The business in question now has a website, though it may not be of the quality they'll eventually want. Still, it's a good start, and their successful social media campaign probably made it possible. 
• You can also think about banding together with others to get a group website. A collection of musicians, alternative health care providers, or other complementary businesses could club together to get a group website, and later add links to individual sites as you succeed in creating them.

Do You Need to Know HTML?

 

 This is html. Should you care?

It's the special language that tells your computer how to organize a web page. Not how it should look, exactly -- that's mostly up to CSS these days -- but which parts are lists and which parts are extra important, which parts should show up on the screen and which should not, where to look for images and how to decide which style to serve up on the screen.

There are those who believe that all schoolchildren ought to learn html, and those who feel that this mysterious stuff with the pointy brackets is just punctuation on steroids and should  be left to the specialists.

I'm going down this afternoon to speak to Joe McCoy's students about online copywriting, so I was checking out their textbook, and I was interested to see that it contains a brief section on html.

The textbook gave instructions for making italics and bold letters, links, and lists. These are generally considered the absolute basics, the equivalent of greetings and counting in human languages. I show some of these things to my writing students, since we sometimes write online and I don't want them to be entirely at the mercy of their visual editors. You may feel this way about your website -- why shouldn't you be able to go in and fix things up a little yourself?

However, there are some problems with this.

The first and most important issue is that your designer uses CSS, or cascading style sheets, to add style to your website. This means that typing in the special html code for bold letters may not really give you bold letters on your website -- it depends what your designer told the computer to do when it sees that code. If you plan to use html, you'll need to work with your designer to make sure it does what you expect it to do. 

Second, your html may not look the same on all browsers as it does on yours. That is, when you look at something with Internet Explorer, you may see something different from what people who use Safari or Firefox see. This means that you have to remember to check on all the browsers you're supporting (all the things your visitors use) to make sure you're giving everyone a good experience.

Finally, it's easy to make mistakes with html when you only know a little bit. If you forget to close a bracket or fail to leave a space where you should, you can break your website. You'll then have to hire someone to find your error and fix it for you. Not only do you need to be highly accurate, but you also have to keep up with changes. Using out of date html is very bad for your website.

That doesn't mean that you shouldn't learn html. If you plan to do your own blogging and SEO, you pretty much have to learn at least basic html. In that case, plan to spend some time studying. Here are places where you can learn:

• w3schools
• html Primer

My advice: don't learn just enough html to be dangerous, and use it. Do be bold and learn enough to have control over your web pages.

Advanced SEO Issue: On-site or Off-site Optimization?

First, I need to apologize for the jargon in the title. I don't write for SEO experts, after all. I write for people who want to get the most out of their company websites, whether they're up on the latest technology or not. But these are terms that make it easier to think about an important question.

When you get an SEO Strategy Report from me, it includes both suggestions for on-site optimization -- which is to say, stuff you can do at your website, or have your webmaster do, to improve your results -- and off-site optimization, which is the online marketing that can be done elsewhere on the web. The two go together like cereal and milk, and usually, it's wise to do both. The cereal and milk experience isn't the same without both elements, and you can say the same for online marketing.

But there are times when one really is more important than the other.

Take the two sites I'm working on right now.

One is a local business with little competition for search. Their current site isn't doing its job for them, and they aren't ranking as well as they should for a lot of searches. But their competitors' sites also aren't optimized for search. Once the client has a good, well-optimized site up, I'm confident that they'll surge right ahead of their competition. In fact, our proposal for them doesn't even include off-site optimization. We'll be happy to do it for them if they want it, but I think they'll get the results they want without much further effort. Google will look around for something to show their customers, see their great new site, and offer it right up with a sigh of relief at finally having something good to offer.

The other site is in a big city, in a highly competitive field. The search engines, receiving a request for their keywords, have dozens of well-optimized sites to pick from. They have to look further to determine which site to present first.

Here's where off-site optimization is most essential. The search engines will consider the number and quality of links each site has in deciding which one to serve up. Certainly, the site has to be very well optimized, or it has no chance of good rankings. But once that's done, off-site work should be the priority.

So when you're planning where to put your budget for ongoing online marketing, be sure to consider the competitive environment your website lives in online. It makes a difference.

Keywords, and Why You Need Some Other Words Too

Yesterday, I was working on a new website. I say new, but there actually was quite a bit of content already at the site. It read sort of like this:

"Maximize your bottom line and catapult revenues with proven revenue generating strategies that propel your business to the next level!"

I could go on, but you probably recognize the genre. There was a lot of this stuff. it makes me think of footprints on the beach: clearly, there was someone there at some point, it's evidence of human effort, but in minutes it's gone from your memory. It has no substance.

I rewrote it as nicely as I could and sent it off. The client wasn't happy.

What a relief.

So often, people are really fond of their horrible content. I explained that I always try to preserve people's existing content, unless I hear otherwise.

"For all I knew," I explained, "you wrote it yourself and you love it."

Fortunately, that was not the case. This was a work for hire, and a good example of a complete waste of money. I'll be throwing it out and starting over.

Have a look at your website. Have you just strung buzzwords together in a faint semblance of meaning? Or is there some substance there?

I have to admit that working on this client's site, when I thought it was his idea of how his business should be described, had given me a poor impression of the client. My sending it back to him as better-written yet still meaningless drivel probably gave him a poor impression of me, too. I think our phone conversation dispelled both those negative impressions.

But visitors to your site won't call you to see whether they've misjudged you. They'll read a little bit of your substance-free content and click right back to the search results -- no matter how high on the page your website may be.

Make sure you have something to say, and that you get it onto the web page.

Twitter Metrics

 

One of the companies we do social media for is custom software creator Clevertech. The CEO and I were talking the other day about their Twitter performance. "It's not great," I told him, "but it's showing some progress."

But what does that mean? Some of our Twitter accounts have hundreds of followers and lively conversations, some have a few followers who rarely say much. Each is quite different, since each company is quite different. How can we tell whether we're making progress at Twitter or not?

For me, Twitter serves some important purposes. I follow some useful people who scout the internet and tweet about important things in my field, so Twitter helps me keep up to date even when I'm busy. Twitter is a means of communication for me with a number of my colleagues. I get job offers via Twitter sometimes, but it's mostly about communication for me. The only metric I watch is whether Twitter sends traffic to my website. It does. But if it didn't, Twitter would still be useful for me, so I don't have to debate whether to continue being active there.

But there are people and companies for whom Twitter isn't a tool for communication and information. For these companies, Twitter may be primarily for marketing. How can they determine whether it's worth the investment?

I should say first that I think Twitter is always worth the investment, because the investment is small. Even if all you do is set your blog to post automatically at Twitter, or have a volunteer from your staff tweet something at lunchtime every day, that's 40 seconds you should invest at Twitter. Here's why: you don't want your customers looking for you and not finding you there.

Clevertech is in an industry that hasn't really embraced Twitter yet. I met the whole staff at a virtual meeting yesterday and naturally, I went right out afterward to find them all on Twitter and follow them.

Naturally. In my industry, we do that.

But those Cold Fusion developers weren't there. And this is what I pointed out to the CEO. If your peeps aren't on Twitter, then you're not going to have a lot of tweeps.

It's possible that I phrased that differently.

"They're not there yet," he said, "but when they get there..." By which he meant that when his clients discover Twitter, he'll be established. For him, adding a few followers a month and getting on a few lists can be progress. For me, steadily increasing referral traffic from Twitter is progress.

Want something more?

Josepha wrote about Klout, a Twitter metric program that analyzes 25 factors (how much you're retweeted, the percentage of people you follow who follow you back, whether influential Twitterers answer you when you talk to them -- lots of stuff) and gives you a grade. It also puts you into categories (I'm a Connector) and shows you various stats. If you do those online quizzes that tell you what superhero you are and so forth, you'll have fun with Klout. It's also a good one if you just want a quick number so you can see whether you're progressing or not. One of the interesting things about using metrics is that things which are measured tend to improve, even if the company isn't making much other effort. If you want to improve your Twitter performance, but don't want to invest much, Klout is the quick and handy way.

Twitterholic compares snapshots of your Twitter page over time, so you can see how you've increased your followers and whether the number of tweets you post has increased or fallen. They'll also tell you where you are in terms of friends and followers, both on Twitter as a whole and in your neighborhood. I guess if you're competitive, this one could be amusing for you. I was interested to see that I rank just below the Arkansas Razorbacks in my regional list. This will have no effect on my Twitter strategy, but perhaps you might like to set yourself to beat the person or company ahead of you. The Razorbacks are large, dangerous-looking guys who knock people down, so I don't plan to try to beat them.

Twitclicks gives you analytics on particular URLs that you tweet. If you're tweeting a press release for your company, a story about you, or some other URL to which you don't have access, and you want to see how many people click through, this is your chance. It doesn't tell you about your effectiveness on Twitter as a whole. However, as with any other metric, if you use it regularly, you can see changes over time.

Twitalyzer provides a lot of data, and had the most up to date info I found on my own Twitter account. There are 9 different metrics, so I can see for example that I'm 100% engaged but only 4.5% generous. I can compare these numbers with the most influential people at Twitter or with people in my physical world community, and Twitalyzer will even give me recommendations. However, it really seems to me that these are measurements and recommendations related to how good a Twitter citizen you are, not how much it does for your business. For example, tweeting more frequently automatically gives you more points at Twitalyzer, whereas I know I'm not the only one who unfollows the very frequent tweeters just because they take up too much of my screen when I drop by.

If I left out your favorite, please share your experience with us!

Stock Content on Your Website

I work with lots of bad web content. It's my job. But it's usually been written by the owner of the website. I completely understand why people do this. If nothing else, writing is like reading or driving -- everyone does it, and it can seem odd to people to pay for something that seems like an ordinary everyday skill.

But I've recently been encountering bad writing for hire. You can go to an article mill and pay relatively low prices for articles. One blogger explained that "quality isn't always important" when he wrote about his experiences with one of these services, and of course he's right.

The image in this post is not beautiful. I like to show you beautiful images sometimes, but in this case, since I'm writing about stock content, this very uninspired stock image seems completely appropriate. True, the pencil is a bit large compared to the paper, the writing surface is unnatural, and the whole thing is lifeless, but it was free.

So if you find yourself in a situation in which for some reason you just want a whole bunch of words, and you don't care much how good they are, you can just buy words in bulk in the form of articles. If you decide to do that, here are some things to look for that can help you get the most for your investment:

• Don't accept errors. Lots of these content farm articles have no particular point to make, but there's no reason to accept grammatical errors, typos, or spelling mistakes. You can get accurate if uninspired English for a nickel a word. If you plan to pay less than that, you should just use automatically generated text, because you won't have actual people reading the article anyway.
• Try for a main point of some kind. If you read many of these articles, you'll notice that they tend to be very boring. This is because they usually involve reading some factual information and repeating it ("regurgitating" is how one of my correspondents phrased it) in slightly new words. Give your cheap writer a point to make, and your article will be much better. If you're buying articles by the yard, you don't usually have this option, but it's worth shooting for.
• If you find a good writer, stock up. Some article mills will let you choose your writer, though you may pay more for that. There's so much well-paying work available for good writers that anyone who can actually write well moves out of the article mill market quickly, so you should take advantage of them before they wise up and move on.

Of course, I don't use stock text, though I use stock images and stock sounds, but I think these tips will help you get the most for your money if you choose to do so.

Stock Photos on Your Website

When I got this fine header in my email from graphic designer Jay Jaro, I had a moment of "huh?" I hadn't been imagining a stock photo in this image, and I wasn't sure I liked it.

Fortunately, I'd just had a conversation with designer Tom Hapgood on the subject of prejudice against stock photos. I was therefore able to step back and respond more rationally.

Do you have the same problem?

In my conversation with Tom, I'd actually been on the side of stock photos. We have a shared client who doesn't like them, but who is also having some trouble getting photos together for the site we're working on. Stock photos can be a great solution in a case like this.

I'd agreed that the client wouldn't want images of people pretending to be their workers, but suggested that we could use nature photos, like the one used below by designer Miriam Hudson-Courtney.  It doesn't matter, it seems to me, whether this is some butterfly we know and love, or whether it's a complete stranger. The message is the same.








And that, I think, is the issue to consider when you're thinking about stock photos, and the source of the distaste some people feel for them.

In discussing this issue when my own site was being designed, I said quite firmly that I didn't want a shot of two models conferring seriously over a piece of paper. It seemed to me that these photos are unconvincing. Visitors don't think that the model getting way too excited over your product is really you, or really your customer.  I felt that there was, in stock photos of people, an unavoidable element of inauthenticity.

A butterfly, regardless of who took the photo, is a symbol in our culture of freshness and transformation. Miriam's butterfly image is designed to say, "Look how fresh these plans are!" It is no less effective because that particular butterfly came from a stock photo site.

Let's re-examine Jay's design from that point of view. This is obviously a model -- she's standing there holding a light bulb and grinning, not something most of us do in the course of a normal day. In his other variation, which you see below, she is listening to the light bulb, or perhaps transferring its ideas to her brain through osmosis.









In other words, there is no pretense that this image represents a quick snapshot in the office at FreshPlans. It uses the light bulb, a common symbol for ideas in our culture, and an image that accurately represents the primary audience for this website: young professional women. It is as clear in its message as the butterfly.

A few months after my website went live I had a client who wanted a picture of the author and the designer of the website for the company blog. Ironically enough, designer Shan Pesaru and I made her a picture of the two of us, conferring seriously over a laptop screen. It was essentially the picture I had rejected so strongly for my website -- except that, since it wasn't a stock picture, we weren't as well lit and don't look nearly as enthusiastic. It was a snaphot in the office, and it's a good image of what I do.

I don't regret not using that stock image on my website. I've learned that many people think the models in stock images are actually the people who work for the company that owns the website, and I think there could easily have been a false impression created. I also rejected a shot of wadded up paper -- "I'm not that kind of writer," I said at the time, and I'm not. I do have a stock image, though -- antique typewriter keys. Designer Ashley Cox found an image that implied writing, worked with the design vision of the site, and didn't suggest anything that wasn't true, because no one expects me to be using a typewriter.

You can do the same for your site. When you consider using a stock image, think of what it communicates. If the image it creates in your visitor's mind is authentic, then it isn't inauthentic to to use a stock photo -- and it's very likely to be a better picture than the office snapshot.

Read more on this topic:
"Where Should You Get Pictures for Your Website?"

Creating Your Marketing Kit

A great website is an important tool in your marketing arsenal, but you'll probably want to have print pieces to support your online marketing. But we all know by now -- or should know -- that print is not the same as the web when it comes to effective content. People read print media differently, interact with it differently, and respond to it differently. Therefore, it has to be different. You simply can't cut and paste your brochure copy into your website and succeed -- or vice versa.

On the other hand, you want to maintain a consistent brand identity and a consistent message. So how do you harmonize print and online media?

Shopmobbing.com has a grand total of 158 words on their homepage -- one of the smallest word counts I've ever done. For their press kit (shown above), they need much more than that. So I started from scratch and wrote them a package of press releases that told their whole story. It has the same young, fresh, energetic tone as their website, the same fun, urban feel, but it shows the strength of their company, too. They used the same images as their homepage to tie the whole thing together, and they can send it as a print document or as a pdf file. The focus is on their new website -- the web address is the first and largest thing on the page -- but they've got scope in their print media to tell the whole story for investors and the press.

Landscape architect Chris Olsen started with a fresh press kit. He wanted a physical item to mail out and to hand out to people he meets at his presentations. His website is not a strong introductory marketing piece for him, but once people are interested, they can go there to learn more about him. Since Chris is a TV personality and a popular speaker with lots of opportunities for physical world networking, a physical object was the highest priority and a logical starting point for him.

I wrote this for LeeAnn Larkan at Vivid Marketing, and she used Chris's great garden shots and enthusiastic testimonials to put together an appealing brochure (shown above). We did a strong sales letter to go along with it for direct mail and following up on personal contacts.

Since this is intended to be read on paper, not on the screen, we can take advantage of the opportunity to have two pages visible at once, and we can use a lot more text and tell a story. Now, we're working with Chris to make his website as fine as his press kit. Vivid will use the same look, and I'll change the text for usability and search -- but keep the same message and feeling.

Sani-Service took a different approach. For this company, I wrote a complete marketing kit, with a number of seperate elements:

• case studies
• testimonials
• unique selling point briefs
• company story
• product and service descriptions
• educational materials
• homepage text

Sani-Service has been picking and choosing from this menu of elements for their website (shown above), their press releases, their training materials, their brochures, direct mail letters, and more. Whatever they want to say, they have the right phrases on hand to speed up the process.

Whether you start with your website, your print media, or a complete marketing kit, you can end up with successful marketing pieces for both online and print media. The key is to take the differing needs of the media into account.

Math Websites: a Rant

 

I don't usually rant about things, and I don't usually show you pages that I haven't written -- or at least I've written the "after" site when I show you a "before" site. I don't normally just hold some total stranger's site up to ridicule.

Today, though, I'm filled with frustration. I'm working on the Kennedy Center's new educational site, and I needed some good math links -- things on the Fibonacci series, and on fractals.

These are interesting topics, and they lend themselves to beautiful graphic treatments. They deserve to have good web sites dedicated to them. Math is arguably a beautiful subject. And there are plenty of math sites with great content, including the one above. So why are the math sites so uniformly ugly?

Their ugliness isn't just a surface thing, either -- these sites are built in antique styles that just aren't nearly as good as what we can do now.

So I'm supposed to be hunting out the best sites for modern classrooms, and instead I have a choice among things like the page at the top of this post. And yes, that is a full screenshot. You have to scroll sideways to see the whole screen.

Why?

Software and websites designed for education are mostly horrible, to tell the truth. The software is always clunky, old-style, inconvenient, and expensive. The websites are... well, things like the example I'm sharing with you.

We may say that we, as a society, value education, but we're lying. If we did, we'd have websites like the Assassin's Creed site for the Fibonacci sequence.

I did find Dean Cameron Allen's handsome site, What the Hell is the Fibonacci Series? and the very pretty Environmental Graffiti page on the subject, but neither is intended for the classroom. And in fact they can't be used in the classroom (the former for obvious reasons, the latter because of racy comments), however hard I try to persuade myself that the modern classroom could handle "Get your ass out of my beer" on the smartboard.

If I'm wrong, then I will be most grateful if you'll share your counterexamples.

Writing About a Process on Your Website

When people read your website, you're not there. This is hardly new information, but it has some implications. One is that things have to be extraordinarily clear.

Things have to be more clear on a website, in fact, than they do on paper.Given an instruction manual, some people will throw it away and experiment, but the others will sit down and read it. They'll expect to search around a bit for the information they need. They'll pay attention to the table of contents, compare the pictures and the text, and struggle through the hard parts.

People facing a complex process online react differently. They look first, to see if they can grab the information in some obvious place. If not, they begin randomly clicking things and scrolling. Then they give up.

No, of course you don't do this. But randomly chosen people in tests of web sites almost always do exactly what I've described. So your visitors may be doing so as well.

This means that a process needs to be explained very clearly, and in an eye-catching way.














At Shopmobbing.com, we went with cute graphics, large numbers, and arrows.This might seem like overkill, but it really isn't. Add very clear text, and you have a fighting chance.

 

At Joblingo.com, we again used graphics to catch the eye, numbers to show the process, and simple text. Arrows wouldn't have hurt, frankly, but this client wanted to maintain a simple, professional look.

 

Onsharp used a bright graphic, and bright headings to emphasize the steps of their internal process. Like the previous example, this layout takes advantage of the natural tendency (among English-speaking people) to read from left to right and top to bottom. Setting the steps out in this order helps make it clear. Each short paragraph then links to a page with more complete information. Putting all the information on one page would have separated the headings enough to lose the step-by-step visual impression. Note also that the graphic contains a call to action -- visitors who are ready to make a decision can simplify the process by getting in contact immediately.

Make no mistake -- if your words don't explain the process clearly, no amount of graphic help will fix the problem. Given clear, compelling text, though, laying the process out in an attention-grabbing way that guides visitors through the process can do the trick.

Search vs. Branding

What do you do when your best keywords for search aren't the best for your brand?

It's a fairly common problem. Right now I'm working on a website for a local natural foods store. Checking the keywords that bring people to their current site, the search volume on the terms related to their products and services, and their preferred brand-oriented words, I came up with a good list of keywords for them. Some were new ideas for them and some were already in their minds.

But high on the list was one term I knew they wouldn't really like: "health food store."

People looking for the things this company sells -- organic foods, homeopathic remedies, vegan packaged goods, nutritional supplements -- such people very often look for "health food store." What's more, people in the community who shop with these folks often refer to their place as "the health food store," as in, "I'm going to the health food store. Need anything?"

It seems obvious that we want to optimize for that term.

But "health food store" doesn't have the image the company wants. They're going for a more modern vibe, something that appeals to people who think more in terms of sustainability, eco-chic, fair trade, slow food, fitness, and maximizing wellness. "Health food store" has, in today's whole foods community, a little bit of a downmarket, outmoded feel.

How do we get the search benefits of using "health food store" prominently on the homepage, without interfering with the brand?

• Evaluate the competition. While my client isn't the only place in town that could have a top ranking for the term, they don't have any serious competition online. The most likely competitor has a one-page website with their name and phone number (and they used tables to get the name in the middle of the page), so we can feel confident that they won't be using any sophisticated SEO techniques to fight for the rankings. We can probably get that term without being heavy-handed in its use. If my client wanted national visibility for the term, or there were several other businesses in town that deserved the top ranking locally, it would be a different story.
• Use the term where it's prominent for search engines, not for people. In this case, we can slip the term into a sentence toward the beginning of the page where the search engines will recognize that it's important, but people reading will perceive it as an introductory sentence. We won't emphasize that phrase graphically, either.
• Use syntax to make your point. We can say "More than just a health food store..." or "In our forty years in business, we've evolved from the first local health food store to..." Human visitors understand that we're saying we're hipper than your average health food store, but we still clue the search engines in and welcome the many people who search for that term. As always, your text needs to be authentic, natural, and useful to your visitors -- but a little subtlety works wonders.

Another common situation is when your company wants to use a term for reasons of branding which isn't being searched for much. In this case, you can use visual effects to emphasize that term, include it with the search essential keywords, and rejoice in the lack of competition -- you may just be ahead of the pack.

Your keywords need to be the things people are searching for, but you can combine those terms with the words you want for your brand, and be right on target for your customers and your company.