Often I encounter a potential client who wants a website or a new website and has nothing but “gadgets” in mind. What I mean is that he is so focused on the bells and whistles that he has neglected to set his site goals. To develop a website you must first determine what it is you want the website to do for you. I know, everyone says, “to increase sales.” But there are specific objectives that have to be met to achieve that overall goal. Let’s review the steps.
STEP ONE: we actually want to work backwards in planning our website by setting the objective(s) of the website first. If there is more than one objective, they should be prioritized.
STEP TWO: With the objectives in mind, we next want to develop a “call-to-action” for each objective. A call-to-action is just a statement that let’s the site visitor know what you want them to do. Some examples are, “contact us for a custom quote” or “reserve your seat now.” You get the idea. They are specific tasks that will, in the long run, contribute to the ultimate goal of “increasing sales.”
STEP THREE: Now, that we have our call-to-actions defined, we need to step back once again and define the benefits that would prompt the visitor to perform the call-to-action. These benefits can be lengthy or short depending on the complexity of the product or service available. Here is a sample of a short benefit with the call-to-action:
“Start moving your career up the corporate ladder, enroll in our management training seminar today.”
Some products or services may require a longer list of benefits, but in any case the list should either end or begin with the call-to-action.
FINAL STEP: So, we’ve started with where we want to be and have stepped back to define the task we want visitors to do for us to achieve our goal and cited the benefits of why they should do so. Is that all? Nope, we still have to backup our products and services with pertinent data. For some reason, site owners don’t seem to have any problem with this part of the project. They quickly turn in brochures or spec sheets for us to create the site. This information is necessary and basic, but it is the BEGINNING of the process and it is from here that we have to drive the visitor to become a customer.
Now we can look at all the bells and whistles that the site owner “likes” and determine how we might best utilize them to close the deal. These bells and whistles have to serve a purpose - hopefully to coax the visitor to buy or they are just eye-candy and taking up valuable space. There’s no doubt that multi-media presentations designed to convey a message or demonstrate a product is a valuable tool and it’s a tool not available in any other advertising medium except the Internet. Interactivity draws the visitor into the site, but in the end the goal must be for the visitor to buy or at least to tell others about the interactive media and ignite a virul marketing campaign.
A virul marketing campaign is a grass-roots campaign where one visitor tells another person about the site and how much he enjoyed something at the site. This prompts the other person to check it out and, if he agrees, he may pass along the same information. This can draw tremendous traffic to a website, but the traffic is useless if it’s not directed at the right audience. Here’s a silly example: you put a picture of a nearly nude Brittany Spears at your industrial hand tool site. A Brittany Spears fan stumbles across your site and sends out the word to all the other Brittany Spears fans. Are Brittany Spears fans the target audience for your industrial hand tools? I doubt it. So, now you have tons of traffic coming to your site but your sales figures hasn’t changed.
DON’T FORGET THE SEARCH ENGINES: Keeping your eye on the ultimate objective while developing your site will bring you the desired results. Developing a site that’s just “pretty” and does “neat” things, won’t improve your bottom line. And, don’t forget the search engines. A search engine must be able to index a website in order to rank it and have it come up on relevant terms. Some design architectures inadvertantly block search engine indexing. When hiring a designer, make sure that they are familiar with search engine optimization techniques. These are not “tricks” or black-hat ideas that will hurt your site, but an understanding of how search engines index so that your site will be indexed properly.
May 23rd, 2007
As anyone in the SEO business will tell you, the number of quality links pointing to your site can improve the overall ranking of your site. This does not mean that you should submit your site to every directory you can find and, in fact, submitting your site to some directories won’t do you any good at all and could even cause your site to drop in ranking. Let’s explore the types of directories available and which ones you should consider submitting to.
Free-For-All
While the concept of free may sound enticing, many of these “Free-For-All” directories may be considered nothing more than link farms by some search engines and might hurt your site’s rankings if you rely on a lot of these for listings. On top of that, they are not likely to bring you any significant or targeted traffic. This does not mean that all directories that accept free listing are “free-for-all” directories. You should visit the directory site and determine if the links at this directory are quality links. Are you allowed to submit your site to the proper category? Are you allowed a brief description of your site?
If the directory has a category for the services or goods that you are offering and allows you a brief description of your site, I would suggest you submit to it IF your listing will be search-engine-friendly.
What is a search-engine-friendly listing?
This is a static link that goes back to your site. For example: www.mydomain.com is a static link while www.thisdirectory.com?id=123+CatID=456 is a dynamic link. When there is a “?” in the URL this is a redirected link and will not count as a direct link to your site by the search engines. Now, by design all directories use a database to store your listing information and rely on programming to call up that listing. This is where the redirected URL comes from: the id is the record number of your listing. The dynamic URL allows the directory owner to track the traffic you receive from this listing. However, most directories can and should also include in your listing a direct hyperlink to your site. Sometimes the direct link will be the title of your listing, sometimes it might be separate within the listing.
If the directory does not have a static link to your site, there’s no point in listing your site unless the directory is specific to the audience you wish to address. An example of a directory to have your site included in despite the lack of a static link might be an online directory supplied by a business association that you belong to or a trade magazine buyer’s guide assuming the trade magazine applies to your audience.
Some of the highest quality links require monetary input, however. Associations usually require membership to list your site, trade publications generally only list advertisers. Many popular online directories also want you to subscribe to their advertising programs and your ranking position within those directories is usually based on the amount of advertising dollars spent. While they may say you can list your site for free, the truth is that your site will probably never see the light of day in ranking position at that directory if you don’t purchase their advertising package.
While it is getting more difficult to find quality directories that provide a static link to your site without a listing fee or that require only a small listing fee, there are some available. If you offer industrial goods and services, you’ll want to list your site at http://www.industry2industry.com. For a more complete list of other search-engine-friendly directories accepting free or minimal fees, visit http://info.vilesilencer.com.
February 20th, 2006
Okay, by now you should know that Web-Kare specializes in marketing Industrial web sites. One of the frustration that we have had to face in marketing these sites on the Internet is the lack of demographic focus. In other words, our clients sites get more exposure but not just to the targeted audience that they would like.
There are literally tons and tons of online directories for Industrial websites - nearly all of them want a fee to list and the most popular ones have fees that start in the thousands of dollars. It is not viable for our clients to list with all of these directories.
Now, however, we and our clients, may have found some relief with www.industry2industry.com. This is not another directory - it is a search engine with filtered results. All sites listed in their database are sites offering Industrial goods and services and, here is the best part…. it’s free to list your site here. The only qualification your site has to meet is that it is offering industrial goods and/or services.
This search engine is very new so don’t expect a big boost in PageRank at Google for listing here - but if you need to have your site in front of buyers of industrial goods and services, there’s no harm in listing your site here. It wouldn’t hurt to tell your company’s buyers to check it out, either. They may find that the more relevant results will get them to the goods and services they are seeking faster.
January 23rd, 2006
Because of the nature of my work, I am often approached by the budding entrepreneur who wants to start an online business “in his spare time.” Usually, he wants to know how much it will cost to get a site designed, hosted and submitted to the search engines.
Yes, the Internet offers an abundance of opportunity for the online entrepreneur but, like any business, it requires that the business owner be involved in the business. If the site is offering e-commerce, the site owner will need to be able to add items, re-price items, post specials as well as retrieve and ship orders. Unless he has a big bank roll and can afford to hire a web designer, clerical assistant, shipper, etc., he will need to do it all himself in the beginning.
Fortunately, there are programs available for this type of budding entreprenaur that does not require a lot of cash. I usually send these budding business owners to Yahoo! Small Business. They offer a complete hosting and design solution for very little money. The design is a template - one can select from several and it can be created and maintained with no HTML programming at all. Yahoo also offers built-in eCommerce solutions ready-to-go, which should work well for the new business owner.
In addition to pointing him to this valuable resource, I also point out that he will need to get a good graphics program so that he can upload photos of his wares. He will also need to learn about sizing photos in pixels and that the maximum screen resolution for an online photo does not exceed 100 dpi (dots-per-inch). Larger photos will take too long to download and he will lose potential buyers as a result.
Of course, that only covers getting a working web site. Step two is to get traffic to the site. Search engine submissions are easy and free, for the most part, but they don’t guarantee that anyone will ever see the site. Here’s where the site owner needs to educate himself about Search Engine Optimization. It’s really not that complicated - PUT THE KEYWORDS THAT YOU WANT TO BE FOUND UNDER INSIDE THE BODY OF YOUR PAGES AND IN THE TITLE TAGS. No, I don’t mean to “trick” the search engines by repeating the keywords all over the place - I mean actually use the keyword phrases when describing your product or services. That will increase your chances of a good ranking for some of the keyword phrases.
The next step is to submit the site to online directories of quality. That means that he wants to submit it to a directory that is respected by others. If he sells shoes, he’ll want to be listed in directories that specialize in apparrell or footwear. If he sells a variety of items, he’ll want to get listed at shopping sites like Froogle.com, BizRate, etc. Some of these directories are not free, so he’ll need an advertising budget.
In addition to the directories, one needs to get the word out to the press. Cheapest, fastest method I know of to reach the press is prweb.com. The pricing is extremely modest for the coverage. Before he does that, however, he must educate himself about how to write an effective press release. The prweb.com site offers some assistance - check out their help menu section. They even offer a template to follow.
In the beginning, the new site owner will spend most of his time trying to drive traffic to his site. If he does a good job of it, he will soon be collecting orders and shipping goods. If not, he is most likely going to quit after the first year because his cost will have exceeded his income.
I highly advise anyone that is considering an online business to research, research, research before he begins. It is imperative that he understand what the competition is on the Internet and has a clearly defined business plan and goals.
December 30th, 2005
Most of our clients have been with us long enough to understand the importance of good content at their site - both from a search engine ranking viewpoint and a site visitor conversion to a sale. However, every now and then one of our clients has a memory lapse or is so busy from all the leads he’s getting from our program, that he forgets and sends us new photos for his site with no real explanation.
Photos are great and “a photo is worth a thousand words”, as they say, but it’s not worth 2 cents if no one knows what they’re looking at or what the story is behind the photo. If the photo is important enough to go on a web site, it must have some text explaining the importance of what the site visitor is viewing. A web site is not just made up of pretty pictures - it has a story to tell. Hopefully, a compelling story that will make the site visitor want to purchase the product or service.
Since the majority of our clients are industrial (manufacturers or providers of manufacturing services), some photos can be nearly impossible to understand. A unique and complex part, for example, means nothing if there isn’t a caption that explains what it is and why it is unique or complex. Sometimes we get photos and we don’t know which way is up - literally. All I’m reminding every site owner in this short blog is to think about your site’s content before dashing off a photo to your web designer. A few extra minutes of planning will make for a more compelling use of your visuals.
October 20th, 2005
I’ve read forum complaints from other SEO firms about clients hiring them to get high rankings for the client’s site, but the SEO firm isn’t supposed to change any content. This leaves only the title and meta tags to be edited and voila! - the site will magically appear in top ranking positions at all the search engines. Fortunately we at Web-Kare have only run into this problem once.
Most of our clients are told upfront what will be needed to get their site high rankings. Often this may be a site redesign. While no one likes to hear this, especially if their site was designed recently, these extra expenses could have been avoided if the client had gotten the SEO firm involved at the start of the project - not the end.
High rankings are affected not only by some keywords put into meta tags and title tags but by site architecture and content as well. To get the most bang-for-your-buck, you need to assemble an SEO firm, a designer, and a content provider at the start of your site development. Some SEO firms, like Web-Kare, can do it all — others will work with your design team and content provider.
In any case, the content of your site is the most important factor in ranking assuming the design is search-engine-friendly. Content needs to be rich with quality information about your product or service. So full of information that other sites will want to link to your site as the “authority” on the subject.
Some clients require terms to go through a compliance screening to meet qualifications for accreditation or legal purposes. That’s fine — let the compliance department work with the SEO firm to find suitable terms that can get the site the rankings it deserves. Simply having the compliance department hacking out the non-compliant terms after-the-fact is like shooting yourself in the foot.
What I’m saying is really very simple: get together a TEAM to create and maintain your Website. The team should consist of a designer, content provider (this might be you, the client), and the SEO firm at minimum. Include someone from compliance, if that’s something your firm requires. SEO is an ongoing process, so expect to be making content changes to your site throughout the year.
October 5th, 2005
When I first started designing websites back in 1996 (yup, I used notepad and table tags were not supported), I translated print to the Internet. A home page was supposed to be a “cover” - like a brochure and so, yes, I’m guilty of creating brochure-ware.
Since my background was grounded more in sales and marketing with graphics as a secondary discipline, I quickly learned that what worked well in print did not work so well on the Internet. This began my self-learning experience to create web sites that worked well for site visitors and the search engines - thus working well for the site owner.
Here’s a few of the rules I try to keep in mind, when designing a web site:
- The fewer clicks it takes to get a site visitor to his goal, the better. People are not patient when they are sincere about looking for something whether it be information or a product purchase. The faster they find what they want, the faster they will order.
- Keeping navigation consistent throughout the site helps keep the site visitor from getting lost and frustrated. It’s not as important WHERE you put the navigation as it is that the navigation be in the same place on every page.
- It’s imperative that you tell the site visitor HOW they can buy from you. If you have an online store, make the checkout an easy process. If you don’t have an online store, make sure that your sales phone number is apparent as well as your order processing hours.
- Make the visitor experience at your site enjoyable. That does not necessarily mean that you need animation, sound, moving marquees, etc. In fact, many site visitors who are serious about making a purchase find these things deterents. Keep in mind that not all site visitors have the latest computers with maxed out memory. Large flash files, animated GIFs, and even sound can slow down the load time of your site and cause frustration for the site visitor.
- Keep the search engines in mind. Before you start creating a site with loads of graphics and very little HTML content, consider what the search engines will see. If the search engines can’t find your site, neither will anyone else.
- Finally, put good content at your site. Aim to produce a site that shows that your company is the most reliable source for information about your product(s) or service(s). Don’t be afraid to give out too much information. Spec sheets, application notes, technical bulletins all help a potential buyer make the purchase. While some of your competitors may take advantage of the data, the gains in sales should outweigh anything that a competitor could do with that data.
Those are just a few things that I have learned over time as I continue to design web sites for industrial clients. You can view a few of our designs by visiting my Web site.
Mary Ann Wells
Sr. Partner
Web-Kare, LLP
September 20th, 2005
eMarketer projections are predicting that U.S. Internet advertising spending will pass the $10 billion mark for the the first time in 2005. In fact, they are estimating the total spend at about $12.9 billion.
Web-Kare, in case you’re not familiar with us, specializes in the industrial and business-to-business market. Our clients have experienced a sharp increase in ad spends this past year. The actual cost-per-click, which was normally well under $1 for most of our clients, now hoovers around $2 +, with a few clients paying in excess of $5. All well and good if your product is capital equipment - not so good if you’re pitching smaller items with an average invoice of only a few hundred dollars.
eMarketer has explained the expected growth as larger ad budgets overall as well as shifts from traditional ad spending to online ad budgets. Perhaps, but which came first, the higher ad budget or the higher cost-per-click? In the case of most of our clients, it was the higher cost-per-click - driven by more competitors joining the PPC bandwagon.
What’s disturbing about the trend is that eMarketer Senior Analyst, David Hallerman, reports that consumer spending has not kept up with the ad spend increase. According to him (and this includes all demographics and not just industrial) ad spending rose 32.5 percent in 2004, while spending per user only rose 27.9 percent. (I have not found any figures specific to industrial spending.)
What does this mean for Web-Kare clients? It means that we must be careful with ad budgets, research keyword terms frequently, and shoot for the absolute best return-on-investment for our clients. Basically, it means more time spent managing our clients’ PPC programs.
September 19th, 2005
Okay, after 6 years of writing and maintaining an online newsletter, I’ve finally decided to switch to the blog. I was pretty sure that, in those 6 years, I had pretty much said everything I could say about Internet marketing. However, with this new blog tool, I can actually have interactive conversations with my readers and perhaps we can stimulate some online discussion about Internet marketing.
God, I love technology.
September 16th, 2005