Does SEO Really Matter in Website Design?

Yes, yes it does.  My project plan doesn’t allow for website design to begin until we’ve gone through keyword discovery, created a keyword rich sitemap, and defined our call to actions.  Only after we know the full scope of the project does the graphic artist and coders begin work.  It is that patience and due diligence that makes the project a success.

The below graph shows a large increase in website traffic two months after go live.  The website went live September 30th and by the end of November the website traffic had increased 353%.  That’s a pretty big shift in traffic in just sixty days.

The below graph separates out the traffic increase into traffic that is solely based on keywords (or organic search traffic).  In this example, it is showing just Google search traffic.  This illustrates that huge traffic gains can be obtained by good old fashion content creation and focused web design and blogging.

What Else Was Included in the Project?

My client is someone who originally approached me a year before we actually started the web design project.  He had known of my work through his competitors and others within his industry.  At our first conversation, he told me I was too expensive.  I’m okay when people tell me this and it does happen a lot.  I know I am more expensive then many other web designers – especially WordPress designers.  This is because my team makes sure we design and build websites with personas, organic SEO, and conversions in mind.  We don’t just customize an existing WordPress template, we create one from scratch and we make sure it is 100% designed to the client’s needs.  We also make sure the entire project is based on search engine optimization, a competitive analysis, and hours of keyword discovery.

A year after turning down my pricing this client resurfaced.  I believe he had tried some lower cost SEO options and some website tweaks that didn’t quite work.  His traffic was still low and his visitors were not converting.  This time around he was willing to invest both time and money into the project.  This time around he obtained results that included a 350% increase in traffic.

Our website design project included:

• New logo
• Complete keyword discovery
• Website pages were created based on keywords
• New custom design for the website and blog
• Design built out in WordPress via the Genesis framework from StudioPress
• Each website page and post were given optimized meta titles and descriptions
• Performed an inbound linking campaign
• Integrated social media to help build branding and inbound links
• Professionally designed newsletter

And the Winner Is?

Both the client and I are winners in my mind.  The client may have paid more than he originally anticipated, but the initial outcome if most likely better than he expected as well.  I win because I was able to stay true to my methodology and keep SEO closely tied into the web design process.

If you’d like to learn more about how Web Savvy Marketing can help with your website, visit our website design or WordPress portfolio pages for more information.

We All Make Mistakes

Very few clients have Scott’s thirst for knowledge.  They don’t understand it, or care, or have the time to listen to me ramble about SEO and website design.  Their confident my team will manage go-live and do so properly.  And we do, because we have a project plan that we walk through and I check off as the project progesses.  But not every web design firm or SEO consultant uses a checklist or project plan.  They miss things and these “things” become opportunities for their client’s competition because it is the little things that win in SEO and website design.

Three weeks ago I was researching competitors of a prospect and I discovered one of their local competitors had every page on their website blocked to search engines.  Only the home page was in Google’s index and the company was paying heavily for pay per click campaigns.  The company didn’t know their web designer or in-house webmaster left the noindex tag on all their pages.  It was everything I could do to stop myself from calling the firm to let them know.

The point I am trying to make here is that many consultants and marketing firms miss things.  We’re human and we make mistakes.  Not like a doctor leaving a medical device in a patient type of mistake, but pretty big mistakes nonetheless.  If you’re the client or the DIY web designer, you need to protect yourself.  You need to have some education and you should do a quick run through of your website before and after go-live.  And of course, well before you pay that final invoice.

Go-Live Checklist for Web Design Projects

1. Test Your Website Against All Browsers – Just when you think everything is perfect, in walks someone using IE (Internet Explorer).  Older versions of IE have produced many of grey hairs for me over the last few years.  Things tend to break in IE, so double checking the new website in it right before go-live is critical.  While not as buggy as IE, other browsers such as Firefox, Chrome, and Safari should also be reviewed.  They are more robust, but older versions can also be problematic. My beloved iPhone and iPad are newer arrivals and they too should be checked.
2. Add a Favicon – A favicon is about branding.  It adds a little image to the tab or window of the user’s browser and it is saved with the bookmark in a favorites list. While this isn’t a critical element, it does provide a nice polished look to your website and I have many clients who get big smiles when they see their logo pop up as a favicon.
3. Create an HTML Sitemap for Visitors – Much to my disappointment; sitemaps are ignored by many developers.  I still create one and while I don’t put it proudly in the main navigation, I do try to make it available in the footer.  Most people don’t use sitemaps, but for those of us who are impatient (that would be me) they’re important.
4. Create an XML Sitemap for Search Engines – A sitemap.xml file should be created and placed in your root directory.  This simple little file allows major search engines to easily index your website.  In WordPress, generating this sitemap is as easy as adding a plugin and clicking the generate button.  WordPress will automatically update this file with every new page or post addition or content change.  It is a simple way of reaching out to search engines and letting them know you have fresh content available for their review.  While this is simple, it is many times forgotten.
5. Prepare a Redirect File – The redirect file is the bane of my existence.  It simply tells search engines and users that an old page or post is no longer available and it redirects them to the current page or post.  It is important for usability and SEO.  So why do I hate it so much?  It is time consuming and it is one of the last things we do before go-live.  Not only do we create the redirect file for the client, we generally have to audit their existing pages and provide a cross reference between old and new.  My clients don’t know what pages they have, so I end up becoming an internet detective in my efforts to locate a complete list.  Once you have the list of old and new matched up, you simply add the directory to the .htaccess file.  Or in my case, you use a WordPress plugin like Redirection.  I love the Redirection plugin because I can upload all the links right from a CSV file.
6. Create and Review a Robot.txt File – The robot.txt file blocks spiders or instructs the search engines to ignore certain file folders on your server.  For most clients this generally means keeping spiders out of the WordPress core and theme files.  For others it may identify a protected directory of white papers or files that are restricted.  Simple, yet important for protecting your website and your high value web assets.
7. Double Check Your Submission Forms Are Working – The simple checking of submission forms may seem like a no brainer, but you’d be surprised at the amount of problems that can result from a simple contact form.  Email and forms can work differently from server to server, so you absolutely need to recheck forms after a website is moved from a development server to a live server.  One woman told me her company had broken forms for an entire year after they launched their website because no one remembered to check them.  When inquiry forms are your lead source, this is disastrous.
8. Double Check Your Meta Titles and Descriptions – Yes I know I just blogged about this in my last post (Web Design Ain’t Over Until the SEO Sings) and we’ve really already done this twice, but it I still double-check high value pages after go-live.  I use the toolbar from SEOmoz to view the meta title and description outside of WordPress just to make sure I didn’t miss anything.  And sometimes, the meta title or description that sounded great a week ago sounds incredibly stupid at launch.  So I go back and edit it just to make sure my pages are well represented in the SERPs.  This is where my OCD personality is highly visible and beneficial.
9. Double Check Your Index Settings – Didn’t I do that with my Robot.txt file above?  Well yes and no.  The robot.txt file looks at folders and is server based.  CMS packages like WordPress allow you to block search engines at a site or page and post level.  While we are in development, we have a site wide block of search engines so our clients do not run into issues with duplicate content.  Our go-live plan includes removing this setting.  That being said, not everyone has such as policy and I’ve noticed new websites blocking search engines more times than I have time to discuss in a blog post.
10. Check Your RSS Feed and Sign Up for FeedBurner – An RSS feed is a techie term for a page that lists your most recent blog posts.  You can use this feed to automatically populate other websites or profiles on the internet.  It is a must have for link building efforts.  Feedburner is a service that allows visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed via email.  It is offered by Google, it is 100% free, and it makes a great tool for building engagement.  Some people even show off the number of RSS subscribers they have as if it is a badge of honor.
11. Add Google Analytics – I virtually force Google Analytics on every client.  I set it up even if they don’t care, because I think some day they will care and I want them to have data available.  Google Analytics is a free application that tracks visits to your website and the corresponding activity.  It can tell you where people came from, what keyword they used, how long they stay, and when they left.  Good website design and SEO requires analytics.  Since GA is free and powerful, it makes a great tool.
12. Submit Your New Sitemap.xml File to Google, Yahoo, and Bing – Use Google Webmaster Tools, Bing Webmaster Tools, and Yahoo Site Explorer.  Doing so will not only allow for very rapid indexing of the new website, it will provide very valuable tools down the road.  I use Google Webmaster Tools every week and find it a critical tool for evaluating website and SEO success.
13. Review Speed and Performance – After your website is live on your server, you need to review performance.  You’ll be able to verify speed immediately from viewing the website live on the internet and you’ll receive performance reports from Google via Webmaster Tools.  Remember that speed alters search results and conversion rates, so make sure your website performance is up to par.  If you’re live and you’re living with poor performance, don’t be fooled into thinking it is temporary.  Some hosting companies are just horrible, so get out as quick as you can.

DIY Designers Take Note

Winning (not the Charlie Sheen kind) isn’t easy.   Most people are not like my pal Scott and their minds do just magically sponge up SEO knowledge.

Each week I receive calls from a lot of DIY website owners.  Virtually every time my heart goes out to them, because they’re really trying.  But trying and succeeding are two different things.  Website design and SEO is hard work.  Competing on the internet is difficult and there are reasons why most websites get virtually no traffic.

If you are considered the average Joe and you’ve undertaken at DIY website project, take a moment and reread the above list.  If you’ve reviewed my thirteen items and you only “get” about five of them, you’re setting yourself up for failure.  Take the time to research them further and postpone your website launch until you’ve made sure you’ve thoroughly covered your to do list.  If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the list, then seek out a professional.  The few hundred dollars you spend for the last minute help will be well worth it in the end.

Whether you’re the DIY website designer, a marketing manager, or a small business owner – double check your website and efforts at go-live and make sure you and/or your website design firm have everything in working order.

The DIY Website Designer

Lately I’ve received a lot of emails and calls from people who ventured down the DIY website path only to find themselves going astray.  They realized – once in the midst of the project – that the whole web design process is a bit more challenging than they originally realized.  Many people believe a website is simply comprised of a logo, basic color scheme, and text.  Heck that’s easy.  So easy anyone can do it.  Well, not so much.  When website design is done correctly – I stress correctly – it involves a whole lot more than just text, colors, and a logo.

Our website development process includes a 90+ point project plan that is broken out into project kick-off, collection of client deliverables, research and planning, custom theme design, website build, and final optimization for search.  This project plan is tracked electronically in a project management software package that manages tasks, owners, and due dates.  I use software for this because it is a process.  When done properly, the process takes a 6-8 weeks to complete all the tasks and make sure they are all performed properly.  Yes folks, that means building a good website requires a lot more than whipping up your logo, throwing in some text, and picking some colors.

I’m not implying the non-web designers can’t create their own website.  I’m stating the average DIY website creator has a full-time job other than website design and they do not have the time nor stamina to execute it properly.

But What About DIY Services Like Website Tonight?

How can that be?  Companies like Intuit or GoDaddy offer packages like Website Tonight and promise to have your website up and running within minutes.   Intuit’s landing page for this shows a case study for a website receiving a whopping 20 visitors a day.  Yes I said 20 visitors.  Isn’t that just fabulous?

So what’s the problem?  Well first of all, real websites typically have more than five pages.  And they don’t all look alike and they typically receive more than 20 visitors today.  Everyone I’ve ever known who has used one of these services has a website that no one visits.  Worse yet, if someone does manage to find it, the visitor bounces (quickly leaves) and the website generates zero leads, sales, or revenue.  Why is this the case?  Because these sites are built by people whose expertise is outside that of website design and because they DIY website builder does not know what SEO (search engine optimization) is or how to utilize it properly.  The other reasons is people who go this route are in a hurry and they whip up the fastest website they can only to regret it months or years later.

The funniest part of the whole Website Tonight process is that GoDaddy has tried to sell me this service on multiple occasions.  I’ve had to call the company before and virtually every time someone tries to pitch me this service.  I have to cut them off in midsentence to explain I do this for a living, I’m a web designer by profession, and I don’t need a cookie cutter website that no one visits.  Okay I don’t say the end part, but I think it in my head.  It isn’t the customer service rep’s fault that they have to pitch this service to everyone they talk to, so I try to be polite.

Why Hire a Professional Web Designer?

There are plenty of reasons.  A professional website designer will guide you through the process.  He will explain why dancing gifs are inappropriate, why thunder sounds on the home page distract from the visitor experience, why Google can’t digest a flash website, and why SEO is critical to driving traffic.  The professional web designer will teach you about design best practices and make sure these elements are used within the project.

And if your design firm is good, at some point within the project you’ll hate them because they will tell you your blog post is too “salesy”, your content doesn’t make sense to the average visitor, or that your images are not high resolution enough to use.  And then at the end of the project you’ll love them, because you will have a website that is unique, easy to use, and easy to find.

But Isn’t WordPress for DIY Websites?

WordPress is hugely popular and it is a great CMS tool.   I love it, because it can create beautiful websites that are loved by Google and Bing.  What I hate about WordPress is it gives people a false sense of security.  It makes you think you don’t need a professional.  And in some cases you don’t.  Some people just naturally think marketing, design, and psychology.  Some people can actually create a great website all on their own.  The problem is that these people are rare.  They are few and far between.

What WordPress is exceptional at is empowering companies to maintain their own website.  My suggestion to businesses who want to use WordPress is to hire a professional design firm to create a custom theme and help you get the website up and running.  Then maintain it yourself in WordPress.  Update your own content, add your own blog posts, and moderate your own comments.  Just leave the plugins and design changes to the professional, because you’ll end up breaking the theme.

There are many design firms that only give clients limited access to WordPress. They do this to prevent clients from breaking their websites and themes and to limit support calls.  I do not do this, but part of me wishes I did because people make changes and break stuff and never see the problems.  They don’t notice that content boxes no longer align or links are broken because they are not professionals.

DIY Websites the Right Way

I applaud people who want to create their own websites.  Heck I did it myself over a decade ago and it is how I got started in internet marketing.  The problem is my website looked like I created it myself and it took years for me to “get it”.  Most people and/or businesses don’t have years to wait for success.  They need help and traffic and leads or sales now.

My suggestion to those who want to create a DIY website is to hire a professional to get your started with the design, SEO, and build out.  Once you have a solid foundation and a strong website architecture in place, manage it yourself and be autonomous.

Let a professional designer give you the wings, then you can teach yourself to soar.

Since I run into this often, I’m sure the average website owner does too.  If you’re trying to decide between updating your existing website or moving towards a full website design, I’d encourage you to ask yourself five quick questions.

1. Do You Have a CMS Package?

If you’re wondering what the heck a CMS package is, it means content management system. Which really refers to a user friendly way to update your website. And when I say user friendly, I mean easy enough that the average person could update page text, write a blog post, and modify an image.

Popular flavors of CMS consist of open source WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. I am a WordPress girl and have dedicated by firm to creating WordPress websites and supporting WordPress users. That being said, Joomla and Drupal are also good packages and both have their place in the market. Each CMS package have different niches they fill and each can be an excellent solution for creating a new website.

Do people really use CMS for website design? Yep and way more than you think. WordPress powers 14.7% of the top million websites in the world. And 22 out of every 100 new active domains in the US are running WordPress.

I digressed a bit. The point I wanted to make is that CMS packages give you control over your website and your online marketing. If you’re stuck living with an HTML website that is impossible to update, then you have a problem.

2. Is Your Website SEO Friendly?

This is a huge factor if you rely on your website to generate traffic through organic search. One of the core reasons I love WordPress is because it is very user friendly. If configured properly, it will create search engine friendly URLs, alt tags, unique page descriptions and titles, XML sitemaps, and the beloved H1 tags and bolded text. All are needed for courting Google and Bing properly.  WordPress makes it very easy to stay compliant with search engine rules and helps guide you along the way.

If you can’t answer that question yourself, go to WebsiteGrader.com and see how they grade your website. My website is a 99/100. Most I query are a 50/100. If you’re less than 90, you have problems.

3. Is Your Website Functionally Robust?

Complete a list of functional desires and compare it to what you currently have in place. Can your website manage your wish list without consuming your entire marketing budget in code changes? Can you add to this functionality or do you have to turn to a high priced coder each week?

Now take your requirements list and compare that list to WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. One of these CMS solutions will meet your needs and all are excellent choices. Especially if you’re currently stuck with an HTML website.

Remember the usage numbers I provided for WordPress? You’re probably wondering why it’s so popular? There are over 15,000 plugins available for WordPress and that means 15,000 opportunities to add to the core functionality WordPress offers. Many of these are free and they usually have an easy one click install right from the admin panel. Good stuff for me and the million other WordPress users.

4. Are You in Charge of Changes?

Do you control your website? That may seem like a silly question, but you’d be surprised at how many people don’t know exactly who created their original website, where they are, or how to reach them. Another frequent compliant I hear is the developer has a 30 day backlog and a simple text changes cannot be made for 45 days.

That, my friends, is a major problem. Internet marketing is fast paced. Last year Google made 500 changes to their algorithm, which means we webmasters needed to also adjust. If you can’t get a hold of your webmaster or if you have no access to the website, you’ll fall behind on search engine compliance and you’ll also be a lager to your competition.  The goal of CMS based websites is to keep you in control.

5. Is it Easy to Use?

Assuming you are in control of your pages and you can access the backend to make modifications, is it easy to do? Can you figure out how to update text, add a page, or create a blog post? Can you add images, products, or change your navigation structure? You should be able to if your website is built within a CMS solution.

But I caution you on picking your developer and making sure they fully understand the CMS package. Back in December I wrote a blog post about my sister’s experience with selecting a WordPress designer. The post Fifteen Questions to Ask Your Future Website Designer goes into how she had a pretty blog that didn’t quite the level she was expecting. Needless to say, my development team rebuilt the entire thing for her this month because the original designer did not code to WordPress best practices. He hardcoded a ton of functionality that should have used WordPress’ user-friendly menus and widgets. It’s been eight months since she received the original design and after months and months of frustration, she is just now capable to making changes.

My sister’s project was a worst-case scenario and this is typically not the case. Generally when you hire a reputable designer for WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal – you actually receive a very user-friendly website.

Conclusion

If you answered no to any of the above questions, consider moving to a CMS.  And don’t forget to locate a reputable website designer. Review WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal to see which CMS package you like best. Ask around and review some website portfolios. You’ll find someone you like and the money will be well spent. You’ll end up with a SEO friendly website, that looks modern, and that you can actually update yourself.  All very good things.

Yes I realize that sounds like fluff, but in my geeky WordPress world all that makes me happy. It means I get to focus on clients, strategy, SEO, and I get to create wireframes. Website wireframes are like pieces of a really cool puzzle that come together to make a really great website.

What the Heck is a Wireframe?

Basically it’s a sketch of what you want a web page to look like. We start with the home page and I typically create a wireframe to give to my graphic artists when I request a new web design. Sometimes I don’t because I want her to be free and unrestricted. In other cases, when I know the client needs specific content or “stuff” on the home page, I create a wireframe. If we are dealing with any type of website personas, I always create a wireframe. It helps give the designer an idea of what we need to accomplish with the home page and what is important for the overall web project.

At this point you’re probably thinking I have this really expensive software for wireframe creation. Not at all. I simply use a SaaS product called iPLOTZ that is available via the internet. You can try and create real wireframes for free. I’ve upgraded and I pay for the service so I can have multiple wireframes at one time, but the free version is perfectly acceptable for the average person to use and create really cool concepts.

The Before and After Using Wireframes

Again, I have a good graphic artist and coding team. But even if you don’t, creating a wireframe will allow you to figure out what you’d like your home page (or other pages) to look like well before you head into actual web design.

So if you’re a novice in WordPress or a business owner who is considering a new website, consider using a wireframe to get your creative juices flowing. It might just bring out the inner geek you didn’t know you had.

That’s a lot, but there is a reason for it. I’m methodical in nature and my web design process is too. There are a lot of dots to connect and things to worry about when you launch a new website.  That doesn’t mean it has to be scary, it means it just needs to be right.

What We’ve Learned Thus Far

So far on our journey of web development, I’ve taught you to:

• Define Marketing Goals -> Successful Internet Marketing Begin With Goals
• Identify Your Target Audience -> A Box for Every Website Visitor
• Review Your Existing Website -> SEO Can’t Help a Website That Sucks
• Perform a Competitor Analysis -> Internet Marketing is a Battlefield
• Perform Keyword Research -> Keyword Research for the Average Joe

Now it’s time for us to prepare our sitemap and requirements list for the new website. I know you’re excited. This is the one step in my process that takes the most thought. But don’t be scared. I’m going to take you through it step by step.

In my last blog post we walked through performing keyword research, so you should have a great list of keywords in hand. That means it is time to create a rock solid sitemap that can support your targeted keywords and convert your traffic into revenue.

Eleven Steps for Creating a Great Sitemap and Connecting All Those Website Dots

1. Perform a Gap Analysis of Your Existing Website – Really, this simply means asking yourself what is missing. We won’t go into specifics here, but when you look at your existing website, what jumps out at you right away. Or more important, what doesn’t jump out at you, but should jump out and grab your attention?
2. List Goals and Objectives for the Website – What does the new website need to accomplish? Capture emails for a newsletter, obtain new leads, sell a product, etc.
3. Outline Potential Call to Actions and Desired Outcomes of Website Traffic – If you know what you want your website to do, then you should know what you want your visitors to do. Should they sign up for a newsletter, attend a webinar, register for a white paper, request a quote, purchase your product?
4. Identify the Path You Would Like Each Persona to Take Once Arriving at the Home Page – An earlier blog post discussed website personas and you can read the post mentioned above to catch up if needed. Since you’ve already documented your personas, consider what information you need to present to get the visitor to perform the desired action you just documented above.
5. Develop a List of Functional Requirements – You’ve defined your actions or “what” you want people to do, so you now need to consider the “how” they are going to do it. Do you need a protected directory to house high quality documents, do you need an integrated contact form to register leads, do you need an e-commerce store to sell products?
6. Develop List of Visual Requirements – Remember to consider personas here, because different genders, education levels, and personality types respond to images and visual stimulus differently. Do you need custom charts, photos, or buttons? What about a fancy web form?
7. Take Inventory – This is the really fun part, because you are probably going through content that is three years old and now that you look back, you realize it isn’t pretty. Go through your existing website and list out all content pages, files, images, and forms that you want migrated to a new website. Don’t forget your web pages should match up to your keyword list.
8. Match Content to Personas – Consider your visitor types, the products or services you offer, and what stage in the buying cycle they may be at when visiting. Now consider the inventory you just went through and match up that inventory (pages, files, images) to your personas. Don’t worry; you’re going to have gaps and holes that you need to fill. Just remember to keep looking at your keyword list and keep this in mind as you go through everything.
9. Consider New Content Requirements – You just identified new gaps in content you didn’t know you had, so now it’s time to document those gaps so you can address them one by one.
10. Develop a Website Outline – We are now creating the sitemap. You were really creating it as you walked through these last few steps, but it is now starting to come together so you can see how the pages and actions fit together to make a cohesive website. Remember, you need to have one page per competitive keyword and those pages need to align with your visitor personas. The pages also need to represent the information visitors need to see and the actions you want these visitors to take upon visiting your website.
11. Validate Your Call to Actions – You’ve already done this right? Well maybe. But I want you to go back and make sure. Think about what words you can use that are compelling enough to make someone do that action you desire. Have you given website visitors enough “meat” to make them want to do something? Internet marketing is about give and take. You need to give before you take. So before you ask for that email address, make sure you’ve given your website visitors enough reason to want to give you something in return. If you haven’t, revisit your sitemap and make sure you do.

Note of Caution: Make sure your sitemap has a hierarchy that makes sense to you, visitors, and the search engines. Do not bury content so deep that a visitor needs to click three times to reach it. Keep as much towards the top as possible, while still having a logical flow.

Connection Complete

Are you exhausted? You might be, but don’t have despair. Your new sitemap is significantly better than anything you’ve had in the past because you created it with a methodical approach geared towards SEO and converting visitors. This is excellent!

Next we’ll create a wireframe of your home page, but this is another post and another day.

Who’s Taking Care of Fido?

In my house I take care of the family dog. I’m not a big fan of our English Lab, but I’m still the one who makes sure he is fed, watered, and let in and out four hundred times a day. I am the caregiver even if I’m far from a dog lover.

I much prefer my three cats, which pretty much take care of themselves. Fill up the food bowls and call it good. Not only do my cats bath themselves, I can leave them home alone for an extended period of time. The dog, well, not so much. He is work and he needs maintenance and attention every day.

I’ve heard the more love you give your dog, the better relationship you’ll have with the animal and the more benefit you’ll obtain. I’ve yet to practice this advice myself, but I do believe it is true and I absolutely believe your website is the similar. Just like the family dog, someone has to take care of your website, nurture it, and love it. If you don’t love and nurture your website, no one else will either.

A lot of my web design clients tend to believe the websites I build will continue to improve over time. Well that’s true, but only if they are nurtured. No website, or dog for that matter, can flourish without care. Go-live is just the beginning.

Loving Your Website After Go-live

On Friday’s call I started whipping out objectives or to do items for the client. They were overwhelmed a bit, but this will pass. We’ll get a plan together and we’ll give their website the continued love it’s been missing.

Today I reflected on that conversation and I thought the list I gave the client would make a good blog post and learning opportunity for other companies. Below is a sampling of my laundry list of to do items.

1. Bounce Rates – After 30 days of activity you have enough traffic to provide insight on visitor trends. Once you’ve reach that milestone you should review your website’s bounce rate (bounce rate refers to people leaving your website immediately upon entry) to see if you are retaining visitors. Don’t just look at the overall bounce rate, look at individual pages. Start with the pages that have the highest bounce rates and work down. Consider the keyword traffic and the content. Is the content to dry, boring, is it text heavy, is it vague? Fix whatever you deem to be the problem.
2. Keywords – How are you doing on keyword ranking and actual traffic from these keywords? Review Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools to see what is happening. Webmaster Tools will show you what searches you show up on and Analytics will show you want happens when someone clicks through to your website from those keywords. Set a priority of action items based on your most coveted keywords down to nice to have keywords.
3. Link Building – Search engines look at inbound links as authority and reputation. You need inbound links to a variety of your pages to be able to score ranking on competitive keywords. No inbound links means no SEO love from Google. Most people forget about this requirement. I encourage people to create a keyword to page sitemap and use this for their long-term link building efforts.
4. Fresh Content – Search engines and visitors want to see fresh content. It gives both a reason to return to your website. Fresh content means adding and/or updating existing pages and adding new blog posts on a regular basis. How often will depend on your niche and your internal resources. Whether it is three times a week or once every three weeks, make sure you continue to add something fresh.
5. Comment Moderation – Monitor comments and respond promptly to anything left by your visitors. Clean out the spam, approve real comments, and provide a thoughtful reply. If you don’t care enough to moderate, your visitors won’t care enough to comment or even read your posts.

Who’s to Blame for the Stinky Dog?

My dog is hyper, stinky, and I literally have to segregate him if new people arrive for fear he will pee all over them. I suspect some of this would change if I spent more time loving him and making a real effort to improve his behavior. As much as I hate to admit it, I give my website more love then the family dog. While my website traffic grows, my dog just grows more and more annoying to me. Yes my dear readers, that was more painful for me to write than it was for you to read. The truth does hurt sometimes and it is obvious that I need to give my dog more love and attention.

The point is this – it is my fault. Without love and attention, my dog isn’t going to change anymore than your website traffic and conversions will skyrocket.

Both my dog and your new website need nurturing, love, and ongoing attention.

The below list of top reasons for a website redesign is a humorous take on my recent conversations with website owners. I wish I could say these were unrealistic and made up in my head, but they’re not. They’re based on real-world websites.

Top Ten Signs Your Website Needs a Redesign

1. Your website looks like it was design in 1995 and it was.
2. Your website needs some updates, but the developer (aka your nephew) is now in college and is unavailable.
3. Your animated gif is getting tired. He looked so hip back in the day, but dancing puppies just don’t articulate your marketing message like they should.
4. If a battle were to break out, your company’s PowerPoint presentations would kick the crap out of your website’s content. Which it should, since the PowerPoint was updated last month and the website hasn’t been updated in years.
5. Your website feels like a black hole. You’re not exactly sure how many people come to your website, what they do once there, and when they leave.
6. Your website feel tiny compared to that of your competition. It looked great back in 2000 when the standard resolution size was 800×600. Today, well, not so much.
7. You navigation is so poor, you and your website visitors have difficulty finding relevant content.
8. You have duplicate content and you didn’t even know you had. But Google did and you’ve been hit by Google’s Panda update because of it.
9. Your website is so slow you can grab a cup of coffee while navigating between pages.
10. You greet visitors with a talking image of yourself. That may have been ultra cool years ago, but now it is just really annoying. And when the world talks about social, they do not mean talking avatars.

Again, real-world websites and comments from website owners. But there is hope. You are no longer forced to rely on your tech savvy nephew or an outdated WYSWYG software package with limited capabilities. You can use modern tools like WordPress and Google Analytics to create a fresh new website presence.

And if you really need help, you can contact a website designer like myself. I’d suggest you locate a WordPress website designer who is spunky like me, so we can stop you from using animated gif files, talking avatars, or anything else that would harm your online image and the world’s perception of your company and offering.

Feel free to add a comment below to help round out my top ten list. I’m sure there are plenty more website faux pas that can be added and I’ve love to hear from you.

I’m not a website snob and I value the small business owner and his desire to bring sales in through the internet. I think internet marketing is critical for many small businesses, because it is relatively cheap compared to other marketing tactics. The problem is most small businesses owners want you to market a website they designed themselves or one that has not been updated in five or more years. My professional opinion is although I’d love their SEO retainer, it would feel as though I was taking their money and providing nothing in return.

Organic SEO rocks. I believe in it and I’ve earned a living off of it for many years. But search engine optimization will only go so far. You have to have a decent website to present to visitors once they arrive.

To illustrate my point, I’m going to use Randy as an example. Randy called me on Monday and asked me to “make his phone ring”. His words. I told him I could, but we’d need to address his website and SEO together, as SEO alone will not work. Randy didn’t believe me at first, so we had a frank discussion about his website and what it presents to visitors.

If a small business owner even thinks about engaging in an SEO campaign, he needs to first look at his website and ask himself a few questions. I think fifteen questions can really help determine if an SEO campaign is needed or if he needs to start first with a website design project. Let’s step through my fifteen questions for website owners to see how Randy’s current website stacks up.

Fifteen Questions Every Small Business Owner Should Ask Themselves

1. What is the first impression your website gives to a visitor?
Stress. One word describes it for me. As soon as I arrive Randy’s website a video starts playing and replays everything I hit the home page. I don’t like background noise and the video literally stresses me out.

2. What is the first thing you notice?
Links and lots of links. Randy has done his own SEO and his home page has nineteen links within four paragraphs of text. It is overwhelming and worse yet, it is keyword stuffing. He has multiple links to the same page and simply uses different keywords for each link. Keyword stuffing = Google penalty. It is not helping him from a search standpoint and it does not help facilitate a positive visitor experience.

3. Does a thirty second review of the home page articulate what your company is all about?
Yes. I definitely know what he’s pitching.

4. Does the website speak to your target audience and/or visitor personas?
Not so much. His text is written for search engines and not the user. As the visitor I see red and lots of it. The text is red, the links are underlined red words, and I struggle to read the actual text. The home page is a flood of information and it does not distinguish one visitor from another.

5. Does the website visitor have a clear understanding of what he/she should do once landing on the home page?
As the visitor I’m told to “CALL NOW XXX-XXX-XXXX”. Unfortunately that is all I see. Randy has a lot of content and videos available, but I struggle deciphering where to go. I’m simply overwhelmed. I believe part of this is because all the lovely red text (yes even content) is centered. The yelling caps is also a problem, as it is an immediate turn off. I don’t like people yelling at me. Painful, simply painful.

6. Is navigation easy and clearly defined for the website visitor?
Yes. Once I get past all the red text and view the navigation bar, my options are clear.

7. Is it usable and bug free across all major browsers?
No. That would be a big fat no. It is “broken” in Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. I didn’t check IE, because I’ve already validated three browsers, so a fourth is just salt in my wounds. Boxes hang over text, text hangs over text, and there is about eleven inches of a blank page at the bottom of each page. That is just the beginning, but my point is illustrated so I’ll stop.

8. Are the “call to actions” clearly defined and compelling?
I know I’m suppose to call and I know I should “submit a case”, unfortunately the submit function on the contact page is covered with text. The bigger issue is I have no compelling reason to call or give my email address.

9. How does your visitor engage with you?
As I’ve already stated, there are instructions to call. There is a contact box on the home page, but it just states “Submit Your Information” without explanation on why I should submit. It is more about me giving than the firm actually engaging with me.

10. Does the website properly project information about your current product and/or service offering?
I think the website does provide information on his service offering, although because of the large amount of coding issues, multiple parts of the service descriptions are difficult or impossible to read.

11. Does the website discuss your visitor’s pain points and your matching solution?
No, not really. The website talks about the services and the industry itself. It does not connect with the visitor on a personal level or try to relate to their problems or pain points.

12. Do you offer anything to visitors or do you just demand something from visitors?
There is a page of “Resource Links” but these are simply links to industry websites that are not written for the average website visitor. They provide little if any value. So the website itself does not provide or give anything to the visitor. It does demand that I call (in all upper case letters) or give my email address. Since it gives little and wants something as soon as I arrive, I’d be very hesitant to take action.

13. Is the website Web 2.0 friendly?
There are no references to social media, the blog link takes the website visitor to a completely new URL on Blogger. Instead of using the blog to bring people into the website, it takes them away. There is no RSS feed or sharing options. The videos are hosted on the domain and do not utilize YouTube. This website is barely making it with Web 1.0, let alone Web 2.0.

14. If you were the website visitor, would you pick up the phone and call?
Nope. The nature of Randy’s service offering requires the visitor to feel that Randy’s firm is an authority figure in his industry, that he and his colleagues are trustworthy, and that the firm is highly knowledgeable in their area of expertise. In my opinion his website does nothing to convey these characteristics. And, there are plenty of his competitors who do, so I suspect the visitors will simply move onto another service provider.

15. Does your website help or hinder you from obtaining your company goals?
My opinion is the website hinders Randy’s goals. I’ve talked to Randy and I liked Randy. His website does not make me feel the same way. It is dated, difficult to work with, and does not tell me what I need or want to know. That feeling transfers over to Randy and his firm and makes you feel the firm is old, hard to work with, and will not communicate with me as needed.

To SEO or Not to SEO

When I spoke with Randy, I told him I would not take him on as an SEO client. I said I would take him on as a web design client with SEO at the forefront our redesign goals.

Why would I turn business away? I only want a client to retain my SEO services, if I can help the client obtain their goals. Randy’s goal was to make his phone ring. Encouraging Randy to spend money on SEO consulting, while knowing full well his website is horrendous, it unethical. Or at least to me, it feels as though I’m stalking unprotected prey. He’d be wasting money, because any traffic I drove to his website would leave and not convert. Thus in the end, my SEO services would not reach his ultimate goal of new clients.

I have to provide Randy a proposal tomorrow for a website redesign. If Randy decides to decline a website redesign and goes with another SEO firm, I’m okay with that outcome. I may not like it, but I know I tried to level set his expectations and steer him in the right direction. The rest is up to Randy.

I ask a lot of questions about the current and future state of their sales process and marketing programs. While these questions are informative, I definitely have a few questions that are my favorites. In particular, this would be four questions focused on their current website. I like this set of questions because they’re very informative and they are “raw”. I can tell many clients write the first thing that comes to their minds, which is priceless. Some answers have me laughing out loud. I don’t mean the LOL kind of laugh; I mean the tears coming out of my eyes kind of laugh.

I believe my clients’ candid responses are representative of most small business owners and how they feel about their outdated and lackluster websites. While most small businesses owners don’t spend their day thinking or talking about their websites, when asked, they will provide feedback. Unfortunately the feedback is usually far from positive.

Tell Me What You Don’t Like About Yourself

To illustrate my above statements, I thought I’d return to my questionnaires and pull a few client responses. You’ll see the average small business owner does not have a whole lot of admiration for their website and their current internet marketing presence.

Below are a few candid responses from real clients:

1. What does your website currently do well?

• Nothing…Or at least very little. It’s a personality free online business card.
• There is lots of information and it does convey our brand.
• Well it is doing something right, because we are getting business from it. Other than that, there isn’t anything I am particularly proud of.

2. What does your website currently do poorly?

• Doesn’t engage visitors, there are no differentiators, and it doesn’t clearly describe our products.
• The e-store has never generated revenue.
• It is basic and comes across basic.
• Lacks traffic.
• It looks like I did it myself and I did.

3. Are there any aspects of your website that you love?

• Love might be strong.
• Not really.
• No.

4. Are there any aspects of your website that you hate?

• It is out of date and information is difficult to find.
• Yes, but can’t point to one specific thing.
• Not necessarily, I think we just need a facelift and a more optimized site.
• All of it.

If you read through the responses, you’ll notice no one is overly excited about what they have presently and no one provided anything really positive about their existing website. The one client who said he just needed a “facelift” received a completely new website and it is actually one of my favorite web design projects because the before and after was so dramatic.

I Love You and Hate You All at the Same Time

As much as I love small business owners, I hate them at the same time. I love working with this segment, because they need me and they like me. They really really like me, as Sally Field would say. They like me because I’m opinionated and I’m not just a web designer. I’m a marketer and a salesperson and an SEO consultant and a WordPress geek all wrapped up in one. I like the companies who need a lot of help, because I like to help. It’s why I quit my real marketing job and started my own firm.

On the flip side, I hate small business owners because so many of them live in a bubble of self-denial. This is even true of my good friend Jason, who is a small business owner here in Michigan. He’s weathered through the rough period and will make it through, because he is smart and he is a good man. But he is in denial. Jason doesn’t put his website’s URL on his business card, because he says the website is so bad. His wife, Megan, regularly makes fun of it and we all laugh about it over Friday night drinks.

But the real problem is Jason needs a new website. He desperately needs a new website and I’m almost to the point of designing one for free because his is so bad. His wife and I have talked about hacking his current website and just surprising him with a brand new WordPress website.

Jason says no one goes to his website, so he doesn’t need a new one. Really? Jason I love you, but no one goes to your current website because it is ghastly and it isn’t optimized for search engines, visitors, or anything else. And let us not forget you are ashamed of it, so you don’t even tell anyone it exists. Jason doesn’t know the potential results a new website could bring, because he is living in 1975. A time when half of America didn’t use the internet to research and buy things. Just for the record, he is only 36 and he should not be stuck in 1975. I could prove to him that real ROI is possible, but to do that I’d have to put down my beer and have a real heart to heart with him. And quite frankly, he isn’t ready for it yet.

If you are a small business owner, take a moment and look back at the list of comments from my clients. No traffic, no revenue, out of date information, and lack of information are all symptoms of old websites or poorly designed websites.

If you are still reading this blog post, you know in your heart, your website is also bad. It may not be as bad as my friend Jason’s website, but you know you have problems. So sit back and take a good look at your website, your current marketing efforts, and your overall internet marketing presence. After doing so, you can tell me what you don’t like about yourself and I can tell you what I can do to help.

If you’re on Twitter, feel free to drop me a tweet with your thoughts at @WebSavvyMrkting.

A lot of small business owners launch their website with the simple goal of using the site as an information portal and a mechanism to talk about their company. It is basic human nature to be egocentric. The problem with this methodology is that it generic. Simply talking about yourself isn’t a differentiator for your website, product, or service offering. It doesn’t compel your website visitor to take action.

No matter what the search criteria is, a typical internet user can visit hundreds, no millions, of websites that all present the same type of information. Users are numb to this approach and their average time on a page supports that they are inundated with bland web copy. By following the same route as the masses, you lack the ability to grab anyone’s attention. Because I believe each and every website should stand out and grab attention, I’m a huge fan of presenting your offering via a mix of problems, solutions, and requests for action.

The Solutions for Marketers and Small Business Owners

In a recent blog post titled A Box for Every Website Visitor, I discussed segmenting your website visitors into personas or categories and then documenting each persona’s pain points or needs. That, my friends, is only the first few steps in my master plan of website design. In the next step, we must move onto brainstorming how your product or services offer a solution to each personas’ individual needs.

If you are a divorce lawyer, quantifying a persona’s needs is fairly simple. If you are a B2B company and you sell complex products, your task is a bit more difficult. That being said, this step in my web design process is still difficult for both the lawyer and the B2B marketer. Most B2B companies have an internal marketing team who is well aware of each persona’s needs. Generally they can articulate and document needs by a given persona if asked. The attorney on the other hand, doesn’t have to segregate his target market, but he lacks a pool of marketing professionals. Thus this task is difficult even though his offering is fairly straightforward.

So what’s the B2B marketer and lawyer to do? Both should create a matrix similar to the example I provide below. By forcing yourself (or team) or document personas, pain points, solution, and call to actions, you begin to formulate your future website map on paper.

Planning Your Website Based on Individual Personas

The Service Offering

Let’s dig deeper into a sample website design for a law firm. After populating the above table, the lawyer now has a clearer image of what information to present. Now he needs to consider how to present this information.

• If the attorney’s target is family law for women, he needs to immediately connect with the website visitor on the home page via familiar images and verbiage. One would imagine the images would include women so that a female visitor would immediately see the website in question provides services to women like herself.
• Once the website visitor has been “interrupted” with a graphic, the attorney can present compelling text to encourage the woman to click to a page that will provide further information about her specific pain point. We will assume our female visitor is already divorced and needs a post judgment modification of child custody, financial support, or parenting time.
• So assuming there was text on the home page to quickly illustrate this is an area of expertise and it had proper navigation options, we will also assume the woman clicks the correct link and moves to a page dedicated to this topic.
• Once on this keyword focused page, the website copy should quickly provide a synopsis of her problems and then provide the solution (or services) which will help provide resolution for her.  In this specific case it would be modifications to her existing child custody or support ruling.
• Finally, after presenting the solution, the page copy should offer an appropriate call to action that will encourage the woman to immediately perform an act. In this case, I would imagine it would be to call the law firm for a consultation.

Assuming the law firm has done a quality job in it’s assignment, the website visitor should take action or bookmark the website for further follow up.

The Call to Action and Close

So how do you know if your current website manages this process correctly? Visit Google Analytics and view your inbound traffic by keyword, the pages visitors migrate to, and the pages of exit.

In our above example, we would view inbound traffic for “child support modifications” and review the path the visitors take. If you received ten visitors for this term and they never move beyond the home page or a keyword specific page, you know you have a problem. You – the lawyer – need to take your own action and you need to consider redesigning your website.

It is as simple as: Persona Identification -> Articulate Needs -> Identify Solution by Needs -> Provide Appropriate Offering -> State Call to Action.

When you break the process down, it is straightforward and very easy to execute.

For example, I know I can pretty much tell my best friend anything and she’ll continue to love me, which is an example of our boundaries and expectations. I know what she is expects from me and what she can give me in return. We have a mutual understanding of respect that has grown over the last decade.

Website visitors, however, do not offer than same continuity. Unlike my best friend, the average visitor gives you about 30 seconds before they make a decision and put your website and company into a box. Your box can quickly become the “expert”, the “clueless”, or worse yet, the “has been”. Website visitors have short attention spans, multitasking lives, and they simply have to much data thrown at them to weed through useless rambling and ill contrived text.

When I sit down with a prospective website design client, I always ask about visitor personas. A visitor persona is simply a box for your website visitors. It helps segregate your web traffic into manageable groups similar to what I do in my personal life. Personas help define your target market and helps web designers formulate a design that direct a more precise marketing message to the various personas.

When a client and I brainstorm website personas I usually ask a lot of questions and before you know it, we have our personas. By default, personas vary greatly between B2B (business to business) and B2C (business to consumer) companies. A B2C company will have personas that include characteristics like gender, age, education level, or geography. A B2B company will have personas that include characteristics like industry, management level, and organizational department. Regardless of B2B or B2C segmentation, defining a website’s visitor personas will help place prospective users in a box.

Why would a web designer or company want to segregate their web traffic into boxes? So the marketing message can be tailored to each persona or group of visitors. Once you have your personas defined, you can create unique messaging targeted to those personas, you can better articulate your offering, and thus convert more web traffic.

Once you’ve defined your personas, put yourself into the box. Think about why your visitor might land on your home page, what might they be looking for, and what might they need to hear to encourage them to take action.

Two Very Different Website Persona Examples

• B2B Example – Over the years I’ve worked with a lot of B2B technology companies. There personas many times get defined into boxes that include IT, finance, users, and the c-level team. I don’t care what service or product you offer, those four groups digest and respond to information differently. They also have very different “pain points” or needs. Different pain points mean completely different marketing messages.
• B2C Example – Since I’m a technomommy, my B2C example would be cereal. General Mills has placed their target market into boxes. There is the kid box and the mom box. Kids want to hear tasty and see colors and chocolate. Moms want to hear nutrition and see grams of sugar and see value. Both are your demographic and both have to be targeted from a marketing prospective. Let me just say, I’m certainly not buying Lucky Charms for myself, which proves the five year is a clearly defined persona.

Figuring out your website personas and placing them in their boxes is the hard part. Once you do this, their needs and their wants begin to quickly materialize.

I so strongly believe in website personas, I will not even consider the aesthetics of a new website until I do a deep dive into your marketing requirements. If I don’t know who we target or how many boxes we will have to satisfy, I can’t begin to think of possible web design options. It just isn’t possible.

So now that you know about personas, take a step back and look at your current website. Do you have them and do they convey the right marketing message? Unlike my best friend, your website visitors are not forgiving and they won’t give you a decade to win them over.

She wanted a cute blog with minimal website functionality and that isn’t my strength. I’m a B2B or B2C girl who likes to work with small businesses and not so much individual bloggers. I wasn’t a good fit for her and we both knew it. While I did coach her along the website design process, she did pretty good all on her own. She found a great graphic artist who created an awesome WordPress design for her. I didn’t agree with everything he did, but I do think he answered her unique needs and she has a WordPress design that is perfectly matched to her needs.

This experience with my sister reminded me that different websites and blogs need different talent sets and while we web designers may want to be everything to everyone, we simply cannot do it. We have limits, areas of expertise, and a niche within which we fit. We have to acknowledge these limitations and strengths both for our future clients and ourselves. I didn’t fully understand this when I launched my internet marketing firm, but I do now.

So what should you look for when hiring a website designer? While this will vary based on your individual needs, there are fifteen criteria and/or questions that I consider fairly universal to the process of selecting a website designer. This may not be all-inclusive, but it is a great starting point for locating and interviewing a consultants or design firms.

Fifteen Must Ask Questions for Your Future Website Designer

1. What CMS packaged do you use? Is it open source or proprietary? If you don’t know the definitions of those two terms, research them and you’ll thank me later. Open source means the website design software it is widely available, while proprietary means it is solely used by the website designer. Proprietary would also mean the website designer probably wrote it himself and the website itself is HTML based. What doesn’t this mean to you? Open source means you are free to update and select website designers at your leisure. Proprietary means you are tied to your website designer for life. The only CMS I use it WordPress, because I feel clients should be able to come and go as they please and not based on my needs or wants.
2. Can your design portfolio meet my esthetic needs? Remember my sister who wanted a cute farm blog? She needed a graphic designer, not an internet marketing expert. Take a look at my WordPress portfolio. Do you see anything cute? Nope, you see business and branding. Now you understand why we didn’t bond over her WordPress design project. If you are looking for a new website designer, review the potential designer’s portfolio well before you reach out to them for conversation. You’ll save both of you a lot of time and frustration.
3. Do you adhere to web design best practices? This may seem silly, but not every web designer understands best practices. Usability is still huge issue with even the best graphic designers. My sister asked me if she should add a “key to help explain her social icons” and my response was “any website that requires a key or tutorial is not based on solid design or best practices” then I told her to change the icons. Cute is great, but functionality and usability trump cute any day of the week.
4. As a web designer, how knowledgeable are you with organic search engine optimization? If you think you can worry about SEO after design, think again. Strong search engine optimization begins with website design and the architecture of your website or blog. Rush ahead with design without thinking about SEO and you’ll regret it long-term. I won’t even start designing a new WordPress website without first having a full understanding of a client’s marketing needs and SEO objectives.
5. Do you use social media and do you feel it is important? Don’t skip this question, because social media is not going away anytime soon. In fact, it is growing at amazing rates of user adoption. Facebook, Twitter, and locally focused websites like Foursquare are taking over the internet and they are powerhouses of traffic and engagement. A new website should embrace social media and encourage engagement. Your new website designer should be active on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. If they aren’t, then you ask yourself why and if they can really serve your needs.
6. What exactly are your project deliverables? Can they meet my individual needs? Let me return to my sister. She hired a graphic designer and he delivered. She didn’t hire a website developer. She got exactly what she paid for, which was a beautiful WordPress website design. She didn’t get hosting set up, organic SEO, page build out, WordPress plugin set up, Google Analytics integration, an XML sitemap, a robot.txt file, or even submission to the search engines. She didn’t pay for it. She also didn’t ask for it. She’s a newbie so she didn’t really know she needed all of that other “stuff” and she has me to help coach her along. But not everyone has a free website designer on call, so decide what you need and make sure your potential website designer can deliver it. Your new website won’t produce results if you can’t figure out how to get your content uploaded or submit your finished site to search engines.
7. What is the full scope of your services offering? This is a big one, because similar to project deliverables, designer capabilities are as diverse as clients’ needs. If you need copywriting assistance, organic SEO, or even assistance with public relations, you typically won’t get this from a graphic designer. My sister didn’t need any of these, so a graphic designer was perfect for her. Most small businesses need a full service design house or an experienced internet marketer. They lack in house marketing resources and need someone to provide a complete website development project with the option for post-launch support. Know your own needs and make sure you pick a firm that meets those needs in both the short-term and long-term.
8. How would you categorize your project management skills and what tools do you use to manage website design project? What? Isn’t it the client’s job to manage the website project? Honestly, most clients don’t comprehend all of the steps necessary to launch so expecting them to manage unknown deliverables is unrealistic. I provide prospects with a written project plan and then once they sign on as clients I transfer this plan to Basecamp so we can jointly manage the project electronically. I learned this the hard way unfortunately. One of my first clients was classic for expecting me to write content, locate images, and do way more than our contract called for when signed. He lied about project volume and frequently told me he did not know “it” was his responsibility. I learned my lesson and now I list of tasks and assignments in Basecamp and assign owners so there is no room for misunderstandings. This helps me stay organized and it helps my clients see the immense list of to do items that need to be accomplished to launch successfully. It keeps us both on task and on target.
9. Are you comfortable with my brand and do you understand my marketing message? This is important to small businesses because they frequently lack an in-house marketing team. If there in not a full-time marketer to monitor the brand and message, someone needs to do it and it falls on the web designer. Your website fails if it doesn’t grab your audience and convert them into your desired outcome. No messaging and no conversion equals failure. While industry experience is not always necessary, if you have a sophisticated product or service, then it is needed. I have had multiple clients within the ERP industry because I was in the ERP industry for eight years. I not only was a marketer for an ERP software developer, at other times I demonstrated the product, sold the software, and trained users on it. I got the concept of ERP and I understood CIO-speak and selling to the C-level decision maker. While this isn’t important to every industry, it is to the ERP industry and you need to get C-level selling to help craft out an effective website that can sell a product the size of an ERP system. If you fall within this type of niche, then you need to thoroughly interview your future web designer to make sure they “get it”. If they don’t, it isn’t their fault. Just keep looking until you do find someone who gets your industry and your product or service offering.
10. Do you think we have a good rapport with each other? Yes, I’m asking if you like the designer. I receive calls from people needing websites and they are so opposite of my personality I don’t even quote the opportunity. I am passionate about internet marketing, I really do know my stuff, and I will tell you when I think you are off base and headed down the wrong path. If you don’t like this approach and simply want your designer to unconditionally agree with you, then I am not the right website designer for you. Run, run away from me quickly. On the other hand, you may find me refreshing and you may like my passion and conviction. If that is the case, we are destined for a long-term and successful relationship.
11. What is your availability? Are you accepting new website design projects? Some of us are really good at what we do and we fill up for months. Many times throughout the year I’m at capacity and I feel as though my head may spin off. Other times I’m not and I’m open to new projects and/or consultations. If you’ve found someone of quality, don’t assume their schedule is wide open and they can start immediately and devote 40 hours a week to you. It most likely won’t happen. Ask your potential designer for a possible start date and how long the project will take to go-live. If they cannot meet your timing constraints, thank them for their honesty and keep looking.
12. Are your terms and requirements flexible? I don’t mean yoga flexible, I mean “go with the flow” and gets the idea that life and business happens. I have a new client who had a family emergency come up and he dropped off the face off the earth in mid-December. I told Steve I understood and we will pick back up once he gets his mother-in-law back on the road to recovery. He has a business to run and his mother-in-law just took the free time that was slated for website launch. I get this and I also get that I am not his top priority. I may nag at you, but I understand you need to keep your business running even if I’m waiting on content. I get you may need to reschedule our appointment three times due to your client needs. I don’t like it, but I get it and I’ll work around it. All I ask is for you to allow the same should my five-year-old son come down with the bubonic plague.
13. Can you work within my budget? This is a big one. My sister’s graphic designer was contracted at a fourth of my standard rate. I didn’t understand how he could do this until I realized our deliverables were completely different. In life you get what you pay for and website designers fit within this theory. Reduced budget means reduced deliverables or reduced abilities. You cannot expect the best of the best on a shoestring budget, so be realistic and find someone who meets your financial constraints. WordPress consultants range from $50 to $300 per hour and WordPress websites can range from $500 to $50,000. If you only need a $500 website, then great, but know you are getting a $500 website. With most things you purchase, it is relative. My pricing falls into that middle of the road category of $100 per hour and websites ranging from $3,000 to $15,000. I believe my rates match my skill set and my target market. While I’ve given free websites to nonprofits, I don’t discount and I don’t believe in cost creep. If you can’t afford me, I understand and I believe you should continue to look until you find a consultant that can work within your budget.
14. Can you provide references? While many of my clients come from referrals and I’m happy to provide clients to speak with prior to signing contracts. Not every website designer can or will do this for prospects. This is especially true if they are just starting out in website design. If the potential website designer was referred to you by a trusted advisor, you really don’t need additional references. If you randomly found the designer via the internet, you should validate their abilities with a reference prior to signing contracts. In doing so, please be respectful to your potential designer and their clients. Don’t ask for a reference unless the designer is your chosen partner. In my case, most of my clients would be C-level executives who are busy, so I only provide their name to prospects if needed. Their time is valuable and the reference is a gift so I try my best not to abuse it.
15. Do you want or can you support long-term relationships and website support? I firmly believe long-term relationships are a privilege and not a right. I need to earn your business and in many cases I want to earn your business for the long-term. That being the case, not everyone wants or needs me long-term and this is okay too. Hire me on retainer, by project, or even hourly. I don’t care, because I’m fairly flexible as long as me calendar has availability. But I am not every web designer. Not every graphic designer or website consultant wants or can support long-term clients. If you need support after launch, make sure you’ve asked your future website designer if they can or want to manage you as a client moving forward.

Web designers come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and flavors and we are definitely not a one size fits all type of offering. Don’t assume a potential web designer is good or bad until you can compare his or her skill set to your unique needs. What may be a poor designer for you, may be an exceptional designer for someone else.

Like I said, this list of qualification questions is my list and Rebecca’s view of the world. Your list may differ some and you may even add another fifteen questions or criteria onto mine. But that’s okay, because you are thinking about what is important to you and you are providing yourself with selection criteria that will help you narrow your search field. You now have a list of questions that will help you pick a website designer that is a good fit for you and your website project. In the end, that’s what matters most.

I just finished a call with a client, which is what led me to write this blog entry. On the call, we were discussing page content for his new website. Without realizing it, I found myself saying “Your website content is like a trade show. You have one minute to make an impression and keep a prospect’s attention. What do you say as you shake someone’s hand and make introductions?” His response was that his trade show pitch wasn’t at all close to what he wrote for the website page that discusses that same topic.

The reason I came to this illustration is that this client is from a B2B technology company. The writer of the content speaks at an educated level and tends to go into significant depth on the “how” when writing content. In actuality, he simply needs to discuss the “what” and more importantly, the “what’s in it for me”. He’s absolutely great at demonstrating his product and is very good at explaining the technology behind his offering, but the web page isn’t a demonstration. You simply are not afforded that much time. It is a handshake or an introduction.

My ten-year-old daughter is, in some ways, like my client. I call her the “clock builder”. If I ask her the time, she doesn’t just give me the time. She wants to build me the entire clock to help illustrate how she reached the point of knowing the time. I love her to death, but she is way too much like me. We are clock builders by nature, which is good if you are a clock builder but not so great if you are writing content for a basic web page.

Back in my early twenties a sales manager at my first job said “Rebecca why can’t you just tell me the time? Why do you always have to build me the clock?” He was right. Many years later I still want to build everyone the clock. I have to make a conscious effort to simply just tell them the time. I’ve learned to adjust my clock building tendencies when I’m writing content for a website, although I still struggle with building the clock for my husband or friends.

The pages of your website only give you enough time with your visitor that is equivalent to a handshake. They are brief moments that allow you to connect with the visitor’s needs or wants. You must provide enough in depth verbiage to offer value, but not so deep of content that you make the visitor feel like they just fell into a graduate level course at Harvard.

My client is a smart man and not a clock builder. I suspect he will have a much easier time adjusting than I did years ago.

When I originally accepted this project, I could see Google had indexed about 1,000 pages within his domain.  While it would take some time to migrate and optimize this many pages, I was up for the challenge.  The goal is to give him a more SEO friendly site that he can maintain himself in WordPress. If that meant throwing in some plugins and optimizing 1,000 pages, so be it.

Last week I reviewed his Google Analytics reports, dug deeper into his content pages, and investigated his existing website’s structure.  Through Google Analytics I could see he didn’t have 1,000 pages, he had about 10,000 pages.  Why were they not showing up in Google’s index?  Well I figured this out a bit later as I reviewed page by page content on his existing website.  Of these 10,000 pages, about 3,000 or so are the exact same pages.  Okay, three different pages, but applied to 1,000 different products.  You may be asking yourself so what and thinking I am a drama queen.  To me, the drama queen, all I saw was a big red flag waving with a large Google logo hovering overheard.  This was trouble with a capital T.

These 3,000 plus pages represent duplicate content to Google.  Why would Google cloud their index with 3,000 pages of the exact same content?  Google won’t do it.  It would simply corrode the overall search results, which would frustrate Google users, so Google is not going to do it.  Google will also most likely penalize the overall site for this mass amount of duplicated content.

I have already told my client I will not migrate this duplicate content.  The SEO consultant in me cannot do it, because I know it is wrong.  The website designer in me won’t do it, because I know it will degrade the user experience as well.  So I get to now explain this to my client and hope he understands that my intentions are good.

Now I will return to his website, his Google Analytics reports, and to the broken sitemaps to see what else lurks beneath the covers of this existing website.  I believe my 3,000 pages of duplicate content is only the tip of the iceberg and I am afraid the Titanic is getting ready to go down.