As I reflect over the years of designing websites for clients, I have experienced websites that have made fantastic progress for my clients business’ and ones that (while look nice) sit there and provide little value to the business.

First things first. This will not be a puppy’s and rainbows article. There will be some hard truths that you will not want to hear but my sincere hope isn’t to stroke your ego, its about getting websites that produce results. That’s what excites me.

Ok – Here we go

#1. I Want A Website That Looks Like….

The client often has things in their mind that they want:

“I want a big slider on the homepage and here’s what I want each of the 6 sliders to be.”

“I want an image here and the text to be dark blue.”

“I want an orange button here.”

Most often they’ve seen a competitors website that they liked and want one similar to theirs. I mean it’s human nature to see something you like and want it (or similar) for yourself, I get it. It has an awesome image, beautiful design, nice fonts and colors etc. Your boss loves it, and possibly even the Board of Directors too.

Here’s the problem.

You have no idea if that competitors beautiful website with the fancy sliders was a tremendous expense that produces no ROI – except look great.

Let me explain..

A website has two purposes.

1. Represent Your Brand – which is usually done through design imagery and aesthetics.

2. Convert Customers – this can measured in different ways – making your phone ring, getting email inquiries/leads, booking appointments, donations, signing up for your email marketing program etc.

In our case here – Mr. Client has fallen in love with #1. (now if that’s your only objective – then ok – mission accomplished). But most business’ would like their website to look fantastic AND convert customers.

How To Prevent This.

Repeat after me…. IT’S ABOUT YOUR VISITOR not about YOU! Early in your discussions with your website firm/person you should be having a discussion about what the purpose of the website is. If you looked back a year from now how will you determine if it was a success. So there should be two discussions, one about representing your brand and another about how you are going to take a visitor and convert them to take a specific action.

#2. Build The Website And They Will Come.

Many times clients can do all the right things. They have a website that looks great, and a plan is in place to convert visitors to take a specific action.

Everyone is stoked when the new website launches. Customers and coworkers are complimenting you on the new website. “It Looks Fantastic, it loads fast and looks great on mobile.”

Here’s the problem.

You don’t have enough visitors. Let’s say you have a conversion rate of 1%. That means that for every 100 visitors only 1 will take that action you want.

Now if you are only getting 10 visitors per week to visit your website – it’s going to be a long lonely journey my friend.

How To Prevent This.

The forgotten step. You spent soo much time and energy in creating your website (i.e. meetings, gathering content, images, revisions etc) that you overlooked a critical step.

You need to market and promote your website – after the launch! 

How do you do that? – There are various things you can do from blogging to e-marketing, offline advertising, online-paid advertising etc. Check out this for more ideas.
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#3.  Whew, We Finally Launched The Website.

I would love to tell you that every website I design with a client is a home-run every time, but that would be a lie. Even though we check off every possible item on the successful website checklist – we still may not get it perfect.

WHY?

Even though I (almost daily) try to keep up on design principles, writing excellent copy, conversion tactics, marketing etc. There are just some things we won’t know until they are out there in the real world running. This leads me to the 3rd website failure point.

DON’T VIEW YOUR WEBSITE AS A ONE-AND-DONE project.

Will more people click a red button or a blue button? What if we changed the image of X to image Y – would that get more people to click? What about your Headline or tag line, what if we changed those?

The only way you will know which tactics work is to test them (In the website biz – they call it A/B Testing).

There are two ways you can almost always improve any website 1. Increase your website visitors &/or…2. Increase your website conversion rate.

So after a period of time re-look at your website analytics and compare them to your goals you had at the beginning of the project.

So there you have it…in summary if you wan’t your next website project to fail just be sure to:

1. Make your website all about what you want it to be.
2. Assume people will flock to your website once it is up and running.
3. Ignore your website for a few years until its time to do a re-design.

Want to make your website a success contact us to talk about your web project.

From time to time I have clients asking about their Google listing. Aside from the obvious question they have i.e. “How do I get mine to the top?” a close second question is about how their listing appears. They typically want to alter it to something else.

“How do those magical wizards at Google decide how search engine results look?”

They use a combination of sources from your website including:

• Titles
• URLs
• Snippet / Keywords

So lets break down some of these and have a closer look…

 

Title

Google will generally look for short descriptive titles that are relevant to the search terms the user entered. Google looks for a pages’ title tag. They can also look for content on the page or even links pointing to a page. So I recommend concentrating on your pages title tag. Ensure they are short, be descriptive of the pages content and contain some strategic keywords you user might use to find you.

Caution!!

Remember ‘short’ and descriptive. If you try to use “The best darn widget company in North America and possibly the world”. You will probably only 50-70% of that title actually displaying – because Google will truncate the rest beyond a certain character number/pixel width. I would quote you the exact number but since it changes from time to time I won’t.

URL

In the above example you will see the full url displaying i.e. https://silver6.ca. However Google will use the same truncating rules for urls as well, notice the dot dot dot below after brows…? Again I recommend following the same rules..short, descriptive urls.

Notice the small downward facing arrow at the end of the url? What’s up with that? That is a clickable link that allows you to view a cached version of the page (in the case it is offline for some reason) or will take you to similar content.

 

 

Snippet / Keywords

Now we get to the meat of the listing. This is where most clients focus their attention. They want that sentence or paragraph to say exactly (fill in the blank).

A snippet is the description of the page. Google will most often take the snippet material from your meta description of the page. This is where you should carefully craft your meta description to deliver your message in a clear effective way. Just think of a potential searcher – they have typed in a certain phrase or keywords and you listing is among others. So what are you going to say that 1) quickly and clearly tells them what that link goes to, 2) Stands out from the other listings and finally 3) Captures interest of the visitor.

Again while with snippets you have some liberal space – its not unlimited – so keep your length in mind.

Hey, that’s all well and good but Im not a web developer – how do I change some of these?

I wish I could give you a quick one answer fits all solution, but it really depends on how your website is built or what Content Management System (CMS) it uses.

Being a wordpress guy I can recommend a tool that makes making these changes a breeze – its a plugin called SEO – by Yoast.

Here is an example. If you go to the Titles and Meta section of Yoast you can enter your meta description right in the box. Easy peasy.

There a lot of other sections that allow you control over your website in terms of Search Engine Optimization – but thats a longer story for another day.

I hope this gives you some insight into your Google listing and how you can alter your listing to the way YOU want it to look.

What do you think are the most important items that should appear in your website snippet? Please comment below..

 

You’ve thought it over and have reached the conclusion..you need a website.

You get excited at the possibilities, the colors, the pictures, the pages etc. It will look awesome! This is a crucial point in the development of any website. Many dive right in with both feet and I’ll tell you why this will set you up for failure.

YOU are excited about your website. YOU want to get going now. YOU can’t wait to get this shiny new website up and running.

But what about your prospective customers (visitors)? What do THEY want? There is a balancing act that must be done when building a website. You need to balance the wants and needs of you – and the wants and needs of your customers.

Here is the crucial question that you need to ask before you write one sentence, pick out one picture, decide on the perfect colors.

[quote style=”boxed”]What do I want the visitor to do?[/quote]

There can be different answers to this question depending on the type of product or service you offer.

Examples can include:

• To capture their email address to email market to them.
• To make a purchase.
• To sign up for a trial of your product or service.
• To inform and educate about your organization.
• To call you for more information
• To book and appointment

This is also a tricky area. Many people look at that list and say “yeah..I want all of those”. This shotgun approach will also backfire. I recommend you pick one. Yep, just one. The more clear and simple your goals are – the easier it will be to achieve it.

Once you have decided on your goal – then you can start the planning process on how you would lead a visitor from your homepage to completing the action you want them to take.

Without taking the time to stop and define a goal for your website you will spend lots of time and money on a shiny new, good looking website….that no one takes any action on.

When you use this basic approach at the beginning of a website project you drastically increase your chances of reaching your goals and avoid a failed website.

Looking for help with your website? Get in touch and we’d be happy to chat with you.

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If you have an existing website and are looking to do a re-design clients typically ask questions like “How much will this cost?”, “How long will it take?” etc.. etc.

While they are important questions there is one topic that my clients rarely bring up and if a website re-design is done incorrectly – will kill your websites search engine rankings.

I’m not talking about some fancy new SEO (Search Engine Optimization) technique, or some new flashy search engine tool.

What I’m talking about is plain, boring, old fashioned links. (existing links to be exact)

If you have an existing website, Google and Bing have already indexed your website and are showing your website in search engine results. Every page on your website has a unique link (url), and every page is indexed.

Over time you might rank very high for certain keywords that your customers are typing into Google and people have been clicking on those links to visit your website. Yaa!!, and that’s exactly what you want.

BUT..

What happens if you hire an inexperienced web designer and they redesign your website using different page urls? So instead of your About page being…

www.website.com/about   they use    www.website/about-us . 

Doesn’t sound like a big deal on the surface does it?

Talk to us about your website

Once the new website has been uploaded and (if no measures are taken) the old one is removed – guess what happens when people click on the old link – which google is still showing.

What The ?! One thing you have to remember is that search engines are not instantaneous creatures. Just because you made a change on your website – doesn’t mean Google or Bing will instantly show that change in search results. Like many things in life – it takes time.

How do I prevent this from happening?

There are two methods that I recommend..

1. Firstly (where possible) keep the urls consistent between the old website and new one. If you used www.website.com/about in the old website and you are including that page again (albeit it an updated version) keep the same url  – i.e. www.website.com/about
2. Ensure your web designer/developer uses appropriate re-directs. They can use plugins to accomplish this or directly edit the .htaccess file on the server.

Many business’ have worked hard to get a high ranking on search engines and the last thing you want to do is to have to start over again from the beginning.

Thinking about re-designing your website? Need some help? Give us a shout.