Lessons Learned: Building Your Website
Building your own webpage can be a daunting experience. In most cases you probably lack the skills either yourself or in-house to build your own web pages so you are faced with either finding the time to learn yourself, or choosing and then paying one of the thousands of web developers, writers or consultants out there to do it for you. That was the very same choice we faced with creating our own web site in the middle of 2008.
We ended up doing both – first attempting to write our web pages ourselves and then later turning to someone else to help us finish the job with us. It took us three re-writes over a period of six months to achieve what you are reading here today. While the end result is not what we call ‘perfect’, we believe it’s pretty good and it has certainly achieved what we set out to do. We can say that because the feedback from prospective clients who have approached us has been overwhelmingly positive.
We learned many valuable lessons during this experience. Lessons which we believe anyone looking to have their own web page, or considering re-writing their own web page would find of benefit. So in the spirit of helping you to get what you want ... in business and life, we're sharing our lessons with you here.
Do You See An Online Presence As An Investment Or Just Another Cost?
Having an online presence is one way to market your business. We see any method of marketing chosen as an investment because we can measure the results of any marketing we do and then compare that to the cost of that specific marketing. By getting feedback on the results of that marketing, we are learning what works and what doesn't, and we can react accordingly to minimise cost and maximise return. That way, any marketing method we utilise achieves results.
Therefore, there is absolutely no reason you can't spend some time, money and energy into putting your business online and not see a return on that cost. Done properly, you should achieve results and it shouldn't cost you an arm and a leg to get online, or to make changes to keep your information up to date.
What's The Purpose Of Your Website?
Your purpose is the reason for having a webpage. Maybe your overall purpose of being online is you want customers to purchase from you? Perhaps you only seek to have prospective customers contact you instead? Or is it just an informative ‘here-we-are page? Whatever it is, ensure that every page feeds into that overall purpose.
For us, we wanted two things – 1st was to give ourselves an online presence so people could find us, and 2nd (and most important to us) was to help prospective clients who came to our web pages to contact us so we could talk with them about becoming their accountant (mainly because trying to persuade prospective clients to change to us online was way too hard). So every web page we have helps to answer possible questions a prospective client may have so they should contact us to talk.
Learn From Your Competitors
Every business tries to stand out from its competitors, whether that's in terms of the products or services they offer, their premises, branding, marketing, and even their online presence. But how different are they really? How different are you from your competitors? How will you stand out online from the thousands of others who are already online?
One way to stand out from your competitors, is to find out how your competitors are marketing themselves online and then look for ways to be better. Remember that your competitors have spent some time and money getting their web pages online. Why not save yourself time and money learning from their mistakes, and at the same time take some of the ideas that work well?
Google your own business type and look through at least 10 competitors web pages. Check their sites and use what you like and avoid what you didn’t like. Work out how you will stand out from them online. Just make sure you stand out for the right reasons – don’t try to be flashy for the sake of being different (you still have to meet your purpose).
Put your ‘prospective customer’ hat on and go through your competitors sites and see how you go. Alternatively ask some of your customers to evaluate your competitor sites for what they liked and what they didn’t like and use that when developing your site. Your customers may give you insights you hadn't considered (and if you're lucky, your competitors may not have considered also).
Deciding On Your Layout And Content
Once you know what you’re trying to achieve, now it’s time to turn your attention to how you do it. This is where you think about the web pages, the words, and the pictures or graphics you’ll need, as well as the questions you need to answer.
ZEALD specialises in web site design, planning, strategy, development and hosting. Their web site has a lot of useful information about writing your own web page. Their free seminars give you even more useful ideas to add to our final site. We thoroughly recommend them.
Below are some of what we believe are the most important aspects of the content and layout to any website you may want:
- Think about the questions your readers are likely to have. If you don’t know what those questions are (or you are guessing) then ask your customers. Answer the most important questions first – and if you don’t know what’s the most important question to your customer, then ask them that too. Your web pages should bridge the questions your customers will have to reach the ultimate purpose of your web page.
- Make sure there is a very clear path from when the client arrives on your site to them contacting you. Help them to move through your web pages answering their questions along the way, to get them to take action.
- Make sure your web pages spell out what’s in it for the customer. Avoid telling your customers what you sell and how good you are. They just don’t care. They are interested in what they can buy from you to solve their problems. If you don’t know their problems then why not ask them?
- Web page writers typically don’t write your copy (the words, sentences, paragraphs) so you’ll need to sit down and carefully construct the messages you need to say before you even start to think about how it will be presented online. Don’t be afraid to ask other people around you to proof your copy – husbands/wives, mentors, any customers with strong marketing skills.
- Be consistent across your pages – don’t underline headings because that’s considered a link; brand consistently; keep your layouts consistent … don't unnecessarily confuse the person visiting your website.
- Keep it simple - Make sure it’s fast to download otherwise customers switch off and go elsewhere. Use minimal pictures (or ensure they are resized to keep their size to a minimum) to speed up downloading. Avoid flash-bang-whizzy-things unless they are fast to download, they don’t confuse people, and they help you achieve the purpose of the page.
- Screen/page size - again, be consistent. If at all possible, try to keep everything on the one page and fitting on the screen so the reader doesn't have to scroll down. Evaluate whether anything longer than one page should be shifted to a new page or left where it is and you use a scroll bar instead.
- Long copy versus short copy? It doesn't matter as long as you do what comes naturally to you and it fits the overall purpose of your online presence. If you do decide on long copy then use headings, bullet points, and paragraphs to make it easier to read. Most web readers skim the headings to find something they are interested in before actually reading what's there.
How Do You Get Everything Online?
You’ve worked out what pages you need, the words and pictures you want on those pages, and how the pages fit together. Now it's time to turn it all into web-code and get it online. Here’s where your cheque book will need to come out. And if you’re going to spend money having your web pages put online, then you need to make sure you get what you want, AND what you want works.
Use someone who creates layouts that you like in general (look at, or ask to see examples of, their portfolio). In the end we never found one we liked – they were either too flashy, or had too many pictures, or couldn’t do something we wanted (which we knew you can do), or were just too cost prohibitive.
Think outside the square. There are plenty of Information Technology (IT) students out there who can write web pages. You may even have some IT friends (or perhaps your children know someone?) around you that may be willing to help you. They may be cheaper than the companies, and they can sometimes be more flexible in terms of design.
We found someone close to us who was working in IT and they did a fantastic job. They currently work for a company now, but the company maintains the same high standards so we'd be happy to give you their details if you were interested.
ENSURE that your web pages, once written, can be viewed by ALL the web browsers. Depending on the software or developer you use to get your pages online, you may find your web pages work for some browsers but not others.
If you want your site to remain up to date, you will need to make changes to it. You should be able to make any small changes yourself (as long as you have some basic understanding of web page code). You can ask your developer to help you with styles and how to access your files that have been uploaded to your website hosting site. Or you can ask your developer to make any changes you'd like for you (but make sure you understand the costs to you for that ongoing service - as well as the likely turnaround times).
How Do You Get Noticed?
You’re online so now it’s time to make sure the time and money you’ve spent works for you. It’s no use having a web site if people either can’t find you or alternatively don’t know about you so they don’t know where to look.
If your site is not coming up near the top of any search engine list then it’s likely any prospect will be going to one of your competitors before they even find you. There are a couple of ways to improve your ranking on any search engine query - 1. have other sites link to you, and 2, using keywords in your headings and copy.
A lot of the referral sites are free. Some charge some money, and some only charge if you want to have your site come up closer to the top on their searches. Here are a few local sites you can register with online to get you started:
You can also find more sites to register with by finding out where your competitors (particularly those on the first page of any Google search query) are registered online. Use Yahoo Site Explorer and type any competitor's webpage link into the 'explore URL' box. Click on the ‘Inlinks’ button and you’ll get a list of sites Yahoo can find, that link to the webpage link you entered. With that information, you can consider registering on those same sites also.
Web search indexes like Google identify keywords in your site to help it decide how important your site will rank on any search, as well as how relevant your site may be for a particular search. You will improve your ranking by using keywords within the headings of your web pages, and within the copy of your web pages, which are relevant to the service or product you provide.
If you still can’t get on the first page in any relevant Google search then another option is Google Adwords. For a small amount of money you can link your site to some keywords and get your advertisement to pop up on the right hand side of any search which uses those same keywords. You only end up paying if someone actually clicks on your add.
How Do You Find Out If Your Website Is Working For You?
You’re online and now it’s time to find out if the time and money you’ve spent is working for you. You need ways to measure the traffic coming to your site and what they are doing on your site so you can make changes if something isn’t working.
Google Analytics is one way to do that and it’s FREE. With Analytics you can track numerous webpage statistics, and it gives you an immense level of detail if you want it. All it requires is the placement of a small piece of code into your web pages and registering on the Google analytics website. You can get statistics on the visitors (new/returning), where they come from, what pages they land, how long they stay there, the keywords they used to find your site, what sites they came from to get to your site, and much more.
By asking every prospect who contacts you how they found they, you can ensure the investment in your web pages and/or the referral sites you registered with is actually working for you or not.
How Do You Minimise The SPAM Your Website Will Attract?
Spam is the abuse of electronic messaging systems (including most broadcast media, digital delivery systems) to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately. It's something we really dislike (and that's being polite). Unfortunately, having a website means sooner or later you will start receiving SPAM if you mention any email addresses on your pages.
There are some ways you can minimise your websites' exposure to SPAM:
- Don't mention any email addresses in your web pages (unfortunately that removes one method of customers contacting you).
- Use some clever code that 'hides' email addresses from the 'spiders' or 'bots' that spammers use to hunt out email addresses they can spam.
- Use a form instead of 'mailto' and have a security code confirmation (some sort of graphic) that anyone who wants to email you must confirm before the completed form is emailed to you.
- State your email address by way of using a picture as opposed to text.
Each of these options has pros and cons and you should discuss them with your web page writer/developer to work out which is best for you. Alternatively you can accept the spam and deal with it once it reaches your email.
Brydon DavidsonOctober 2009