Rebecca Haden

This blog has moved

2010-04-26T01:51:00.001-05:00

This blog is now located at http://blog.rebeccahaden.com/.
You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click here.

For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to
http://blog.rebeccahaden.com/feeds/posts/default.

Temporary Websites

2010-04-22T09:39:00.000-05:00

For SEO, the long term view is the right perspective.Quick fixes usually backfire, while the more natural approaches, though slower, give more lasting and worthwhile results.

What if there is no long term? Money magazine recommended making your house a website when you're trying to sell it. That way, you can post a sign with the URL (web address) outside your home, and people can take a virtual tour on their own time.

It's a smart idea. Engaged couples make websites about their weddings, sharing the experience with distant friends and family. Family reunions have a site for a few weeks before to get the word out, and for a few weeks after to share information. Candidates for office need a website, but it might be for just a few months.

Sometimes -- for that candidate, for a book launch, for a major fundraising event -- it might be worthwhile to spend a few thousand dollars and get yourself a proper, basic website. In many cases, doing your website well increases your chances of needing a long-term site for the successful candidate, book, or fundraiser. But you don't want to invest a lot in a site that will only be up till you sell your house or leave on your honeymoon.

Here are some options:

Temporary website companies These exist, and you can Google them. I did, and I didn't see any that seemed to be making good websites. What the heck, you can make a bad website on your own.
Free website options While these are a mistake for business, they're perfect for personal sites. Weebly, Wix, and any of the dozens of others out there are fun to build at and they'll do just fine for your temporary site. You can usually choose from lots of templates and do an a lot of customization.
A Facebook page Making a Facebook page is free, and it's easy to get the word out to your friends and family. Ditto with a Squidoo lens or a Google site. These options give you fewer choices and less control than the free sites listed above, but may also have more functionality-- that is, you can make them do more things.
A blog Blogger, LiveJournal, Xanga, and other free blogging sites let you set up your site in minutes, and you need no special skills to add information. You won't get a static page that way -- that is, a home page that doesn't change -- but you can keep people posted on what's happening with your project.
A WordPress site WordPress sites are flexible enough now that you can do almost anything you want with them, if you're willing to pay a bit. They also require some skill, unless you're just using your WordPress site as a free blog -- which you can. This puts them in their own category.

As you can see, there are lots of ways to arrange for a disposable site -- a temporary site for a temporary need. Consider springing for a domain name, even if you only expect to need it for a few weeks or months. Your class project, book club, or desperate bid to find homes for those puppies might blossom into something you'll want to keep online.

New Website Lab Report: Benchmarks

2010-04-21T12:00:00.000-05:00

The new website I just launched -- this is an interior page, with Earth Day lesson plans -- has two days' worth of analytics now. The first day it had five visits and the second day it had seven, for a total of 12 visits from 6 unique visitors. 8 were direct visits, 3 were referrals from this blog, and 1 came via search, looking for "freshplans."

Yesterday the site was at #18 on Google for "Fresh Plans" and over 100 for "FreshPlans." Today, it's at #14 and #28 respectively for those terms.

We've done nothing at all, except to filter my computer out of the results and mention the site here. So this is what you might expect if you simply build a good site and put it up and don't do anything in the way of search engine marketing. I'm going to give it a week before I take any steps, to establish proper baselines.

Adjectives at Your Website

2010-04-20T08:17:00.001-05:00

Are adjectives bad news for your website content?

Some clients want to lard their text with adjectives, assuring visitors that their goods and services are the best, the greatest, and especially the most unique. Others want to avoid adjectives entirely, as though there were a law against adjectives on the internet.

Who's right?

Neither, as is so often the case with extremes. Here are the questions to ask yourself when you start contemplating the use of adjectives in your web content:

Are you bragging? On the web, in print, or in person, you're less convincing if you're exaggerating. Is your product actually unique? That means there isn't anything else like it, a rare event. Is it actually the best? Can you prove it? Use adjectives that actually describe your product or service in a meaningful way -- your shingles may not be unique (your customers probably don't even want unique shingles) but they may be slate, or durable, or guaranteed, or award-winning, and your customers would probably like to know that.
Is anyone searching for those adjectives? I'm amazed by how many companies want to use the word "unique" as a keyword. Now imagine yourself searching for a new bike helmet or saxophone or allergy medication. You sit down at the computer, bring up your favorite search engine, and type in... Not "unique." In fact, just about the only time people search for "unique" is in the phrase "unique gift." Are you selling unique gifts? If not, give that word up. But do check -- lots of people look for "quality roofing," and expression in which "quality" functions as an adjective. And "romantic getaway" is popular, too. If an adjective is part of a bona fide keyword phrase for your business, you ought to use it.
Do you have room? If your home page design only gives you 250 words to work with, you may not really have enough room for adjectives. Save them for an inner page where you have more space.

A New Website

2010-04-19T18:10:00.000-05:00

We have a new website up. This site is different for us in a couple of ways.

First, it's a WordPress site. I blog for several companies at WordPress blogs, but this whole site is WordPress based, something we haven't done before. Jay Jaro designed the logo and some other visual elements. Shan Pesaru at SharpHue customized the Allure theme from Studiopress and also designed some other visual elements.

Second, we've set it up for affiliate marketing. People often ask us about affiliate marketing, and I usually have to tell them, "Well, I don't know anyone who earns anything at it, but I can certainly set it up for you."

I don't consider that a satisfying answer.

So we're planning to use this as a bit of a laboratory for this means of supporting a website. If you were planning on buying something at Amazon anyway, you can click on the link there and give me some data to work with.

I'm going to let you know how that works out. If I learn useful things, I'll share them with you. I'm also going to share with you how the site does in terms of traffic and links and stuff. I remember, the first site I worked on, wishing that there was some data somewhere about how well sites usually did and how long things usually took to give results.

Having worked on a large number of sites by now, I can tell you that there is an incredible range where results are concerned. Some sites are much more successful than others launched at the same time. There are a lot of different factors involved, and I obviously don't share my clients' data.

I'll share the data for this one, though. This is a good quality website where design and content are concerned, but I don't plan to invest large amounts of either time or money in it. I think that'll make it a good lab experiment for the busy business owner, or the individual running a website in his or her spare time. If you've ever been curious about other people's stats, though, here's your chance.

First Thoughts on Typography for Your Website

2010-04-16T11:46:00.000-05:00

The subject of typography at your website is a large one, and I'm not trying to cover it. I'm assuming here that you're not doing the design work yourself, and that what you need is enough information to recognize whether you have a problem, to choose a designer who has the skills you need, or to keep the updates you do yourself from making your site look bad.

Let's start with a good example and a bad one. The example above, from the work of Jay Jaro, shows basic things to look for in good typography:

The left margin is even, and it's large enough.
The decoration at the margin is balanced; the proportions are pleasing.
The right margin, while ragged, is not excessively or distractingly ragged.
The spacing in between letters and words is smooth
The spacing between lines is enough for easy reading.
The spacing between graphic headings and text headings and the main text is well proportioned.
The decorative headings are still search-friendly text.
When there is an uneven line, it's intentional and part of the design (in this case, the titles use a fun font that looks hand-drawn, and the title curves like a tiger's tail when it says "Take the Tiger by the tail").
The differences in colors and fonts are enough to be interesting but not enough to interfere with reading.
The design is appealing and in keeping with the goal of the page.

The second example, from someone who will remain nameless, has not succeeded in meeting that standard. The right edge is way too ragged, and the words are very crowded (note the top left corner of the sample piece -- sometimes there are no spaces between words at all, and there's a line containing just one word.

The graphic headings cut the columns in half. The spacing between the graphic headings, the text headings, and the words are unbalanced. The use of color and line is uninspired. And the graphic headings are images, so we lose some search advantages, too.

If you see this sort of problem at your website, don't despair. It just means that you need a designer. Find someone whose work is more like the first example than like the second one, and ask him or her to take the text and redesign it.

But what if you use a content management system, and you add content yourself?

Here's another bad example. We're fixing up this website -- not a redesign, since the owner likes the look, but a fix of content and usability, with some updates to the code and the look. This is an example where we're seeing some problems in the part the client does himself.

He's chosen light text on a dark background, which is fine unless you think you might have some older customers or visitors with limited vision. He's also chosen justified margins. That means that the program automatically adjust the spacing to make the margins even -- but look at the size of the spaces between the words!

You can only pick justified margins if you're willing to fool around with your wording and font sizing and so on to make it look good. In general, you're better off just choosing left-justified, where the words line up on the left.

If you really want to use justified margins, do as Josepha has done and keep an eye on it -- if it doesn't look good when you put it on the page, go back and change your words to make it look nice.

Finally, resist the temptation to have lots of variety. This example has trouble with spacing and margins as well, but much of the daunting effect of the page is the result of the variety of colors, fonts, sizes, and borders. There's nothing wrong with a little bit of variety, but the rule of thumb should be only to use something different if you have a reason to do so.

In the example at the top of this post, the main text is in a simple, easy-to-read font, black on a light background color. The designer then used another color in the text headings: bold, in a darker shade of the background color. The decorative titles at the top of the page are completely different; they, and the whole color scheme of the page, are based on the major illustration. In the bad example just above, we have different colors all over the page with no apparent plan or intention. There is no illustration, and no color scheme.

Flash: a Slice of Life

2010-04-15T06:55:00.002-05:00

Have you ever noticed how hard it can be to get through a video?

A client wanted a blog post based on a video about new Adwords features, so I was trying to watch it and get all the information from it. There were screenshots and graphs...

Josepha IMed me to ask about macroevolution vs. microevolution.

So I had missed a screen, but it was okay -- I'd opened my own Adwords account page so I could follow along...

My son came in to discuss Descartes and his idea of the essential nature of physical bodies vs. sensory input.

Then Kuty from Clevertech appeared as an instant message.

I paused the video. I had sort of lost the thread by then anyway, and I like to be alert when I talk to Kuty. He once said to me, "You're not a developer, so you have to have things explained really simply." He meant it in a kind way, but still I try to pay full attention in case he starts in on Coldfusion or something.

It was at this point that Sean Borsodi, the new designer at Sharp Hue, emailed me to call him.

He wanted to talk about Flash. Not that this was the initial topic. It was more that he feels I'm unfair to Flash, so it's more or less always on his agenda to talk about. I wasn't taking notes, so this may not be a fully accurate transcript of our discussion:

Sean: Flash is fun and cool.
Rebecca: Granted. It's also bad for search and speed, and sometimes it's irritating.
Sean: Flash is fun. Let me show you some cool Flash things I built.
Rebecca: It's buffering...
Sean: It's the server. On all other servers it's really fast.
Rebecca: Still buffering...
Sean: Okay, go to this other really cool thing I built. See how fun it is?
Rebecca: Yes... the first time. But what if I actually wanted to buy something from these people?
Sean: Have I mentioned the cool funness of Flash?
Rebecca: Sure...
Sean: And also the fun coolness?

That wasn't really all that Sean said. In fact, he made some excellent points about Flash. Let me share them with you:

You don't have to build your whole site with Flash to get the cool, fun aspects of it. Used in moderation, it can make your site fancy (and cool and fun) without slowing it down.
Use html for navigation and get the text in, and then spice up other areas of the site with Flash.
If you build them correctly, Flash sites can be updated by the client or later web workers just like html sites.
You can have alternate content. Just as alternate text gives information about your pictures to the search engines and people who can't see those images, alternate content allows you to work around the search and access issues of Flash.
Flash can increase the fun quotient of your site enough to keep people there longer.
Much irritating Flash has simply been done badly, just as much irritating text content has been written badly. That's not the fault of the medium.

I like Flash in its place -- games, for example, or online toys. Sites that are themselves games or toys, or otherwise recreational. It can be terrific for educational uses -- I'd like to see it used a lot more at math education sites. And certainly, if you're selling Flash, you want some very jazzy examples on your site.

The Flash intro to your business site? When people are actively looking for something -- either a solution to a problem or an object of desire -- they want their stuff. They don't want to have to wait through your Flash. People who like and enjoy your animation may come and admire it (I like to look at Greenshires' fish sometimes, and I made Sean look at them, too), but they're not necessarily interested in the stuff you want to sell.

So, if you must have Flash, don't have it as an intro. If you must have a Flash intro, make sure it's easy to escape from it and move right on to the main navigation. Check out my post on "Website Music" for more suggestions on this point.

I did eventually get back to the Adwords video. It was informative, but it wasn't fun, and it wasn't cool. It might have benefited from some Flash.

Analytics and Your Web Site Redesign

2010-04-14T10:52:00.000-05:00

Industry expert Dave Taylor says that he's never arrived at a meeting about a site's SEO redesign to find clients with analytics data. Me neither, unless I bring it with me.

What kind of evidence do people bring with them?

Well, here are some comments from initial SEO site redesign discussions I've been involved in recently:

"We should have more pictures of people. People like looking at people."
"We need to do what [competitor] did."
"We need something edgy."
"We need it to pop."
"Perhaps we need Flash?"

These may all be true statements about what these websites need. But, as Erika Andersen has pointed out, starting your meeting with statements about needs means you're jumping ahead to strategies before defining the problem or the desired outcome. It's the equivalent of saying, "Hey, let's try this!"

Starting with analytics allows you to see what's happening and compare that with what you want to have happen. For one of the sites in question, the owner defined the problem and the desired outcome by referencing the bounce rate (the percentage of people who leave the site without exploring further) from one source. He wants to keep those people hanging around the site longer. He's arranging for four pages with slight variations so he can test them.

For another, I've just installed analytics, so I'm not yet seeing a lot of information, but I can see that this 18 month old site appears to be averaging only one visit each day, and none from his service area. We can easily identify his immediate problem. Once we start bringing him some traffic, we can look at other issues, but making his site findable is clearly the highest priority.

So on the one hand we have

"In order to increase the ROI on our ad campaign with Site X, we need to improve the bounce rate for people coming from our ad by a) testing the effect of a suggested design change, and b) following through with the design that gets the best results"

and on the other hand we have

"We need it to pop!"

I hope the difference is obvious.

Anchor Text

2010-04-13T11:49:00.003-05:00

Once you're established for your main keywords, it's time to branch out and add some more. A client of mine, The Retreat at Sky Ridge, is working on some new keyword phrases. They've built a new pavilion which is a great place for wedding receptions, and they're near Eureka Springs, a very popular place for destination weddings. So of course they want "Eureka Springs Weddings."

They're not the only ones who want to rank well for that phrase, though, and they're up against some stout competition. Naturally, when I made their new Weddings pages I gave them plenty of keyword-rich content, and they're working on linkbuilding. This is a case in which reciprocal links can be terrific -- there's a nice community of wedding-oriented vendors in their town, so they can get good old-fashioned word of mouth as well as referral traffic by cultivating some relationships there.

They can also place some links themselves. They can fill out forms at high-quality directories and purchase ads at good travel sites, and in both cases they can choose the words they use. They can write blog posts that link back to their new wedding pages, they can write Squidoo lenses or post YouTube videos, they can offer tips on outdoor weddings -- and in every case, they're constructing their own links.

They need to be strategic about their anchor text. Anchor text is the stuff you click on to go to a link. When you make your own links, you control what words you use as anchor text.

In the example above, you can see that "Rebecca Haden" is the anchor text that can be clicked to go to www.rebeccahaden.com, and "Reservations" takes you to the page reservations.php (this is an internal link, so it doesn't have the whole address). Whenever you have access to the html on a page, you can use exactly the anchor text you want by typing it into the space between the brackets.

When you don't have access to it, you can construct code like this and send it to someone, requesting that they add it to the page, or you can ask someone to use a particular phrase as anchor text. You can also often type it into a form. Sometimes the form is asking for the name of the site or something of that nature, but you can choose what anchor text to use unless the site in question has a rule that the name of your site must be the anchor text for your link. Of course, we always respect those rules.

Here are some rules of thumb for choosing your anchor text:

Use your keywords. While The Retreat could create links like "The Retreat at Sky Ridge is a great place for weddings in Eureka Springs," they could just as well do "The Retreat at Sky Ridge is a great place for weddings in Eureka Springs." Since they already have a solid #1 ranking for the name of their business, the second choice is a better one for them.
Use some variety. When people link to you naturally, they'll choose different kinds of anchor text, even if they're all thinking of roughly the same thing. Some would say "Eureka Springs weddings" and some would say "weddings in Eureka Springs" and some would say "Eureka Springs wedding venues." Having every single link going to your page use the same anchor text looks very unnatural.
Make your anchor text informative. People should be able to tell where they're going before they click, and they should not be upset or feel tricked when they get there. The folks at Sky Ridge can't use "bridal gowns" for anchor text (not that they want to) and they certainly shouldn't use "click here."

You can't control how other people choose to link to you, so make the best of the links you place yourself.

Inner Pages of Your Website

2010-04-12T15:55:00.001-05:00

You work hard to make your homepage a thing of beauty and a joy forever, but how about your inner pages?

Your inner pages should also be things of beauty and joys forever. This is not just because you deserve a great website (which you do), but because your visitors may very well come into your site through an inner page.

The example above, designed by Tom Hapgood, uses the same background and navigation throughout, and puts the content of the various pages on an overlay that looks like a stack of postcards or a sheet of paper lying on the surface. Someone searching for "grass-finished beef" who ends up on the products page can readily find contact information or the home page.

A slightly different approach can be seen int his refresh of Hatfield and Associates, designed by Shan Pesaru. The homepage, above, has a different image and a different layout from the inner page, shown below.

The navigation remains the same, though, and the color scheme and the overall feel. On this website, all the inner pages use black and white photographs. The contact information is also prominent on the inner pages as well as the homepage. You don't want your visitors to feel as though they've gotten lost.

We've seen sites that had inner pages with no contact information, no navigation bar, a completely different navigational structure, different colors and fonts, and even a different version of the logo. Bad idea. We've also seen website that made the inner pages identical to the homepage except for the content -- same image, same layout, just new words. Also not good -- okay for people who reach that page first, perhaps, but confusing for people navigating through the website.

Navigate through your own website and make sure it gives a clear and consistent impression. You'll be glad you did.

Mirror Sites

2010-04-09T11:53:00.000-05:00

Last night Josepha and I were creating a strategy for a client who wants to do well for some new keywords. These are brand new keywords for him, related to a new section of his website, and we've just begun working on it. Still, it seemed to us that he should have been doing better than he currently is.

Accordingly, we went poking around to see if we could see anything that might be an obstacle for him.

General poking around is something worth doing sometimes. Often, when you're looking for specific information, you zoom right in on it too quickly to notice side issues that might have some value for you.

In this case, we were startled to see a mirror site.

A mirror site is an exact copy of another site, at a different URL. There are valid reasons for setting up a mirror site, most of them having to do with handling large traffic volume or international downloads. They can be set up and identified as mirror sites quite properly.

That's not what we were seeing here. We were looking at an exact copy of the original site. The code was messed up and the meta language was different (and not nearly as good, let me tell you), but the site was otherwise the same.

This is not a good thing. Occasionally, people set these up themselves, in innocence, thinking it's a good way to get more for your money. Here's what can happen, if you have a mirror site:

You can be penalized by the search engines, if it seems that you've plagiarized or just been sneaky.
Search engines can simply choose one of the sites as the "real" one -- not necessarily the one you'd want them to choose, either.
Google can remove one as duplicate content or copyright violation.

Report plagiarized sites to Google if you find that someone has copied your site in this way. While in this case Google could determine from the underlying code that ours is the real one and the other an inferior copy, that's not always the case. Therefore, you should make certain to report the mirror site before the plagiarist reports your original site.

If you did it yourself, not realizing that this is bad form, take the mirror site down. If you want to have more than one domain for your website (again, something you can do for good reasons, including common misspellings of your business name), a 301 redirect is the correct way to handle it. Have your webmaster do that for you.

The One Question to Ask Your Web Design Firm

2010-04-08T07:34:00.001-05:00

Here's the paper rocket ship I send to congratulate clients when their new sites launch. You're only getting a mere hint of its awesomeness in this snapshot, but I think it helps to capture the excitement of launching a great new website.

There's also the sad dismay of launching a mediocre new website. A poorly built site that won't do as well as it should in search or present your business as well as you hoped it would.

Katie York of Peacock Media asked me how to avoid that, when having a site built. After all, you get a chance to approve and make changes to your content, and you get to approve and make changes to a mock-up -- which is to say, a picture -- of your design. How do you know whether your site is good under the hood or not?

And more importantly, how can you tell ahead of time whether it's going to be good under the hood or not. Because after it's launched and you learn that it was built with a template from 1995, it's too late. How can you make sure that the new site or redesign you're having done will really be as good as it looks?

First, you can check on the firm's own website. "Looking Under the Hood at Your Website" gives you a quick and easy way to get a general sense of whether they know what they're doing or not. If their own website is not built well, there's no reason to think that a site they build for you will be, either.

Second, just tell them that standards-compliant code is very important to you.

That should be true. Clean code does better for search, loads faster, is easier to maintain, and looks better to people on different browsers or using different assistive technologies to access your site.

A designer who looks vague when you mention standards-compliant code should be crossed off your list. One who assures you that all sites produced by her company are completely validated before launch or that "standards-compliant" is his middle name -- that's what you want.

Katie copied down the phrase, and you can do so, too. You can also contact me when you need a new site or a redesign. Standards-compliant code is very important to me, too, and I can make sure that you get it.

Which Comes First, Design or Content?

2010-04-07T13:02:00.005-05:00

Sometimes I write the content first and the designer fits the design around it. Sometimes the design is already finished, and I write to fit the design. If you hire your writer and designer separately, or you do some of the work yourself, then you have a choice between these two approaches. Which way is better?

Actually, both have advantages.

Content first

Many modern design gurus prefer this. You start with the content, you mark it up semantically ("html" stands for "hyper-text markup language"), and then style the resulting html in the way that makes most sense for your content. There's a logic to this approach.
The content sets the tone. I wrote a content page yesterday for a jeweler's site that web design firm Onsharp is building. While this was a credibility page, not even a main page, it took the client's words and established a playful, informal feel which can guide the designer in the feeling of the site.
The content can be part of the design. Clevertech is updating its own site. Owner Kuty Shalev and I worked out the primary text and sent it on to designer Jay Jaro, who will create an infographic including the text. "The point of an infographic," says Kuty, "is to take a whole lot of information and make it digestible." Here, the words will become part of that graphic, leading visitors to read more than they might without the design elements.

Design first

The content will fit the design. Vivid Marketing just made a new design for an area medical professional. I wrote the content first -- and didn't know until after launch that the site had ended up with an empty page. Fortunately, we have access, so I was able to go in and write something for that page; if I'd written it for the client, he might have had extra costs involved in submitting it to his webmaster for changes after the site was up.
The content can take the feeling from the design. Sometimes the logo, colors, and images are easier for a client to come up with than the feeling they want for their content. Once I saw the design planned by WhatIf Creative for the site they're building for an area architect, I could tell the kind of tone the client wanted in their content, even though they hadn't provided much.
It can be an efficient way to work. iProv set up a site with spaces for the content, and I was able to go in and enter the text directly, instead of sending a text file to the designer to place. That can be a savings of time and money.

With the example at the top of this post, a new website made by Sharp Hue, the preliminary design came first, I wrote the content to suit, and then designer Sean Borsodi finalized the design and needed a bit more text. He was able to specify the precise area he needed content for, and I was able to write just enough (three letters over, actually; he adjusted the size a little and it came out just right) for the space. This kind of example makes me think that the very best arrangement might be simultaneous design and content.

Social Media for Nonprofits

2010-04-06T07:10:00.001-05:00

Last night I did a social media training for the marketing committee of the Cancer Challenge, a local nonprofit just beginning to consider using social media as a strategy. Social media campaigns for nonprofits have some different parameters from those for businesses. Let me share with you the high points:

Set a simple goal. Nonprofits are likely to have a large, loose membership rather than a small, focused team. Members will have varying levels of comfort and experience with social media, and you can expect some random behavior. There will also be lots of people who will be willing to give a few minutes to help out. A clear, simple, narrowly focused goal is what you need. For the Cancer Challenge, their first step is simply to get as many of their volunteers and supporters as possible to place a link to their website on the social media networks they already use. One of the committee got the brainwave of heading an email "How you can really help in 30 seconds." Chances are, many of their list will go ahead and take that 30 seconds.
Make it easy for members and volunteers. Unlike staff, who can be assigned tasks, volunteers need a task to be easy. An email saying, "Please link to our website on your Facebook or Twitter page!" will work better than, "Please go set up a Xing page about Cancer Challenge and then make us a Squidoo lens." Include easy instructions on how to place a link, and your chances of success are high.
Have a next step for the enthusiastic. There will be plenty of people who'll take that first, simple step and stop there. That's fine. But there will also be some who get into it, and are willing to do more. Have something for them to do. For the Cancer Challenge, the people who place a link on Facebook and want to take the next step can be asked to add links at any other pages they already have access to (got an old MySpace page, maybe?). Then they can be asked to consider creating profiles at other social media networks where they don't already have a presence, and adding a link.
Make it fun for contacts. Once the word starts to spread, any added amusement value will help. I reminded the committee of the breast cancer awareness stunt at Facebook last year that had women posting just one word -- the color of the bra the poster was wearing. Committee members came up with some great ideas of how they could get fun content that might go viral going. We sorted the ideas into those that would require technical skill and those that wouldn't -- and they chose one from the "doesn't require technical skill" group. That type will spread faster.
Get your web site in order. Most social media campaigns aim at increasing traffic to the organization's website. Before you invite in a whole bunch of guests, just make sure that you have this year's information up, and your site looking as good as possible. We had some discussion last night about a few issues with the website, and the group is going to make all the improvements they can. They're also going to install analytics, so they can see which efforts bring traffic.

Social media can be excellent for nonprofits. If nothing else, you have the great advantage of having people who actually want to spread the word about your cause, rather than just people who are paid to do so. The effect of sincerity which you need for effective social media is always heightened by actual sincerity.

Your Website: Not Just a Pretty Face

2010-04-05T05:31:00.000-05:00

Your website provides essential information for your customers and prospective customers: who you are, what you do, what you have to offer, where to find you, how to contact you. These things are essential. But your website can do more than that.

There may be a lot of jobs around the office that your website can do for you.

Here's a physical therapy site that Lee Ann Larkan and I have recently redone. The new site, below, looks better and fresher than the old one, above, and the content is better for search. (You're looking at the Services page.)

In addition to these good things, Lee Ann also took the opportunity to add the client's basic forms as PDF files. Now, the client's office doesn't have to print and mail these forms -- patients can get the forms whenever they like. It's a savings of time, paper, ink, and postage. The patients have more control, too, so it's a win-win solution.

Another example is Clevertech's site for a dermatologist: there's an interactive form that allows patients to upload their information securely. Again, a savings of resources for the office, including staff time.

These two examples are similar: they're new variants on the old form on the clipboard that medical offices used for years. Your needs may be different. Requesting a quote, making a payment, applying for a job, buying an item, subscribing to a service, checking on a package, scheduling an appointment -- all of these are tasks your customers can do at your website. There may be more. Talk to your web developer about common processes in your shop or office, and you may be surprised by how many can be incorporated into your website.

Adding these special functionalities to your website is often more environmentally responsible, as well as providing an extra measure of convenience for your customers -- and the savings in staff time can make this kind of site development pay for itself quickly.

You're Really Not That Interesting

2010-04-02T08:04:00.000-05:00

Well, yes, of course you are.The problem is, visitors to your website are not as interested in you as in themselves.

Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, points out that our own thoughts and feelings are all that we have direct access to in the way of human experience. Naturally, our own thoughts and feelings seem richer and more interesting and in many ways more real than other peoples' thoughts and feelings.

Particularly when we're looking for solutions to our problems or things that meet our needs or that totally cute pair of shoes we saw on TV last week.

This is probably the normal state of mind for your web visitors.

Arriving at your homepage, your visitor thinks, "Can this company provide what I want?" So your homepage shouldn't say that your company was founded so many years ago with this mission statement in mind -- who cares? Not your visitor. Your homepage should tell the visitor what you have to offer.

A visitor who goes to your "About Us" page is thinking, "Can I trust this company?" Your mission statement may or may not answer that question. Put the number of years your company has been in business, your credentials, things like that, on this page.

A visitor at your Products or Services page wants to know, "Will this company's goods and services meet my needs?" So make sure that your descriptions talk about how your goods and services will meet their needs, not how hard you've worked on them or how cool you are -- and certainly not how many years you've been in business or your mission statement.

This isn't exactly a new idea. But I know that it's very hard to remember. I've been doing a lot of website rewrites lately, and it seems as though 90% of the initial content boils down to, "I'm great and my company is wonderful!"

You know what? You are great. Your company is wonderful. Let your customers tell you that after you've provided what they want, earned their trust, and met their needs. Most of your visitors are thinking about themselves when they reach your website, so be sure that your website is all about them.

Creating Your Social Media Plan

2010-04-01T10:12:00.001-05:00

Your company certainly needs a website. It probably also needs a social media plan. If this is a new idea to you, then I have the answers right here to some of the questions you probably have in mind:

What is a social media plan? While there are general best practices for social media for companies and organizations, each case is different in its goals, its circumstances, and its resources. Therefore, each case should have a plan that considers these aspects.I've recently developed a social media plan for a company that wanted to spiff up its reputation, increase its authority, and develop visibility on the web. This is different from a social media plan designed primarily to drive traffic to a website or to increase sales of a product.
What's in a social media plan? A social media plan should detail the steps to take to reach the goals set up for it. This is likely to include identifying the most valuable sites for the particular organization, creating content for the organization at those sites, and interacting with communities both at the organization's own website and at the best communities for the purpose. If the organization intends to implement the plan in-house, the plan should list the sites and address the issue of training. A social media plan should also include the metrics that will be used to measure the success of the campaign. Success should be defined, and the steps needed to measure progress should be delineated.
What is involved in implementing a social media plan? Ideally, your social media plan will have been developed with your resources in mind. The company I've just built a plan for has 500 employees; having each worker set up a few profiles with links to the company website will give them a lot of bang for their buck. A two-person operation with no time or desire to spend on social media? That's an entirely different ball game. I always give clients the option of having us implement the plan for them, but also make sure that the plan gives step-by-step details for implementation, in case the company chooses to carry it out themselves. In general, your organization should have a few people willing and able to put in an hour or two a day, if you want to implement a social media plan in-house.
What does a social media plan cost? It depends. Research, strategy, and writing are involved in creating a social media plan. For me, this is a couple of hours of work, and that's what you'd pay. I've seen quotes of as much as $5,000. While those numbers make me wonder if I should raise my prices, they may be based on differences in overhead, or in process, or simply in philosophy. The opportunity cost of bulling ahead without a plan is likely to be higher, either way.

Using Notable

2010-03-31T21:17:00.000-05:00

I've mentioned Notable before, but I think I've mentioned it in a sort of "We all know about this" kind of way. I've discovered that in fact we don't all know about this, so I want to share a little more about it. Click on the name of the site back in that first sentence to visit and try it out yourself.

As you can see from the examples here, it's a simple concept. You can capture a screen from an existing page (either online or at a development site). You can also use a picture of a screen -- so a screenshot or a mock up will work, too. Just type or cut and paste the web address in, or browse for an image from your files.

Having captured the image of your web design, you can click on any spot in the image and make a comment. The examples here were downloaded as PDF files. When you do this, you can send them to people and they can read your comments. I like to upload them at Basecamp so I don't have to say things like "The upper left hand side, right under the search box..." However, you can also invite people into your Notable workspace to see your comments right on the screen.

It's easy to invite people in -- you type their email addresses in right at the Notable website. Then they also can make comments.

As you can see, Notable captures the whole site, so it's better than a screenshot. There's also an iPhone app, which helps with mobile discussions, when you may not be seeing the same thing if one person is at a computer and the other is using a phone to navigate to the site.

You can make comments on the site and what needs to be changed, on mock ups for a new site you're having built, or on content. The labels let you narrow in on the particular thing you'd like to discuss, and the comments are clear -- no "Love this!" scrawled on a corner or "Could we make the gray box -- no, not that gray box, the other gray box --"

The price is certainly right -- if you just use it occasionally, you can have a free account. Paid accounts range from $24 to $119 per month, depending on factors like the number of users, the amount of storage space, and the level of security you want.

Try it out. Let me know what you think.

Floating Along with Your Website

2010-03-30T09:46:00.002-05:00

It's the nature of my job that I'm usually working on building sites or rebuilding them. I've got half a dozen right now that need rewriting, several needing new content, one about to go live, and several more waiting to be built.

But one of the great things about a website is that it will continue to work for you even when you're not working on it. With you or without you, your well-designed and optimized website will do its job.

You have to update your blog regularly, of course. If that's not on your daily to-do list or part of your morning routine, then you need to hire someone for it. Apart from that, though, your website can continue to do its job for you for a while without needing any updates. You can float along the river in your canoe, enjoying the peace of the surroundings (or fending off attacks on some other front entirely, if your business is like that), and your website will serve as part of your sales force 24 hours a day.

This is the danger, really. It's easy to miss the moment at which you should have updated your site, and then you end up with a site that badly needs updating. That's not what you want. It can be great to shoot the rapids in business: the thrill of new product launches, the challenge of speedy growth, the excitement of the Really Big Deal --that's fun. Finding yourself in urgent need of a redesign you didn't budget for because your outdated website is losing you business is not fun at all.

Ideally, you can see the need for an update ahead, and plan for it. I'm in that position. My website has been up for about 18 months, and in another few months I'll be ready to make some changes.

How can you tell that it's about time for an update at your website?

Technology has changed. I see lots of websites with badly outdated code. They left it too long. For me, that's not a problem, but I do want to take advantage of some new things that have come up since mine was built. If you have Flash components that aren't friendly to search, you might want to update to newer, more search-friendly options. If your visitors are mostly using modern browsers (you can find out through your analytics), you might like to take advantage of some CSS3 options.
Business has changed. I've kept my content updated as things changed in my business. However, some business changes require design changes. For me, the increasing importance of social media means that it would make sense for me to have my online networks as part of my call to action on the homepage. It might also make sense for me to add a portfolio. For another business, new services or products might require a new section of a website. This was true at Clevertech, where a new team and extended services made an update necessary. If you don't do your own content updates, you need to check your site now and then to make sure there isn't some outdated information -- old hours, a new product you should showcase, a change in staff -- that needs correction.
Fashions have changed. Let's face it, there are fashions in web design just as in anything else. If your website looks dated, your business will look dated. Just as your office decor or your brochures have to be spiffed up every now and then to keep your company looking current and fresh, your website has to be updated now and then for the same reason. I'm trusting my designer to freshen the look of my site when he adds the new functionalities I know I want.

You need a content refresh every few months. A design refresh should be on your calendar and in your budget every year or two. Doing this essential maintenance will allow you to float happily along, secure in the knowledge that your website is doing its job for you.

Does Your Site Work?

2010-03-29T13:18:00.000-05:00

We got back from Spring Break last night, various family members having spent the time in different places, and we decided to have dinner delivered to us.

As we aired out sleeping bags, unpacked bags, showered, and otherwise prepared to return to our daily lives, we tried to make a quick order at a restaurant online.Here were the steps:

We waited through an animated introduction screen. While we had found this mildly entertaining the first time we saw it, we didn't want to wait through it before being able to place an order.
We searched with growing irritation for the place where we could place an order.
We tried unsuccessfully to log in, thinking we had an account. While it's possible that we should have remembered whether or not we had set up an account there, the response to our log in attempt could have told us that we didn't have an account, rather than leaving open the possibility that we were using the wrong password.
Having spent quite a while trying to get into our account, we concluded that we didn't have an account and went to set one up. Then lengthy form was daunting, but we filled it out and hit submit -- and waited for several minutes before realizing that it simply didn't work.
We phoned the restaurant and placed the order.

We are a calm and forgiving group. There are plenty of people who would have called some other restaurant instead, and gotten angry about it and told all their friends, too. It may be nothing to do with your company, really, but fails at the website can create negative responses to your company and even to your product.

If your website has added functionality, like a shopping cart or a form to fill out, check sometimes and make sure that it's still working the way you think it is.

Website Misery

2010-03-26T07:35:00.001-05:00

A recent study of small businesses found some surprising results.

The majority of respondents were dissatisfied with their websites in some way -- 76% thought they needed improvements, 40% were unhappy with the amount of business the site generated, 23% didn't like the quality of the design...

Well, it's true that there are plenty of bad websites out there, but I'm not sure that these numbers necessarily show intense dissatisfaction. After all, we're seeing that 60% are happy with the amount of business their sites generate, which seems surprisingly high. How many businesspeople are satisfied with the amount of business they have? And more than three quarters of respondents like the quality of their design -- in fact, the percentage of people satisfied with their design is higher than the percentage who feel their sites could use improvement, and I'm inclined to think that most sites could use improvement.

Here's the stuff that caught my eye:

44% said "Commissioning a website was a confusing or frustrating experience."
41% said "Web designers try to confuse us with jargon."
30% said "It was hard to find a web designer who understood our business."

Now, this is a true/false test, and we're still looking at 70% finding someone who understood their business. Having worked with everything from a stage hypnotist to manufacturers of biologicals, I know that grasping the nature of a business can be a challenge -- though it's a challenge that I enjoy. Not all of my clients understand my business, either. 30% doesn't seem that bad.

Still -- 41% believe that web designers intentionally try to confuse them with jargon? Nearly half found the whole business confusing and frustrating? Add those concerns to the feeling that these people don't even get what your company does, and you can be looking at some unhappiness.

Those are distressing numbers.Clearly, we web professionals need to work on our communication skills.

But I'd like to suggest that you -- if you ever find yourself in such a situation -- take the bull by the horns.

If you don't understand something, ask. It's easy for us to lose track of which terms are jargon. You spend a few years referring to pictures as "images," and you forget that most people don't use that term in that way. Don't assume that an unfamiliar term is being thrown around in order to confuse you.

If your web professionals don't understand something, offer. It's easy, as I said, to lose track of what's jargon and what isn't. Plan on spending a little time explaining your business, providing documents, or paying for research time. If it turns out not to be necessary you're ahead of the game.

My own company makes a priority of communication, and we strive to make sure that the website building experience is a positive one. Numbers like these reinforce the importance of this goal.

What Makes Your Website Special?

2010-03-25T17:24:00.003-05:00

I admit it; there are times when people like me, who specialize in things like usability and search, come into conflict with people whose primary goal with a website is to make it snazzy.

Not that I'm opposed to snazziness on principle. It's just that when I see a designer's eyes light up at the thought of making a really flashy thing happen on the screen, or hear a client say, "Wouldn't it be cool if..." -- well, I can foresee that I'm going to have to be the one who says, "Yes, that would be fun, but do your clients really want a three minute auto-loading music video if they're usually calling you at midnight because a family member has been arrested? I mean, maybe they'd like to get your phone number right away."*

So I've been very happy about the new website Tom Hapgood and I are working on. The screen above shows you the homepage. If you click on that turned up corner, the translucent white sheet will lift right up and show you this:

The first screen in the photo gallery. Click on the arrow, and you can see more images:

More images with alt text, in fact, so this is good for search -- unlike the rotating flash screens which completely baffle the search engines.

You can easily pull that white sheet back down, too, when you're through looking at the picture gallery -- no need to wait for the information you want. The white sheet also has a feed from the "What's Happening?" page, so visitors can quickly check on upcoming events and specials.

Tom built this with the open source jQuery javascript library, which web professionals are getting very excited about. This technology is CSS3 compliant and cross-browser supportive, so all visitors can see it. Since all the images have good, clear alt text, people with limited vision using screen readers will also be able to understand the site easily.

When you feel that your website needs some bells and whistles, talk with your web professionals about ways to provide that without interfering with usability and search. Skillful designers can do that. And your entire team should recognize the value of that goal.

* Yes, actually, I had that conversation just last week.

Filter Your Google Analytics

2010-03-24T17:13:00.003-05:00

Sometimes I analyze websites' analytics for their owners or for other companies. Sometimes I analyze current websites, including their analytics, so I can improve their performance or make sure that their new site does what they need it to. Sometimes I follow clients' analytics as part of my work with them.

In all of these cases, I need to be alert to the possibility of internal traffic -- the sites' owners or staff visiting the website. You should be alert to this, too, if you look after your own analytics.

Not only can numerous visits from your own workers make you look as though you have more traffic than you really do, they can also throw off other aspects of the information available to you:

Where are your visitors coming from? The percentage from your service area may be smaller than you think, if a lot of your local traffic comes from your own office.
How long are people on your site, and how many pages do they look at? It's great to keep your website open at your brick and mortar shop to give people information about your products and services -- but it can skew the averages on these important metrics.
How do people use your site? The way you navigate through your own site is bound to be different from the way other people do.

Filter your own computer, your office or shop computer, and your workers' computers from your site's analytics. Then Google Analytics won't count any of your own visits.The little video above shows you just how to do it, and just how easy it is.

Editing: a Dream

2010-03-23T08:59:00.000-05:00

I dreamed last night that I was editing web copy. It is possible that I had been doing that for too long yesterday; they say that dreams are the brain's way of processing leftover stuff from the day that couldn't get fully sorted out during waking hours. So there I was, still editing, but I had special tools that allowed me merely to think the edits, mentally click the button, and have them turn up corrected on the page.

How cool would that be? You'd think, "This needs to be warmer, livelier, and come in at under 375 words," envision the radio button, and the text would be perfected.

Not actually going to happen.

Short of that, here are some ways to make editing as easy and successful as possible:

Have a clear goal for your edits. Right now, I'm working on projects that need to be shorter, have a more natural sound, fit in with the rest of a website, and lead to more conversions -- respectively. These are all great goals, and I appreciate my clients for having them so clearly defined. A general desire to make something better, a feeling that something needs changes because it hasn't been changed for a while, or "Make it pop!" are not useful goals.
Save your edits with different yet clear names: Homepage1, Homepage2, things like that. I'm currently working on a project which has been edited by several people under names like "services_draft," "services2," and "new_design_services." At this point, it's impossible to tell which is the current version. However, it's always possible that people -- including you -- might choose to return to an earlier version, so saving with different names is a very good plan.
Go first for errors. If you're doing general editing to improve something, catch as many grammar and spelling errors as you can, and update any inaccurate or outdated information. This will make the biggest improvement.
Next, make some common fixes. Most web copy needs more direct and active language, parallel structure, and consistent phrasing. Make these improvements without taking out the essential keywords for search, and you'll have something better.
Have someone else proofread for you. It is almost impossible to catch all your own typos and small errors, if only because you know exactly what you meant to say. Having someone like me edit the things you've written (or the things your staff person or even your inexpensive bulk writer has written) is a very affordable option because it'll be done very fast. But even if you don't choose a professional for this work, someone else will be able to catch the things your eye slid right over because you'd been looking at it for so long.

Social Networking for Business: a Book Review

2010-03-22T10:09:00.000-05:00

Rawn Shah has written a well-researched and thorough examination of online social networking as it relates to business.

Shah examines some aspects of social networking that we don't always think about. For example, it's possible to use social networks as personal, non-social experiences, as limited social networks, as community experiences, as group collaborations, or in a variety of other ways. Social networks have a variety of possible leadership models, whether they are collaborative environments like Google Docs and Basecamp or public networks like Xing and Jigsaw. Recruiting members and evangelists to a newly-designed social network (your company's Facebook page or your new membership-only forum, for example) has multiple potential points of failure.

My sense is that these decisions tend to be made on the basis of personal preferences or gut feelings. Reading through Shah's analysis can give you a better sense of the possible consequences of these choices -- and therefore can give you a better chance of making a data-driven choice.

This may be the rub, though -- are you going to read this book? This isn't necessarily a fun read. There aren't any pictures, though there certainly are charts. There are no cartoons.

I'm not trying to talk down to my readers, here. I just don't want you to think this book is going to give you quick tips on how to improve your business results at Twitter.

Here's who should read this book:

People who want to understand the nature and behavior of social networks fully in order to make the best possible decisions about how to use them. If "What the heck? Let's give it a shot!" just isn't your management style, this book gives you hard-to-find details and metrics to consider.
People who want to have strong data in order to persuade management to finance social media campaigns. Analyses of how NASA and Disney have leveraged social media can be persuasive to people who really don't see the point of Twittter.
People who really love data and analysis. I'm one of those people, and I enjoy delving into the development of altruistic behavior as evidence of leadership in social network tasks. If you relate to this, then this book will be more satisfying to you than the lighter approaches.

If you've been looking for a book on social networking for business, and this one sounds too intense for you, consider Steve Weber's Plug Your Business, a less theoretical but still thorough treatment of the subject.