Archive for June, 2009

The answer to almost any question is literally at your fingertips. Type the right words into Google’s search bar and within seconds thousands, often hundreds of thousands, of answers are spit back at you. The question is: What are those right words?”

I always took searching for granted, and it wasn’t until I recently spent some time with friends and family that aren’t on the computer as much as I am, that I realized there were some simple tips that might be helpful.

1. Ask exactly what you want - be as specific as possible.
2. Use a lot of words - even a sentence. If you only use one or two generic terms, you aren’t going to get the exact information you’re looking for.
3. If you’re asking a technical question, there’s a good chance Google will give you some results with links to forums. These are great places to find answers. There is always a really good chance that someone else is experiencing the same problems you are, and the wonderful people that contribute to the forums have provided a solution.
4. Take a quick peek at the website address before clicking on the results. After a little practice, you’ll begin to recognize sites that are selling products and may not have much information. If you’re looking to buy, then that’s a different story.
5. If you are in the market to make a purchase, don’t forget about the links on the right (the paid ones). The merchants advertising there have put a lot of research into the keywords they have chosen, so there is a very good chance that those ads will bring you to just what you are looking for.
6. If you are looking for something specific, use quotations around the words that should be grouped together. Google will look for webpages that have those specific words, in that specific order for you.
7. If Google isn’t returning helpful results, try the other search engines: Ask.com, Yahoo.com, MSN.com.
8. If you are looking for specific “How To” information, try going directly to an article directory. They have thousands of articles on almost any topic you can think of. Some good ones to try are EzineArticles.com and eHow.com.

These are some of the basic principles that I use when I am looking for information online, and I hope they provide a good start to help you learn to search more effectively. If you have any other tips to add, please leave a comment!

For some reason, Better Homes and Gardens gets delivered every month. I don’t ever remember subscribing to it, but like clockwork - every month the new issue is in my mailbox. As I was flipping through the new July 2009 issue, I noticed the word “blogged”. Being an online marketing consultant, anything to do with the internet gets at least a passing glance. So, I went on to read the little snippet. This is what it said:

SIMPLEMOM.NET Mom Tsh (pronounced “Tish”) Oxenreider, a self-described “life hacker” and home manager, lives by the credo “when mom is doing well, the whole family thrives.” Her easy-to-navigate site is loaded with tips for clearing clutter, getting healthy dinners on the table, paring down paperwork, and finding time for yourself.

Just a quick little blurb, but two things in particular stood out to me.

1. “…Her easy-to-navigate site…”
2. “…loaded with tips…”

Think about it. The one word or phrase used to describe her site was “easy-to-navigate.” The phrase that was chosen describes the site’s functionality, or USABILITY - not the way it looks, but the way it behaves.

Too often in the web design/development industry, design is given more importance than the user’s experience. The internet has given complete control to the consumers. If they don’t like something about a website, they have the ability to navigate away from it, in the blink of an eye. If you are not offering the best possible experience for your visitors, you are missing the ball and your website is no longer a powerful marketing tool.

When you are in the planning stages for developing a business website, look at things from your visitors’ point-of-view. Where would they expect the navigation to be? How would they expect the links to be named? How many layers are they willing to wade through to get to the information they’re looking for? Will they be able to get back to the home page from anywhere in the site in one click? How hard is it to find your contact information? Is the ordering process seamless and instill confidence in their buying decision?

These are important points to go over when you are working with a web design team, and if they don’t want to take your customers into consideration, you may want to consider working with someone who does. Usability isn’t just a buzz word floating around, it is vital to the success of your site and possibly your business if you are making online sales.

Now on to the second point…

The short little blurb also gave a reason for magazine readers to go visit simplemom.net. Simplemom.net is loaded with tips. The more value you can offer, the more successful your site will be. Tips are a great way to drive traffic to your site, get visitors to stay on your site and return on a regular basis.

So, what can you do to make your site more user-friendly and provide better value? Business and website owners that begin to think this way and take a more customer-centric approach will see a much bigger return on their investment.

There are so many programs out there now that with a little bit of html knowledge, you can get your business up online in no time and at very low cost. But what is the actual cost to your business?

There’s a good chance your website is the first impression you’ll make with a potential client. What kind of impression do you want to leave them with? Many times, with these easy, do-it-yourself solutions, you end up with a template that is exactly like many others in your industry. Or if you aren’t using a template based design, how professional will your website end up looking and acting?

Designing and developing a website that leaves a good first impression, and even more importantly, drives the visitor to take action (like calling for an appointment or placing an order) requires a specific set of skills. Just because the tools are readily available to the public, does not necessarily mean that the average business owner has the knowledge or the time to learn to use them to their best advantage.

I have spent years analyzing internet behavior and developing websites that are both functional and look professional. There is much more to creating a website than slapping up a few pictures and links. Those links need to be where expected and make sense to even the most novice internet user, and those pictures need to be formatted properly to display quickly and at the right size and dimensions. Colors play an important roll as well in conveying a certain feel and driving particular actions.

And that is only what is seen on the surface. What is under the hood is even more important. That’s what makes your website work. Sloppy code will cause problems, the wrong hosting service will cause problems, and what if you need your website to act as more than just an over sized brochure? You need systems that are working behind the scenes to make your website functional and offer true value to your visitors. Would your website benefit from a rating system, online reviews and comments, online booking, online ordering, how about even a simple contact form that delivers the correct information back to you in a useful format.

These are all things that a skilled web developer will help you with. By working with a professional, your website can become so much more than just a few pictures and links. It can actually become an integrated marketing and managing tool for your entire business.

So, what’s that worth to you? As a fixed, one-time cost, the money spent with a professional web developer is almost guaranteed to yield a much higher ROI than any other marketing activity you do.