I recently spent the weekend at Social Dev Camp Chicago and came away with a lot of good contacts and a head bursting with notes to self and ideas. Here’s my take on the kinds of things that you as a small business owner can think about and put into action.

Value is determined by the buyer not the seller

Think carefully about this one. It takes a minute to sink in, but in this age of consumers sharing their favorite products on Facebook, it’s more important than ever. What value do you provide to your customer? The lowest price is not necessarily what people need. They will perceive

Bringing it to the Real World

One of the biggest trends being discussed, was how to integrate social networking into your overall marketing plan. Cross promotion in the real world can really engage your customers.

• Have a “like us on facebook” sign at your store. (If customers like your page, can you offer them something as a thank you?)
• Show a  QR codes on the window. The customer can scan with their smart phone and receive a coupon or promotion info.
• Other stores have products that give you credits on Farmville and other facebook games.
• If you have a fun product, link it to a game in a mobile app. (Design t-shirts, accessorize your scooter or tie promotions to an established game)
• Monitor your business name in Twitter and actively reply if there is a customer service problem that needs solving.

Bottom Line – Know Your Customer

There was talk at this conference about the possibility of a bank tying into your web searches, setting aside funds for the purchase and then sending you alerts when you were close to a store with a good deal on what you had been searching for. If that feels like big brother to you; to your kids it sounds cool and to their kids it will be expected and normal. Make no mistake, mobile location based internet will be a bigger player in years to come and how you tie into that with your social presence and your mobile site will be critical.

It all comes down to that first headline – value is determined by the buyer, not the seller. If you can add value, communicate that value and make it easy for them to join then you have a client for life. In my mind, social networking is great and can have real value, but without real customer service behind it, it doesn’t mean much.

Further Resources

What is a qr code and why do you need one?

Facebook adds a Customer Service app

Social Media Trends for 2010

So, as a layman, how do you know that? You’re hiring someone because they have skills that you don’t, how do you know they have the right skill set necessary for your site?

(Full disclosure here: I am a web designer and of course I would like it if you contacted me for a quote.)

Do your homework

Before you even think about hiring anyone, know what you want first. Site design is a collaborative effort. Fill out the questionnaire, get your written content together, think about how you’d like the site to flow. The more specific you can be in your planning about what you’d like to see and how you’d like it to work before you talk to anyone, the better.

Think about your budget at this point as well. Your website isn’t the only cost in your overall  marketing strategy but it is your anchor. Think in terms of what you expect your business to make. If you expect to see $50,000 in sales this year, then spending $5-10,000 on your site is an investment that will pay off. If $1000 is all that you can manage, then be honest with anyone you may hire. Talk with them about what kinds of things you can do yourself to alleviate some of the cost. If you plan correctly, you can start with something very simple and build on it later.

Before you hire anyone, it’s always good to shop around a bit.

Good places to start, beyond a basic web search:

• Sortfolio.com – Find listed designers by city and price range
• LinkedIn – Search for web design and your city under people or companies and you should get quite a list. The ones that are closest to your network will show up 1st.
• Referrals from friends -  A great place to start, but you should dig deeper and get several quotes if possible.

Check them out

Things that ANY designer you’re considering should have:

• A site of their own. (You found it useful, easy to find information and all the links worked, right?)
• Portfolio – Their site should include this. Each site in the portfolio should have a link to the real site.
  • Do you like what you see?
  • Have they built sites that work the way you would like yours to?

Once you have gotten to a site they designed, you should be able to contact that business owner for a reference.

• How was the designer to work with?
• Did they provide a proposal and contract that detailed everything they would do?
• Were they honest and responsive?
• Did they do the work promptly and on budget?
• Did they answer any questions that came up?
• Were they responsive to any issues that cropped up after the site launched?
• Did they make sure that the owner had the domain and hosting login information and that the billing was assigned to the owner?

Every designer/developer has different skill sets so it can be hard to determine if the person you’re talking to is the right fit. Again, this where close scrutiny of their portfolio and direct questions are important. At a very minimum someone will have to know HTML, CSS and possibly Javascript or PHP to get your site to the web.

• Do they do the graphic design work and the coding?
• If  you need complex back-end/shopping cart/database work done, will they do that or hire it out?
• If they will use other people (and there’s nothing wrong with that), will the designer be the project manager or will you have to deal with multiple people?
• Is all of the work necessary included in the quote?

Get it in writing

I was asked once to look at someone else’s quote. In six pages there was a lot about branding and a test “mock” site, but there on page 6, one line – “Programming is not included in this quote”. They would have spent $15,000 on a new logo, look and feel and some layout, but at the end would have had a “mock” site that didn’t work. If the designer is a great graphic artist and does no coding, make sure they are working with a developer who can code their designs and that the quote you got included everything needed from concept to launch.

A good proposal and contract should manage expectations for everyone and be very clear on the fee structure. If you’re not clear on what’s in the proposal, please get a 2nd opinion. It should be clear when and what payments are due, how many pages will be built, how the design process works for this designer.  Here’s the basics I always include:

• Design process – mock-up first, so many revisions, approval stage
• Construction stage – what will be coded, pages, forms etc
• Final launch – going live as well as being clear on copywrite assignments

Payment usually goes in thirds. A deposit, payment after design approval and then final at launch.

The bottom line? You want to work with someone you can communicate and build a relationship with. This is after all your business and your site.

Further References

sitepoint.com/article/how-to-hire-a-web-designer

lifehack.org/articles/management/how-to-hire-a-web-design-firm

Now, I work by the hour as well as the project, so I don’t have any problem with helping her out. Dealing with product images for a web site is an ongoing challenge for small businesses, particularly craft oriented business where the product and the pictures are produced by the owner. Her question (and I’ve seen it before with several clients of my own), raises several issues.

What does web-ready mean?

Yikes! This baby picture is huge!

All of us have received those baby pictures in our email where the image is so large, it takes 5 minutes to open and all you see is a giant eye. This is how the image came off the camera. Different cameras produce different size pictures, the more megapixels, the bigger the image. The primary purpose for these giant images is so you can print them. Print likes high resolution. Web images need to be at a lower resolution and as small as file size as you can manage. No one want to wait 5 minutes for your pictures to download on your site. So, web ready means pictures that have been cropped to the size that will be used on the web page and “saved for web” at the low resolution of 72ppi (pixels per inch) – the resolution that your computer monitor is. Size is determined by pixels; a rule of thumb might me that thumbnails are not bigger then 150 px in either direction, “medium” images no bigger than 300 px and “large” no bigger than 800 px. Most websites are between 750 and 1024 px wide.

Photoshop is the most commonly used program to get an image web-ready, but it’s lighter version Elements, Gimp and my favorite little share-ware program Irfanview all have the ability to help you re-size images. For more information on resolution, file management and other image related web topics you can check out my article Creating Graphics for the Web.

Find Those Images!

Along with getting the images web-ready by sizing them correctly, paying attention to how the files are named and described will go a long way to optimizing your site for search engines.

Titles – no one knows what dsc0012.jpg is but everyone will know what sparkly-butterfly-barrette.jpg is. Naming your images to match what they are or what your customer might be searching for will go a long way to helping them find you.

“Alt tags” – along with the file title, every web image has the opportunity to have an alt tag or alternate description attached to it. This serves 2 purposes; for those who don’t have the image, (cell, screen readers) they know what it’s supposed to be and like above it helps the searchers find you. Use keyword rich descriptions in your alt tags. If you’re handing off the images to a designer, give them the image descriptions along with your regular page copy.

DYI

If you are running your own craft based business and taking product pictures is going to be an essential and ongoing part of your business, then I really do recommend finding a class or tutor and investing in a decent camera and software. Of course, you can hire a photographer to do all of this for you, but if saving money in the long term is your goal, making the up front investment and learning to take and edit your product images yourself will save you real money when it comes time to have your site built and updated.

Like with most things it all comes back to time and money and how much your time is worth. If you spend 20 hours doing something I could do in 5, was it worth it? Many people only look at what something costs, but don’t factor in what their own time is worth.

I’m not a real advocate of doing everything yourself when it comes to web design. After all, I’d like to have enough clients to pay my bills, I’d rather have my car serviced by someone who has been trained and really knows what they’re doing and if you’re running your own business, that should be where your expertise lies. I do think however that understanding enough about how images and files are prepared for the web so that you can talk intelligently to a designer and even do some of the repetitive work yourself is a good thing.

Further Resources

The Secrets to Optimizing Your Site for Image Search

How to Create Better Graphics for the Web

Creating Graphics for the Web

Glossary of Web Terms

Just so we’re all on the same page – a domain name is the address of your website. This site’s domain is beckydavisdesign.com. You can tell because at the top of your browser in the address bar, that’s what comes after the http://.  The Domain is just the address. Hosting is the service you paid for to hold the files of your website. A domain name and hosting are often bought together, but don’t need to be and can be purchased separately. They will often have separate login information, so it’s important to know the difference.

Domain name in browser

Every website starts with the domain name, without that you do not have a site. More importantly, if you as the business owner do not have control over this name, then you do not have control over your site. If you had your designer “take care of” the purchasing of your domain name and hosting at the beginning and the billing goes to their email address, you have left yourself open to a lot of damage.

Beyond malicious things, without the login information for the domain and the hosting, you can never have someone else take care of your site for you. I do a lot of maintenance work for my clients on sites I didn’t design and without the basic login information, I can’t get to the hosted files to make changes. I have unfortunately heard many horror stories about designers who left town, got sick, didn’t pay renewal bills, or were holding the owner in some way hostage. If the owners had had their own information and the bills had been sent to them, a lot of grief would have been avoided.

Take Control

Here are the steps every site owner should take to ensure that they have control of their site.

1. Go to networksolutions.com/whois, type in your domain name and see who comes up as the owner. Not you?! Now you know who is being listed as owner and that tells you where to go next. This listing also tells you something extremely valuable – when the domain expires. This date should go on your calendar. If you haven’t gotten a bill at least a month in advance of this, then something is wrong. Paying attention to it a month early gives you time to correct the issue.
2. Go to my Login Information page and download a blank form. Print it out and as you do your investigating, (you did keep all the emails from the registrar and hosting company right?) write down the important information. Then store that file somewhere safe and fireproof. That means get it off the top of your desk!
3. If the owner that was listed was your designer and you’re on good terms with them, you’re in luck. Contact them and ask them to send you all the information on the login sheet. If this person gives you any grief about this request or hesitates in any way, that is a warning sign. Once you have it, test it to make sure it works. A good designer will give you instructions on how to do this. If you’re still not sure, contact the registrar/host company and get help from them. If you change the password – be sure and document it!!
4. If the owner listed is someone you don’t know and/or are not in good contact with, you may have more of a pain on your hands. Start with the registrar company (listed at the bottom of that whois page) and find out what your options are. Changing control can be very difficult, registrars do that on purpose to avoid fraud. They may want faxed and notarized documents proving your ownership.

(Clarification – Domain names are like postage meters, you never OWN them. You lease them for a year or more at a time.)

Keep Track

This is what happened to my client this morning. She never got a bill, so never paid the $9.95 for her yearly domain name renewal and it expired. With the domain name expired, the site disappeared and was replaced by a placeholder page. She panicked and I got a call way too early in the morning. I made sure a year ago that the billing information was in her name and her email address. Then she changed providers and got a new email address. No bill, no pay, site goes bye bye. Fortunately in this case, the registrar kept control of the name instead of releasing it back to the public. With a few phone calls, she was able to get the bill paid. Once that was done, I was able to re-direct the DNS (domain name server) to the correct host and voila the site was back up. I also updated her billing email address.

Lesson learned? She now has a reminder in her calendar a month ahead of the bill due date to make sure she got the bill and it was paid. And I made sure that she has all the login information she may need. Do you?

Further Resources

http://support.hostgator.com/articles/getting-started/what-is-the-difference-between-domains-vs-hosting-vs-website

http://www.keytlaw.com/urls/whocontrols.htm

Usability & Navigation

Make sure it works

I was on a beauty product site the other day and they had a questionnaire to determine which line of their products would be best for me. I actually spent over 3 minutes filling this form out, only to find out that the submit button was broken and did not work. I never got the information I was looking for and was frustrated enough to find the contact page and let them know. I never got a reply and I’m very unlikely to re-visit this site or buy the products now.

Be vigilant about is broken links and have someone test your site regularly, especially to external links that are not in your control. Nothing screams unprofessional site like links that go to Page Not Found. Any time you change anything, it’s always good practice to test for this. You can check your site right now with this tool. http://validator.w3.org/checklink

If it’s not ready, don’t put it out there

Say NO to "under-construction"

I strongly encourage forethought and planning in site design, but that doesn’t mean promising links or info that is not ready yet. If the content for the page is not ready, then don’t put it in the navigation. How many times have you seen COMING SOON! only to come back a week or month later and have whatever was coming still not there? Design the navigation so that adding pages later is no big deal, but “under construction” and “coming soon” are  just not cool.

If Mom can’t figure it out, it doesn’t make sense

When I first designed my own site, I did some very artsy things with my navigation. Instead of the straight choices across the top or side that you see almost universally, I embedded the links into the header art. I showed this site to my Mom and despite the fact that the giant leaves to the right had Portfolio and Contact written on them, she didn’t know that was where she was supposed to click until I showed her. Oh. Eventually I got around to changing my navigation to something more conventional. Maybe not as cool, but if your audience can’t make sense of it, what’s the point?

For more on this, check out the Mom test video.

Is it easy to use?

We’ve all been in sites where how to get to the next step, refine the search or figure out the shipping before buying was just not apparent. User testing, (this is a great place to use your Mom again), is critical. Even small companies can enlist family and friend help. This is where you really want to find someone who is not you or your designer. If it’s not easy to use, the chances of repeat visits, otherwise know as business, are slim.

Engagement & Conversion

Engaging your audience and converting them to sales are the holy grail for e-commerce sites. Once you’ve got the structure making sense and working, making your site attractive to your target audience is next.

Know your audience

Know the audience you're designing for

Design elements

Why are quote and buy buttons often large and hot colors? Because they work. Why is navigation across the top or on the side? Because that is where we expect it to be. Your site can be your own without being so unconventional that nobody knows what you’re offering or how to get more

Call to action example

information. All e-commerce sites and even those that are just service businesses should have some kind of “Call to Action” on as many pages as possible. What that is depends on what you want your audience to do, but if you want them to get a quote, or sign up for a newsletter or search or buy, makes those actions obvious and don’t be afraid to test different methods.

Customer Service

OK, this seems like a no-brainer, but it bears repeating. If you’re selling something, at some point you will have to deal with your customers.

• Don’t surprise them, be up front about things like shipping costs
• Don’t make them search for a way to contact you
• Make returns and other policies obvious

If you are selling your own products, make sure this process is completely tested as well. The system that works is one that can handle the exceptions well. Very few people will talk about an uneventful order, everyone will complain about a bad one.

Sell your Credibility

Belong to a chamber of commerce, a trade association, have a profile on Linked In or a fan page on Facebook? Tell the world about it. Not only does bring credibility to you and the services you offer, but it has the added bonus of adding more SEO to your site. Do you see what’s happening at bottom of this page?

Test it, track it

Google analytics

How do you know what pages on your site are being visited? How do you know how long they are staying on a page? How do you know if your customers are bailing in the middle of a sale? How do you know that you really need to make sure that your site works in IE6?  How do you set up A-B testing to see which landing page works better? One word: ANALYTICS. Google analytics is free to install. There is no excuse for any site and particularly an e-commerce site to not have the tracking code installed. Business is all about measured results. This is where it starts.

Further Resources

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/17-new-rules-for-successful-ecommerce-websites

http://www.site-reference.com/articles/Internet-Marketing/Building-eCommerce-Websites-That-Work.html

http://reach.dzone.com/articles/10-key-practices

http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com/web-design/current-style.php

http://www.lakeshorebranding.com/company/blog/simple-ppc-tip-increasing-conversions-with-a-shiny-button/

http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-use-google-analytics-for-beginners

http://www.newfangled.com/how_to_use_google_analytics

The question I always come back with when someone asks me this question is “How long will it take you? Do you have your content ready?”If I send you a mock-up for design approval, how long will it take you to get back to me? Are you ready to move the process along with comments, approval and the next payment?

The reality is (and one of the main reasons I teach the seminar) is that while all small business owners want and need a website, most are unprepared for all the work that needs to go into it. Unfortunately, I’m not a fairy godmother. I cannot just create a site for you with my magic wand out of thin air. My job is to create a design that works for your business and makes it easy to use and compelling for your customers. Your job is to sell your products and services. I can help you with structure,design and functionality, but only you can tell me about your business.

The other reality is that while my priority is getting your site designed and coded, it’s not yours. You’re still running your business. Getting back to me in a timely fashion with comments and feedback may not happen and that stops me in my tracks. I used to design a layout and then ask for content. One time that process took over 6 months. I’ve come to the conclusion at this point that I really need content first, before even thinking about design. Having the content first does several things.

• It forces me to design a layout that actually works with the existing content, instead of finding out later that there really isn’t room for that form here.
• It forces you to really think about the whole project and all of the details ahead of time.
• It allows both of us to plan for as many contingencies as possible while still in the design stage.

This creates a win/win situation for both of us and hopefully keeps the project on track so it really doesn’t take too long at all.

Original Article

On October 20, 2009, Chris Campbell wrote:

So you have an idea for a business website and you’ve hired a web designer. It’s a simple enough collaboration. You’re raring to go live. If, however, you wish to encourage people to keep coming back to your site, understand that this takes more than stylish, colorfully designed pages and great Photoshop skills. After all, there are things that a web designer won’t tell you – or can’t tell you – but which you should know anyway. Here are some of them:

1. “Shiny, sparkly, and splendidly bright” doesn’t cut it. It might work as a lyric for a Michael Jackson single (“Gone Too Soon”), but not as an agenda for web design. Out of propriety, or shyness typical of people with artistic temperaments, a web designer might not tell you to keep off the electric neon-colored background, or the blinking rainbow font, or the head copy that scrolls like a snail. Keep off them anyway. You want your website easy for your visitors to read. Don’t give them a headache.

2. Put a “Skip” option on your fancy Flash intro. It’s actually simpler and easier to not have a fancy Flash intro altogether. But in case you decide to have one anyway (it makes sense for some businesses), remember to make the option of skipping it available to your visitors. If your web designer doesn’t tell you this, well – it might be that he just wants more and more people to see his work. It doesn’t matter: put a button so repeat visitors won’t have to sit through the same thing over and over.

3. Say no to popup windows. All right, those ads can bring in a bit of revenue. But make sure they comprise no more than a quarter of your website content. And place them with subtlety. If you want a visitor sign up for your newsletter, buy your e-book, or take the online survey, do it with subtlety. Pop ups are not subtle. Nothing is worse than a popup while reading an article, its easier to click the back button than stay on your site. Very rarely do people bookmark sites with popup ads popping up all the time. (See? Even reading “popup” several times is annoying.)

4. Turn it down; better yet, turn it off. At least give people the chance to do so. I’m talking about the sound that suddenly starts playing when one visits a website. Again, this is a matter of subtlety. Neither your website designer nor you should play DJ and force visitors to listen to audio tracks, be it a business podcast or your choice of background music. If you just have to play audio on your website, place in a prominent area on the webpage the option of muting or pausing it.

5. “Back to top” makes reading a lot easier. Your web designer will probably have learned in design school that reading a page that scrolls horizontally can be irritating. But if you have to have so much content that your page scrolls, make it scroll vertically. And then put a “back on top” option for easier navigation.

6. Don’t ask for TMI, or too much information. Think about it: if you were to visit a website, you’d hate signing up for anything that requires you to enter your residential address, phone number, and birthday, among other personal details. And unless there’s a financial transaction involved, you’d be foolish to give out your credit card information. So build a website that doesn’t ask too much; keep it basic. If you have to use a form with fields that visitors have to fill in, don’t make it mandatory.

7. Highlight your brand and make it easy to contact you. While you may have a shared aesthetic with your designer, it doesn’t automatically mean that he understands your brand fully. Your web designer can’t be expected to double as your strategic consultant. That leaves you in charge of communicating the story of your business through your website, which really is a cost-effective way of establishing your brand. Highlight it. Put a logo, your site name, and your contact information where visitors can see them. And then tell the people what you can offer them.

8. BONUS- Build it and they will come syndrome. Yes the first step to effectively marketing your organization online is through a website, but web designers often are not internet marketing experts. Having a strategy and plan for how you are going to market your business online through email, search engine optimization, paid advertising or maybe even blogging is important to maximizing your investment of your website.

Then he directed my attention to a completely different site that was not his. “I want my site to look just like this one.” Oh. Now we’re not talking about a few minor changes, now we’re talking about a whole re-design. This is basically building a new site. Except for having most of the content already written (and really that probably needs some work as well), everything will have to be done from scratch. I can charge hourly for this, but most small business people like to have a clue on cost before starting such a project.

Once I had this information, I would be able to send him an estimated cost and a contract. While I have no problem just billing for a few hours of maintenance, for a complete project, I need to have a signed contract and a spelled out payment plan. It is typical to ask for 1/3 up front, a 1/3 after the design has been approved and the final payment once the working site has been approved, but before it gets launched.

Close to a week went by and I hadn’t heard from him, so I sent him a friendly follow-up email asking him about getting the login information so I could correct the current site. The reply I got back is “is the new template ready yet?”

What we have here is a failure to communicate.

My bad, I should have followed up the conversation with an email spelling out my understanding and the action points that we both needed to take.

The cost of designing and building a site is often one of the first questions I get and probably one of the hardest to answer. This is not an evasion. If you went into a Home Depot and asked how much a new kitchen was would you expect a direct answer? No, you know that you would have to pick out the appliances, cabinets, counter top materials, etc. before a price could be generated. So what do I need to be able to write you a quote? Some of that depends on what you need or want for your site, but some of it is pretty basic.

1. How many pages do you want?
2. Do you have the images you need or do you need stock photography or?
3. Do you have the written content ready or do you need a writer?
4. Do you need a contact form? (What happens when someone fills it out, does it go to you email or a database?)
5. Is there ecommerce needed?

As you might imagine, I’ve just gotten started. The discovery stage is a very important collaborative effort and one of the main reasons I encourage my clients to fill out my questionnaire. It may seem like a lot of work and it is, but without your contribution to the project there isn’t much I can do.

The good news is that every new client and project is a fascinating learning process and this faux pas on my part has at least given me good material for an article and a reminder to never assume anything. Now excuse me while I go reply to that email with some detail about what I need to get this project rolling.

For the small business owner the over whelming amount of information on these subjects can be intimidating, so let’s start with a small primer and understand why you should care.

Social Media – This includes things you’ve probably heard of like Facebook and Twitter, but almost anything online that you can contribute to (like YouTube or Wikipedia) counts. Most mere mortals use this kind of thing for personal enjoyment, but the growing thinking is that this is the new way to communicate and sell to your customers. 20 somethings have never used a phone book, they look it up online. And it’s not just 20 somethings anymore, the biggest growing segment on Facebook right now is boomer aged women. If you watch television on demand or like I do on the Internet, then your exposure to commercials is way down. But if I know my local business and connect with them on Linked In or Facebook, then I know what they are up to. Then as the theory goes, the friends of my friends also know what they are up to and the potential for a new customer is born. Small business competes with large on a more even playing field.

SEO – Search Engine Optimization is the holy grail of getting on the first page or 2 of Google. Not when someone searches for your business name, but when a complete stranger searches for the product or service that you provide. There are many ways to make this happen for your site and there are many experts out there that specialize just in this. This is where content has to be king. Pictures and art have a definite place in telling your story, but as far as the search engines are concerned, words are what they understand.

A really beautiful site that has just the right fonts and colors is just the beginning. If the content is not optimized so that people searching for your product or service can find you, then that’s all your site is – pretty. Most people build a site hoping to increase sales in some fashion. If that’s what you want, then your budget for the project needs to be more than just the design and coding. Without careful content planning and a marketing strategy that includes making it personal with social media and making sure that the search engines find you – no one will come.

Am I an expert in all this? Hardly, but I can direct you to some people who are. I’m the one who makes it all work and look good. But I am learning more all the time and trying to participate more regularly myself. (Which by the way is probably my next article – this stuff is time consuming, how do you manage it?) Adding recent and relevant content is something that Google loves too, one of the reasons we’re becoming a world of bloggers. So, I’ve done my bit, so help me out and do yours. Let your friends know about me and post this on Facebook or tweet it on Twitter for me will you? I’ll do the same for you.

If your business doesn