Search Engine Marketing... it's not voodoo

There’s still a lot of confusion out there about what a search engine marketing firm does – and doesn’t do – and I think this confusion is holding businesses back or causing people to waste a lot of money on false expectations.

Put simply, search engine marketing (SEM) is just what it says it is: marketing. It’s not search engine sales, or search engine lead generation, or search engine voodoo…it’s just marketing; bringing your products and services to market.

I can bring your product to someone who is searching for it (that’s the market). I can’t force them buy it, or contact you, or stop them from going to a competitor. We can take measures to influence these decisions, such as improving website usability, but SEM by itself does not do this.

This is why it’s so important to look at your web marketing efforts in a wholistic way: SEM works with site design and usability works with copywriting works with social communication. And it should all work together with your offline marketing efforts, as well.

Still confused? Tell me about it in the comments – I’ll answer any question you might have.

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Photo courtesy of me’nthedogs

Search Engine Marketing Voodoo is a post from: RSA Blog

When it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), many business owners don’t understand how it works or how to use it – so this week we brought in the big guns to help demystify the process.

The SEO Expert

Woessner, SEO Guru

We had the pleasure of bringing in renowned SEO expert (and one-time RSA intern) Stephen Woessner from the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse to host public workshops and meet with our staff.

Stephen kicked off the week with a seminar for small business owners, sponsored by RSA and AAF Black Hills. More than 40 people turned out to learn Stephen’s 15 simple steps to SEO, and we’ve heard some great feedback from attendees who took home a step-by-step plan for optimizing their sites.

For those of you who missed out, you’re probably wondering what big secrets Stephen revealed. We can’t give you all the details, but Stephen’s book is a great resource for business owners who want to take a stab at doing it themselves. Want to try to do SEO yourself? Here’s what you should know.

Learn SEO

You can learn SEO pretty easily, if you take the time and focus on it. Going through a book like Stephen’s will give you a simple step-by-step tutorial that will have you on your way pretty quickly. There are also vast quantities of resources out on the web on the subject, so there’s really no excuse not to learn SEO if you have the time and it needs to be done.

And even if you don’t do SEO yourself, it’s still a valuable subject to understand, especially when it comes to working with someone else to get your website optimized.

Do SEO Yourself

Yes,  it’s possible to  optimize your own website. The question is how long will it take you to learn SEO, and how much time do you actually have to spend on it? If you are a business owner or in-house marketer,  your schedule is probably already packed.

In order to do SEO yourself, Stephen recommends spending about an hour to an hour and a half per page, per month. So if you own or manage a website of 20 pages or more, you’re talking about more than 20 hours per month of work just to keep it optimized.

Is it worth your time?

In order for your site to reach its full potential, it needs to be optimized. But whether you should do SEO yourself or outsource is ultimately dependent on how much time you have to devote to SEO. It’s possible that your time might be better spent focusing on other aspects of your business or marketing, and hiring someone to take care of the SEO work makes sense. Hey, some people change their own oil – and that’s really cool. But there’s nothing wrong with hiring someone else to do it, either!

Snaps to Stephen

In addition to the AAF seminar, Stephen also hosted a similar seminar for the Black Hills Home Builders Association. We were thrilled to see so many local businesses turn up to learn more about SEO, and a big thank you goes out to all who attended.

Stephen also graciously agreed to spend an entire afternoon letting RSA staff pick his brain for new ideas on maximizing SEO and social media for our clients. Needless to say, we learned a few new things too.

For those of you who attended Stephen’s seminars this week, what did you think? Are you ready to do SEO yourself, or would you rather outsource?

You can do SEO yourself is a post from: RSA Blog

...since sliced bread.

Q: I get a lot of clients asking me a number of variations of this question: “What’s the Next Big Thing?”

This is good! They’re interested, they’re anxious – they observed the boom of social media and they want to get in on the ground floor of whatever new craze comes along.

A: So here is the answer: it doesn’t matter. The corollary is that no one really knows for sure. Yes, you can speculate all day long – and people have – but the reality is no one knew Twitter was the Next Big Thing until it was.

Well I can tell you the Next Big Thing is data and communication implants, but it’s nothing more than wild speculation. Also, scary.

Among people who are reluctant to get involved in the web, social media, SEM, and mobile marketing, I get the sense they think they’ve already missed the boat, and so they ignore it. They’re waiting around for the Next Big Thing, instead.

Well yeah, you’re missing the boat. But guess what: Das Boot is a ferry – there’s always another chance to hop on and join the party on the other side. Stop waiting around for the Next Big Thing, because if you’re not already involved in This Big Thing, chances are you’ll completely miss the next one.

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Photo courtesy of cogdog

The Next Big Thing is a post from: RSA Blog

Think of your face.

I wrote previously about my experience at OTA Sessions a few weeks ago, and highlighted some of the topics discussed. It all boils down to changes in the way we do business; whether you like it or not, these changes are occurring.

In this (holy crap it’s long) article I am going to outline what some of the speakers at OTA Sessions said about how to approach this new marketplace–and the new “consumer”–we’re faced with.

Social communication isn’t new

While social media like Twitter and Facebook are new, they are simply vehicles for an activity we’ve always engaged in. Humans are fundamentally social and always have been. We are drawn to each other and impelled to communicate and belong to social groups; something greater than ourselves.

The difference now is the marketplace is shifting to media through which human interaction is enabled–necessary, in fact–rather than muffled or disabled.

Here’s what our speakers had to say about approaching and succeeding in this new communicative, interactive marketplace (again, with commentary not meant to reflect what each speaker said, only my own conclusions):

Mitch Joel:

• Instead of focusing on numbers, focus on WHO your audience is
  The quality of the audience matters more than the quantity–that is, I’d rather speak to one person who is in need of my services than ten who aren’t. Likewise, I’d rather speak to one person who knows ten people who need my services than 100 who know  none.

• Think of new ideas and tech as “along with” not “instead of”
  Your audience is fragmented. Don’t abandon traditional platforms for “new media” – use them together to get the most out of both.

• Google is the gatekeeper: SEO is critical–every page should be the homepage
  Google search results can often be a person’s very first encounter with your brand. If you’re not paying attention to search engines you have zero control over what a person might see in search results, whether it’s a negative review or a competitor. SEO can give you some influence in that arena.

• You can’t create or “get” community, you earn it over time
  Don’t approach social media with the idea that if you provide a platform (like a fan page or discussion board) people will automatically flock to it. Building a community is a long process, and it’s hard work. If you expect to gain the benefits of belonging to a community, you have to put genuine effort into it.

• Negative reviews have been shown to convert better than positive reviews
  Here’s an eye-opener. One of the biggest barriers to entry in “social business” is fear of negativity. But contrary to this natural fear, we’ve seen negativity become an opportunity for people and businesses. Think about how YOU research purchases. Do you read user reviews? Which ones do you read?

Julien Smith:

• “Touch the burner”
  Experiment and explore, expand your knowledge and understanding. Try new things, take risks, learn.

• Hype dies, but building a community through interaction lasts
  A TV spot can generate “consumer” interest, but it dies quickly. The whole point of online is interactivity; human relationships, community. If you’re not using that to your advantage, but simply moving old tactics into the web world, you’re missing the boat.

• Build your community before you need it; when you have need it will be there
  On the other hand, don’t focus on community–this group of people–as a means to your end. YOU are part of THEIR community, too.

• Think about “social capital” and facilitate the exchange–always say “yes”
  The point here is to be helpful. Helpfulness is unlimited currency–don’t hoard it.

• Pattern breaking creates emotional responses; break someone’s pattern and get a reaction
  Don’t exclude yourself from this either. Part of taking risks and experimenting is breaking the patterns you’re locked into. Do something crazy.

Chris Brogan:

• See people for who they are (“If you talked to people the way advertising talked to them, they’d punch you in the face” – Hugh MacLeod)
  Talk to people like a marketer and they’ll tune you out. Talk to them like people, be interesting and interested, and you’ll be starting a real relationship.

• “Be there before the sale”
  Success in this marketplace relies on being helpful to people, not just trying to sell them as much as possible. Be genuine; stop manipulating.

• Three aspects to social media: Listening, Connecting, Publishing
  I would add “measuring” to this, but the point is you have to really listen these days. You have to REALLY connect. And on top of that, you are now a publisher. Think about that.

• Stop asking “what” and start asking “why”
  Asking “why” helps clarify underlying goals and keeps your activity focused on those goals. Ask not which social media platform you should be using, but ask why you want to be active in social media in the first place.

Spike Jones:

• Everyone wants to jump in and start executing. Where’s the goal? Where’s the strategy?
  With respect to social media this is true. it does little good to be active in this space without knowing why you’re doing it. If you don’t have a goal, you can’t succeed.

• “Social media” is just another tool; the difference is in your approach
  We’re emerging from a half-century of some pretty bad marketing, in general. Yet good marketing hasn’t changed. These new medial let us be good marketers again in this urbanized, global marketplace.

• Campaigns vs Movements
  Similar to Julien Smith’s “hype vs community,” this distinction is rooted in the meeting of different marketing paradigms. Where campaigns are me-focused, movements are people-focused. Campaigns are about a product, movements about a passion. Movements have a high barrier to entry (only passionate people need apply), have inspirational leadership, empower people, share ownership, and elevate advocates. This is community building.

Tim Brunelle:

• Burn the ships
  Tim related the story of Cortez and conquest of Mexico, during which Cortez burned (actually scuttled, apparently) his ships to preempt any retreat, and likened this to the way we should approach this new marketplace: there is no retreating, no going back to the way it was before.

• Experiment all the time
  You don’t innovate by doing the same thing over and over without adding anything new.

• Hybridize: seek multi-dimensional people
  I found this incredibly interesting. As a “hybrid” myself, I can see the merits both from the personal and professional/business perspective. But are we looking at the death of the specialist? Is that a good thing?

• Curate content: highlight content relevant to brand and encourage/empower those advocates
  The mass of information that exists online – and the constant deluge of new info – dictates we have some sort of filter in place to sort the wheat from the chaff. “Content Curation” is going to be the Next Big Thing.

Jonathan Harris:

Not to leave Jonathan out, but I just can’t seem to put what he had to say into bullet points. Check out his interview at OTA Sessions, or just explore some of his projects.

Neat little package?

The last century has seen us erect pillars of mass marketing that cut off the speaker from the audience and elevated the message above all (classical rhetoric, anyone?), effectively disabling communication and enabling the stuffy, inhuman “message/consumer” mentality we have. The next 10 years (less?) will see those pillars crumble into dust. The “consumer” is now a person, thinking and acting, able to see others for what they are rather than what they say they are. We’re getting back to real marketing, something fueled by social communication and personal interaction.

So change your thinking. Take risks. Touch the burner. And if you’re still unsure about all this new media stuff, look toward the beach: the ships are burning, friends. You’re stuck here whether you like it or not.

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Image courtesy of Hugh MacLeod

The New Marketplace (Part 2) is a post from: RSA Blog

Last week I wrote about OTA Sessions, which I attended the week before, and gave some overall thoughts about the experience. For the next couple of posts I will attempt to dive a little deeper and find out what it all means for you and I.

Most of the ideas discussed by the event speakers can be boiled down to one thing: changes. Changes in the marketplace and marketing; changes in the “consumer,” and the “user”; changes in the way we interact as people, and changes in the way we do business because of it; changes in our thinking and our actual physiology.

So how exactly has the marketplace changed? Here’s what some of our speakers had to say about the current state of things, with a little commentary thrown in:

Mich Joel:

• 40% of TV watchers are also… sleeping
  So on top of people watching TV shows online and using DVR, 40% of people actually “watching” a TV aren’t even seeing your ads. Because they’re sleeping. Hey, not to dismiss TV spots altogether, but we can all see that people’s habits concerning home entertainment are changing, right? Other studies show people also surf the internet while watching TV, and for that matter I watch ALL my TV on the internet.

• There are 1.8B people online
  That’s about 20% of the world population with close to 300 million in North America. Most of the rest are in Asia and Europe, predictably, but I’m sure we can agree this internet thing isn’t a fad (does anyone still think this?). Short of global catastrophe, the internet isn’t going anywhere.

• 81% of holiday shoppers read product user reviews online
  People aren’t looking to you to find out about your products anymore, they’re looking to each other. While there is still some debate about whether people really trust each other that much, it’s pretty clear they trust advertising less than word-of-mouth. Have you seen any online product and service reviews about YOU?

• 20% of DAILY searches on Google have never been entered before
  This one boggles the mind. A full fifth of searches entered every day are unique?! Well I suppose it doesn’t help that probably half of all searches are for *ahem* adult content. You’re right, probably more than that.

• Online, WE create our own user experience
  By choosing and sometimes even creating the content viewed, people are experiencing something custom-tailored for them. This isn’t sitting on the couch staring numbly at the screen. It’s interactive and user-controlled. You may not be burning any more calories than watching TV, but at least your mind is engaged. So does this more interactive, engaging activity make people pay closer attention to ads, or ignore them more easily?

• Brand control hasn’t shifted, but people who experience your brand now enjoy an amplified voice
  While you still control your brand, to a degree, people now have a voice. They can be heard all over the web, and as the 3rd bullet points out, they listen to each other. Collectively, they can make or break your brand. And don’t forget Google’s influence on the brand experience; have you checked the search results for your particular product or service lately?

Chris Brogan:

• We don’t have to wait for “they” anymore. WE are “they”
  Chris related an anecdote (this is all paraphrased) about a woman who commented on one of his fundraising efforts saying she wished “they” would do such fundraising in her locale. He responded, “hey congratulations: YOU are they. Sign up here, put the widget on your website and start raising money.” The point is there are a lot of things available to the individual and small business that we’ve never had access to before. The internet helps to level the field.

• We can now listen at the point of need, and directly fulfill that need
  There are plenty of “listening” tools out there to help you monitor social media, blogs, forums and the rest of the web to find people in need of your particular product or service. You now have a DIRECT line to the customer.

• “Community Manager” is one of the most frequently filled position right now on Monster.com
  This is one of those things you can take or leave, but I think it’s very interesting some of the new positions that are arising from these changes we’re seeing. Community manager? I thought they only existed in online gaming.

Spike Jones:

• 90% of word-of-mouth happens offline
  For all our technology we still do most of our communicating in person. I’m not sure if “offline” includes the telephone, but either way 90% of our talk about products and services happens without the use of the internet. Don’t misunderstand it, though: much of the subject matter we talk about is found online–and some is available only online, in fact–but actual discussion of that happen mostly offline. (I’ll talk more about what Spike Jones had to say in the next post.)

Conclusions?

There’s a lot to consider there. This really is a new marketplace, but we’re still in the middle of that shift.

We’ve heard people announce the death of print and traditional advertising, and plenty more have denied it. I don’t think this debate is relevant. From the very first printing press, this technology has been constantly changing. One thing has stayed constant from the very beginning: human interaction. In fact, if you really think about it, social networking is far older than mass media.

We should be able to agree that humans have always been fundamentally social. We are drawn to each other and impelled to communicate and belong to social groups; something greater than ourselves.

The difference now is the marketplace is shifting to media through which human interaction is enabled—necessary, in fact—rather than muffled or disabled.

I’ve said it before: whether you like it or not, your business already has a presence in this marketplace. Even if you don’t have a website yet, there are still business directories, review websites, and conversations in social media that may involve your brand. Do you know what they’re saying?

Next post I’ll get into what the speakers at the OTA Sessions had to say about adapting to enter and succeed in this new marketplace. You may want to subscribe to get future posts automatically in your feed reader or e-mail.

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Photo courtesy of Seattle Municipal Archives

A New Marketplace is a post from: RSA Blog

How can we solve this?

Using the internet is now mainstream; a way of life for the great many people who buy products and services online. In light of this, you might think more businesses would have a better online presence. So why don’t they?

Low budget = cheap website?

In my experience the top reason is budget. Businesses, usually those on the smaller side, tend to have limited financial resources to devote to web marketing. Now no one wants to settle on a poorly designed website, but some do because they think it’s all they can afford. Unfortunately a poorly designed website can often seem shady or unreliable to potential customers-which sort of defeats the purpose of a website: to draw customers in.

So enters the do-it-yourself website template. This kind of thing sounds good, in theory: it’s fast, cheap, and requires no special skills in web design, content development, information architecture, search engine optimization, or the rest of that “stuff.” As a business owner, you can’t lose, right?

With a decade of experience developing websites across many industries, I’ve seen the effects of both good and bad design. So I can say with confidence that your website, if done incorrectly, will most likely fail to achieve your goals, leaving you with a sense that websites don’t work.

The “template” website

I’ve noticed a recent push by these template companies to sell their product as a quick and easy website solution, but they’re selling you an incomplete package. Don’t get me wrong-these types of services can be useful, but only in the hands of a professional development team. That’s right, team. Web development is much more than just placing a Word document into an eye-popping web interface, and so it takes more than one person to do it well.

Web development takes the business as a package and gives it an online presence, so that everything your business is and does is represented as a whole. You could say it’s your “brick and mortar” for the web.

Website templates completely skip all strategic planning steps, and many feature poor navigation and content structure. Some may even look like a competing business. This can hurt your brand in three ways:

1. It forces you to modify your brand to fit a set “look” rather than designing that “look” to fit your brand
2. It means less thought goes into your site structure and content development, affecting user-friendliness
3. You have far less chance against competition, especially in search engine results

A better way?

If cost is the main issue when building a website, spreading that development cost out over a longer period of time may be a better option than a one time “cheap” solution. Let’s put it this way: would you go to the car dealership and ask to see the best Cadillac on the lot and only bring enough cash to buy a Yugo? Maybe you would, but you certainly wouldn’t be driving the Caddy off the lot.

Instead, maybe you’d purchase the base model Caddy knowing that you could upgrade the vehicle over time. The analogy ends here, though, because we all know cars don’t work that way.

But websites absolutely work that way, and this way of developing your website can  be more successful and  save you a costly redesign in the future.

Necessity of strategy

If the goal of your website is to make some kind of conversion, whether it’s product sales, subscriptions, downloads, etc., a strategy is essential. But the implementation of that strategy is an ongoing effort that does not end, and should never be thought of as a one-time purchase.

So even if a template purchase is your decision, having a good game plan for that website is still very important. Get a consultation with a reputable development company before executing any major decision, or you may end up missing the boat.

Have you ever gone the “cheap” route? How did it work out?

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Photos courtesy of ricardodiaz (left) and irinaslutsky (right)

Cheap Web Design, Step Right Up! is a post from: RSA Blog

Who cares what the glass looks like...is the beer any good?

Who cares how a website looks if it doesn’t work?

Well, the owner of the site, usually. Many of the websites I’ve built over the years have been for clients who care very much how their websites look, and often make decisions to enhance that aesthetic quality at the expense of usability (the ease with which a person uses the website).

Of course the “look” of a site is important. A website needs to draw and engage the eye quickly, or at the very least, not make the visitor puke on their keyboard (here, this might help you with that).

But drawing the eye is only part of the equation. Readers familiar with this subject might here expect me to talk about “function”, and how it needs to take precedence over “form.” In other words, don’t sacrifice usability for flashy eye-candy. But we all understand that, don’t we? I don’t need to beat this dead horse, because look, here’s a perfectly good, live horse that’s ripe for a beating:

Form follows Function follows Content

What’s usually left out of the puzzle is content. Yet content is the most important piece. It’s what the internet is about; it’s what you visit websites for. It’s what you came here for. You’re reading content right now.

Would it make a difference to you if this site was ugly (go ahead, call the site ugly–Google knows where you live), so long as you were still interested in this article?

Further (let’s assume you came via direct link), would it have mattered to you if, when you came here to read this article, the navigation was broken, the images didn’t show up, or the styles or scripts didn’t operate quite right? Would you still have read the article? I think so, provided you were interested enough. And interest in content is only effected by lack of good function or form to the degree that lacking hinders your ability to view the content.

Form follows function follows content. Content comes first; it’s what we build the website around. As a designer, it’s always better for me to know the content before beginning design work. It allows me to design a better website, something that fits the content in look, layout, and function, and to do it much more efficiently.

The benefit to you, the business owner, is a better website all around.

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Photo courtesy of stevendepolo

Is The Look Of A Website Most Important? is a post from: RSA Blog

Blogging is a waste of time?

Seriously, why bother? Isn’t this kind of a waste of time? It’s not like blogs really matter – it’s just throwaway content, after all. What really matters is the website.

False.

Look, the web is about two things: content and search. Content because that’s what you’ve come for, and search because that’s how you find the content. Nothing else matters.

In light of this, a blog can be the most important tool you employ for two reasons:

1. A blog is all about content. But you have to make that content matter. It needs to be quality content; relevant content. Guess who loves quality content? That’s right: your customers and the search engine they used to find you. This content is useful to them; it helps them make decisions, helps solve their problem. It gives them a reason and a method to engage you.

2. Blogs are inherently search-engine optimized. They make you much more findable, which can drive a lot of traffic to your website. But SEO needs to be strategic. You have to pay attention to your audience and the keywords they use to make this work well (no, using random keywords based on intuition is not optimization – that’s called blind guesswork; fumbling in the dark).

Your website is important, to be sure. It is the hub around which all your online activity orbits (and often the blog *is* the website). But a blog can be an “orbital” with one hell of a gravity well, attracting searchers to your content and your website,  so don’t write it off too quickly.

Alright, you’ve got my opinion on it. What do you think? Are blogs just a place to toss extra content that doesn’t matter? Why bother?

Why Blog? is a post from: RSA Blog

She's right...

What is “good” web design? Many people don’t understand what makes websites good or bad, and some are even surprised to learn that effective web design takes time, and isn’t cheap. Let me explain…

When you look at a website, you’re looking at an end product. Like a car, there’s really no indication of what went into the creation of the product. We can break it down into its individual parts – wheels, pistons, frame, gears – but we don’t know *why* they, specifically, were used in its construction, or how to acquire and assemble the right types of parts for another car.

Who decides what’s good?

Most of us probably don’t understand how cars are designed, and have only a basic understanding of how they work. But we do know how to use them. We call them “sweet” or “clunker,” seeing distinctions in quality based on various attributes, such as age, safety, power, or utility.

Let’s dwell on that for a second. The designers and engineers who build these complex machines understand them a gazillion times better than you or I, and yet *we* are the arbiters of automotive quality? How does that work?

It’s simple, really. Cars are designed to solve our traveling problems. Need to pull cargo in hilly terrain? Alright, here’s a truck with more power…how’d we do?

“I need cargo space, but also passenger room.” Here’s your gas-guzzler.

“I need a place to put my drink while on long trips.” Okay: this model has 200 cup holders.

“I need an economical car.” Here’s a chair on wheels.

And we get to be the judge as to how well they’ve accomplished those goals. SUV? Wildly popular. Chair on wheels? Not so much.

So these researchers, designers, engineers and others all get together and attempt to solve our problems. They each have a role in the design and construction of our cars, and, together with all the complex parts and mechanisms in the machine, make for a price that can be pretty shocking.

After all, it’s just this little car. Like…a frame on wheels, right? With lights. And gears. Computers. An engine. Hoses and fluids and wires. Fabric and safety belts and airbags and safety glass and…yeah, that sounds expensive now.

You know what? I bet many of us could walk into a big automotive company office and tell those designers a thing or two about building cars. They’re made for *us*, after all. “Here’s what I want…”

But we’re not really telling them how to design cars, are we. We’re just telling them what problem we want them to solve. In the end we trust them to solve these problems in the most effective way, all variables taken into account, because we just don’t know how to design or build cars.

So now that we’ve completely forgotten the point of this article, let’s get back to web design.

Web design is…

The process of solving a business problem, communicating a message, and facilitating user action on the web. That’s my working definition. By all means, critique it in the comments – I’d love to get it nailed down.

1. Solving a business problem.
Website design – even print graphic design – is not art. As a designer, I’m not creating a work of art. The graphical and architectural decisions I make throughout the process are not primarily based on my own preferences – I have reasons for each choice I’ve made.

This is because I am creating a solution to a business problem. However one might want to articulate that problem, it usually can be constructed as an objective end, “Generate more foot traffic,” or, “Increase non-local sales,” or, “Take over the world.” Whatever the objective, all of my efforts as a designer revolve around it and attempt to fulfill it. This takes research and planning, information organization, writing, discussion, graphics work and programming.

The point here is that web design isn’t like creating art. Designers do have to think about the aesthetic form of the design, but within the context of business goals and the rules that go along with a communicated message.

2. Communicating a message.
With every website, something specific needs to be communicated, both visually and through the copy. Call it the brand or the marketing message – either way for this message to be communicated successfully, graphic and structural decisions must be subordinate to it. Does this color help convey the message? Does it fit the brand? Is it simply a preference? In web design, preferences must die.

3. Facilitating user action.
If there’s a clear goal for a website, the website user or “visitor” is involved on some level. You want them to read something, click something, subscribe, purchase, or interact in some other way. The design of the website must facilitate and not hinder whatever action you want the user to take.

All design decisions must be subordinate to usability. If a website looks great but is slow and clunky, or isn’t easy to figure out, it is not an effective solution to your business problem. Yet if it’s incredibly usable but has no visual appeal, you might also say it’s less effective than it could be. So there is a balance to be found, but when it comes down to either aesthetics or usability, usability must win. If your visitors don’t take the action you want them to take, you’ve failed.

Clear as mud?

I know there is confusion out there, and I hope this helps somehow. Creating a website is not just painting a pretty picture or moving some colored boxes around on the screen. It is an attempt to construct the most effective solution to meet a business goal, and sometimes this can be a lofty endeavor. There are so many things to consider beyond just the “look” of the site: the user experience, structure of information, findability, search engines, and more. It’s no wonder this stuff takes time.

But we’re not talking about a piece of wall art, here. This is a business investment, the core of your company’s web presence – a web used by over 1.5 billion people worldwide.

Don’t you think that’s something to take seriously?

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Photo credit: lmnop88a

Understanding Website Design is a post from: RSA Blog

As a business owner or marketer, you’re always taking steps to stay ahead of the competition in a marketplace that’s always changing. The web is no different; it’s always changing as well.

Businesses online must keep up with the constant changes in web technology, trends, and techniques, or be left far behind very quickly.

As for your website, you need to take dozens of constantly-changing elements into account that will, at some point, affect the value of your web presence and the viability of your business online. Here are nine.

1. A “brochure-style” website is good enough.

This hasn’t been true for almost a decade. Competition on the web is stiff, and you’ll have a hard time maintaining a successful website if it’s a purely static, online “brochure.”

Instead, you should be constantly updating your content to reflect changes in your business or organization, your market, technology, and the needs or desires of your customers and website users.

Further, your content should be configured or “optimized” to cater to your specific market. We call this search engine optimization (SEO).

2. Websites should contain as much information as possible.

While placing every bit of content you have on your website may seem logical, it can actually hinder the user experience and reduce conversions. If you have a very well-designed website, you may not have a problem offering a lot of content. But this sort of design takes not only good visual communication skills (read: graphic design, information architecture), but also a well-thought-out content strategy.

Anything less and you run the risk of publishing a website that’s bloated, slow, overwhelming to the user, or ineffective for search.

3. The “home” page is the entry page.

This may have been true at some point, but it isn’t anymore. Most website traffic comes from search engines, and any given search can bring up any page of your website – not just the homepage. So a visitor can come to your website through almost any page.

But realize this is a good thing! It helps you better understand your website traffic; who is entering your website, where did they enter, and why. Then you can better structure your website and content to better serve these visitors.

4. “Intro” animations or “splash” pages are awesome.

With sincerest apologies to anyone I ever built a splash screen for: no, they are not awesome. They are clumsy and superfluous, and as a visitor to your website I can assure you they do not add anything positive to my experience of your content, but simply get in the way.

5. The focus of my website is me and my stuff.

Wrong. The focus of your website is the visitor, and how they experience it. Does that seem backwards to you? It shouldn’t.

This shift in focus has been a long time coming. It’s changed the way we do almost everything on the web, whether content structure, navigation layout, page layout, graphic design – it’s even changed the way we analyze web statistics.

So keep this in mind when thinking about your website: it’s all about the user.

6. “Click here to see more!”

Again, we’re more than a decade into this era – do we really need to tell people to click? I mean, assuming you’ve provided some form of differentiation for links (i.e. underlined, blue, bold), there isn’t really a reason to tell people they have to click it.

There are, however, several reasons not to, the most important being its affect on accessibility and SEO.

7. Welcome to our website!

When the web was young, each new person or organization to join up and publish content was overflowing with excitement. With all the ecstatic jubilation of a 4-year-old who’s just received a new playhouse, they proclaimed: “Welcome to our homepage!”

Alright, well…it’s a little played out, and a lot unnecessary. A better tactic would be to analyze what your current visitors find most important on your website, and highlight that in place of a welcome message.

8. “The Fold”

I remember 640 by 480 pixels. You know, the maximum screen resolution on those tiny computer displays we all had at the dawn of the Internet. Boy, those are long gone now aren’t they?

Well “The Fold” isn’t quite extinct, but it certainly isn’t as important a consideration as it was.

“The Fold,” by the way, is a metaphor drawn from newsprint where content of supreme importance was placed on the top half of the front page, “above the fold,” so as to be immediately visible to readers or passers-by. Likewise content of great importance should be placed “above the fold” on the website – that is, above the bottom of the browser window.

The problem is we have so many different screen sizes now, it’s difficult to identify exactly where the “fold” is. Further, we’re over a decade into the “web” era – I think most of us are accustomed to a bit of scrolling.

9. Because I can!

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Yes, you can add a hit counter to your site. Yes you can make text blink, or add scrolling marquee, or animated GIFs and clipart. But think for a second: are you adding it just because you like it or think it’s “cool”?

What about your target audience (see number 5)? Is their experience improved or made worse by the addition of these things?

Look, would you base a marketing campaign decision involving TV/radio/print (read: $$$$) on something as shallow as “because I like it”? No? Then why would you do it online? This is all part of your marketing effort, so your decisions should be based on strategic goals and research.

You do have strategic goals for your website, don’t you?

So there’s only nine out of dozens; clearly there are a lot more. But if you think I missed any big ones, let me know in the comments. I’d love to hear what others think about this topic.

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Photo credit: gothopotam

Keeping Up With a Changing Web is a post from: RSA Blog