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Your Website Content: Answering the 6 Most Important Questions

Kishau Rogers — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:23:15 +0000

Writing your content without the assistance of a copywriter can be a challenge for business owners that:

Are not comfortable with writing.
Do not enjoy writing.
Do not have the time to document their ideas and thoughts.

As they say “content is king”. Compelling content is the key to engaging your website visitors, generating leads and making the sale. A website visitor will remain on your site an average of 10 seconds. This is not a lot of time to introduce yourself and your business.

TIP: Always consider the questions that your potential customers will need to answer before making a decision to purchase.

The following exercise may be helpful in writing an effective introduction for yourself and your business. Start with your call to action statement, and then add the supporting details by asking 6 basic questions: What? Who? How? Where? When? Why?

WHAT

What can you do for me?
What are your prices (if applicable)?
What additional information can you give me about ?
What makes you so special?

WHO

Who are you?
Who have you worked with previously?

HOW

How do I make a payment?
How do I sign-up for ?
How do I contact you?

WHERE

Where are you/your offices located?
Where can I obtain more details?

WHEN

When are you available/open?
When is a good time to call?

WHY

Why should I purchase from you?
Why do I need this service?
Why are you in business?

Call to Action: A statement that describes the action you want your visitors to take. Should be concise and should compel your visitors to do something (subscribe, donate, call, buy, contact).

Write your first draft using natural language. Then, plan to correct spelling and grammatical errors and edit the language before publishing the text on your website. Remember that you have less than 10 seconds to grab the readers’ attention and compel them to learn more.

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Kishau Rogers

Kishau Rogers is the President and Founder of Websmith Group, a web application development company. Her mission is to connect businesses with the information and technologies necessary to meet their goals EFFECTIVELY. Kishau Rogers holds a Computer Science Degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and has over sixteen years of experience, which includes web, application and database development. Kishau also speaks, blogs, and writes articles to educate organizations and entrepreneurs on resources and best practices for ensuring effective, dynamic and innovation web solutions.

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Creating a Successful Small Business Website: The Final Signoff (Part 8 of 9)

Kishau Rogers — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:11:58 +0000

The Signoff – When is Done Done

It is Done!

NOTE: This the eighth segment of a 9-part series on how to create a successful small business website. If you’re planning to create a new small business website or enhance an existing website, this series will help you improve your chances for success. Step 8 involves approving the final product for implementation.

During the testing phase, you should have accomplished the following:

Resolved all glitches and technical issues that prevent your visitors from using the site as ‘intended’.
Updated the website to resolve any user interface (layout, functionality) issues that are critical to your site’s success. For example, if during the testing phase, you learn that the most of your test users had a difficult time finding or using your website navigation area, you should definitely resolve this issue before ‘going live.’ These are the issues that cause your visitors to leave the site (due to confusion, error or annoyance).
Developed a listing of potential future enhancements. You are certain to receive feedback on features that are not included in this initial implementation. Create a “wish list” containing these items and plan to revisit them when you begin to plan for your next website enhancement.

Now that you’ve completed the testing phase and received valuable feedback from your test group, it is time to signoff on the project and schedule the launch date. The signoff process will vary depending on your website team or developer. However, you should always state in writing that you approve of the final product and schedule the actual date that you would like to “go live”.

NOTE: “Go live” is basically a phrase to state that you’re ready to launch the website and make it available for public viewing.

Resist the urge to launch the site if there are “loose ends” or other items to be completed. “Loose ends” should either be completed during the development and testing phases or considered for the next phase.

It is done. And it is not perfect. Sounds weird, but it’s true. If you’re having trouble checking the completion box because of the pesky wish list of cool & suggested features, you will be happy to learn that most successful ventures are works in progress. And if you’ve performed the following tasks, you’re ahead of the curve and on the path to success:

Documented realistic goals & objectives for this phase of the project. This will help you target your marketing efforts more effectively.
Resolved any technical glitches or issues that prevent an effective user experience. You want to maintain a high level of quality.
If you have stayed within or close to the original scope of your project, you should be within your budget and near your expected deadline. This is important to ensuring that you’re not borrowing resources that could be used during the next enhancement phase.

Once you’ve issued the final signoff, you have stated that the project is complete. The next step is measuring the outcome of your project. Congratulations! It is done.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Subscribers will receive a FREE eBook containing extended versions of Steps 1 – 9, as well as accompanying worksheets for managing your project. If you would like to receive the FREE ebook, join the Websmith Group Facebook Page or subscribe to our eNewsletter.

Kishau Rogers

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Creating a Successful Small Business Website: Testing the Final Product (Part 7 of 9)

Kishau Rogers — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 18:02:45 +0000

Your Web Project: Testing & Customer Feedback

TESTING & CUSTOMER FEEDBACK

NOTE: This the seventh segment of a 9-part series on how to create a successful small business website. If you’re planning to create a new small business website or enhance an existing website, this series will help you improve your chances for success. Step 7 involves testing your final product.

Testing is an important phase for technology projects. The testing phase ensures that everything is working “as expected” and as identified in your project requirements. The technical team responsible for developing (coding) your website will test their code and interfaces for glitches and other issues. However, you should also perform some testing of your own. Be sure to carve out enough time to review the work completely. Revisit your requirements document to ensure that all requirements were met.

Since the visitor experience is the most important, you should also enlist a small group of people to review the site. Ideally you would include a few current & past customers. During Step 1 (Do Your Homework), it was recommended that you “survey your current and past customers regarding the features that they feel are most important to include on your future website or similar websites in your industry”. If you performed this step, you should enlist the same group to review the final product. Be sure to provide your test group with a brief document describing the site, as well as descriptions of any features and enhancements. This will give them some perspective regarding your intended final product. You will want to ask questions regarding:

Their overall experience using the site (layout, look & feel, functionality).
If they experienced any technical issues or glitches while accessing the site.
Their feedback on each new feature/enhancement.
Their recommendations for future enhancements.
If they feel that the new site or new site enhancement is an improvement and if it increases their ability to do business with you.

Compile your feedback and the feedback of your test group and submit it to your website team/developer. For this phase of your project, you will want your technical team to focus on feedback received on user experience (question #1) and technical glitches experienced while testing (question #2). Issues related to questions #4 – 5 are for your records. You should use this information to plan the next phase of your project. If your test group requests future enhancements, don’t make the mistake in trying to implement the enhancements at this time unless you’re willing to utilize additional resources and time to implement the new features. If you decide that new features identified during your testing phase are important and should be implemented before you “go live”, meet with your website team to develop a new budget and timeline for implementing the new items (See Preventing Website Project Headaches & Frustrations).

Kishau Rogers

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Creating a Successful Small Business Website: Managing Your Progress (Part 6 of 9)

Kishau Rogers — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 17:56:55 +0000

Managing Your Progress

NOTE: This the sixth segment of a 9-part series on how to create a successful small business website. If you’re planning to create a new small business website or enhance an existing website, this series will help you improve your chances for success. Step 6 involves managing your progress.

MANAGING YOUR PROGRESS

Once you have documented your website development goals, established the resources needed to perform the work and decided on a deadline, you are ready to start your project. Here are a few tips for ensuring that your project is progressing smoothly:

Identify milestones for your project. Your project milestones should represent the completion of a task, event or set of activities. You should work with your project team to determine the most appropriate milestones for your web development project.

Here is an example of potential project milestones using the sample project from Step 5:

Project Goals: Create a new company website to provide information about the company and classes available. Allow customers to contact the company via email, web form, etc. Advertise promotional products/special sessions. Allow customers to subscribe to company newsletter

Milestone Description

1 Finalize Website Content.

2 Requirements Gathering – Gather/Identify design and user interface preferences.

3 Approve/Finalize website design/layout

4 Discuss and approve the eNewsletter provider/vendor and signup for the appropriate package(s).

5 Development/Design Phase – Complete programming all web files and scripts.

6 Review and Testing – Complete the review & testing of the final product.

7 Website Implementation – Go live! Implement/Copy the new/updated website files to the appropriate web servers.

Define Projected Completion Dates for each Milestone – For each milestone, work with your website team to identify a projected completion date. It is important that the individuals involved with each phase of the project have input in determining the projected completion dates. If you determine the dates without consulting your team, you may find that you have over or underestimated the level of effort required to complete the tasks. Also, if you are outsourcing the work, you want to find out if your team is dedicated to your project or juggling other projects as well. Your team members should be able to articulate the level of effort and project completion dates. Be sure to articulate your overall deadline for completing the project. You will want to ensure that your timeline allows you to complete the project AHEAD of schedule.
Milestone Kick Off Meeting – Schedule a meeting with the appropriate members of your team to kick off each phase. During this meeting, you want to ensure that the team members have the information that they need to start that phase of the project. For example, if you’re approaching the development phase, you want to ensure that you’ve approved the design and provided all of the necessary content before that work begins. There are certainly instances where project phases can run in parallel, but in general you want to ensure that you’ve completed all of the preliminary work prior to moving on to the next phase. You can build inefficiencies into your project by skipping steps. If you step the website finalization phase and move on to the development phase, you may find that you’ve added items to your content that requires that the design be modified or revisited entirely. This adds to your timeline and could potentially increase your final website cost. (See Reducing Your Website Project Costs and Headaches)
Milestone Check In – Schedule a quick follow-up with the appropriate members of your team shortly before each milestone’s projected completed date. This follow-up can be made via email or a quick phone call. The purpose of the follow-up is to determine if the milestone was completed on schedule. If the activity is behind schedule, you will want to modify your timeline for each of the subsequent tasks. You could certainly attempt to keep the subsequent phases scheduled as planned, but this tactic is generally a failed effort … that is unless you enlist additional resources (people, time) to ensure that you can stick to the original schedule.

Kishau Rogers

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10 Basic Components that Every Small Business Website Needs

Kishau Rogers — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 16:20:51 +0000

10 Required Website Components

Be sure that you have the basics covered prior to launching a new web site or implementing new features to your website. Below are 10 basic components that every business website should have. This will ensure that your website has a solid foundation to build upon.

1. Page Titles

Every page on your website should include a title that describes the content on that page. This is important for search engine optimization, as one of the items that search engines considers when ranking your page is the page title. Also, having descriptive page titles will increase usability. Your visitors may have more than one web page open or decide to bookmark your page, therefore you want to ensure that your page title accurately reflects the content of the page.

2. Meta Keywords

Your web pages should include a “meta keyword” area that provides a listing of keywords that accurately describe of the content on the page. TIP: Select the keywords that you want the web page to rank for in search engine results. Although several of the top search engines are increasingly placing less importance on this area, there are still some secondary search engines that will consider your keyword listing when determining your search engine placement. The meta keywords statement is placed in the header area of your website. If you are working with a designer or webmaster, speak with them about updating this area.

3. Meta Description

Your web pages should include a “meta description” area that provides search engines with an accurate description of the content on the page. Ensure that the meta description tags are descriptive, brief and contain your relative keywords. Some search engines will use the meta description tag to describe your site when it appears in search engine results.

4. Professional Designed Web Pages

Reputable small business websites have attractive, well designed and well functioning user interfaces. Compare your website to the top websites of competing companies in your industry. If you do not feel that your website is professional or portrays an accurate representation of your brand, you should consider a redesign. Businesses with poorly designed or ineffective websites are often judged as unprofessional or untrustworthy. A small business website does not need to be overly designed or display all of the latest, hot new technologies, but you should ensure that your website does not convey an unprofessional image. Also, remember that professional designed pages should be properly coded (validated) and not include errors or other issues that will prevent the page from displaying properly and functioning as intended.

5. Contact Form

A contact link should be on every page of your website. You want to ensure that your visitors can contact you easily with their questions or comments. Keep the form simple. You will want to allow space for the visitor to input their feedback or question and you will also need a method for responding to them (their email address). If you include too many fields on the contact form, you may discourage the visitor from connecting with you. Only gather the information that you need to effectively answer their question or respond to their feedback.

6. Navigation

Is your website navigation effective? Your visitors should be able to quickly find the information they need without effort. When reviewing your navigation, ensure that the link titles are obvious. Try not to be too creative with the website navigation. The link titles used should reflect the terms that your customers use when describing your product or service.

RESOURCE: Revisiting your Website Navigation

7. Website Analytics

You should have access to your website statistics. I recommend that every small business website owner install Google Analytics on their website pages. The Google Analytics application provides detailed statistics on your website traffic. You will need this information as you monitor your website marketing efforts. Also, website analytics can reveal very helpful information about what’s working and (most importantly) what’s not working for people that visit your site.

RESOURCE: Sign-up for Google Analytics www.google.com

8. Call to Action

The average new website visitor remains on a site for less than 10 seconds. If you main objective is to gain new subscribers, sell more widgets or register more event attendees, allocate a prominent area on your website to display your “call to action”. This is the area where you are asking your visitors to “do something”. Be sure to indicate the benefit of taking this action; don’t simply demand that they “buy now”, “subscribe now” or “attend this event”. Indicate a few brief benefits to taking the action and also provide a link to provide more detail about the product, service or event.

9. Customer Focused Content

Ensure that you are providing the information that your customers want and need in a clear and concise manner. The average new website visitor remains on a site for less than 10 seconds. You don’t have much time to convince visitors to buy a product or service, subscribe to a newsletter or attend an event. Visitors that are new to your site should be able to determine who you are and what’s service/product or information you’re providing in less than 10 seconds. If the navigation area is effective, they should be able to access all of the supporting information that they will need to make a decision on whether to continue a business relationship with you and your company.

RESOURCE: Read 5 Critical Questions Your Website Should Answer in 5 seconds or less

10. A method for staying connected

If you have a business website, you will need a method for staying connected to people that want to be notified of product/service specials, new company news, upcoming events and other changes relevant to your business. There are many methods for building a listing of people that want to stay informed about your business. Two popular options are RSS feeds and email newsletters. You can use either tool to build a listing of customers and potential customers that want to learn more about your service. This strategy also increases your repeat visitor rate, as you will have an opportunity to call previous visitors back to your website. Be sure to inform your visitors regarding how often they can expect to hear from you (ex: monthly, daily, weekly, or as new information comes in). Also be sure to explicitly indicate if you have any plans to redistribute their email addresses for other purposes or to other companies (NOT recommended).

RESOURCES: Learn more about RSS and eNewsletters

Read What is RSS?
Popular eNewsletter Providers: Constant Contact, iContact, aWeber

NEXT:

There will be a follow-up resource(s) provided to assist you in evaluating your website for each of the 10 basic components. Please subscribe if you wish to receive an automated notification when new resources are posted (See below for subscription options).

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Kishau Rogers

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Creating a Successful Small Business Website: Identifying Your Resources (Part 5 of 9)

Kishau Rogers — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 17:33:17 +0000

Identifying Your Website Resources

NOTE: This the fifth segment of a 9-part series on how to create a successful small business website. If you’re planning to create a new small business website or enhance an existing website, this series will help you improve your chances for success. In step 1, we covered the research and discovery phase. Step 2 involved focusing and prioritizing your website development tasks. Step 3 involves identifying your goals for your website. Step 4 involves identifying your barriers. Step 5 covers identifying the resources that you will need to complete your project.

IDENTIFY YOUR RESOURCES

Once you’ve defined and prioritized the goals for your website project (step 2), you will need to decide if your project should be covered in phases.

1. What is your budget?

Once you’ve stated your project focus, identified your goals and strategies for overcoming your barriers, you will need to identify the resources that will help you complete your project. You will first need to determine your project budget. Unless money is no object, all website projects need a budget. The project budget is the TOTAL amount that you’re willing (and able) to spend to complete the work within your desired timeframe.

2. Who‘s on your web development team?

You should determine if you have the resources in-house or if you will need to outsource some of all of the project work. Draft a listing of people and organizations that can assist with your project. You may start by asking for recommendations from other people in your network.

3. What’s your deadline?

As a small business owner, tackling a large website development project with limited time and resources will often create much frustration as you wait for ‘everything to be finished’. As you define your deadline, be sure to determine why you’ve chosen your selected deadline. Is your deadline based on a trade show or industry event (i.e.: you’d like to have a website enhancement completed before the event)? Is your deadline based on an upcoming hosting contract expiration? Avoid picking deadlines for “kicks and giggles.” Make sure that you have a deadline that is realistic and allows for an appropriate development timeline. The team that will assist with your project will provide feedback if the deadline can not be met (based on your budget, people resources and project scope).

4. Define your project.

Depending on your budget and available resources, you may decide to only focus on the high priority items first, while covering the lower priority items in subsequent phases.

EXAMPLE - Here is an example web development project plan for a technical/IT training company.

Primary Objective: Create a website for a technical/IT training business.

Website Goals: TIP: The website goals should be those that are most important to creating an effective user experience for your customers and potential customers visiting your website.

Priority	Goal
1	Create a new company website to provide information about the company and classes available
1	Allow customers to contact the company via email, web form, etc.
1	Advertise promotional products/special sessions
1	Allow customers to subscribe to company newsletter
2	Allow customers to register for courses online
2	Allow customers to view training videos online
2	Allow customers to pay for courses and purchase other products online
2	Automated notifications of assignments and other related course notifications
3	Monetize website by selling ad/banner space
3	Create a company blog to discuss the latest topics in the industry and build additional website traffic
3	Allow training instructors to create their own subsites and training areas.

In this example, the organization is creating a new corporate website. If the necessary resources are available (time, money, people); the organization may decide to implement all of the desired website goals before the initial rollout. However, if time, money or resources are limited, a phased approach may be necessary. Since the desired features are already prioritized, the organization can use this listing to determine what features are most important to be completed during phase I. Ideally, during phase I development, the organization will identify additional resources, so that the remaining phases can be scheduled shortly after the initial phase.

Use your website goals and objectives listing to: a) Decide if you will tackle your project in smaller phases and b) Define the first phase and potential subsequent phases. Using the example above, the training company may decide to tackle their project in four phases:

Phase I: All priority 1 items will be completed – these items are related to ensuring that the company has a web presence (since it’s a new site) and that the basic information needed for their customers is provided on the new site.
Phase II: Enhance the user experience. Perhaps the company will decide to complete 2 of the 3 priority 2 items. One of the items is related to ecommerce (pay for courses and purchase other products online). The company may decide to create a separate project for implementing the ecommerce component.
Phase III: Enhance the user experience with an ecommerce implementation. This is the remaining priority 2 item “allow customers to pay for courses and purchase other products online.”

This is a simple example of how you can evaluate and prioritize your website goals. Once you’ve made a decision on what items will be completed during phase I, you should document your budget, your desired time line and your project goals. This is the document that you will provide to the team of people that may assist with the implementation and development.

Using a phased approached to your website projects is very helpful in determining if you have the necessary resources for completing the project. This also helps to define very clear and focused goals for your project; which will help combat “scope creep”. A phased website approach and well defined project resources and goals will ensure that your website continues to evolve as your business evolves. You will be aware of your progress as you move forward in implementing your ultimate vision for your website.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Subscribers will receive a FREE eBook containing extended versions of Steps 1 – 9, as well as accompanying worksheets for managing your project. If you would like to receive the FREE ebook, join the Websmith Group Facebook Page or subscribe to our eNewsletter.

Kishau Rogers
Kishau Rogers is the President and Founder of Websmith Group, a web application development company. Her mission is to connect businesses with the information and technologies necessary to meet their goals EFFECTIVELY. Kishau Rogers holds a Computer Science Degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and has over sixteen years of experience, which includes web, application and database development. Kishau also speaks, blogs, and writes articles to educate organizations and entrepreneurs on resources and best practices for ensuring effective, dynamic and innovation web solutions.
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Creating a Successful Small Business Website: Recognizing Barriers (Part 4 of 9)

Kishau Rogers — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 07:55:44 +0000

Barriers to success

NOTE: This the fourth segment of a 9-part series on how to create a successful small business website.If you’re planning to create a new small business website or enhance an existing website, this series will help you improve your chances for success. In step 1, we covered the research and discovery phase (See Step 1: Do your homework). Step 2 involved focusing and prioritizing your website development tasks (See Step 2: Identifying your focus).Step 3 involves identifying your goals for your website (See Step 3: Identifying your goals). Step 4 involves identifying your barriers.

IDENTIFY YOUR BARRIERS

Once you’ve identified your specific goals, identify HOW you will reach those goals. It’s not enough to build a new website and declare that you will increase website traffic by 30% within 90 days. How exactly do you plan to do that? You can start by identifying your current barriers to meeting your goals (ex: not enough website traffic). Once you’ve identified your existing barriers, you can begin to identifying the resources (products, people, services) that you will utilize to help you overcome those barriers.

Goal: Increase my website traffic by 30% within the first 90 days of this implementation.
Barrier: The website currently receives 2 hits per day
Strategy:

Use Google Ad-words to increase my paid/sponsored search engine visibility.
Hire a consultant to ensure that my web pages are optimized for organic search engine visibility (this could take some time)
Ask existing customers and relevant partners to link to my website and/or provide referrals.
Place links to my website on brochures, business cards, email signature line etc.

You will notice that in order to complete this step, you will need to have a baseline for measuring your progress. For example, if your goal is to increase website traffic, you should already know your website traffic statistics. If you are not monitoring and are unaware of your website statistics, then you should go back to step 1 and refocus your project. In this example, we would recommend that one of your high priority items is to implement a process for tracking your website statistics. This will require that you revisit your stated goals as well. In the example used above, the goal indicated is to “increase website traffic by 30% within 90 days”. That goal is no longer realistic given the new high priority item of implementing a website statistics monitoring process. You will first need some time to determine your existing traffic rates before moving forward. You may learn that you actually get more traffic than you think, but perhaps your bounce rates are high (this is the % of visitors that arrive on your site and leave without clicking on any other pages). This discovery could change the entire direction of your original plan.

Kishau Rogers

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Creating a Successful Small Business Website: Identifying Goals (Part 3 of 9)

Kishau Rogers — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 22:25:29 +0000

Identifying your goals

NOTE: This the third segment of a 9-part series on how to create a successful small business website.If you’re planning to create a new small business website or enhance an existing website, this series will help you improve your chances for success. In step 1, we covered the research and discovery phase (See Step 1: Do your homework). Step 2 involved focusing and prioritizing your website development tasks (See Step 2: Identifying your focus).Step 3 involves identifying your goals for your website. This is a “broad” purpose for building or enhancing the website, such as:

Increase sales (or donations)
Reach more prospects and leads
Increase awareness about the company, the entrepreneur, the organization etc.

Once you’ve identified your goals, you will need to define measurable objectives for your website. This is how you will measure the success of your new website or website enhancement.In step 2, you ranked your project tasks into high, medium, low and no priority categories. You will need to select the tasks that are most important (i.e. the high priority tasks), then begin to document your measurable objectives. For each of the ‘to do’ items selected, identify a measurable outcome. Once the project is completed and implemented on your live website, what is your desired outcome or return on investment? Be specific. Examples of specific, measurable objectives are:

Website Feature or Enhancement	Measurable Outcome
Addition of a Frequently Asked Questions area.	Within 6 months of completing the website, reduce the amount of time spent responding to calls and emails from existing customers on basic business questions such as item return policy, membership cancellation fees, office hours etc.
Addition of an online membership application and renewal process.	Reduce the amount of time and resources required to process membership applications, membership renewals and payment information.
New shopping cart for accepting credit card payments online.	Increase business revenue and expand customer base by selling products/services online.
Addition of a DONATE NOW button	Enhanced fundraising opportunities by accepting online donations.
Distribute company/organization information, mission, team bio and products/service offerings	Increase the number of new site visitors to build awareness of the company/organization.

If you can not think of a measurable goal or objective for the enhancement or feature listed, perhaps you should rethink the priority of this item. This step is important because this is how you will define and measure the success of your website enhancement and website marketing efforts. Also, identifying specific goals and measurable objectives reduces the opportunity, during the development/design phase, for the project to grow and expand beyond the intended purpose.

Kishau Rogers

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Creating a Successful Small Business Website: Establishing Priorities (Part 2 of 9)

Kishau Rogers — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 18:42:14 +0000

What's your Primary Focus?

NOTE: This the second segment of a 9-part series on how to create a successful small business website.

If you’re planning to create a new small business website or enhance an existing website, this series will help you improve your chances for success. In step 1, we briefly covered the research and discovery phase (See Step 1: Do your homework). Step 2 involves focusing and prioritizing your website development tasks.

STEP 2: IDENTIFY YOUR PRIMARY FOCUS

Websites evolve and change rapidly. Even the most successful business websites maintain a revolving “to do” list of new features and content for enhancing their web presence. You should always identify a focus or scope for your website project. The project scope details the projects deliverables and major objectives. The most successful website projects have a well focused scope. Less successful projects have a poorly defined or nonexistent scope. A nonexistent and poorly controlled scope is the root cause of “scope creep”, also referred to as “feature creep”. Scope creep occurs when a projects’ focus and requirements grow and expand without making the necessary adjustments to the project budget, resources and schedule. This is a recipe for failure and frustration for all involved participants.

When you decided to create a new website or start a new website enhancement project, you probably created a listing of desired content and features to include. Also, in step 1 of this series, we covered researching website trends on competitor and industry related websites, and obtaining customer feedback. Compile your initial listing of desired content/features with the information that you’ve gathered through customer feedback and research. This will create your laundry listing of potential website features and content.

Review the listing carefully. What were the items that most of your customers listed as important? You should have a “customer focused” approach to your website, therefore you will want to weight the importance of these items heavily. Your website should provide your existing and potential customers the information that THEY need WHEN and WHERE they are looking for it. Are there differences in what YOU and YOUR CUSTOMERS indicate as important? For example, many small business websites will designate a great percentage of the home page for information about the company, the business owner and/or staff. This information is certainly very valuable to build credibility and trust with your customers. However, depending on the nature of your business and your target audience, this information may not be needed on the front page of your website. For example, if your business is Widgets R Us, your primary objectives is to sell widgets, therefore home page would highlight information about your products and you would place the website elements that promote products sales in the high priority category.

Also, remember to consider your findings from reviewing your top competitors and other industry related websites. Are there obvious trends in content and functionality that you should consider for your website? Your website is likely one of millions in your industry, therefore you want to make sure that your website is within the standards of your top competitor websites.

Next to each item on your website to do list, prioritize the items using the following scale:

1. High priority – these are items that are critical to your success (ex: a secure shopping cart process, an online contact form etc.).

2. Medium priority – these are items that must be completed in the near future, but are less critical than the high priority items. These items add value to your website, but are not critical or do not require immediate implementation.

3. Low priority – these are items that you’d like to incorporate into your website eventually, but they are not critical to your business success, aren’t necessary to complete in the near future and shouldn’t be implemented until all High Priority and Medium Priority items are completed. You would start implementing these items, once there aren’t any high or medium priority items on your list and you have the resources available to implement them.

4. Wish List – these are items that you’d like to consider at a later date. You wouldn’t assign a priority level to these items until you have performed further research, have discussed (and debated) the proposed items with your team and have made a decision to move forward.

Kishau Rogers

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Creating a Successful Small Business Website: Do Your Homework (Part 1 of 9)

Kishau Rogers — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 03:44:40 +0000

Creating a Successful Small Business Website

If you’re planning to create a new small business website or enhance an existing website, this series will help you improve your chances for success.

STEP 1: DO YOUR HOMEWORK

Before you start a new website project, always allow time for research. Who are your competitors? What are the features available on the websites of your top competitors? Who will benefit the most from this website or new website feature: your target audience, your existing audience, your staff etc?

Effective websites are planned with a target audience in mind. The most successful website projects involve the target audience in the planning process. If you are unfamiliar with the opinions of your target audience, now is the time to survey your current and past customers regarding their experience while using your website. Don’t be afraid to ask your customers for feedback. You may find that the new and cool flash animation that you ‘had to have’ is an irritant to many of your best customers.

If you don’t have an existing website, survey your current and past customers regarding the features that they feel are most important to include on your future website or similar websites in your industry. This will provide valuable insight on how your website could enhance your level of service to your customers. You may also learn the content, features and functions that are attractive to new customers that are not familiar with your company.

When you survey your customers, be sure to keep the questions short and include both open and closed-ended questions. Also, gather some demographic data about the customer such as age, technical/internet experience and their past/current involvement with your company (i.e. services used/products purchased). Compile your results into a single document or spreadsheet. This data can help you begin to build a “profile” of your target website visitors. This information will serve to be very valuable once you begin to focus and prioritize your website development tasks.

Kishau Rogers

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QUICK TIP: How to effectively link to a recommended website

Kishau Rogers — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 20:45:22 +0000

How to link to a recommended website

If your website includes a listing of links to recommended websites, take the time to provide the following information to your website visitors:

The title/name of the website/organization
A brief description of the website
A reason for the recommendation (i.e. how does this external website benefit your website visitors and existing customers?)
The actual website address (www.xyz.com)

If your recommended website listing is extensive, for increased usability, you should organize the links by industry and/or purpose. Providing more detail about the websites that you’re linking to gives your recommendations increased credibility. Also, remember that your site visitors are real people. If someone walks into your physical business location, you wouldn’t slide them a post-it note with a www address on it .. not without some explanation.

ONGOING REVIEW TIP: Be sure to check your recommended links often to ensure that the websites are still active.

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Kishau Rogers

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HOMEWORK: Revisiting your website navigation

Kishau Rogers — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 21:47:31 +0000

Review Your Website Navigation

What is the first link on your website … actually, what is first link following the ‘Home’ link? On many small business websites, it’s the ‘Company information’ or the ‘About us’ link. Rethink your navigational structure by considering your target customers needs first. Perhaps most of your website visitors are potential new customers that after reading the home page, they’re most likely to want to know more ‘About’ your company. Or perhaps your customers prefer to quickly buy a widget, download an article or make an appointment. Prioritize your navigational links based on the needs of your customers first. HOMEWORK

Select a few well-known and successful companies. Visit their websites to review their navigational structure. What is the first link on their home pages (don’t include the Home link). I selected Disney, IBM and Elizabeth Arden’s Red Door Spa. The first link on the IBM website is ‘SOLUTIONS’ (customer-focused). The first link on the Disney website is ‘Movies’. The first link on the Red Door spa site is services. All three companies have a link to their company information pages in the footer of the site.

Kishau Rogers

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Content Planning Guide for Small Businesses

Kishau Rogers — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 09:01:37 +0000

The Content Planning Guide contains an organized list of the areas of content featured on most small business websites. Feel free to use the guide to check the content items most important to your business. This content guide is helpful in the initial status of planning a website. Once you’ve decided on the content areas, you will need to identify and provide the content for those areas.

Download: Content Planning Guide for Small Businesses

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Kishau Rogers

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Small Business Website Project: Mistake #1 … Poor planning

Kishau Rogers — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 00:09:41 +0000

Website Strategy for Small Businesses

A critical barrier to the success of website design or enhancement project is poor planning. Great websites are the product of effective planning … or blind luck. Unless you’re a gambler, you should answer the following questions before you approach a website designer or developer:

1. What is the primary purpose of your website?

Do you want to distribute information or provide training? Sell more products and services? Increase your newsletter subscription rate? Encourage potential customers to visit your physical business location? Provide enhanced customer service to your existing clients?
You should be able to clearly define your website’s purpose before initiating a web design or web development project.

2. Can you provide well written, completed content?
Website content is the heart of a website. Many website professionals will not start a project without completed content. It is important that you can either provide the content or identify the person(s) responsible for providing the content. Also, you want to ensure that your content is “web ready” and is focused on the needs of your visitors. A great website design can be rendered useless by 14 pages of scrolling text … or with a whopping two sentences per page.
If your website content is not ready, what is your timeframe for providing completed content? Who is responsible for writing the content? Do you require writing services, such as the services of a copywriter or journalist?

3. How will potential customers find your website?
How do you plan to market your website? Will you place the site address on your business cards and print marketing materials? Will you advertise your website to your newsletter subscribers? Will you advertise your website on a commercial or in the local yellow pages? Will you rely on search engine placement?

If search engine placement is important (it should be), you will want to identify your desired keywords. Do you want customers to find you when they Google “ugly green t-shirts”? The sooner you can identify this information, the better for your long term SEO strategy. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an ongoing and often separate process; however it is important that your website changes don’t contradict effective SEO strategies. Your desired keywords should be effectively used throughout your web copy and in your web page meta tags.

4. How often do you plan to update your website?
Do you plan to update your website regularly? What does regularly mean: daily, monthly, quarterly, or infrequently as information changes? Are there dynamic areas of your website that require ongoing maintenance such as a newsletter archive area?

5. Who is responsible for ongoing website maintenance?
Will you or your staff maintain the website? Do you have the necessary skills to update the website? If you will rely on the services of a webmaster, how often will you communicate the website changes? What are your turnaround time requirements? What is the scope of your maintenance activities: textual changes, newsletter distribution, blog management, shopping cart maintenance, site design enhancements, search engine optimization etc.? Identifying the scope of your ongoing maintenance activities will be important in selecting the appropriate webmaster or perhaps a ‘web team’ is needed to support your ongoing website needs.

6. Do you know where you will host your website files? Or do you have an existing relationship with a web hosting provider?
Selecting an appropriate hosting package is of critical importance to the successful launch of your website. If you have an existing hosting provider, be sure to document and provide the features of your hosting plan to your website developer. You want to ensure that any technologies selected for your design or enhancement project are compatible with your existing hosting plan. If you do not have an existing hosting provider, be sure to ask your website design/developer for a listing of server requirements that are compatible with the technologies selected. Use this listing to research and select an appropriate hosting provider and package.

7. What is your ultimate vision for the website?
Do you already have an idea for future enhancements, such as video and audio streaming, online training, forums, blog etc? It is helpful to document and convey this information to your website developer. This will enable your web service provider to recommend or implement a scalable website that can grow with your vision.

8. What is your budget?
You should establish a realistic budget for your website, as you would for other areas of your business. Submit your documented, detailed project requirements to at least 3 website development firms/professionals. To assist the firm in providing an accurate quote, it is very important that you document your project requirements completely.

9. What are the milestones for successful project completion?
What are the measurable outcomes for determining the success of your project? You should define the milestone for project completion by identifying measurable goals.

Example:

Build 5 web pages: Business contact information, company info, product descriptions, testimonials and frequently asked questions.
Website color palette should include all colors in the existing business logo.
Website should provide the functionality for clients to comment on articles.
Allow customers to save their credit card information for future purchases.

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Kishau Rogers

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5 Critical Questions Your Website Should Answer in 10 seconds or Less

Kishau Rogers — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 21:17:56 +0000

5 Questions Your Website Should Answer in 10 Seconds or Less

Research studies have revealed that the average website visitor spends 5-10 seconds on a website. That gives you less than 10 seconds to grab their attention. There are 5 critical questions that your visitors will ask and that you should answer within 10 seconds or less.

1. Where am I?

Your company name, logo, and tagline should be displayed in the header of the site on every page. This is particularly useful for visitors that find your site through indirect channels, such as search engine results or referrals from external websites. This is also effective for a business with a web address that doesn’t match their company name. For example, if your website address is www.ABC.com, your website visitors should realize within seconds of connecting to your website that your company name is Acme Building Contractors.

2. Can you help me?

What products or services do you provide? Your business website should include a brief description of your company and your products and services in a prominent location on your home page. Most importantly, you should indicate how this product or service will benefit your potential customers. Remember, your visitors are interested in finding solutions to their problems. You should convey this information as briefly as possible; remember you have 5-10 seconds. To encourage your visitors to learn more, provide a link to interior pages to distribute further detail about your products or services.

3. How can I do business with you?

Once a visitor has determined that your product or service matches their need, what should they do next? Your website should encourage your desired customers to perform an action? What action would you desire your visitors to take: subscribe to a newsletter, schedule a phone meeting, buy a product, download a free e-book, join a forum, ask a question etc.? The danger in not including an explicit call to action is that your visitors will read the information, leave and never return. You want to initiate a relationship with your desired customers.

4. How can I reach you?

Allow your visitors to see or access your contact information from every page. Most businesses should include the following minimal contact information: business phone number, physical address, and email address. Also, for visitors that are referred to your site from another website or search engine, your website address should be prominently displayed on every page.

5. What will (and won’t) you do with my information?

A privacy notice is particularly important for websites that request or accept information from visitors. This includes everything from the acceptance of email addresses to ecommerce transactions. Generally visitors are less likely to provide their information if the data could potentially be sold or shared with anyone outside of your company.

Answering these 5 questions quickly, may encourage your desired customers to stick around longer than 10 seconds.

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Kishau Rogers

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Milestone	Description
1	Finalize Website Content.
2	Requirements Gathering – Gather/Identify design and user interface preferences.
3	Approve/Finalize website design/layout
4	Discuss and approve the eNewsletter provider/vendor and signup for the appropriate package(s).
5	Development/Design Phase – Complete programming all web files and scripts.
6	Review and Testing – Complete the review & testing of the final product.
7	Website Implementation – Go live! Implement/Copy the new/updated website files to the appropriate web servers.