What’s the best value for my marketing dollar?

December 8th, 2009

What is the best marketing option for the money?
- realtor

The answer to this could vary based on your industry and audience, but in general we feel that you get the most value for your marketing dollar with a blog. A blog is a website (or part of your existing website) where you regularly post new articles, images, and even videos. It can be very inexpensive to create a blog, and the software is designed so that you can make the updates yourself instead of hiring a web developer for each change.

A blog does require a commitment on your part. While you won’t be spending a lot of money to keep the blog chugging along, you need to be adding new content regularly. That could be daily, and should definitely be at least weekly.

So that’s what you need to put into a blog, but what are you going to be getting out of it?

  • Home base for your social media – on Facebook, Twitter, and your other social networks you can direct people to your recent blog posts
  • SEO - search engines will rank your site higher (resulting in more web traffic) if you are frequently posting fresh, relevant content
  • Position yourself as the expert - regular blog posts will teach your followers to turn to you for the latest news in your industry
  • Dialogue with your visitors – the commenting dynamic of blogs allow you to get valuable feedback and make connections with your visitors
  • Ongoing contact - regular updates to your blog keep you in front of your audience
  • Ease of sharing media – photos, audio files, and videos are easy to share through your blog

Not quite convinced, yet? Check out what Seth Godin and Tom Peters have to say on blogging.

If you have a blog, what are you getting out of it? Is it worth the time you’re putting in?

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What should I look for when hiring a website designer?

July 2nd, 2009

When shopping for a new website designer (to re-design an existing website), what questions are important to ask?  What makes some web designers more or less expensive?  Is it appropriate to ask to have controls over some areas of the site to change content?  What type do you suggest or is best for SEO strategies?
- business owner

Choosing a website designer is a big decision.  Unless you plan on regularly doing a complete overhaul of your site, the choices you make today are going to be affecting your business for years to come.  You’re on the right track with some of the questions you’re already thinking about.

The first point to consider is that there are actually two phases to building a website.  The design phase is creating the user interface, layout, and general look-and-feel of your site.  The programming phase involves creating the HTML+CSS, writing any Javascript, building a database, programming forms, and tying everything together into a cohesive site.  You either need a single developer who can handle both phases, or a designer and programmer who can work together.

Factors Effecting Cost

While there are always going to be people who charge a lot more or a lot less then they are worth, in general you get what you pay for.  From a web developer who charges more, you should be expecting…

  • questions about your business, your customers, and what you want your website to accomplish
  • engaging design that reflects your brand
  • a well-defined process that lets you know what you need to provide and when (files, copy, etc.)
  • clear answers to your questions about websites in general and your site specifically
  • genuine interest in seeing your website help your business grow

Content Management Systems (CMS)

The short answer is you should definitely have content management in place.  There are going to be times when you need to make simple changes to the information on your site.  Don’t cross your fingers and hope the original developer is going to be available when you need to make changes right away.  They might be swamped.  With a good CMS, you’ll be able to change prices and dates, post announcements, upload photos, and even add or remove pages without needing to know a lick of HTML.

You also should be regularly adding new content to the site for SEO purposes (see below).  Constantly shelling out money to your web developer to add a paragraph to your site doesn’t make sense.  You’ll pay a little more for a CMS up front, but it will save you money in the long run.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Getting search traffic to your site is a very big topic.  One small part of that is optimizing your site to be as search engine friendly as possible.  SEO expert is a full-time job.  So while your website programmer doesn’t need to (and probably won’t) know everything there is to know about SEO, they must have a basic understanding of the principles.  A very basic touchstone is to ask if your potential developer uses table-based layouts.  If they blow off the question as unimportant or (worse!) don’t know what you’re talking about, tread carefully.  Also ask about search-engine friendly URLs.  There’s much, much more involved in SEO, but those two questions will at least help you identify the true amateurs. 

If search traffic is a big part of your strategy for your website, you’ll want to get an SEO specialist on your team.  (And, yes, we do know a guy.)

Other Factors

What else should you be thinking about?

  • portfolio – Check examples of other sites this designer has created.  Do they match the level of quality you need?
  • technical features – If you know your site has to have a shopping cart, online event registration, or some other feature make sure your programmer has the chops to pull it off
  • testimonials – What are previous customers saying?

Another obvious but good tip is to check out the developer’s own site.  While there are exceptions, in most cases it will reflect some of their best work.  On that note, here’s a sneak peek at the new Silver Square home page that’s being developed right now:

Sneak Preview of New Silver Square Home Page

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