Having spent most of the last two decades planning, developing and marketing websites, I've learned a lot about what works and what doesn't when marketing your business online. For the most part, I can sum up website planning in one word: relationships. Thousands of books and articles have been written about building relationships online. In the end, it isn't any different than building relationships offline. Business relationships are often compared to dating. The metaphor works in the sense that you start by talking a little, then maybe go out for coffee... Over time, a lot of other stuff happens until, shazam! One day you get married. The point here is that beginning a relationship with a marriage proposal pretty much never works. And if it does, your odds of marrying a desperate, toxic nut-job are pretty high.
I think a better comparison is a student-teacher relationship. Outside of our marketing agency, I teach scuba. I am passionate about diving, especially deep diving, using exotic breathing gasses and hundreds of pounds of highly specialized equipment. Although a student brand new to diving has no need to understand the effects of high oxygen partial pressures on the human body, my expertise is never questioned. The rationale being that if I can survive dives in excess of 100 meters, breathing gasses I mixed myself, surely I must be qualified to teach a new diver to swim around in the top 60 feet or so. When that same diver is ready to buy equipment, who do you think he/she goes to? My students won't even consider making a purchase without talking to me first. That concept translates to virtually every business relationship and should form the basis of your website planning. Reno web design and website planning is relationship planning.
The absolute first rule in website planning is to make sure the right people see it. 7/11 stores are located on busy neighborhood intersections because people who like Slurpees live there. In today's world, 'busy intersection' means Google's search engine results page (SERP). If you stop reading right here, take away this one concept: Make a plan to reach your audience in Google search before you even think about website design. I see it over and over. Clients toil over every pixel and make countless revisions spanning months to make their websites "perfect" before allowing us to take them live.
Meanwhile, not one human being is exposed to their business online. With this in mind, website planning essentially means Google planning. I've never been comfortable with the term, search engine optimization (SEO). Partly, that's because so many of the people and agencies that claim to be SEOs fall somewhere between incompetent and crooked. I just don't want to be lumped in with that group. I also don't think SEO is as hard as it is time consuming. At least, not for most businesses.
After over a decade resisting the term "SEO," I've grudgingly come to embrace it. If you want your website to bring you customers, you have to play by Google's rules. That means the written text has to take priority over design. Yet, I'm told over and over, "people don't read online." Really? Scores of bloggers make their living writing content people read online. It is more accurate to say, "people don't read boring crap online."
The fact is, people DO read online. They read a lot. It's just that they are very choosey about what they read. If you are a sucky writer, don't expect people to read your sucky writing just because you want them to. Be the expert in your business, but hire pros to do the writing for your website. A website writer must understand how to write engaging content for humans that also supports the relevancy requirements for search engine rankings. Writing for SEO purposes is an essential website planning strategy.
The myth that people "don't read on the internet" is partly made believable because large blocks of text are miserable to read online. You can solve that problem by making content readable. Unless and until we (we being OCG Creative) bring it up, typography never enters the conversations about website planning we have with our clients.
Typography includes all the elements related to your website's written content. The creative use of headings, type styles, font choices, sizes, color, italics, bolding, lists, etc. all contribute to the readability of your website content. Website text must be well-sectioned and scannable by the reader. Online readers will scan your page for specific terms in about 2 seconds before deciding whether to read it or go back to Google and search some more. Therefore, it is essential that typography be central to your website planning.
Right from the start, accept that your website will never be done. Your planning process must include a strategy for ongoing updates. In nearly every instance, websites that are easy to update get more attention than those that aren't. Generally speaking, the more complex the website design, the more difficult it is to make changes. Plan your website for your visitors, not your designer, or worse, your ego.
It's funny. Our Reno web design team ask new clients every day to describe what elements they feel are most important to their websites. 9 times out of 10, the first word they'll use is "clean." Yet, 9 times out of 10, the same client will want everything he or she can think of thrown in once the design phase begins. At the same time, all attention shifts away from content and search engine rankings in favor of graphics.
By now, it should be clear that search engine rankings and speed win out over everything else about your website. Once you make it to the top of Google, you'll have the luxury of dialing in your website for conversions. At that point, you can make all the design changes you want. But early on, plan your website around rankings. I promise you'll thank me later.
Short of Apple and American politics, I can’t think of an industry more consistently skilled at building and riling up a fierce, loyal fan base than sports. Games are exciting by nature, but great sports marketers are experts at capitalizing on that foundation. They know how to make full use of tools like brand strategy, social media, and email and internet marketing, even internal marketing, to make everything about their game, their players, their ticket sales. But those sales boosting strategies aren’t unique to sports, and any business willing to invest in the value of enthusiasm can steal them to power their own home field advantage.
This is something that sports marketers do really well, and it’s an easy play for any business to add to their repertoire. There are many great ways in which the sports industry markets that any business can put towards their list of sales boosting strategies. We all know that social media is about engagement, and that engagement usually means broadcasting and interacting. But how carefully are you listening on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, and other social media outlets for positive mentions by existing and potential customers? What do you do when you find them? You amplify them. Like them, but don’t just like them. Respond, but don’t only respond. Retweet, reblog, link to those mentions in your marketing emails, share them through all relevant channels. Enthusiasm is most infectious when it’s observed in an un-coerced third party (just like endorsements—and enthusiasm is a form of endorsement). Sports teams amp up fan excitement by compounding the energy of excited, individual fans, and you can do the same thing for your product or service by letting your potential customers be voyeurs to the happiness of your existing customers. Be sure to listen for other customer and market segment conversations about things relevant to your business, too, and be a conduit for those. Sharing excitement about upcoming events, new technology, and other things your customers are interested in can align you with the shared philosophies and positive feelings that are precursor to buying.
We know what happens in the football huddle: The quarterback pulls the team together mid-game to strategize the next play, congratulate or motivate players, commiserate on a sagging score, or in general to get player buy-in back at peak levels. In other words, it’s a kind of internal marketing. Whatever it is that happens here during any given game, you can be sure the quarterback feels it’s critical to winning that particular game. Not the game they planned for, hoped for, or even expected statistically—the game that’s currently in progress, with all of its unexpected turns. Keep your sales boosting strategies and marketing plans bold and robust but flexible. This way they can be quickly adapted to unexpected changes like economic downturns, new technologies or outlets, poor product reception, social media backlash, or any of the number of fumbles, blocks, and interceptions that can plague a campaign. Internet and email marketing are especially good channels for marketing flexibility. Social media, too. Campaign messages can be quickly adapted to reflect changing information, corrected for mistakes or oversights, take advantage of new developments, or work around a mea culpa situation gracefully.
Have you ever been invited to a luxury box seat for a high-profile sporting event? If so, you know how much that changes the experience of watching a game. That game is, technically speaking, the same game for everyone in the stadium. The lineup is the same, the announcers are the same, the plays are the same, no matter where you’re watching from. But I assure you the game doesn’t feel the same from up there behind those big windows, wine and cheese in hand, as it does in the crowded, sometimes too-hot or too-cold and almost always stiff-seated stands below. The VIP treatment changes—and almost always enhances—the customer experience. Sales boosting strategies that add to a customer's value and experience will increase sales simply due their satisfaction. Levels of purchase have become more commonplace since the advent of web apps and services, and this can work for just about anything—but keep it simple, and make it meaningful. You can shift up or down with this. If your service is basic, what expansions, add-ons, or concierge-like perks can you offer at a higher price point to add value, and boost the customer’s experience (and opinion of your brand)? Even something as simple as extended support hours can boost your customers’ sense of their value to you. If your product is already complex and/or high-dollar, can you provide a pared-down version to offset the image and value of the original? This can also make your brand more accessible to a larger market, but be careful and talk to a brand strategist on this—some brands can be damaged by offering more basic and affordable options (think of a $22,000 MSRP on a Rolls Royce).
Team marketing is a big component of sports marketing, but I’d argue that player marketing is the key to the emotional resonance that gives sports its true power. Players are storied, and as humans we’re helplessly attracted to stories—particularly ancient story archetypes like the hero’s journey, rags-to-riches stories, David and Goliath. Embedded deep down in our DNA is the universal need for something to root for, and it’s why sports and games elicit the responses they do. It’s why a single sports team can affect everything from a fan’s wardrobe (black and orange, anyone?) to their emotional behavior (shouting red-faced at the screen, or the field), to their willingness in some cases to paint themselves and go out into public with large foam appendages attached to their bodies. Burt Shavitz, the now legendary figurehead of Burt’s Bees personal care products, is a favorite go-to example of the power of storytelling in a brand. The quality of his products is top-notch, but it’s his unlikely story—north country recluse living off the land and raising bees stumbles on myriad uses for beeswax—that populates the brand with its infectious personality and wins it fans (and hundreds of millions in revenue) worldwide. If you can capture the fertile seeds of story that served as the seeds for your company’s products and services, or that underlie the company itself or the people in it, marketing magic can happen. Just be sure the story is congruous with the company’s brand image, and is told consistently across all messaging.
Read our other articles pertaining to e-commerce.
It’s not an option anymore to have a good looking website. Consumer expectation is high, and at a minimum you need a storefront and web design that is attractive enough to pull in more visitors. If you notice a high bounce rate on your homepage, there’s a good chance it has something to do with how it looks, which in turn means less conversions to your business.
Looks matter, but strategic design choices can do more than just generate “oohs” and “aahs” from the crowd. Having a designer on your side who has an equal amount of flair and pizazz as they do user experience is crucial to any new website. Effective Reno web design is one of the most integral factors in attracting visitors to your online storefront, however it is not as simple as it may seem. There are a number of aspects within business web design that help visitors convert to customers, and knowing what works is key to making that transition into a reality.
In the early days of design and development, business pages were loaded with content making the user’s experience overwhelming and, at best, confusing. In current design psychology, a web developer must focus on the core message of the business and relay that in a clean, efficient manner to users. It is part business strategy, part psychology, and completely necessary to earn more conversions.
Color can have a positive or negative effect on a visitor as they navigate through a business web design. According to Amber Leigh Turner of The Next Web, certain colors have a greater impact in design and development than others. She states, “Cooler colors (blues, greens, purples) often provide an inviting, professional and relaxed feeling. In contrast, it can project a very cold and unfriendly feeling as well.” She continues to state warm colors, including oranges, yellows and red offer a soothing experience and pay homage to a creative side of the business. In professional web design, selecting the colors to use within your business are crucial to providing an inviting feel to your site. In other words, the right color invokes the right emotions, and the right emotions lead to action that ultimately turns into a conversion.
Have you seen a stellar website lately? Share the link with us.
Using the expertise of a web page designer or a professional web design company can provide you with the tools necessary to create effective, simple web design, ultimately increasing traffic to your site, while keeping users engaged with your specific content. Additionally, a Reno web design company like OCG Creative can guide you to higher conversion rates for your company. If you are considering making changes to your website in an effort to increase your sales, contact your local Reno internet marketing company, OCG Creative, today.
It’s not an option anymore to have a good looking website. Consumer expectation is high, and at a minimum you need a storefront and web design that is attractive enough to pull in more visitors. If you notice a high bounce rate on your homepage, there’s a good chance it has something to do with how it looks, which in turn means less conversions to your business.
Looks matter, but strategic design choices can do more than just generate “oohs” and “aahs” from the crowd. Having a designer on your side who has an equal amount of flair and pizazz as they do user experience is crucial to any new website. Effective Reno web design is one of the most integral factors in attracting visitors to your online storefront, however it is not as simple as it may seem. There are a number of aspects within business web design that help visitors convert to customers, and knowing what works is key to making that transition into a reality.
In the early days of design and development, business pages were loaded with content making the user’s experience overwhelming and, at best, confusing. In current design psychology, a web developer must focus on the core message of the business and relay that in a clean, efficient manner to users. It is part business strategy, part psychology, and completely necessary to earn more conversions.
Color can have a positive or negative effect on a visitor as they navigate through a business web design. According to Amber Leigh Turner of The Next Web, certain colors have a greater impact in design and development than others. She states, “Cooler colors (blues, greens, purples) often provide an inviting, professional and relaxed feeling. In contrast, it can project a very cold and unfriendly feeling as well.” She continues to state warm colors, including oranges, yellows and red offer a soothing experience and pay homage to a creative side of the business. In professional web design, selecting the colors to use within your business are crucial to providing an inviting feel to your site. In other words, the right color invokes the right emotions, and the right emotions lead to action that ultimately turns into a conversion.
Have you seen a stellar website lately? Share the link with us.
Using the expertise of a web page designer or a professional web design company can provide you with the tools necessary to create effective, simple web design, ultimately increasing traffic to your site, while keeping users engaged with your specific content. Additionally, a Reno web design company like OCG Creative can guide you to higher conversion rates for your company. If you are considering making changes to your website in an effort to increase your sales, contact your local Reno internet marketing company, OCG Creative, today.
Yesterday started out as an average busy afternoon, evenly spaced with quick yet heated discussions about Ender’s Game (movie and book), as well as, the “rumored” participation of the great Harrison Ford in the upcoming Star Wars Episode VII. Soon enough, said conversation abruptly sputtered out of control, down the proverbial rabbit hole that encompasses a geek's curiosity and need to discover hidden things on the interwebz (internet, for the nontechnical demographic out there).
I got what I thought was a “can you do something?” or worse yet a “did you do something?” request from Caroline, our wonderful SEO and many other talents guru (yes I am attempting to suck up). While oblivious to this request, Caroline so very politely reminded me to check my email. In my inbox yielded a message with the subject line “Can you figure this out?”.
So, what was this is all about?
Reno Startup Weekend is an event where “entrepreneurs come together and turn an idea into reality within 54 hours”. Later this month there will be a weekend full of events and competitions for entrepreneurs to bring their ideas, get mentored, launch startups and build products all at Reno Startup Weekend. The organization was posing a challenge to receive a discount for tickets to this year's event. A friend and colleague, Nicole- @nicolerosedion, from The Abbi Agency had been trying to get me to participate in this event for a couple of weeks now. I was familiar with the event and was well aware that I was running out of time to buy my ticket. Funny enough, Caroline found this challenge while Facebook-ing, I mean doing industry research. Though had I checked my text messages, I would of realized that Nicole already tried to clue me into the challenge earlier that day.
I followed the link and was greeted with this... “Things are not as they seem.” Well, that is all it took, I was hooked and sprang into action. Ah, the excitement and pressure as Caroline watched on clearly expecting a "Eureka!" 30 seconds after my quest began. Luckily this was not the case, so she left me to solve it on my own time and soon enough I had it!
I will tell you of the joy taking 15 minutes to doing something fun like this brought me. While I didn’t find this annoyingly challenging, it did force me to think outside the box and get creative to find the solution. This also reminded me that we should all take a few minutes a day to learn something new, using skills that we may not have to rely on everyday, or just do something challenging that's outside of your normal task flow. This will help to keep your creativity up and make the time you do spend being productive that much more valuable. With that rant, I hereby pass this challenge on to other any other developers and the curious who are up for the challenge. Take a few minutes out of your day to follow the white rabbit and be handsomely rewarded by not only the treasure at the end of the quest but by the enjoyment of taking a few minutes out of your routine to have some fun.
Follow the white rabbit here. Read our other blog posts about entrepreneurs and business professionals.
Yesterday started out as an average busy afternoon, evenly spaced with quick yet heated discussions about Ender’s Game (movie and book), as well as, the “rumored” participation of the great Harrison Ford in the upcoming Star Wars Episode VII. Soon enough, said conversation abruptly sputtered out of control, down the proverbial rabbit hole that encompasses a geek's curiosity and need to discover hidden things on the interwebz (internet, for the nontechnical demographic out there).
I got what I thought was a “can you do something?” or worse yet a “did you do something?” request from Caroline, our wonderful SEO and many other talents guru (yes I am attempting to suck up). While oblivious to this request, Caroline so very politely reminded me to check my email. In my inbox yielded a message with the subject line “Can you figure this out?”.
So, what was this is all about?
Reno Startup Weekend is an event where “entrepreneurs come together and turn an idea into reality within 54 hours”. Later this month there will be a weekend full of events and competitions for entrepreneurs to bring their ideas, get mentored, launch startups and build products all at Reno Startup Weekend. The organization was posing a challenge to receive a discount for tickets to this year's event. A friend and colleague, Nicole- @nicolerosedion, from The Abbi Agency had been trying to get me to participate in this event for a couple of weeks now. I was familiar with the event and was well aware that I was running out of time to buy my ticket. Funny enough, Caroline found this challenge while Facebook-ing, I mean doing industry research. Though had I checked my text messages, I would of realized that Nicole already tried to clue me into the challenge earlier that day.
I followed the link and was greeted with this... “Things are not as they seem.” Well, that is all it took, I was hooked and sprang into action. Ah, the excitement and pressure as Caroline watched on clearly expecting a "Eureka!" 30 seconds after my quest began. Luckily this was not the case, so she left me to solve it on my own time and soon enough I had it!
I will tell you of the joy taking 15 minutes to doing something fun like this brought me. While I didn’t find this annoyingly challenging, it did force me to think outside the box and get creative to find the solution. This also reminded me that we should all take a few minutes a day to learn something new, using skills that we may not have to rely on everyday, or just do something challenging that's outside of your normal task flow. This will help to keep your creativity up and make the time you do spend being productive that much more valuable. With that rant, I hereby pass this challenge on to other any other developers and the curious who are up for the challenge. Take a few minutes out of your day to follow the white rabbit and be handsomely rewarded by not only the treasure at the end of the quest but by the enjoyment of taking a few minutes out of your routine to have some fun.
Follow the white rabbit here. Read our other blog posts about entrepreneurs and business professionals.
In marketing, there are few guarantees. We set goals, do our research, plan, weigh the opportunities and threats, then execute. Finally, at intervals or once the campaign has finalized, we evaluate the result make decisions about what to do next.
It is little known, but prior to 1900 and a little after, there was a Lake Tahoe resort on the North shore of Emerald Bay called, appropriately, the Emerald Bay Resort. Then, as now, Lake Tahoe was something of a vacation hotspot, despite having virtually every tree in the basin cut down and sent to the Virginia City silver mines. This is where the marketing/scuba diving similarities are uncanny. When the Emerald Bay Resort was in its heyday, they'd offer rowing skiffs and similar watercraft to guests, which they would use to ply the waters of the lake under human power. Although the resort is long gone, these little vessels, known to some as Emerald Bay's "miniature fleet" had been scuttled and remain on the bottom. For small craft enthusiasts, the miniature fleet is like a liquid time capsule--a submerged museum of the evolution of boat building. On Sunday, our mission was to find it.
Like finding a bunch of tiny boats, effective marketing begins with research. Imagine (and, who wouldn't) the boats are your potential customers. As a marketer, your goal is to deliver your message to the boats, er... customers. BUT, before you can deliver your message, you must know where to find them. Your marketing dollars are like air (or, in our case, Nitrox, but that's not important). It's a big lake, so if we were to have any hope of finding the miniature fleet, we couldn't just jump in and start swimming. And, unless you have unlimited time and money (who doesn't?), the last thing you want to do is blow your budget not knowing whether your target market is anywhere in the vicinity. We read books, asked people in the area and dug through everything we could find on the Internet (BTW, I think this "Internet" thing might really catch on). Eventually, we narrowed our search by comparing old photos of the resort to the surface geology (rocks... big ones) of today. I'm no expert on geologic time, but how much could a 50,000 pound boulder erode in a hundred years? Thus armed, we chose our drop in point, geared up and rolled over the side of our trusty research vessel (aka. Joe's boat). After about 25 minutes in the water, we hit our mark by identifying a lapstrake rowing skiff dating back to the late 1800's. Our research payed off and we had the opportunity to visit a unique piece of history because we narrowed our search without wasting our precious breathing gas.
Your budget is your budget. Too often, the approach to marketing (especially media advertising), is to decide and commit, skipping the research part altogether. In fact, the system is kind of set up that way. Our job is to make sure that you deliver the right message to your boats while you still have air left.
And there you go. Diving and marketing. Peas in a pod. PB & J. Different, but so eerily complimentary, that I believe it's high time we thought about having meetings underwater.
Speaking of scuba diving and marketing, OCG Creative is a Reno web design and internet marketing agency that provides marketing services for a variety of industries such as the scuba diving industry. Take a look at some of the work we have done for clients such as Adventure Scuba.
In marketing, there are few guarantees. We set goals, do our research, plan, weigh the opportunities and threats, then execute. Finally, at intervals or once the campaign has finalized, we evaluate the result make decisions about what to do next.
It is little known, but prior to 1900 and a little after, there was a Lake Tahoe resort on the North shore of Emerald Bay called, appropriately, the Emerald Bay Resort. Then, as now, Lake Tahoe was something of a vacation hotspot, despite having virtually every tree in the basin cut down and sent to the Virginia City silver mines. This is where the marketing/scuba diving similarities are uncanny. When the Emerald Bay Resort was in its heyday, they'd offer rowing skiffs and similar watercraft to guests, which they would use to ply the waters of the lake under human power. Although the resort is long gone, these little vessels, known to some as Emerald Bay's "miniature fleet" had been scuttled and remain on the bottom. For small craft enthusiasts, the miniature fleet is like a liquid time capsule--a submerged museum of the evolution of boat building. On Sunday, our mission was to find it.
Like finding a bunch of tiny boats, effective marketing begins with research. Imagine (and, who wouldn't) the boats are your potential customers. As a marketer, your goal is to deliver your message to the boats, er... customers. BUT, before you can deliver your message, you must know where to find them. Your marketing dollars are like air (or, in our case, Nitrox, but that's not important). It's a big lake, so if we were to have any hope of finding the miniature fleet, we couldn't just jump in and start swimming. And, unless you have unlimited time and money (who doesn't?), the last thing you want to do is blow your budget not knowing whether your target market is anywhere in the vicinity. We read books, asked people in the area and dug through everything we could find on the Internet (BTW, I think this "Internet" thing might really catch on). Eventually, we narrowed our search by comparing old photos of the resort to the surface geology (rocks... big ones) of today. I'm no expert on geologic time, but how much could a 50,000 pound boulder erode in a hundred years? Thus armed, we chose our drop in point, geared up and rolled over the side of our trusty research vessel (aka. Joe's boat). After about 25 minutes in the water, we hit our mark by identifying a lapstrake rowing skiff dating back to the late 1800's. Our research payed off and we had the opportunity to visit a unique piece of history because we narrowed our search without wasting our precious breathing gas.
Your budget is your budget. Too often, the approach to marketing (especially media advertising), is to decide and commit, skipping the research part altogether. In fact, the system is kind of set up that way. Our job is to make sure that you deliver the right message to your boats while you still have air left.
And there you go. Diving and marketing. Peas in a pod. PB & J. Different, but so eerily complimentary, that I believe it's high time we thought about having meetings underwater.
Speaking of scuba diving and marketing, OCG Creative is a Reno web design and internet marketing agency that provides marketing services for a variety of industries such as the scuba diving industry. Take a look at some of the work we have done for clients such as Adventure Scuba.
I'm starting to feel like we're beating the same drum with back to back articles about WordPress, but the simple fact is that marketing with WordPress makes a lot of sense for most businesses of pretty much any size. It takes planning and effort, but of all the low cost ways to grow and market your business, writing blog articles can eat away at your competitor's market share in a way that is difficult, if not impossible, for them to compete with. It's hard to decide whether WordPress's incredible ability to reliably achieve top search rankings, or the ease by which site owners can manage their websites is the more valuable feature, but in my view search engines always win out over everything else. Not true in all situations, however. For a lot of business owners, providing a simple means of managing content is key. This is especially true for companies that use their websites to supply current information to an established user base. SEO may be be a factor in this case, but by no means most important. For most organizations, search engines rule. If you are selling a product or service, achieving top search engine rankings can mean the difference between success and failure. With WordPress, I've spent years experimenting with the right combination attributes and discovered that it is possible to achieve more or less real-time indexing of your website content. What this means is that, within minutes of your publishing an article (post or page), Google will have already added it to its search engine results page (SERP). I can't emphasize enough what realtime search indexing means to most businesses. By eliminating the normal crawl cycle, search engine marketers (as well as non-technical website owners or content managers) can get onto the SERP in a few minutes, a process that often takes 30 days or more--sometimes much more. Generally speaking, my list of top reasons business owners should consider WordPress is as follows...
All this sounds great, and it is. But, there are a few things for which WordPress may not be the best choice. Topping that list is large scale e-commerce. While there are many plugins (WooCommerce is one popular example) that make selling products possible, and even simple, none that I've worked with are ready for prime time. WordPress also may not be the best choice for websites that must present many varying types of data or content. For example, a site with several regions or feature areas on each type of page. To do this using WordPress, programmers often issue database calls to specific post categories or tags and display the result in the appropriate location on the webpage. It seems clever enough, but if you have a lot of them, things get out of hand pretty quickly. We've resolved the issue by doing unique things with custom post types, but there are times that a more traditional content management system (CMS) makes a better choice. This isn't so much of an issue here, but most web designers simply don't have the programming skills to do any serious custom work within the WordPress engine. As a result, many web designers install off the shelf themes and modify them. Many times, that's fine, but these modifications can be a nightmare if done improperly. For example, your website can be completely wiped out just by performing a routine update. Even with a few drawbacks, I'd say that 70% of the web development projects we do are custom WordPress websites. And, we are an engineering firm capable of building anything our clients dream up from scratch. If you've got questions about whether WordPress might be a good fit for your website project, drop me a note with a few details (joe@ocgcreative.com) and I'll be glad help you explore your options.
I'm starting to feel like we're beating the same drum with back to back articles about WordPress, but the simple fact is that marketing with WordPress makes a lot of sense for most businesses of pretty much any size. It takes planning and effort, but of all the low cost ways to grow and market your business, writing blog articles can eat away at your competitor's market share in a way that is difficult, if not impossible, for them to compete with. It's hard to decide whether WordPress's incredible ability to reliably achieve top search rankings, or the ease by which site owners can manage their websites is the more valuable feature, but in my view search engines always win out over everything else. Not true in all situations, however. For a lot of business owners, providing a simple means of managing content is key. This is especially true for companies that use their websites to supply current information to an established user base. SEO may be be a factor in this case, but by no means most important. For most organizations, search engines rule. If you are selling a product or service, achieving top search engine rankings can mean the difference between success and failure. With WordPress, I've spent years experimenting with the right combination attributes and discovered that it is possible to achieve more or less real-time indexing of your website content. What this means is that, within minutes of your publishing an article (post or page), Google will have already added it to its search engine results page (SERP). I can't emphasize enough what realtime search indexing means to most businesses. By eliminating the normal crawl cycle, search engine marketers (as well as non-technical website owners or content managers) can get onto the SERP in a few minutes, a process that often takes 30 days or more--sometimes much more. Generally speaking, my list of top reasons business owners should consider WordPress is as follows...
All this sounds great, and it is. But, there are a few things for which WordPress may not be the best choice. Topping that list is large scale e-commerce. While there are many plugins (WooCommerce is one popular example) that make selling products possible, and even simple, none that I've worked with are ready for prime time. WordPress also may not be the best choice for websites that must present many varying types of data or content. For example, a site with several regions or feature areas on each type of page. To do this using WordPress, programmers often issue database calls to specific post categories or tags and display the result in the appropriate location on the webpage. It seems clever enough, but if you have a lot of them, things get out of hand pretty quickly. We've resolved the issue by doing unique things with custom post types, but there are times that a more traditional content management system (CMS) makes a better choice. This isn't so much of an issue here, but most web designers simply don't have the programming skills to do any serious custom work within the WordPress engine. As a result, many web designers install off the shelf themes and modify them. Many times, that's fine, but these modifications can be a nightmare if done improperly. For example, your website can be completely wiped out just by performing a routine update. Even with a few drawbacks, I'd say that 70% of the web development projects we do are custom WordPress websites. And, we are an engineering firm capable of building anything our clients dream up from scratch. If you've got questions about whether WordPress might be a good fit for your website project, drop me a note with a few details (joe@ocgcreative.com) and I'll be glad help you explore your options.
I just read something that struck me as both funny and poignant. It was an article about website budgets that pointed out how every project begins with what the author described as a "subtle psychological game of 'you go first'" between the agency (us) and the potential client. The point of the article was that the creative agency or web design firm should be bold and ask. Fundamentally, I agree and here's why. To begin with, regardless of the business owner's budget, there will almost always be a solution that will at least satisfy some of his organization's goals. So, for Reno web design projects with smaller budgets, we always do our best to guide the client toward options that have the best possible chance of early success.
Sometimes, outlining the scope of a project ties our people up for days. To be accurate, we develop what we call use case diagrams outlining every possible interaction between the various potential users of the final website. Additionally, considerable effort goes into higher level strategic planning long before we present a proposal. If we have a sense of the planned budget going in, we are able to concentrate our energy on strategies and tactics that have a realistic chance of being implemented. It's easy to understand why a potential client might prefer to play it close to the vest. There are agencies that would propose a project at, say, $5,000, but if they know the budget is twice that, the proposal will be presented accordingly. It's an opportunistic form of bidding that is both unethical and unproductive. In our firm, if we know the budget is X-dollars, we bid the project based on realistic expectations of hours regardless. If there's anything left, we'll make recommendations about how the client can gain additional value with the same budget, or simply leave it out of the proposal. But, in either case, we never jack up the price just because there's money available.
Obviously, no one wants to be charged more than what the web design or development project should really cost. But, not having some idea of budget at the onset makes it very difficult to propose the right solutions. Also, there are times when a budget is simply too small for the proposed project scope. Proposals cost a lot to produce. There's almost always a significant amount of discovery that must take place prior to putting together the quote. So, if we're going to invest several hours putting together an accurate proposal, we need to know that there's a reasonable chance that the project will move forward.
In an ideal world, the client and creative agency share the same goals. In other words, both sides should be working to achieve the same result, which, by the way, must be to reach the objectives set forth by the client, not those of the agency. After all, we don't get hired to send invoices. Our Reno web design and internet marketing team gets hired to accomplish something the client cannot accomplish internally. In my view, it all boils down to this. If you are the client, try to at least give some kind of range regarding website budgets for a given project. That will help the web designer and engineering or marketing team outline the best possible tactics for meeting your goals. If you are the agency, be honest and quote what things really cost. That way, we maintain trust as an industry and everyone involved wins.
I just read something that struck me as both funny and poignant. It was an article about website budgets that pointed out how every project begins with what the author described as a "subtle psychological game of 'you go first'" between the agency (us) and the potential client. The point of the article was that the creative agency or web design firm should be bold and ask. Fundamentally, I agree and here's why. To begin with, regardless of the business owner's budget, there will almost always be a solution that will at least satisfy some of his organization's goals. So, for Reno web design projects with smaller budgets, we always do our best to guide the client toward options that have the best possible chance of early success.
Sometimes, outlining the scope of a project ties our people up for days. To be accurate, we develop what we call use case diagrams outlining every possible interaction between the various potential users of the final website. Additionally, considerable effort goes into higher level strategic planning long before we present a proposal. If we have a sense of the planned budget going in, we are able to concentrate our energy on strategies and tactics that have a realistic chance of being implemented. It's easy to understand why a potential client might prefer to play it close to the vest. There are agencies that would propose a project at, say, $5,000, but if they know the budget is twice that, the proposal will be presented accordingly. It's an opportunistic form of bidding that is both unethical and unproductive. In our firm, if we know the budget is X-dollars, we bid the project based on realistic expectations of hours regardless. If there's anything left, we'll make recommendations about how the client can gain additional value with the same budget, or simply leave it out of the proposal. But, in either case, we never jack up the price just because there's money available.
Obviously, no one wants to be charged more than what the web design or development project should really cost. But, not having some idea of budget at the onset makes it very difficult to propose the right solutions. Also, there are times when a budget is simply too small for the proposed project scope. Proposals cost a lot to produce. There's almost always a significant amount of discovery that must take place prior to putting together the quote. So, if we're going to invest several hours putting together an accurate proposal, we need to know that there's a reasonable chance that the project will move forward.
In an ideal world, the client and creative agency share the same goals. In other words, both sides should be working to achieve the same result, which, by the way, must be to reach the objectives set forth by the client, not those of the agency. After all, we don't get hired to send invoices. Our Reno web design and internet marketing team gets hired to accomplish something the client cannot accomplish internally. In my view, it all boils down to this. If you are the client, try to at least give some kind of range regarding website budgets for a given project. That will help the web designer and engineering or marketing team outline the best possible tactics for meeting your goals. If you are the agency, be honest and quote what things really cost. That way, we maintain trust as an industry and everyone involved wins.
