I’ve got a lot of work to do before this gets super useful, but take a look at the initial output.

This is people who I influence and that influence me, out to five degrees (i.e. influencers of influencers of influencers of influencers of influencers).

I’ll post updates as I make them, and the code once it’s useful.

You can view the full-size image on flickr.

My slides from WCM on March 15, 2011

If your website is just falling a little bit flat, then you might benefit from a redesign. From the information contained herein, as well as the series of articles that will be coming over the following weeks, you can be an educated and savvy consumer in the process of redesigning a website.

5. Not Driving Organizational Goals

We already talked about not having goals, so we’ll assume that you have goals.

Are they the right goals?

Just picking a site at random, let’s take a quick look at Ford. They spend a good amount of their time in their main advertising area talking about non-ford-branded (Mercury, Lincoln, etc) hybrid cars. So, I know that I don’t watch as much TV as maybe some other folks, but, when did you last see an ad for the 2011 Lincoln MKZ Hybrid? You’ve probably seen about a dozen of Ford’s F150 commercials with Mike Rowe in the mean time, haven’t you.

The web is advertising, more and more every day. Ford’s website probably costs them in the neighborhood of $10M/yr to run (there are a lot of people go into a site like that), and they allocate roughly half of their mindshare on that page to products outside of what I would guess are their core performers (trucks and Ford cars).

Do you think that Ford spends half of it’s advertising budget on the MKZ Hybrid? Even on the 2011 focus (yes, I know the focus is huge in Europe, please do try to stay focused)?

No, probably not. So, why spend mindshare on the web on those products that don’t drive your core business goals?

6. Content is King

I’m hardly the first person to say that. I’m probably not even the first person to say that to you, this month.

Having up to date content on your site is key. Content, in so many cases, is your product, or, at least, your packaging. You wouldn’t buy a carton of eggs that had been left sitting on the shelf for a month, so why would you trust content that was loaded onto a website when the website was first setup years ago, and then never touched?

Hey, creating is quality site is hard work. You need well written, plentiful content that goes to your goals, speaks to your audience and is updated frequently. It’s a drag, but that’s why they call me, ich bin expert.

7. How many visitors do you lose while they wait around for your site?

Does your site take more than a second to load? One whole second is too long already.

Amazon has found that every additional tenth of a second(!) that users have to wait, the conversion rate drops by a full 1%. Amazon has the same users as you do (because they have way more users), and if they get frustrated when they’re going to amazon to buy something, how much patience will they have on your website where they’re probably either shopping, or being sold something.

Like it or not, we live in an instant gratification world. if your site can’t live up to it right now, call a pro.

8. Google doesn’t even know you exist

Google is smart, but it can’t read minds – yet.

You need to write your content in a way that you clearly communicate to google what is important, and what is not. You can do this through the subtle language of semantic markup, the far more subtle language of link balancing, or the comparatively blunt tool of robots.txt, but the one thing that is for certain is that you cannot do it with words that are in text, or content that is loaded in from an external source, be that flash or javascript.

Google, and similar services (bing, yahoo, etc) are increasingly the sources that people use to get their news and information. If Google doesn’t know about your site, then it can’t send traffic to your site. If Google isn’t sending traffic to your site, then you’ve got some pretty big problems.

9. Tough to Touch

Do you have a CMS?

Do you know what a CMS is?

If you don’t have a way to quickly, easily, and safely update the content to your website, then chances are that you don’t do it. If you don’t update your content, you’re likely falling prey to the reason #3 listed in part one of this article.

Having a website that is tough to update is like having plants that are hard to water. Put another way, making it difficult on yourself if the surest way to be confident that you won’t do it.

So, please, make it easy to update your content. Then, y’know, update your content. We’ll look more at specific CMSs later.

This article, as well as Part One of “Do I Have to Redesign My website should get you started on the process of at least figuring out what you need to do.

As it comes to actually doing the thing, you should wait for my articles coming up int eh next several weeks / months as your guided tour of how to (re)build a website.

Until next time.

– ”You guys, you can’t do that.”

– ”Why not?”

– “‘Cause it’s freakin me out.”

(if you missed the reference, try this on for size)

Before getting into this, you might want to take a look at the acid tests and maybe make life a little quicker.

Once you’ve finished with “this one” be sure to check out part two of today’s article!

1. Your website has no clear goal

Would a visitor coming to your website for the first time know exactly what you wanted her to do when she got there? Would she see a clear, concise message right away? Would there be a clear call to action?

Or maybe it would be be a bit more complicated, maybe a whole lot of text, maybe a bit muddled.

When a user first arrives at a site, there should be clear headlines, concise body copy, and a clear call to action. The homepage for your website is like an advertisement, and should have the same basic pieces, headline, body copy, call to action. All of your navigation should be secondary to this. Text on the page is good, google likes it. Descriptive body text is best. Text that talks about your website and the products and services that you offer is better. If your an organization selling memberships, text that talks about your value proposition to your members is best.

Don’t waste pixels on graphics that don’t get your message across and don’t waste your breath on text that doesn’t drive your user toward a goal.

2. Your Competition is Eating Your Lunch

When you look at the websites of your competitors, are you struck by how clearly they communicatie? How stylish they are? How much faster they are?

So are your customers.

If you’re scoping out the competition, odds are, your buyers* are too. The difference is that they won’t be looking for the subtle things that you do better than your competitors. They’ll be looking at how much better your competitors are overall, and will just buy directly from them, forgetting all about you.

So, while it’s good to focus on what you do well, and what your competitors can improve on (more on that in a later post), for the most part, you just have to make sure that they’re not miles ahead of you.

3. Are you tone-deaf?

Do you talk directly to your audience? Do you know who your audience is?

You site might have beautifully written prose, packed with references to Proust or perhaps to enlightenment era thinkers. If your website is selling Miley Cyrus memorabilia, you might have strayed a bit far from the mark.

Know your audience. Know what they like. Know what they find humorous. Know if they find humor something that can be easily injected into everyday situations.

Think Geek does a great job of knowing their audience. The Architect of the Capitol, less so.

Always be on the lookout for what resonates with your audience. If you can put yourself directly into their shoes, so much the better. If for some reason, you’re not able to (age gap, gender gap, whatever gap), develop a focus group and test your site and content on them when it comes time to redesign your website.

4. Your design tries too hard

Good design is timeless. Design that tries too hard looks dated after a year, and hopeless after three. This holds true for web design as well as it does for clothing design, architectural design, or vehicular design.

Put another way, there’s a very good reason that a good condition C2 Corvette will cost you over $100k, but a perfectly serviceable C4 can be had for under $10k.

You’ll know if your site looks dated. The next time you redesign it, please, please, please, try to stay away from the glitter coat, the targa top and the neon green leg warmers.

See reasons 5 through 9 in tomorrow’s entry!

* Throughout, I’m going to use terms like “buyers,” and “customers.” Regardless if you’re actually selling products to consumers on your website, you have buyers. Anyone whom you would like to have fulfill a goal when they come to your website is a customer.

]]>