Over the last year, Small Box has been asked to respond to dozens of  RFPs for all kinds of businesses, corporations, and non-profits. Here’s some advice for groups that are looking to solicit work from a company like Small Box via an RFP process… Don’t. Just kidding, sorta.

I suggest instead of sending out RFPs to every company you come across examine the capabilities of the companies you are considering and start conversations with them.

If you like how the conversation is going and the work they have done for others then engage with them on a limited or trial basis. This might mean research and site architecture or just general consulting to help organize the project. If they are the right fit you will know after that limited engagement. If not then walk away with the work they did and keep looking.

This gives you a real chance to find out how they work, and in the long run saves you the time and money associated with an extended RFP process and subsequent “marriage” to the chosen vendor. What if that vendor is really only great at 2 of the 5 things you need? Now you have a vendor that is stretching to do work that it shouldn’t be doing.

Instead find one team to lead and manage the project and work with them to bring in secondary vendors as needed. Rely on the lead team’s knowledge and experience to help pick these secondary vendors.

An RFP can be a useful document and a good starting point for a conversation but most of the time the scope of a Web project will change, often dramatically, once the planning and design phase begins. The Web is both a wonderful and frustrating thing. It is ridiculously flexible as a platform which creates endless possibilities.

A smart company will engage with an agency that is willing to explore the possibilities, make informed choices, put together the right team to get it done and then circle back around to evaluate those choices after they have been implemented. Too often companies, and agencies, get pulled by the “idea of the day” creating endless scope creep and headaches for all involved. The resulting site is usually a messy melting pot of half baked ideas. Explore, make decisions and stay focused. You will have a much more successful project in the end.

- PJ with contributions from Jeb

A year or so ago Ning.com was the belle of the ball. Gina Bianchini, the company’s CEO was featured on the cover of Fast Company. The article “Ning’s Infinite Ambition” detailed their viral loop strategy to getting 4 million Ning communities online by 2010.

Ok, well here we are entering the 4th quarter of 2009 and there are “only” 1.5 million Ning Networks and only a fifth of those are active. Only 3% of the communities are paying to run their own ads. I would argue that is an even better indication of how many truly active. Finally many feel, myself included, that the platform has not evolved fast enough to keep up with Facebook and Twitter.  In October 2008 Ning stopped supporting any API activity telling developers to work within the Open Social platform. Not a bad choice for some but certainly not the preferred method for most developers who want to customize their Ning Network and push content out to third party apps ala Tweetdeck, etc.

It’s no secret that Ning’s RSS feeds suck. Their event feed doesn’t even include a field for the event’s date! If ou pull in the date field it’s the date the event was posted which is near worthless. Basically Ning has done as little as possible to make their platform a broadcast platform. It wants everyone to come to their party but they won’t return the favor. Ning just doesn’t play nice.

Also, some feel that Ning is actually a scam. Setting up this cool, white label social networking platform and then co-opting the users that their site admins have gathered. Read an interesting post on this and other Ning theories at Charting Stocks.

It appears that Ning has lots of money, having raised $60 million last April on a $500 million evaluation, also it has yearly revenues around $10 million. Not too shabby. So why aren’t they investing in the platform? Is Ning looking to be bought out? I would argue making improvements would increase that likelihood. Everyday that passes leaves Ning further and further behind. Their unwillingness to let their site administrators easily integrate third party apps and sites has opened the door for new Social Network services like SocialGo.com to get their foot in.

I’m frustrated by Ning. At Small Box we run, consult and develop around several Ning communities, including the Indiana Music site Musicalfamilytree.com and the Indiana business site SmallerIndiana.com, but we consistently run into issues with the platform. Whether it’s bad RSS feeds or little control over the design and functionality we have to be very creative and make numerous compromises on a regular basis. With Musical Family Tree we have actually developed an entirely separate platform that appears to integrate seamlessly but I can assure it was anything but easy to do.

So what’s up Ning? Why won’t you open up the API and let our Social Networks play nice with third party apps? Why won’t you develop the platform to realize it’s true potential?

What do you think? Is Ning on the right track or losing momentum?

In my experience most companies have no idea how to blog. They are really intimidated . Sure, they know that it should help in their search engine standings but what happens when the search traffic gets to this blog? Where is the ROI? Is this is a huge waste of time and resources?

Now don’t get me wrong, there are a handful of companies out there doing a great job of using blogs to capture search. Our friends over at Compendium have done a great job of providing a SaaS platform for business blogging. But it really takes a company that is willing to invest in creating content regularly and “gets” blogging on some level. Or it takes an investment in “ghost” blogging which can be a little pricey and also run the risk of appearing inauthentic.

If most companies don’t know how to “blog” they do know how to answer questions. In fact they answer questions everyday. These questions and answers simply float out into space. These answers contain valuable content that needs to be captured and shared. If these questions and answers were presented in a search and user friendly environment then companies would be creating valuable site content on a regular basis, capturing new business via search and providing a valuable tool for existing customers.

More soon on how we plan to provide this service. We call it “Active FAQs”- search engine and user friendly FAQ pages.

There is growing evidence that Google and other search engines are looking more closely at how quickly visitors bounce from your site. In one way this helps you, it means that your site is less likely to show up for those irrelevant searches. In other ways it could penalize your entire site since Google could see it as your site not being user friendly.

People usually bounce for one of two reasons- content and usability. If the content isn’t what the user wanted they will head back to Google- keep in mind content includes product prices. If the content is there but buried, or the site is a mess with no clear calls to action then they will bounce back to find a better page that serves their needs. Remember that most visitors don’t care about you, they don’t know your company or why you might have a better product or service.

So the key is building a site that attracts the right kind of traffic. When we do keyword research we look at search volume and we consider “commercial intent”. Basically this means that we want to get our clients listed for relevant industry searches that have users with high commercial intent. The “wallet on the table” user. Ready to go once they find the site that meets their needs.

So when you look at your Analytics and you consider your site traffic, whether it is rising or falling, look a little closer. Make sure you are looking at things like time on site, bounce rate, pages per visit etc. Also look at keywords that brought the user to the site. Are they relevant for what your company or organization is doing?

If you aren’t getting “real” visitors but only “lost” visitors then your website isn’t doing its job.

4 years when I first started building websites all my clients wanted them to “look good”. There was very little awareness of search engine traffic, Content Management Systems and even less awareness of the importance of user testing. Basically they wanted a brochure website. I’ve noticed a big shift in the last year. Businesses and organizations I talk to are more focused on ease of use and discovery.

So let’s break it down:

Easy To Find: what good is a website that no-one can find in search engines? Very little. A modern website needs to be built from the ground up to be search engine friendly. This means site architecture, keyword research and implementation. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is serious stuff. You do it right and the world is knocking on your door. You do it wrong, or more often not at all!, and your business can wither and die.

Easy To Use: now that you’ve got people to your website does it convert? Do they know what to do? Consider this, if your site has a 1% conversion rate you can either work to increase that rate to 2% through user testing and changes or work to double your traffic via search engines, email etc. They both have the same outcome. Guess which one is easier? A “beautiful” website is a fine thing but it is meaningless if it doesn’t convert.

Easy To Update: this is probably the number one complaint that I hear from clients. “I can’t update my %&$* site! I have to pay the Web company to do it, it takes forever, costs too much.” Back in the late 90s and early 2000s many sites were built without a Content Management System (CMS).

Is your website easy to find, easy to use and easy to update? If not then it’s time for a real website that will actively grow your business.

Then it hit me. The reason I have trouble with proposals is that there is a disconnect between the company and the proposal. We are Web company, right? Our proposals look like they were kicked out by a traditional media company. They are flat, bullet pointed things. There is little story telling and no Web element to it. Why are we only giving customers a PDF for a proposal? Are we going to design and build a PDF for their company?! I understand that a PDF needs to be a component but really it should just be a part of a presentation that is in sync with who we are as a company, a Web company.

So what to do? We are looking to experiment with some new approaches. Sending a client a link to a landing page with a screencast of what we want to do, links to relevant work and a demo of our Content Management System and yes, a PDF take away document.

I think this is going to help us sell our services more effectively as well as ensure that the original vision the client buys into can survive intact through the duration of the project.

What do you think? Any proposal ideas or suggestions?

People Don’t Read on the Web.

They scan menus, headings, lists, icons, images and labels looking for the juicy little bits of text that will lead them to the few words that communicate the information they want, need and were looking for all along.

Everybody’s writing about it.

Jakob Nielsen , Usability Guru, has done the research.

“79 percent of our test users always scanned…16 percent read word-by-word.”

“The introductory paragraph(s)… is what I call blah-blah text… such as “Welcome to our site, we…”

“On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely.”

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Carsonified , Experts on Web Design, offer this equation.

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Steve Krug, author of Don’t Make Me Think, suggests a dull knife.

“Get rid of half your text and then get rid of half of what’s left.”

Conclusion: Write for the user, not for yourself.

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In our experience most companies have starter websites- basically a brochure on the web. It’s a destination. Maybe you find it via a search for the company name but not much else. All the visitors know something about the company or they wouldn’t be there. A “preaching to the choir” website. A website that exists only because you “have” to have a website.

The problem is that this kind web presence is almost worthless and will do nothing to grow your company. In fact it may be hurting it.

The few that find their way there wonder how legitimate your company is if you don’t have a “real” website.

So what is a “real” website?

A real website is a broadcast platform. Here’s some of the characteristics of broadcasting website:

Social Media- when you add a blog it automagically updates your company’s Twitter account, and other services, with a link to that blog.
RSS- your site’s RSS feed is being pulled in by other blogs and services like Google Reader.
Google loves you- a search engine friendly site will rank for many competitive keyword searches.
You site is easy to update- so you look forward to adding new pages and content which only brings more traffic. (don’t get me started on the importance of a good Content Management System!)
Your site listens- lets users leave feedback, comments and generally interact in a playful way.

The function of a website is changing. If “content is king” then a website’s job is to broadcast that content across the web’s many platforms.

The companies that invest in content broadcasting sites will win search, traffic and eventually the customer.

First off the Web and media has changed substantially since that “brochure” site was launched. In the late 1990s and early 2000s it didn’t do much harm for a company to have a brochure style website. But now companies need to see their websites more like broadcast platforms. Often times their website’s content will be accessed as much from third party sites and services (Google Local or Maps, Search Engines, RSS feeds, Social Media etc).

Companies need to think of websites as being similar to radio or TV stations that are broadcasting their content 24/7. Websites are no longer just destinations. They are channels that flow out and across the web in various formats. At least that is what a modern website does. So before you think about what to spend think about how this is not the Web of the late 90s or early 2000s. Heck this isn’t even the web c.2006!

So how much should you spend on a modern website that acts as a broadcast platform?

I recommend looking at your media budget and determining a percentage to invest in the Web . I would recommend at least 50% since it’s pretty clear from all the data that the Web has the best and most demonstrable ROI of any marketing effort. The take that amount and extend it to 3-5 years. If you spend $2000 a month on marketing then allocate $1000 a month to the web times 36 to 60 months.

The beautiful thing about the Web is that you can test and see what works, tweak and repeat until you are seeing a phenomenal return. Every investment takes time to bring a return but with the Web you will be able to see it more clearly and usually more quickly.

I encourage business owners to be patient. The Web is moving quickly, more quickly than most of population, and your customers, can keep up with. Only 30-40% of all new users to Twitter actually use the service a month later. That means 60-70% of all Twitter users abandon the site/service almost immediately! Twitter is a great format for business conversations, creating leads, etc. but remember it is still a small player compared to search engines in terms of driving business growth.

So don’t panic, focus on what is working and only expand into the Social Media waters as you have the time and interest to make that investment. The reality is that the business on the Web is still being driven by Search Engines. Although Twitter is moving into the search arena, see its new home page, it is still a long ways off from competing with Google or even Yahoo and Bing in that arena.

The best way to grow your business is by using search engines to drive traffic to your website. It has the best ROI hands down. If you have a website that is easy to find (search engines), easy to use (usability/conversion) and easy to manage (content management system) then you will have the right foundation for growth. Once that is established you can start dabbling in the Social Media waters.