With all the talk about SEO, PPC, Twitter, Flash and other web technologies, sometimes we overlook what is *really* important in a website. Don’t forget the fundamentals! Here is a quick list of things you should do that will help your online visitors once they find you:
You need an “elevator speech” – a short paragraph summarizing your organization. Imagine that you were in an elevator with someone and had only 1 minute to explain your company to them. It should be short, sweet and memorable – and right in a user’s siteline above the fold.
Your site needs to inspire an action of some sort. What is your goal? Is it to have a visitor contact you? If so, make it easy for them to do so, but also give them a clear reason to contact you – Inspire them!
Have an “About Us” page. People like to know more about your company. The “About Us” page is consistently one of my most visited pages on my website. This is your best opportunity to build trust – why should someone trust your organization? Experience? Knowledge? What is it?
Most often, people on the web are hunting for specific information, and they want it QUICK. Waiting to see if that information is in a video or buried on a subpage is usually not an option – they will click on to the next site. Concentrate on making the key information available quickly and easily. Navigation at the top will help, and adding relevant textual info. Don’t get too wordy – get to the point.
Don’t try to dazzle with Flashy intros, or moving graphics. A) It is distracting, and B) it isn’t search engine friendly. If it doesn’t help deliver information faster, don’t bother. Depending on your brand, the days of cool Flash animations are over for most companies. Information delivery is key.
If you have a website, you should also have a Flickr account. Flickr is a fantasic social networking site for uploading and sharing pictures. It also provides some great website building tools. Here is my quick list of how you can use Flickr on your company website:
1. Host all those big picture files!
For a lot of small businesses, there just isn’t a lot of room on your server to host all those pictures that you want to share. If I uploaded all my pictures from my last Florida vacation to this server, I’m pretty sure I would fill it to capacity in no time. Flickr is great because it will host all your pictures online for FREE – that is, you are allowed to upload up to 100MB of pics per month for free. That is enough for most people.
2. Host there, Display anywhere!
Now that your photos are sitting safely and snuggly on the Flickr server, you now can “insert” them into your website. The picture below is posted from my Flickr account – it is the scoreboard from the 2009 Monon Bell football game (my favorite sporting event)!
3. Embed Cool Photo Galleries
You can also create cool photo galleries with Flickr. By organizing your pictures into sets, you can export them as sliding picture galleries that you can share on your web page. This aligns with one of the great services that we provide our clients: maximum functionality for minimum cost. Check out this gallery below from the 2009 Monon Bell game that I attended last year:
So as you build your site – think about using some of the features available to you by free social networking sites like Flickr. They can improve the user experience for your web visitors, but they can also save you money in your pocket.
We managed to squeeze in a quick redesign of our site – this is our first real custom design project. Mostly we have been doing slightly modified free Wordpress templates. With the new Seven1 site, we finally got let our imagination go to work.
The best part though is that it is, in fact, still a Wordpress template – we just uploaded it into our existing Wordpress installation and – voila – a brand new website (although the underlying software never changed).
That is a great advantage to having a Wordpress website, you can change the look-and-feel of the site very easily without changing the underlying functionality.
So what have we been up to lately? Well, we are perfecting some document management software that we have been working. It does some pretty cool things – the main focus is that users can generate and organize forms with bar codes on them. The form can be printed, filled out manually, then uploaded back into the system. The software recognizes the bar code and stores it in a file system in the appropriate location.
Next up soon will be the Blue Crew Sports Grill re-design. That will be a fun project – we have been sorting through some great pictures taken at the various Colts parties from the 2009-2010 season. I think the site will be exciting and a reflection of the passionate Colts fans that love to eat and drink there.
My partner Jodi and I had a great meeting with BRANDSWAG yesterday. It seems there might be some web development opportunites there – we’ll see.
BRANDSWAG provides several important services to its customers. A big part of what they do is using social networking to build your client base. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn – they are important tools in today’s digital age because they easily push information to customers. They enhance communication and build relationships. Good stuff.
Another part of what they do is establish “brand”, which is a more technical term for defining what is unique and marketable about your business.
The Seven1 Group is still in its infancy. We are defining ourselves and networking, networking, networking. I believe we are at a point now where our brand can finally come out. I was busy redesigning our website last night to match our brand: Professional, web smart, and an emphasis on web application development.
As it stands now, our website is geared more towards web design and marketing. That is part of what we do – but a brand is about marketing what we do *best*. And I truly believe our strength is in building robust web applications.
That’s how we got in the same room with Brandswag – they need what we do best.
So think about your brand, and make sure it is communicates your strengths to your potential customers.
One of the great pleasures of my job as a web developer is helping out the small businesses of Indiana. I’m a born-and-bred Hoosier and grew up in southern Indiana. My father was an Indiana business owner – he owned a restaurant near Martinsville for years (The Waverly Inn – “the place for catfish”). To be a part of that small business community is in my blood, you could say.
One of the reasons I enjoy working with Indiana small businesses on their websites is the satisfaction of helping someone succeed. Many businesses out there are missing the boat on getting a new website that integrates with all of the newest technologies – they are missing important opportunities to connect with their customers.
Consider our newest client – the Blue Crew Sports Grill. We will be re-designing their website in the coming months. Imagine the potential to reach out to customers through Twitter and Facebook during the Colt’s amazing playoff run! For restaurants like Blue Crew, we can set up their site so that a simple update to their website will also update their most loyal customers through online social networks. Harnessing new technologies that provide instant communication does one simple thing – it gets the word out. And most importantly, it gets the word out to receptive targets – people who have chosen to “subscribe” to what you have to say.
My father founded a business on customer loyalty. Great service bears great referrals. Websites can help make that referral process easier.
The other great part of doing websites for Indiana small businesses is simple Hoosier hospitality. I have made some good friends in my line of work. One of my favorite clients to visit is Alex at the Delicious Bakery-Cafe. Alex is the co-owner of the Delicious Bakery-Cafe, which is coffee shop/bakery/cafe in downtown Westfield. Not only is the food and bakery items and amazing, but it is the friendliest service in town. We finished up a very simple, cost efficient site for Alex just this month. He is already reaching out to customers using Facebook and Twitter, and having him is a client is the perfect excuse to pop into his shop for a coffee and some pleasant conversation.
Alex, who is from Mexico, told me that once you do business with the Hispanic community, “it is like being family”.
That, to me, sounds like a worthy way to conduct business.
Parker 
