I want to know who is clicking on the google ads that are placed in the middle of paragraphs, before the answer you need to find, and anywhere else they can be jammed on the web page? Okay, maybe I’m a touch intolerant of ad sense. But I have a good reason why. For example, I too fell prey to the lure of googles billions, thought I could make money and implemented google ad sense into the yellowfish website.

Hard as I would try, I could not get the ad sense placements to stop competing with the content. Now here’s where my tolerance started to go south. We are Yellowfish Technologies, an Information Technology firm. Ad sense decided to pick the word ‘yellowfish’ and proceeded to list out crap ads about water, feeding, fish types, yellow belly fish flounder and you name it. It was ridiculous to see this type of information being offered on our technology home front. The competitors it also advertised was another story. I removed ad sense from the Yellowfish site. I guess now I’m not such a big fan, but the bad news is, it continues to haunt me.

I am a victim. I really am. Bad google advertising makes me lose track of what I was looking for. Usually the rest of something interesting… When I see these odd ad blocks hogging up valuable real estate on the web page where the content suppose to be, I can’t believe they are in such big use. The ads are just plain distracting and side-track you. Honestly, I do not know anyone who would stop to click further on them. The Yellow belly fish flounder incident comes back loud and clear.

I am now convinced most people who use and those who over-use ad sense do not pay attention to what actually shows up on their site under these ads. I was having a victim moment the other day and noticed the link options very strange. I think it was out of irritation and to prove it’s all irrelevant stuff displayed in those ad sense links, but I clicked on a couple as an experiment. All 5 of the links I chose brought me to a page without graphics and that was just a series of more random links, too many choices about the same thing, with an occasional link that made a small amount of sense. It’s just as I thought…useless. Oh, and by-the-way, I never went back to that site and found another that delivered information not ads. I book marked it.

I know people are just trying to make an extra buck off google hoping someone clicks on one of them and earns them extra money, but geeze, good sites are falling prey and putting all google ads above the fold and the important stuff below. I can barely read what’s I came there for. To all you over-users of google ad sense, please evaluate if it’s worth switching out your business content that should be easy to find and read for ads on things generally irrelevant and out of your control. Do you really want visitors leaving your site to go somewhere else anyways?

 

 

Ok, I am all for video on a website. It’s interesting, visually stimulating and its fun to watch. EXCEPT when you arrive at a website and the video blasts off and startles you half to death. How dare they scare me like that? A few choice words later, while I try to get my heart rate under control from the sudden fright… I can’t help but find myself irritated at the disturbance as well as wonder why my speakers were set so loud. I think the use of video on a website and on landing pages are great when used appropriately. But you must allow the user to control when it starts, ends and how loud it will be. Set the default volume to a non-invasive level. Let the user adjust it to their liking. Asking how do you get the user to play the video and know it’s there if it doesn’t blast off? Make it interesting! Draw attention to the display, make the user want to push ‘play’. Use a giant ‘Play me button’ if you need to, but just don’t set the video on ‘auto-play’ with a volume level loud enough to wake moon men.

Okay, it’s time to put the content for your website together. Easy, right? There is probably tons of stuff about the product or service you provide laying around the office so you’ll just compile the technical information about each and list it out. Well, if only it were that simple.

The problem is most products and services are unique or fall into a pretty generic group along with everyone else who sells the same thing. So, how are you going to get found by the visitor and ’speak’ to them so they first find, then choose your business?

You are going to start by talking their language and entering the conversation in their head. You will earn the trust of these people when you talk to them the same way they talk to each other and themselves. Try to imagine what the website visitor is going through to need your product or service. When they sit down to search, what would they be looking for and how they might start their search. Would they start with searching the exact product name and technical details? Probably not, how would they know what those were? Keep in mind, if they knew of a product/business already, they would go straight to the website, there would be no search conducted. So…

Most likely the potential visitor would start by searching for information about the problem at hand. By this I mean the pain point are they trying to address.That would be something they know, but what they don’t always know is how to solve it and/or what the solution is. That’s where your website comes in. Your website would lead with information about solving problems, not information about the product or service itself. Now, here’s the perfect example of what I’m talking about.

I know this is an old over-used example, but…it’s just so good I can’t resist using it, yet again.

Nobody who bought a drill wanted a drill. They wanted a hole. What this means for you is that instead of providing information about drills, you should deliver information about making holes.

It’s hard for a business to survive today.  This has caused lot’s of companies to incorporate practically any method of prospecting new business such as constant cold calls, daily eblast, ineffectively designed direct mail, etc..

With a rapid fire of  sales genres being applied in attempt to win customers, the buyer is steadily becoming desensitized and blocking most of this crap out. The buyer knows they can just google a service / product  if they need to and become annoyed at the unwelcome sales contact. Obviously this leaves a bad taste in their mouth. In the end the buyer will be the one to approach a business should they decide to and only if the business is deemed worthy.

That’s why it’s super important that you have a professional web presence built and are positioned and ready to allow the buyer/searcher to find you first instead of you calling them. With most people starting their search for products or services on the web, they can do the research and check out places before they dive in and make contact.  Make sure your website is in good position out there delivering the information the searcher/buyer is looking to find.

When these buyers contact you via website, they  already know what you do and how you can help them.  By letting the prospect approach you, their perception of you is different. You will be a consultant to them, not a pesky peddler with unwanted goods that were not asked for.  That alone gives you a good chance at selling to them and gains you instant respect.

Think of  positioning your website vs. prospecting this way;  if you needed a doctor, you would research and choose one you felt comfortable with.  You probably wouldn’t choose the prospecting doctor who happen to call you at breakfast one week wondering if you had a migrane headache they could help with nor would you choose the prospecting doctor who sent you a flyer in the mail offering a significant new patient discount that expires in two weeks.

What it boils down to is the doctor doesn’t find the patient, the patient find them. This creates the patient confidence to accept the diagnosis and follow recommended orders no matter how inconvenient or painful.

Get competitive and make sure your website is out there and ready to be found when these potential customers start their research. Lastly, make sure your website is delivering information that will help the visitor get started, then want to contact you to learn more. That is website positioning, not prospecting.

When considering your business website it’s best to think in terms of business goals you would like to achieve with your website. Your website is the front door of your business. Most people start searching for services and products these days on the web, then contact you in person or visit your physical location. With this in mind, think of what business goals you would like your website to meet as it is your first impression.  It’s the best business tool you’ve got, make it work hard for you and make it speak to your visitors.

Some business goals to consider (think in terms of a year from now, 2 years from now) when determining your website goals are:

What do you want your website to do for you AND the visitor?

1. Inform
2. Inspire Awareness
3. Educate
4. Repeat Visitors
5. User Interaction
6. Media source
7. Resources
8. Measurement
9. Call-to-actions
10. Funding/ donations
11. Grow Rep & Branding

Qualitive Goals:

1. Market Position
2. Kind of Business
3. Target Audience/ Market

Potential conflicts of business goals (if any):

Other Goals:

Other Challenges:

Once you have this handly list populated, a web designer will have a great tool to design a website that will  accommodate these needs. It’s truly helpful.

Nothing is harder than trying to design a website when you have no idea what the content will be. If you want to have a web site that meets certain goals such as easy to navigate, pleasant to view, nice organized layout, calls-action, user-digestable,  high lead conversions, etc…you simply must have the content to design around.

Having the content also allows you convert text into graphics, punch out certain information which compliment the page layout and give visual interest.

In order to plan these things into the design, you must have all content up front before any design work can start else the usability of the site will be at stake.

Once you have the content in front of you, you can then plan the information architecture, which is how the website visitor will find their way around your site-navigation. Categories and sections will lay the ground work for the first phases of design.

Without having content upfront you risk the hazard of having to ‘jam’ things in, stick them where ever you can find room, well, you get the idea, it’s not ideal and does not help the usability of the site.

To have a professional website designed or an existing website assessed, visit Yellowfish Technologies.

Most of core software developers tend to brush off ‘user interface’ thingies. ‘HTML developers’ are looked down upon by people working on the cool backend technologies. The mere fact that UI designers get paid far less than their backend counterparts is a proof of my assertion.

Goes on to prove the geeks have it all wrong when it comes to selling!

Good, slick user interface is quite hard to achieve. It requires vision, imagination, training in human psychology AND a quite a bit of technical wizardy. Try navigating all corners of CSS and then make yourself cross browser. You’ll know what I’m talking about. Apple is where it is today simply because of it’s fantastic user interface. There’s nothing one could not do with good old PCs before Macs made a comeback. Yet people rushed to pay extra dollars to get the coolest computer on earth. Ease of use ? Stylish? Marketing? Status Symbol? Be different syndrome? You can call it what you like but if it were not for the beatiful interface, Apple wouldn’t have survived it’s comeback for this long.

Contrary to popular wisdom, Looks ARE everything. People are shallow. The managers controlling the money purse are technologically shallow and ill-informed. Show ‘em your multi-threaded, fault-tolerant, highly scalable database which has an inferior look and feel and you’re sure to lose that sale. Absolutely. It’s guaranteed.
Pay attention to usability and some amount of eye-candy right from the beginning. Even your prototypes have to look slick, even with reduced functionality, if you’ve any hopes of raising capital or generating interest. Don’t discount the shallowness of the masses.

Creating a website by doing it yourself. Exhilarating, fun and most likely you thought ‘well this isn’t hard at all’. Some actually add it to their resume as a skill while thinking ‘why would I pay to have someone do this for me?’ I’ll tell you why, for all the little things that you would have no idea come with having a competitive web presence where you are 1 site out of millions trying to be seen and heard. You only have 6 seconds to get through to a visitor. Not to burst any bubbles, but these fun little DYI website projects generally come to a frustrating end when realization sets in that your business and virtual front door may not be very competitive.

I blame the companies that offer this do-it-yourself option as a business solution. Shame on them. They almost make you feel guilty that you should build your own site since they are giving you all these easy tools to do it. It amazes me how many companies offer a complete package of hosting, web design templates and an editor, then say your ready to go. They claim it’s so easy you can be up and running within hours. The real kicker is you probably could, but at a severe handicap.

The goal for these types of companies are to get a web page up quickly and easily, not how to attract and retain visitors to your website, or how to make certain you are coming across professionally and creating a good impression. There is much to creating and evolving a web presence. You must think long term. Most would literally need to switch jobs to keep up with their website and it’s industry.

I’d like to show you alittle about what’s under the hood of building a website that gets missed entirely by the D.Y.I’ers and why you should go with professional services, not your receptionist or son in high school as a computer class project.

Although there is a ton to this, to each area and sub-area, here is a basic outline of process:

1. Web Project Outline
2. Team selection
3. Information Gathering
4. Site Planning

• Purpose of site
• Goals of site
• Target Audience
• Content development – see SEO
• Optimization
• Reporting
• Interaction
• * etc…

5. Design

• Do you have existing graphics?
• Do you have a logo?
• etc…

6. Development
7. Testing and Delivery
8. Maintenance

Let’s talk about the existing websites. They must be assessed to learn where the flaws are and how start improving your website today. Yellowfish offers this service and many clients have been astounded by their assessments and quickly set about correcting the issues with the website. Here are is a link with a fun little test for your website and others: Can your website do it?

I have seen some seriously cool websites out there. Some of the cooler sites I have found have been completely flash. You know, those really jazzy sites with lots of stuff moving around, sounds coming from it, videos streaming away….

Let me tell you a little something about flash. Flash does not work like html websites, of which search engines like. Search engines do not like flash. In fact, flash isn’t considered in most search engine indexing. It’s ignored. Indexing just means the little robots that go through your site and take note of what’s there and make it show up when someone searches for it. The robots can’t seem to read it and make heads or tails of it.

As you can start to see, that’s a problem if your site doesn’t come up or it’s too deep in the results because the search engine doesn’t really pay attention to it. A flash site doesn’t have pages per say so it misses out on the use of engine friendly tags traditional websites use. Flash pieces can be embedded into these html pages for a nice effect and not handicap the search results. The full flash site actually defies search engine agorithims almost like the engine is an enemy, which isn’t good.

If the search engines think you are an enemy, then good luck having people see your site. Think about what you do when searching for stuff on the web. You go to google or yahoo, enter your search phrase hit enter and wait for your results to pick from. Out of the first page, you pretty much only pick out of the first few results, if one of those doesn’t work, you scan down the rest of the page to see if anything else jumps out at you, take note of all the pages of results that came up with a ‘next’ button at the bottom of the page, you don’t bother with them and finish with a glance to the right, spotting the results listed vertically. That’s it, done looking, time for a new search. Most people just don’t use or find the results in the ‘next’ pages credible. Unfortunately a full flash site may end up way down the line somewhere in those ‘next’ results.

So you see that optimizing a full flash website for people to use and find is tricky. I’m not saying it can’t be done, there are advanced search engine optimization (SEO) methods that can be used at a pretty steep cost, but still can’t compare to traditional page tags.

Basically a decision must be made based on your situation. If you get most of your website business from some method where most your visitors know your website address and enter it directly and there is no need for optimization, great, go for the full flash.

For right now until flash and search engines start playing nice together, if you depend on the search engines to display your site, then you really should think twice about a full flash website even though it may be tempting.

My opinion is to just use bits and pieces of flash embedded into a traditionally developed website.