Everyone recognizes that the internet is essential to business. Having an online presence is no longer a luxury or an afterthought, it is the first place customers look to legitimize a company as someone they can trust. It is the face of your business. Having specific ideas of what your website should achieve from the beginning helps ensure your visitors have the experience you designed. An effective website starts with clearly defined goals.

Step by step: Your best web presence through clearly defined goals.

Know what you want. It seems obvious, but the first step is to decide exactly what website is for. Sharing information? Announcing news? Selling products? Generating contacts and leads? What do you want your visitors to do? Call you on the phone? Fill out a form? Buy a product? If you only have 5 seconds to convey one idea, what is it? These are your starting points. Ask yourself these questions and write down the answers, these are your website’s goals.

Know your audience. An important early step is considering who you are trying to reach. This can make a huge difference in not only the look and feel of a site, but in the way it functions as well. Gather as much information as possible about the people who will be your visitors. Know not only who your customers are, but who you want to become a customer. This is your current and target demographic.

Plan your content with goals and audience in mind. It’s easy to get caught in the “everything is the important” trap. Too often websites become cluttered with secondary, tertiary and irrelevant information because a business owner forgets the goals. Stay focused! Remember that one, prominent idea and let it shine. Create an information hierarchy by organizing your content from the most to the least important. Think of all the feedback, questions and comments your customers have ever provided and use that as a guide to your structure.

Be prepared. Once you’ve done all that thinking and planning and structuring, don’t forget to communicate it clearly to your marketing team. Make sure the people you work with understand your goals. A marketing plan is much more effective when it is well thought out from the onset. A good marketing company will work with you throughout the process to make sure your goals are met. You should be able to trust each other in the creation of your site. You provide content and knowledge about your business and they organize and present it in an intuitive and effective manner.

Be an active participant. Once that site has gone up, it’s up to you to keep people coming to it. Don’t “set it and forget it.” If you never look at your website again, neither will anyone else. Update your content, keep your information current, announce new sales/services/partnerships. Become an evolving resource and people will turn to you again and again. Talk with your marketing team if you are unsure of ways to keep your content fresh. A good company will have tested ideas and methods prepared to help you stay current.

Don’t forget the maintenance. Technology advances at an alarming rate. It’s a good idea to have a bi-yearly check-up performed on your site. This ensures that your investment continues to function properly and your visitors get the experience you designed. Regularly check the site for broken links, expired content, and areas that suddenly stop functioning. If you find something, call your developer immediately. Broken websites are a terrible blow to the confidence a visitor has in the business.

Setting goals for your website from the start is setting yourself up to succeed, so take your time. Plan, prepare and communicate every step of the way. By defining your goals and staying focused on them you can create a highly effective web presence and the best possible experience for your customers.

By Liz Abbey / Designer & Developer Extraordinaire

It’s important to say that most clients haven’t thought about the content they’d like to include in detail and that’s OK too.  However, it’s important to get these clients thinking about their site and what they want to include.  The main question to begin the collection and website planning process is “Why do you want a website?”   This is important as someone who is looking to open up an online store has very different needs from a business services firm that’s looking to establish a professional brand online.

To make things easier, here’s a list of materials and content that you should begin collecting once you decide that you need a new website. For a larger list, please download our handy website planning guide.

1. Take out a pen or pencil and answer these questions from the start.

Why do you want a website?

What are you expecting to accomplish with the site?

What are the main 2 – 3 messages that you want to communicate on the site?

2. Do some research on the web and make a note of sites that you love and also of sites that you really don’t like.  These can be sites within your industry or can have nothing to do with your product or service.   Make sure to make a note of what you like or don’t like about each site.

3. After reviewing the sample sites, write down a simple list of the website pages or types of pages that you’d like to see.

Do you want a blog?

Will you need a calendar?

Do you want to integrate your social media pages into your site?

Are you looking to sell products online and if so do you want any specific features like a gift registry?

Will you need detailed contact forms?  If so, what fields will you need?

Do you need a password-protected area of the site?

4. The next step would be to start collecting your company logo in vector format and any images that you’d like to see used on the site.  If you don’t have a logo, let us know if you’d like to have one created.   Save these in a folder on your computer and make sure it’s accessible so that you can add items as needed.

5. As for the actual copy for the site, start gathering that as well in Word docs for each page type and make sure they are labeled accordingly.  If you have difficulty, reach out to us and we’ll offer ideas and can walk you through what is needed.

6. If you are going to sell products online, make sure to start collecting the information for at least 20 products.  This information should include images of each product, the category(s) associated with the product, description, price, size, color, etc…The easiest way to collect this content is by adding it to an excel document with a field for each type of information.  You can then save this document along with the product photos and you’ll be set.

In addition also make a list of the categories that you think should make up your shop.  Keep in mind that you are not going to be held to these categories and that this is just a starting point to get you thinking.

7. The final and a very important piece includes collecting the necessary logins for your hosting account and domain name.  It’s very important that both of these items are registered to you.  If you do not have a domain name or hosting account, we can help point you in the right direction.

In Conclusion:

If all clients had started thinking about the purpose of their site and began collecting content from the start, their projects would be completed much more quickly.  When projects are dragged out for a long period of time, it’s always because the client is too busy to collect the necessary information.

A website is a significant investment, and you should be prepared to spend a good amount of time gathering the content and thinking about your goals for the project.

When clients are prepared with relevant content and have clear goals for their site, we are able to produce a much more effective end product.  This is due to the fact that it allows us to design the site around the content provided as well as focus on the marketing messaging throughout the site.

It’s our job to help our clients through the site planning process, and this includes offering content suggestions. By scheduling out time to collect content and think through the site, you will end up with a much more effective website.

Please feel free to download both our content checklist and website planning guide.  Happy planning!

Do you have any tips for organizing and collecting website content?  If so, we’d love to hear your thoughts.

Why is this process so difficult?

Visual concepts are never easily put into words, and talking about graphic design is no exception.

What does sophisticated mean to you?  How about professional?  Classy?  Does describing something in this way, (i.e. a classy dress) give one a good image of what the other is trying to communicate?

Now, how about the phrase “a red wagon”?  That’s a little closer. What about “a red Radio Flyer Wagon”? Now that is pretty darn specific.  With this description, average Americans from most age groups and backgrounds could pull together very similar images of a red wagon.

Of course, in our experience, business owners come to design firms for insight, creative direction and ideas.  They do not always have a clear picture in their mind as to what they are looking for.  It’s our job to help drive and lead both the creative process and the accompanying conversation.

The Good Work graphic design method is simple:

We try to have visual conversations about visual things.

We start with a client consultation to help define the general parameters and marketing goals, and to also draw out some of the clues that will help us find the “that’s it” design.  At this point, even the most specific answers can leave a lot of creative leeway and the vaguest answers can drive an artist into a corner.  It’s our job to listen carefully and hone in on the important information.

In the second stage and depending on the project, we submit a variety of radically different rough designs.  Now this is when the verbal conversation evolves into a visual conversation.  Each graphic element is a signpost in the world of visual communication.  Each piece an element that we can talk about in terms of how it functions in the design and how it works with the client’s brand as a whole.  Our team has listened to the client and has produced a roadmap of the visual representations of each thought, and the more specific the feedback, the more meaningful the conversation.

Here is an example of some meaningful conversation at this stage of the design process:

“While design one has the professional feeling we like, we really feel like the second has more impact.  The third design is just “way too out there” for us.  Let’s pursue the first design, but incorporate some elements from the second to see if we can find a happy medium between professionalism and impact.”

The least successful answer would be “we like them all”.  But either way, we have now started to hone in on finding the “right” design, and after each stage of this process, our team listens and responds to the conversation with a narrowed set of proof options until the right solution is reached.

We love having visual conversations with our clients, and at the same time understand that some clients find this process difficult.  The most successful projects happen when the end client is open, honest and timely in providing feedback. We truly enjoy the thrill of finding the right solution for each client, one that incorporates both professional design and targeted marketing messaging.

Over a decade of experience helping new businesses has taught us that although a new business may have a laundry list of marketing needs, there is something to be said for starting with the must have items and working from there.

Yes your business should have a web presence, a professional logo, and professional marketing materials, but these items can be created on a time line that works best for you and your business.  As with most of the new ventures that we’ve helped launch, the owners often end up offering very different products and services than they initially envisioned.  And if this isn’t the case, the new business owner will most certainly end up working with target markets that she never initially considered when putting her proof of concept together.

If asked to list four must have marketing items for any small business, we’d recommend the following:

1. logo / identity design
2. quality business cards
3. professional web presence **This may only consist of a 1 page website at the start
4. professional email address **yourname@yourdomainname.com gives off a much more professional feeling than superman7@aol.com .

With these simple items in hand, you (as a new business owner) can confidently get out there and network both at local business events and also on social networking sites like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

When attending real world events like chamber of commerce and specialized group meetings – it’s important to realize that the point of attending these meetings is to make connections not immediate sales.  These events allow you to expand your professional circle, which will certainly result in later business referrals.  Before you even step into one of these events, remember to dress appropriately and yes your outfit should include a smile.  We recently read an employee manual that included “a smile” as part of the company uniform.  In life and when networking, make sure that a smile is a part of your ensemble.  No one wants to approach the grumpy girl in the corner, that’s for sure.  Along with your professional outfit, also come prepared to explain what you do in a clear and concise manner.  Think of this as your elevator pitch or what you’d say if someone in an elevator asked you what you do.  Keep your pitch free of industry jargon.  Just simply state what you do and how you help your end clients.

When you do begin a social networking campaign for your business,  start with a goal in mind. The best advice on social media is to focus on becoming a resource to your connections.  Offer something valuable and position yourself as an expert in your field.  Educate, help and listen to the members of your social networking community.  The same principles apply as they do at real world networking events.  Quality business relationships take time to build both online and offline.

We’re interested in your comments and thoughts on the subject, so please share what you think is most beneficial to new businesses entering the marketplace.

The meeting starts at 8AM and ends promptly at 9:30AM.  Make sure to send us an email through our contact page to confirm attendance so that we can reserve a spot for you.