Most small business owners design and build their websites like this:

First, hire a designer and start with a great-looking logo. Then, design a homepage that has all the stuff they want in it. Next, start building the website. Finally, write all the content.

This is the exact opposite of what you should do if you want to build your site as cheaply and efficiently as possible.

Instead, to save money and move quickly, here are the proper steps to follow to build your website:

1. Outline all the pages you want in your website and write as much content as possible (preferably, all of it).

2. Create a sitemap and architecture (I’ve attached a simple web architecture done in PowerPoint that you might find useful, but you can simply sketch it out on paper, use Word or whatever you’re comfortable with).

3. Hire a web designer and developer to design the logo and homepage simultaneously – show logo designs within homepage designs so you are sure the logo will work in context.

4. Finalize content while the site is being built.

Essentially, I am suggesting you do the most difficult task first: write content.

I’ll explain why later, but let’s back up and talk about what is involved in building your website.

Your small business website consists of three basic elements: content, design and technology.

The content is the words, images and videos contained in the website – you create this yourself or hire writers, photographers (or purchase images) and videographers.

The design is how your website looks and how the content is arranged within the pages – this is typically done by a professional web designer.

The technology is the actual pages that show content on the Web and get found by people through search engines, and it runs the various bits of functionality and features contained within the site – this is typically handled by a professional web designer or developer.

The goal, ultimately, is for your small business website to present your company in a compelling way. To build a compelling website, you need a solid site architecture, which is determined by the content. Then you need a great design, which is determined by your industry, brand, architecture and content. Finally, you need handy technology which will be used to manage the content within the design and architecture. It starts and ends with content.

Now, I’ll give you three reasons why you should write your website’s content before you do anything else: money, money and money.

Reason 1: Money & Efficiency

Let’s start with a question. Can you know how many pages your site will contain if you haven’t written the content?

No, you can’t. You may have an outline and think you know how many pages your website will contain, but until you put finger to keyboard, you only have an estimate. Once you start putting the words and pictures together, the number of pages will change. And since many inexpensive web designers charge by the page, the page count could affect your budget.

And, hey –want to drive your web designer crazy and spend more money at the same time? It’s easy! Just say this: “Oops. I just found out we need another page in the top navigation bar.”

Time comes to a standstill, and your designer’s blood pressure rises along with your bill.

Reason 2: Money & Design

Homepage designs are probably the most expensive element of the design process. You save money and time when you know exactly what content and images go onto your homepage. Remember, every edit or tweak could cost money and waste time.

Reason3: Money & Time

Small business websites are almost always delayed because the content is not finished. People never believe me when I say this, but it’s true. Whether it’s a team member bio that needs editing or a product description that needs updating, content is usually the problem.

The truth is that most people don’t like writing and will put it off as long as possible. But dive in and bang it out – you’ll be glad you did.

With best wishes, Eric Weidner

There are a lot of jokes about out-of-touch bosses or professionals who think they know it all, even outside their areas of expertise. Doctors, CEOs, lawyers, architects, financiers – they get a fair share of teasing about letting personal aesthetics or seemingly arbitrary, unfounded opinions negatively affect otherwise rational business or marketing projects.

To be honest, I’ve actually seen some version of this happen with web design. And admit it, you super-Type-A personalities out there, sometimes you just can’t help yourself! So, I’ve put together a quick list of four things you (the boss-man or boss-woman) should keep in mind when your company is designing or redesigning its website.

1. Consider goals, functionality and content BEFORE design

Your competitor has a snazzy bit of Flash on their homepage, and, yes, it looks cool, but does the website accomplish measurable goals?

The main point here is to consider what you want your website to do for your company (beyond looking impressive) before you get too deep into design. Do you want to sell more product? Gather leads for your sales team? Tell your story to investors?

Whatever your goals are, you need to think of how the site will be built and the content displayed so your goals can be achieved. Let your web designers work with your team to specify the technology that will achieve your goals and make it easy for your team (the folks who are tasked with working on the site every day) to maintain it. Once the technology foundation is specified and content outlined, your designer can make it look fantastic – on-brand and appropriate for your market.

Making the design process the second step is difficult because it is the most emotionally engaging (and fun) part of the process, and where you actually start to see what your site will look like in the real world. And don’t get me wrong: design is absolutely critical to a website’s success. But remember – design should support the business goals you set for your website.

2. If you don’t like it on other websites, don’t put it on yours

I’m talking about “intro pages” and “splash pages.” They are universally despised, but for some reason, the occasional CEO still wants one.

You know you hate them for wasting your time on other sites. Don’t put one on yours.

3. “Global” = content, not spinning, animated globes

If you want your company to appear “global” in its reach, a little, spinning globe image isn’t the way to go. Consider an image with your team or partners in obvious locations around the world, create content that discusses your work in other countries, show your international offices in your “contact us” page, or have your site translated into other languages. Those techniques show you walk the global walk.

4. Don’t hire your cousin

… unless she has 5 years experience building professional websites. Be sure whoever builds your website will be around to help maintain and support it, and has a history of successful website launches. Professional web design firms have employees who can help when your main contact is on vacation, sick or just unavailable – you’d be surprised how many emergency, late-night content edits we’ve received over the years (particularly from companies in regulated industries like pharma or that are publicly traded).

Conclusion

Essentially, I urge you to look at your web design project the same way you think of complex contracts or year-end accounting: consider your goals and hire a kick-ass professional who knows the industry’s best practices.

So, if you’re a big cheese, I hope you find these tips useful. And if you believe that you’ve made some of these mistakes, it’s O.K. – one of the great things about the web is that you can change things for the better very quickly.

Best wishes, Eric Weidner

spinning globe animated gif courtesy bestanimations.com

A friend (to remain unnamed) recently relaunched his website. It looks cool, but they instantly lost years of deep search engine links and ranking, killed in-bound links from other websites, and generally blew away a lot of tasty, wholesome search engine goodness.

How did they do that?

They neglected one of the key elements of a redesign project – something called “redirects.”

The good news for you is that it is very easy to prevent this ranking loss, but it needs to be managed BEFORE you relaunch, then implemented simultaneously with the relaunch. You just need to talk with your web designer/developer about “301 redirects” before you start your redesign project. The designer should know what to do after that.

So, what is a “redirect” and why is it important for website relaunches?

A redirect simply tells a browser to go from an old page URL to a new page URL. This is important for website relaunches because your old website’s URLs (like http://www.workbox.com/clients.html) might either not exist or change (to something like http://www.workbox.com/clients) with new the website design or content management system. The difference between “/clients.html” and “/clients” might not look like much to you or me, but to a search engine or a web browser, it is as different as night and day.

Redirects are important because:

1. The search engines could take weeks or months to re-index your new pages so they appear in the search results. And, if you have important keywords in the old page’s content, it could be a long, long time before your organic ranking returns for those keywords.

2. If another website linked to your old URL, any visitor who clicks on the link will get an error code on your website rather than a page with your content. So, you made someone who was kind enough to link to your website, or yourself, look incompetent (visitors will assume either the website with the link or your website has a problem).

3. If you are a high-tech company, could be a big bummer for your street-cred, dude.

Technical aspects

Technically, a redirect is often called a “server-side 301 redirect.” We don’t need to go into the specifics because this is pretty basic stuff for good web developers (simple .htaccess edits) – you just need to be sure your web designer/developer understands and commits to implementing redirects for you.

Also, as usual, Google has all kinds of info on this:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=93633

Practical aspects

The first thing you have to do is create a list of all your existing pages/URLs. Then, decide what new pages/URLs they should redirect to. Some people will use Google Webmaster Tools to see which pages are indexed and/or have inbound links and only redirect for those pages/URLs, particularly if they have a lot of pages. Then, rather than show a 404 error code when someone visits any other obsolete URL, show your sitemap or another page on your new website. Also, your developer might have a simple technique for managing redirects.

In any event, it is critical that you discuss redirects with your web designer (1) before you hire them (so you’re sure they understand it), and (2) during the redesign process so you’re sure your existing URLs are all cataloged and the redirects can be properly implemented.

Conclusion

If you are relaunching your website, it is critical to your SEO and online friends that you utilize redirects:

- They’re easy to do.

- Good web developers and designers can handle the whole process for you.

Best wishes,

Eric Weidner

COLLECT CONTACT INFORMATION

One of the few things your new marketing website can “do,” other than branding, is to build an in-house email marketing list for your business. In our opinion, if your website doesn’t get visitors to leave their contact information, you’ve wasted your money and your visitors’ time. If someone makes the effort to visit your site, there’s a good chance they’re interested in what you have to offer, even if they aren’t going to buy today.

It’s simple: give visitors an enticement to receive email from you, and use a form on your website to gather email addresses into a list of email subscribers. Then, send high-quality emails to your email list. This process is the most basic form of email marketing – and it works.

Tip: When people sign up to receive email from your company, they must get something of value, not just self-serving blather. Make an effort to give worthwhile information or insights, real bargains or other timely information.

First, this article covers some of the most basic enticements, then shows how to fit the contact info collection process into your website.

Tip: Be sure your visitors understand they’re “opting in” and later have a chance to “unsubscribe.”

SUBSCRIBER ENTICEMENTS

Enticement #1 – Discounts & Specials

Discounts and specials move product, and early announcement of discounts and specials make the recipients feel that they’re getting valuable information, too. This enticement can appear on your homepage, in the shopping cart or on a confirmation page. Retailers typically have an opt-in/opt out button in the registration process.

Enticement #2 – Give-aways

Give-aways are a proven way to build up a mailing list. Offer something (not too expensive), then see how much information you can gather from your visitors in your give-away registration form – ask a few questions that they can answer by simply clicking. Gift certificates and iPods seem to work really well! Also, this is particularly good if you want a quick “hit” and are willing to sacrifice the quality of the list over the quantity.

Enticement #3 – Newsletters

Free, expert information and news is a wonderful thing to receive in an in-box. If your company can write up news, trends or opinions about your industry or niche that targets your viewers’ interests, you have the seeds of an online newsletter.

Enticement #4 – Events & Seminars

If your company sponsors events or seminars, people want to get reminders about times and locations. Try offering discounts to events through email to increase attendance.

Enticement #5 – Valuable Content

Industry experts and researchers have data that people want. And you can give it to your viewers in exchange for opting in to an email list.

Tip: Keeping contact information in an online database gives you the ability to export and manage your contact data most effectively.

PUTTING IT ON YOUR WEBSITE

Example: Intelliden

Workbox’s client, Intelliden (http://www.intelliden.com), wins the gold star for lead-gen, contact information collection in the B2B category. They gather this data in two specific ways:

1. Valuable content – Intelliden’s team are experts in their particular field (intelligent network automation, for big, sophisticated networks). They also have a very targeted market. So, they are in a unique position to generate deep, insightful content that their market will find useful. But, to get to the really good stuff, you have to register and “pay” by giving them your contact information (see 1. – a detail of Intelliden’s “Resources” page.)

2. They simply ask – In Intelliden’s contact form, at the bottom, they quite simply ask you to subscribe to receive news. And they segment subscribers into folks who want product news or folks who want any news at all. Easy! (See 2. – a detail of Intelliden’s “Contact Us” page)

Through this process, Intelliden is able to generate an in-house email list that is pure gold.

CONCLUSION

One of the few ways you can measure your marketing website’s success is to see how effectively it gathers sales leads. That means collecting contact information from your website’s visitors in a form. And here’s why that’s important: Once you collect contact information, you can start using one of the web’s most effective and efficient marketing tools – email.

All the posts in this series:

4 Things Your New Marketing Site Must Do: #1 – Tell Your Story Quickly (http://blog.workbox.com/4-things-1-tell-story-quickly/)

4 Things Your New Marketing Site Must Do: #2 – Update Regularly (http://blog.workbox.com/4-things-your-new-marketing-site-must-do-2-update-regularly/)

4 Things Your New Marketing Site Must Do: #3 – Collect Contact Information (http://blog.workbox.com/4-things-3-collect-contacts/)

4 Things Your New Marketing Site Must Do: #4 – Measure Results (http://blog.workbox.com/4-things-4-marketing-measure-results/)