William M. Pitzer, Web design consultant
CEO, NetConnect, Inc.
Director, Amalgamated Enterprises, Inc.

How To Market Your Business With Your Web Site.

The answer is simple: provide value in an easy to use and an easy to find web site. How to accomplish that is the subject of this chapter.

Selling Yourself.

You have always been selling your services, but now you have at your fingertips this wonderful tool, the INTERNET! Understand that the Internet is the most powerful tool since the telephone. You are in the business of selling success to your customers. You are telling your customers and your prospective customers that if they purchase your services they will be more successful. To be believable, everything about you and your business must to look successful and professional. Your web site must also reflect this professionalism.

Building Credibility

Your web site is an electronic brochure for your services - a résumé about you and your business. Projecting the image of a successful person builds credibility. This should be the first goal of your web site. Placing content that is needed, easy to find, and easy to comprehend builds credibility and educates your visitor. The web site invites them in and shows them how to become more successful by using your services. This is your "silent salesman" who shows the world that you are a successful professional. The total package must build credibility.

What to Put On Your Web Site?

VALUE, that is what you want on your site. Any and all the information that defines and describes your business and services. Address and phone number seems simple, but believe it or not many websites forget to include these. Include a map; make getting to your business easier than the competition. Describing how your services will make your customer's life better and/or easier. Providing your customers and potential customers with ideas and education is a cheap and good way to bring that customer in or back to your business.

Educating The Customers

Using the web site to educate your customers should be your second goal. Your web site enables your visitors to educate themselves at their leisure. The more the customer understands, the less time it will take you to explain how to use your business and for them to grasp how your services work for their success or benefit. Within your web site, you can direct them to specific areas either for greater detail, or to give them different options to help them make decisions.

How do you get more traffic?

There are literally millions of web sites on the Internet. How will prospective customers find yours? In the beginning, people will find your web site by being told that it is there by you or their friends. You will want to advertise your web address and email information on everything that you print, and on every wall of your business.

There are search engines that provide a lookup service for the Internet surfer. These engines use a number of methods (which are still secret) to find your web site. What I have found that works for my site, is to place the keywords that you think people will type into a search engine, in the TITLE of your homepage. There is a limit, but it certainly can be 10 words, then use these same keywords in your text and links on that page. In the past they exclusively used programming code that was placed at the top of your pages. These are called META TAGS. I still recommend that you place all the keywords that describe your web site in the Meta Tag location. Search for web sites for others in your field that are near the top of the listings in major search engines, such as Google or Lycos, and look at their Meta Tags. You do this by clicking "View" at the top of the browser (IE) and then "Source". This enables you to read the page's programming code, which includes the Meta Tags. You will find these in the first few lines of the code.

Cross Links

One of the ways to get a higher "Rating" (getting your web site closer to the top) in a search engine listing is to use cross-links. This is an exchange of links with other web sites. The problem here is, with whom do you want to cross-link? The most likely candidates are trade associations, trade publications and friends in non-competing fields. You will also want to surf for web sites that could use your information and discuss cross-linking with them. Using Link Exchange (a company that arranges the cross-linking of web sites) is, in my opinion, counterproductive. You don't have a lot of control over whose links are placed on your web site, and it's an invitation for your visitor to go somewhere else. There are also services that claim to be able to get your web site registered with hundreds of search engines and place your web site at the top. Forget it. There are fewer than ten search engines that are of any importance. You can submit your pages to them yourself by just logging on to them and filling out a simple form. And yes, I said pages. Take the time to register each of your pages. Start with the search engine that you normally use.

Is your web site providing value?

The major benefit to your business from your web site is that it is working for you 24/7. It is an employee who is rarely out sick, doesn't have a 401K liability, and won't go on strike or sue you for discrimination. A recent statistic shows that 50% of the people visiting your web site will be doing so outside of your normal business hours. Your information will also reach people outside your present geographical area. You will be providing information and services to customers and prospective customers anywhere on the planet, without leaving your desk or actually even being in your office. The secret to a busy, successful web site is simplicity!! The easier you make it for your visitors to find the useful information, the longer they will stay and the more the likelihood that they will come back. A simple, friendly web site is more likely to gain a new customer or keep an important one. What you do not want to do is provide weather, sports, a news ticker or anything to distract your visitor. You also don't want to send him someplace outside of your web site with an inappropriate link. Two important areas of value is an easy way for your customer to communicate with you and the ability to apply for employment. These are important and very easy to include on your site.

Let's Examine Your Web Site.

Navigability

The major tool to accomplish simplicity is navigability, which is the most important aspect of your web site. The visitors' time is very valuable and they will leave your web site in a split second if you make them wait, confuse them, or make it difficult to find something of value. Do you know anyone who likes automated telephone systems? A very clean and easy to follow menu system is essential. You should have no more than 12 menu items on your navigation bar. In fact, the fewer items the better. Create fewer steps to get to that important information.

Placement of your navigation bar will depend on the complete web site design. It should be along the top or the left side, and if the page doesn't fit on one screen, then at the bottom also. You should never put a navigation bar along the top and another on the left side. One or the other, but never both. This causes confusion.

You must also resist the temptation to make your web site or the navigation bar look like a "work of art". This is one of the biggest problems you will have with web designers. They are "artists", not business people. Their fancy fonts and graphics take more time to load. They are distracting and result in visitors leaving. More than 80% of your visitors are still on a dialup connection, and that means , for them, it takes more time for your page to open. Make sure that your menu selections are clear and idiot proof. Ask someone who is not in your business to surf your web site. Have them make notes and, hopefully, ask questions. Using someone not familiar with your content will point out any areas of confusion. I guarantee you that what makes perfect sense to you will be confusing to many others.

Another issue with the navigation of your pages is the amount of information on each page. Forcing the visitor to use the scroll bars is a negative. I also believe that if your visitor has to use the scroll bar along the bottom of the page, you have a BIG design error. A large percentage (about 75%) of your visitors are still using 800x640 monitors. That means you will need to design your pages to just fit the 800x640 screen. You can have your web site programmed to look at the visitor's monitor's resolution and adjust your pages to match it, but that takes more programming time, adding more expense. The least expensive option is to program for the 800x640 resolution only.

In addition to looking at your pages on computers with different monitor resolutions, you need to test it on the two main browsers. 80% of the Internet surfers use Internet Explorer (IE) 5 or newer and 9% use Netscape 4 or newer. If your pages look okay on these two browsers, you will cover the majority of the visitors. The problem is that these two browsers display your pages differently. Most of the time, the differences are minor, but every once in awhile it can be catastrophic. Of course, Netscape 4 and Netscape 6 don't display the same way either, but you get the picture.

The Fonts in your web site need special attention. They are the letter style of the text. There are literally hundreds of fonts available, but only a few are both easy to read and likely to be found in most every visitor's computer. The rest are best treated as "art", and may look very different in different computers. In most cases, if the font you have selected is not installed in the visitor's computer, a substitution will automatically be made. At that point, you have no control over how your text looks. You can avoid this by using common fonts. Here is a selection of fonts that should give you some variety and will be easy to read by most of your visitors. Arial, Ariel Black, Comic Sans, Courier New, Georgia, Impact, Helvetica, Times New Roman, Trebuchet MS, and Verdana.

The ideal page is one full screen with no scroll. In practice, that is difficult to achieve, so we want to find a compromise. Take an article that you have written, or some other piece of text as an example. On your web site, it will probably use two or more screen pages to display. The use of bolder print and frequent paragraphs will make reading easier. Rather than placing the article on one long page requiring scrolling, its wiser to place the text on two or more pages using a link to transition from one page to another at the bottom of each screen. Links going to the next page as well as links going back to the previous page are necessary.

Reading on a computer screen really bothers some people, and others just prefer to read from a sheet of paper. Cater to these visitors by creating a "printable" option for your article. This is just a link to another page that has a printable version of your article without any graphics, navigation bars, or unneeded parts of your page.

Consistency

The second biggest problem in web design is lack of consistency. Lack of consistency generates confusion. Confusion results in an immediate exit from your web site. Many web designers want to provide variety, to "entertain" the visitor. Remember why you want the visitor to come to your web site. The visitor isn't there for entertainment!! Consistency means a smooth flow from one page to the next with little change in the principle design of your web site. Your pages do not need to all look identical but the key elements need to remain constant. Templates help with this concept. When you get "creative", you run the risk of your visitor being confused or even thinking that they have left your web site. Obviously, the navigation bar is the main key element. Your logo, company motto (if you have one) and the background are also key elements. Color is a key element, but use color like cologne, sparingly!! I recommend not using "frames". Frames are a type of design where a portion of the page remains stationary while other parts of the page change or can be scrolled. In addition to the confusion factor, another major problem is that the search engine robots out looking for web sites to add to their database don't like framed web sites. If you decide that frames are the only way to go, use them on all pages. Mixing framed and non-framed pages will really confuse your visitor!! Framed pages require more care with navigation design. When your visitors move around your web site, you want them to be able to return to the correct page and frame.

Speed

Speed, Speed, Speed. It's all about how patient your visitors are. Unfortunately, today we have no patience. Speed is critical. The speed at which your pages load makes the difference between traffic and no traffic. Graphics, which are images, take time to load. Your logo is an image. The background is an image. All pictures are images. You need graphics but you need to make sure that they have been compressed to reduce their internal size, without losing too much detail and quality. Only use graphics that make your information more understandable. All graphics are made up of dots of color, just like a newspaper picture. The more dots the better the picture looks. The downside is that it takes longer to load. Thankfully, our eyes will fill in what is missing, up to a point. If you "right click" on an image and then click on "Properties" you will see the displayed size and the physical size of the image or the amount of memory that it takes to store this image. What happens many times is that a large image is displayed smaller to fit in a specific space. What many designers don't realize is that the image still takes the same amount of time to load as if it were displayed at its full size. All images can be reduced in the number of colored dots per square inch with a graphics program. Make sure that your images are created in, or reduced to the same size at which they will be displayed. Avoid logos and images with many colors that take a lot of pixels (colored dots) to look good. Have your images reduced until there is a noticeable difference in quality, and then back up a notch.

Look at your web site, ask yourself, "where is the value", "what is important here", "what am I trying to accomplish". All the fancy flash, great pictures, music, and your creative genius, defeat your primary purpose to provide value. Start with the value and add a little pizzazz, not the other way around.

Dos and Don'ts

(Do) keep it simple!!

(Don't) have a Splash page; these are like a title/cover page, usually really fancy pages that take a lot of time to load. It not only takes too much time to load, but it makes the visitor click another time to enter your site. Statistics show that 50% of your visitors won't bother.

(Do) keep your pictures and graphics to a minimum. If they don't add to the information, forget them. If you really need them, keep them small. If you want a picture of yourself, or your staff have them professionally taken.

(Don't) use pop up windows. They are distracting and people hate them. Like many ideas, this one "only works on paper".

(Don't) have music or blinking objects on your web site. I guarantee you that there isn't a piece of music on this planet that your visitor wants to hear for more than 2 seconds. Blinking also gets real old very quickly.

(Do) check the speed at which each of your pages load. If you have a high speed connection, DSL or cable modem, find a friend or someone that has a dial-up connection and use "Shift Refresh" to clear the cache (pre-stored images on the hard drive). Time how long it takes for your pages to load. Do this at different days of the week and time, since traffic on the Internet will affect your web site's loading time

(Don't) use any solid color background with the exception of white.

(Do) pay attention to your background. What looks "cool" to you may drive your visitor away in a minute. Most backgrounds make reading the text (content) difficult or impossible. With rare exception, stay away from any color other than white or off white. You should only use color to highlight. A very light background pattern will give your page "class" and make reading that page more pleasant, without interfering with content. A black background with white or red text creates dramatic contrast, but quickly tires the eye. If in doubt, think about living with your entire office painted the color you are considering.

(Do) use a search engine to find web sites in and outside of your field. Pay attention to what looks good and what doesn't. Take notes and bookmark web sites that you like. Incorporate what you like into your own web site, and remove anything that you realize confuses or detracts.

(Do) keep your navigation bar to no more than 12 choices. On the home page, don't waste a choice on your navigation bar with a link to the home page.

(Do) make your menu selections descriptive enough so the visitor will know exactly where they want to go, or, just as important, have no interest in going.

(Don't) have any dead ends. When going from one page to another don't "Open" a new window in the visitor's computer. Going back is complicated - you force the visitor to "Close" that page to go back. Remember the last time you got stuck in an automated phone system loop. Don't put your visitors through that. Adding a Site Map is also a good way to give your visitor a bird's eye view of your web site, helping them to not get lost or confused.

(Do) provide information so that the visitor can contact you immediately. Phone number and mailing address and if appropriate your street address. These should be on the home page. If you have an 800 number don't hide it. You will also want a Contact Us page. It's on this page that I recommend professional photos of you and your staff. I also recommend, along with the photo, giving the phone extension and email address for each person in your organization who has contact with the client. A nice touch is a paragraph or description of the area of responsibility for each person. A good example of this can be seen at http://www.noln.net/staff/index.html

(Don't) allow broken links. Links that do not work really irritate the visitor. Make it a habit to check the links on your pages regularly. Things happen.

(Don't) put links on your web site that take your visitors away from your web site.

(Do) look at your pages on different browsers and at different monitor resolutions. All browsers read the HTML code differently and display it differently. Most of the time it's minor, but when it's major, it will kill your web site for those people using that browser. Do not expect a visitor to change browsers to view your web site.

(Don't) inject your religious or political views into your pages. When your visitor comes to your web site they are looking for knowledge, not religious enlightenment or political guidance.

(Don't) have a visible counter. No one but you is interested in that number. Your host (ISP) can provide you with all the statistics you need.

(Don't) bother with a Guest Book unless you are going to give them something in return for taking the time to "register". If you are going to take information from you visitor, then you need to have a written Privacy Policy on your web site.

(Don't) use "cookies" (an invisible informational gathering code). People value their time and privacy. Some people will not visit a web site that "gathers" information about them. Very few web sites need to use cookies.

(Do) schedule updates and changes to your web site immediately from day one. Visitors return to sites that are continually updated with fresh and interesting content.

(Don't) let the designer of your site place his logo on your web site. He was paid for his work. It detracts and is a link to send your visitor somewhere else.

(Do) use email addresses that are linked to your site. (i.e.: you@yourwebsite.com NOT you@aol/hotmail/yahoo.com or you@freesite.com.) This is another representation of your professionalism.