These words came from one of our current clients, during the early wireframe phase of his first website. And although we make the process as easy as possible for our clients, it remains a valid point. Your website is your company’s public face after all, so you really do want to make sure that each and every detail is just right.

The process can be overwhelming for the uninitiated. If this describes you, read on. What follows is a basic, plain-language checklist for getting your organization online.

1. Purpose

Before you do anything else, you need to create a plan… and this plan needs to be centered around the question: What purpose do you want your website to serve?

In essence, you need to develop a proper job description for your website. What do you want it to DO for you? Will it be a simple informational marketing tool and point of contact? Will it serve as an online community, gallery or forum? Do you want an online storefront with e-commerce capabilities? Do you want to position yourself as an authority in your field through the provision of news and resources? The requirements for every website are unique, so you will need to decide which functions best serve your organization’s specific needs.

2. Web Host

A web host is not the same as your Internet Service Provider (ISP). Your ISP simply provides access to the internet. If you want a website of your own, you will need to effectively “rent” the space for it on a hosting company’s server.

A hosting company owns and maintains X number of servers. On each server, X number of websites is stored. With that in mind, there are three common options for hosting:

• • Shared means that you share a server with several other websites, and is the cheapest.
• • Dedicated hosting gets you a server all to yourself, and is the most expensive.
• • Semi-dedicated reserves a server for a very small number of clients.

For most websites, shared hosting with a quality hosting company is more than adequate. If you anticipate high volumes of traffic or bandwidth, however, you will want to look into dedicated or semi-dedicated hosting options. Keep in mind that servers are just like your own computer… if it is overloaded, outdated and neglected, it will perform slowly and inconsistently at best, and crash and fail at worst. Most bargain-basement hosting companies are able to offer cheap rates simply by squeezing as many accounts as possible onto a single, often outdated server. And then there’s the human element… when your email and website are down, quality customer service suddenly becomes very important.

Bad web hosts are a dime a dozen. It is imperative that you do your research, and choose a hosting company based on reliable measures of quality rather than gimmicks, sales or ad campaigns. Widely advertised does NOT equal quality. We both use and heartily recommend the pros at Fused, but always encourage clients to do their own research before deciding on which host best suits their needs.

3. Domain Name

Now that you have a home for your website, you need a relevant, easily identifiable address. The domain name (DNS) is the address that appears in the address bar in your web browser, excluding ‘http://www’ (e.g., our domain name is ‘sagemedia.ca’). Unfortunately, nobody owns a domain name for life. You need to register it (usually through your web host) to start, then renew it every year. If you don’t, someone else can and will buy it up, and your site will be rendered both nameless and inaccessible.

Choosing a domain name is a frustrating, but important process. It is frustrating because of the simple fact that if it is a recognizable word, chances are someone has already registered it… even if they’re not using it. There exists a scourge on legitimate online businesses everywhere known as domain squatters… these people buy up thousands of domain names, and simply sit on them until someone comes along who wants a name so badly that they are willing to pay an exorbitant price to buy it from the squatter. Squatters also buy up versions of existing business names and fill the pages with pay-per-click ads (known as link farms) so they generate ad revenue for themselves by capitalizing on well known companies. Your choice of domain name is nonetheless important – it needs to be relevant to your company (containing your company’s name), easily remembered, and easy to spell. Once you’ve committed to a name, you’ll want to stick with it.

4. Target

Further to your initial plan, it is important to decide exactly who you want to communicate with online. Your target audience should already have been established in your business plan. In planning your website, you need to keep in mind what THEIR needs are. Are they looking for information; Do they need a problem solved (hint: the answer is always yes); Do they want to be entertained, educated, or simply served? Combined with your purpose (and as you’ll see, intertwined as well), a sharp focus on the target audience is central to your website strategy.

5. USP

Following from the previous items, your website will need to emphasize and reinforce your USP, or Unique Selling Point. This is the reason why people will choose to come to your site (and your company) rather than your competitors. Note you can’t get to this point without first developing an understanding of your target audience. The USP is the answer to your customer’s problems.

6. Budget

As the single most important online marketing investment your company will make, you will need to determine a realistic and appropriate budget for the design and development of your company’s website. Plan to invest well into four figures for a properly planned, well designed and expertly executed business website. Rates vary wildly between providers – the web design field is largely unregulated, so be sure that you look for qualifications, reviews and referrals, and know exactly who you’re hiring. This includes confirming precisely who will be doing the actual work, as many ‘design’ companies are simply middlemen outsourcing contracts to unqualified overseas labour farms.

7. Content

Given this article is being written by a designer, it may surprise you to see content weighing in first. The fact is, effective design relies on high quality content to provide context, depth, and relevance. If you think of your design as a restaurant, your content would be the food. Note that content is also not limited to the text within your pages; it also refers to images and brand materials (like your logo, for example). These are things that your designer should be provided with upfront, so they can move forward with context and purpose.

8. Persona

Refer back to the parameters covered in previous checklist items – namely your purpose, USP, and target audience. These items will help guide you in narrowing down a personality for your website. As part of a more thorough consultation, any reputable designer will ask you fairly early in the process to provide them with a mood-board, or a selection of exemplar sites that portray the sort of image you want for your business (in addition to industry relevant examples of what you explicitly do NOT feel represents you). Obviously, the purpose is not to find something to copy, but rather to better define the mood and theme for your online presence.

9. Website Design

This is the fun part, though it doesn’t quite start out that way. Clearly, you’ll need to research and choose a qualified, reputable designer. Find someone you feel comfortable with, review their portfolio, look for customer reviews, learn about their company and philosophies, and enter their name into a search engine. Finally, be sure to review the design company’s terms and conditions. There are many designers whose terms specify that they (not you) retain ownership of all materials in perpetuity, placing restrictions on your usage. Remember, you will be investing a significant amount of time, trust, effort and capital in creating your website, so it is most certainly worth your time to ensure you really are choosing the right professional for the job.

Following your initial consultation and scope development, your designer will generally develop a wireframe for your approval. This serves as the skeleton for your site, establishing general placement/layout and structural presentation of site elements. It’s boring, but it is important. Spending a little time here now will save a lot of time later on.

The wireframe will be followed by a visual concept presentation for your homepage. If all of the preliminary steps have been covered thoroughly and thoughtfully (by both the designer and yourself) and communication has been clear, this will generally serve as the starting point for your site. Of course, you may want to tweak some colours, graphic treatments or images to make the design perfect in your eyes. Remember though, your eyes are not the important ones… it is the eyes of your customers you really need to consider. And it is your designer’s job to communicate your message with your target audience squarely in mind.

The design phase finishes with your visual layouts contained within PSD files. If your designer is also your developer, the transition to the next step will be seamless.

10. Website Development

If your website designer and developer are the same person, they will already have been provided with the required functionality and content for your site. If you are going with a separate developer, you will need to provide them with PSD files for the site (provided by your designer) as well as a detailed outline of exactly what you want each part of the site to do, and an outline of your content. They will then turn your visual design into a fully functional, working piece of communicative art (in code).

Like designers, web developers are not created equal. Not by a long shot. Web development is a rapidly changing and ever-evolving field, with different technologies and techniques being created, updated, and rendered obsolete on a daily basis. Web standards are important to ensure that your website looks and works as it should for the maximum possible number of visitors, though even that is no guarantee. Your developer will also need to test the site for cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility (because not all browsers follow standards). The way your site is coded is incredibly important for usability, accessibility, and will have a strong impact on how your site ranks in search engines. So choose someone who really knows what they’re doing.

11. Launch

While there are certainly other considerations insofar as pre-launch marketing goes, at this point your website is technically ready to deploy. Your developer will want to migrate your site onto your server for you (the one that your domain name points to, provided by your hosting company), and then complete one final set of tests to make sure that everything continues to work the way it should in its new home. This is another reason your choice of hosting companies is important – the software installed on the server needs to be up-to-date so it can support the latest standards in development.

12. Corollaries

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is an entire industry unto itself, with intricacies that extend far beyond the scope of this article. At minimum, if you want anyone to find your website on a search engine, your developer needs to employ best practices in organic, white-hat search engine optimization. Organic simply means that the optimization is contained within the code, content and build of the site itself. White-hat means that the methods employed are not prohibited or frowned-upon by the search engines themselves. Google et al WILL blacklist any website it finds that tries to circumvent the rules through unscrupulous SEO techniques.

There are additional SEO tactics you can (and should) employ yourself to maximize your exposure. Search engines rank sites higher if they have regular updates with new content, and a good number of quality inbound links. This does not mean link exchanges necessarily, as search engines often penalize sites that offer little in the way of actual content. Basically, the more high-ranking websites you can get to link back to your site, the better.

Social Media

These days, everyone and their mother has a profile on Facebook and Twitter. Professionals will also have a profile on LinkedIn. Setting yourself up with a presence on social media can draw visitors to your site, IF handled properly. In order for this to work, you will need to invest time into keeping your profiles up to date, and you will need to make sure your contributions are relevant, appropriate, and suitably engaging for your visitors.

Offline Marketing

The web is an incredibly important medium for marketing your business. However, you should not make the mistake of ignoring classic offline marketing techniques and resources. Be sure to update all of your promotional and corporate materials to include your website address and branded email. This includes just about everything that has your logo on it, including your business cards, stationery, signage, advertising, packaging, etc. If a customer sees an ad on the side of a bus as it rolls by, they will be significantly more likely to retain a website address than any other method of contact advertised.

Your Browser

While your website will have been tested and developed to function in older browsers, it cannot be optimized for them. Current best practices and up-to-date techniques are simply not supported by many obsolete browsers, requiring secondary options and workarounds. So, open whichever browser you prefer to use, and update it to the latest version. It’s free, it’s easy, and it has the potential to improve your online experience exponentially.

Although this article has been fairly lengthy, it really is just a primer on the most important fundamentals of launching a new website. If an effective result is to be expected, the process becomes an involved one that requires considerable investment and effort on the part of the client and the designer/developer. It also requires a high level of expertise. As always, research is important. Hopefully this checklist will have you well on your way.

Even if you have no interest in design theory and fundamentals, for the sake of your business there is one point that should never be forgotten: the purpose of design is communication.

Communication Demands Relevance

Each industry has a unique audience, with unique needs & expectations. What works for a law firm website will not necessarily translate well to the design of a catering company website. In an industry flooded with generic templates and unqualified or (worse) apathetic service providers, this simple fact is often overlooked. For this reason, we present to you the first in a series of Web Design Anatomy articles. Motivated by the short and frustratingly familiar script referenced here, our first article will deal with Restaurant Websites.

Why Does a Restaurant Need a Website?

We’re not talking generalities here – in today’s marketplace just about EVERY type of business needs an online presence if they want to stay competitive. More specifically, we are asking the question: what is the purpose of a restaurant website?

The reductionist answer is twofold:
• To create an attraction between diners and your restaurant
• To provide the information they need to spend their money there

Attraction

This is the point that far too many restaurant owners get caught up in, at least superficially. It’s no secret that we are not supporters of Flash to the detriment of accessibility or functionality. How can you attract when you can’t be seen? It’s best to consider Flash as just one specialized tool in a very well stocked toolbox… it serves a niche function, comes with a ball of strings attached, and with advancements in the capabilities of JavaScript is quickly becoming obsolete.

It is important to present an impressive online image that represents everything great about your restaurant. But in order to make that impression, diners need to be able to actually VIEW your website. If they are out driving around, browsing for a restaurant on their iPhone, they will not be able to view your Flash website. At all. If they are using a search engine to find a restaurant, yours will likely be way down the list, as search engine optimization techniques for Flash sites are crippled, at best. There is also the issue of not being able to copy/paste, or bookmark individual pages. Statistically, Flash sites have an exponentially higher abandon rate than XHTML/CSS based sites.

Information

Following is a short list of requirements that every restaurant website should have in order to provide customers with the information they’re seeking:

• Restaurant Overview
  A basic introduction to your restaurant is a must. Even if you think the name of your restaurant is self-explanatory, people still like to see how you describe yourself. If you have any unique selling points (local-sourced or seasonal ingredients, fair-trade, vegetarian options, etc.) this is a great place to mention them.
• Location
  Diners need to know where you are, and how to get there. You don’t need to provide directions from every corner of town, but an address, basic map, and link to a direction-giving site like Google Maps is very helpful indeed. BONUS: include a photograph of the front of your restaurant, so first-time visitors will recognize it easily from the street.
• Hours
  Basic stuff, here. And this is very near the top of the list of priorities when a diner visits your website. Make them easy to find.
• Menu
  Your food is your business! If ever there were an influential and unique selling point, it would be a mouth-watering menu. Words paint a picture, here. Don’t just scan your paper menu into an annoying PDF file, either – invest in having a digital menu designed to complement your physical one. This is the page people will want to bookmark.
• Photos
  A picture surely does speak a thousand words. Show what you’ve described in your menu, and make the imagery so vivid that it elicits a Pavlovian response in your visitors. Show your food, show your restaurant, your staff, and your dining room. The food is the star, but the experience is the whole package.
• Reviews
  This is not a must-have, but it certainly is nice. Reviews are the first thing many people look at when considering a new restaurant to try. If your restaurant has been reviewed in print, you definitely want to boost the influence that press affords by including it in your website. If you’re not in print, patch in reviews from consumer sites like UrbanSpoon or Restaurantica, or any of the other dozens of options available in any given city. And if you’re brand-spanking-new, include a reviews page with a simple request and link for people to visit a chosen review site, and let the world know what they thought of their experience with you.
• Reservation/Contact Info
  This area can be the deal-closer in many cases. If you make it easy and painless for people to book a table, guess what they’ll be more likely to do? Provide an easy-to-find phone number, of course, but also consider bookings by email, or requests via a form on your website. You can even program in live reservations through services like OpenTable.

How to Annoy Your Customers

Some food for thought, straight from the horses’ mouths:

“I’m always taken aback when music emanates from my speakers when I’m viewing a site”

“Flash required. Biggest irritant of a restaurant website. Even more so if they have an “Intro” graphic/animation. Two of my fav places use flash for their sites and it’s very very annoying. Even more annoying with flash is not being able to copy/paste phone numbers.”

“Can’t stand it when a site starts with music or that stupid talking character/video. I’ve got my own playlist going already, thanks. I don’t want your music. And when I’ve opened a ton of tabs at once, skimming through to find a cool place to eat, it’s always a pain to figure out which ones are making the noise.”

“I have my windows set up so that everything is sized and positioned the way I want it. Nothing bugs me more than when a website takes over your browser and forces it to fill the screen.”

“Flash, flash, flash. I don’t care about your intro. I don’t want to watch a video of leaves unfurling. Atmosphere is nice, but I usually end up closing these sites before they’re even done loading.”

“Where’s the damn menu?! I scour the site for ages, then when finally find it, it’s a crappy PDF.”

Who Does It Right

Here are just a few examples of restaurants with websites that walk the walk in terms of design, attractiveness to their own target customer base, and serving their purpose through the provision of convenient, easy-to-find information.

Each of these sites has a design that appeals the demographics the restaurants are trying to attract. They look great. They work the way they should. And information is very easy to find.

The central lesson in all design, whether it be for print, digital distribution, or the web, is that (the right kind of) communication is king. The goal for any company’s website is to sell a product, service or idea. Obviously you want to look good doing it, but dressing up for a job interview will do you no good if you can’t communicate with your prospective bosses. And let’s face it… the customer is the boss.

What follows is a recounting of one man’s frustration at the restaurant industry’s infatuation with Flash. Enjoy.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

A conversation I have every month or so

Me: (tries to visit a local restaurant’s website via iPhone)
Restaurant website: I require Flash. F**k off.
Me: I just want to know how late you’re open.
Website: Nope.
Me: But I’m on my phone. Don’t you have a little “HTML Version” link up in the corner or something?
Website: I’m ignoring you.
Me: What if I’m on my phone because I’m out, looking for a place to eat? Didn’t that ever occur to you?
Website: F**k entirely off.
Me: (gives up, switches to computer)
Website: Oh! Hi! What can I help you with today?
Me: What are your —
Website: Hang on, I’m loading the music.
Me: Really.
Website: You’ll love it. It’s “Girl from Ipanema” arranged for steel drum and keytar.
Me: No, you don’t have to —
Website: Loading…
Me: All I want is —
Website: I SAID DOT DOT DOT.
Me: (drums fingers on desk)
Website: There we go. Isn’t that nice? It’s… what’s the word. Ethnicky.
Me: What are your hours?
Website: Take a look at our menu! It’s a PDF of a screenshot of a scan of a Word document printed on a dishtowel. With fonts!
Me: I don’t care. What are your hours?
Website: Don’t worry, the menu loads in a new window so the music won’t stop. Can I show you some broken images?
Me: What. Are. Your. Hou. Rs.
Website: I… I don’t know.
Me: (goes to Denny’s)

Visit the Source: Venomous Porridge
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

As much as I might be tempted to rail and ramble on about the detriments of Flash to concepts like website usability and UX (user experience), it somehow seems folly to think I could be quite as succinct or relateable as Mr. Wineman’s script above.

If you’re a restaurant owner, the next time a designer tries to sell you on an overpriced Flash site with all the bells and whistles… take a moment and think about the purpose your website actually serves. And think of Mr. Wineman. He could have been one of your best customers.

However, before bidding a polite but firm “goodbye and good luck”, I do try to impart a little knowledge and foresight. Because in the end, these people actually end up paying more for a vastly inferior product – and that’s not good for anyone.

A True Story

I’m not going to bore you with the vague old “you get what you pay for” adage (oh wait, I just did). Rather, I am going to ask you to read through a short, true story. Trust me, you don’t want to learn this lesson the hard way.

Jon* is a 15 year old high school student, hoping to build his portfolio so he can get into a design program. He lives with his parents, has no staff or overhead, and is teaching himself how to use a copy of Adobe Creative Suite that he ‘found’ online. He’s had no actual clients, and his only business experience was a summer job at the snack bar at the local ball diamond. He built a small website for his freelancing business using a free (but very nice) WordPress template. His portfolio has three very nice but unverifiable sample pieces featured.

Jan* is a 30 year old university graduate, with specializations in consumer psychology, research and graphic design. She has over ten years experience creating a myriad of different design solutions for businesses around the world, an expansive portfolio of work, and dozens of testimonials from satisfied clients. She runs a full time design business, supporting a small team of painstakingly selected, experienced designers.

Obviously, the names have been changed… but it should be pretty easy to guess who Jan really is. As for Jon, he had submitted the winning bid for a project we competed for early last year (and I always check out who beat me when the opportunity presents itself). After I contacted him to ask about his background, he sent me his resume and the information above.

An excerpt from the client’s email to me last year:

Fourteen months later, the same client approached me out of the blue, asking if the previous quote was still valid.

It turns out they had spent nearly double the quoted amount with Jon (bringing them well above my quote), who not only turned in more than thirty “terrible” logo concepts, but who was impossible to get hold of between school and his social calendar. They never even got to the brochure, corporate collateral and website that were part of the original RFP.

But that’s not the worst of it.

When the client finally got fed up and decided to “settle” on one of his logo concepts, the graphic used turned out to be a copyrighted trademark belonging to an established multinational company. They are incredibly lucky their secretary stumbled onto the plagiarism before the copyright owners did.

I have to admit a small sense of satisfaction in hearing their story. Not because I revel in the misfortune of others (quite the opposite), but because I was vindicated. On the flip side, I hear too many stories like this one. These experiences sour people on the whole profession.

Yes, our hourly rates are quite a bit higher than Jon’s. But what you should be thinking about is what you actually get within that hour.

It’s also important to note that I only know about Jon’s status as a student with no actual clients or experience, because I bothered to ask him. These are not things that people advertise on their sales collateral. So do your homework when choosing a designer. And always, always read their terms of service in full. If they don’t have any, then my advice would be to run as quickly as possible in the opposite direction.

As for the prodigal client, I agreed to take on the project at last year’s price. They’re now very happy, and a little wiser for the experience.

Effective strategic design is somewhat like a composition written for a symphony orchestra, in that it requires several instruments working symbiotically in order to achieve the desired result.

What is User Experience? Dozens of definitions and formulas have been put forward over the years, but what they all have in common are the premises that (a) the customer experience is the ultimate loyalty/sales motivator – for better or for worse, and (b) that a positive user experience depends on the correct ratio of a number of different elements. It is only the labels given those elements that differ between theories.

For example, Robert Rubinoff’s definition contends that the user experience is made up of four factors:
* Branding
* Usability
* Functionality
* Content

Rubinoff argues that none of these factors in absence of the others can make for a positive user experience. While originally intended for the context of web design/development, this formula can also be extended to products and services.

Branding is at the forefront of what we do at Sage Media. Your brand is your identity – not only the aesthetic or visual elements of your business materials, but also the messages your company projects. It is your ethos. It is you.

Good branding provides customers with an engaging and memorable (positive) experience. Visually, it has a strong and instant impact that is consistent with your company’s brand identity. All of the graphics, collateral materials and multimedia used in your materials are carefully considered and tailored to your specific audience, adding relevant value to the experience.

If your branding is strong, it makes clear promises that your company consistently delivers on, and your materials all leverage the capabilities of their respective media to enhance or extend your company’s brand.

Usability has become a buzzword in the world of web design and development, yet I’ve found its execution to be somewhat less than elegant in most cases. There are thousands of web sites, newsletters, brochures and other business materials that are just as easy to use as they are useless, because the “designers” responsible simply stopped at usability, without consideration for appeal, aesthetics, connection, content, message, functionality or relevance.

Materials must be accessible to be effective. However, I see too many companies hiring separate ‘usability experts’ (because their designers don’t understand usability), and sorely unqualified designers (because they’re cheaper). What this causes is a perpetual war between someone who doesn’t understand design, and someone who doesn’t understand usability, which inevitably costs the company untold amounts of money and wasted time, and results in (at best) a product representative of a begrudging compromise.

Functionality should be a rather obvious requirement for any product, service or marketing piece. If it doesn’t work, doesn’t do what your customers need it to do, or expect it to do… it is bound to fail. This is kindergarten level stuff.

It can even be an issue as basic as cross-browser/platform compatibility for your website. Your visitors do not all use the same browser you do. They do not all use the same screen resolution that you do. Nor do they all use the same operating system or type of computer. Crafting code that ensures your website works and provides a consistent experience to the widest possible range of visitors requires a lot of extra work, but it is a requirement. If your developer tries to convince you that a given feature you want on your website requires you to block visitors not using, say, Internet Explorer… start looking for a new developer. Seriously.

Content, finally, is often said to hold a regal position when it comes to creating brand materials. While I might not necessarily go so far as to crown it as King, stellar content is indeed a crucial element in strategic design. Overlook it, and your brand becomes that initially gorgeous creature who makes you want to turn and run the second they open their mouth.

By the same token, content alone won’t get you far. The same words coming from a clean, impeccably dressed, attractive person behind a podium will have far greater weight, impact and credibility than they would coming from an unkempt, unpleasant looking person on a street corner.

Think of your content as the closer. If you’ve branded your company right, you’ll have their attention. Now you need to choose your words very carefully. Your credibility and your bottom line depend on it.

All said, this is just one of many formulas floating around in the ether. I like it because it’s clean, and easy to explain to my clients (most of whom are neither experts in design, marketing or psychology, though all very nice people).

The amount of psychology that goes into the design of everyday things would amaze most people. What I find amazing is the fact that so many people think they can create effective, influential design without understanding what motivates the people they’re trying to influence.

My mother was a carpenter and a forest ranger… also an intellectual, a bit of a flower child, and an intensely caring individual. So as you might imagine, I was raised with a certain amount of appreciation and respect for the natural world. When it became apparent that more people in my own demographic seemed to be acknowledging and embracing concepts like social responsibility and environmental awareness, I was thrilled. I thought, finally – the middle class is starting to open their eyes.

Now, I feel rather ill at ease with the whole thing. I’m not implying that people don’t care – quite the opposite. A growing number of consumers want to do the right thing, but there remain two major problems with this. The first is a question of motivation… why do they care? How many of them are just being trendy? The second problem is the fact that we’re all being lied to. Over the course of one year, the number of products making ‘green’, ‘natural’ or ‘eco’ claims increased by 79% – which would be fantastic were it not for the fact that most of these claims are either fraudulent, unverifiable, or otherwise misleading (check out the latest Greenwashing Report).

These problems are not new, but given the context it’s taken on a new level of malignancy. I don’t want the world we live in to become the next discarded fad.

For those of us who run our own companies there are significant hurdles to face in terms of the decisions we make both personally, and professionally. On the personal front, as business owners, what we do in our personal lives inevitably bleeds into our work. Many of our clients have come to our company after having researched not only Sage Media as a business, but also the individuals who work here. Social media has rendered the faceless CEO extinct.

Be aware that everything you do publicly reflects on your professional life in some way. If your company is making corporate social responsibility claims, eschewing slave labour, for example… and you’re then seen shopping at Sprawl-Mart… well, you do the math. I’m not saying these big box stores use slaves directly (forget about their treatment of their own employees) but through their pursuit of the lowest price and their phenomenal buying power, they pressure their vendors to engage in increasingly cheap and unethical manufacturing and procurement strategies, which means – you guessed it – irresponsible raw material sourcing and sweatshop labour in some poor country overseas.

As a business owner, you need to be honest and authentic when making any claims, of any sort. Just because the FDA hasn’t yet written any rules for usage of the word ‘natural’, it doesn’t mean you should use it on everything simply in the hopes of duping well-meaning customers. Poison Ivy is natural, as are any number of toxic or poisonous elements. They’re not good for you.

When marketing a product with a ‘green’ advantage, make damn sure you can both justify and back up your claims – not just because it’s the right thing to do, but also because almost nobody will believe you right off the bat now that consumers are wising up to the game.

If third-party endorsement is important to you, then go through the steps to actually get it. Don’t have an unscrupulous designer draw up a fake certificate or label. Don’t try to make a customer feel ‘green’ about a choice that is harmful or unnecessary, and make sure you have an honest understanding of all of the environmental impacts of your product, across its entire lifecycle. Check out The Story of Stuff – it’s really getting around, and more of your customers are going to be asking tough questions as awareness builds.

You don’t need to wear a hemp poncho or stop using soap… all you need to do is be educated and honest.

I’ve always been a strong proponent of transparency in business. My own model is simple: Say what you do, and DO what you say. Being honest is so much easier than pulling your hair out trying to back up a tangled web of exaggerations and false claims. And if you’re lying to your customers, they WILL find out. As they say, one bad review is more influential than twenty good ones.

Top Image: Matteo Cibic’s desk tamagotchi, each of which is one-of-a-kind and custom blown to match its individual cactus’ shape. A green design that also just happens to be adorable.

More often than not, consumers associate brand-speak with trickery, exaggeration, misdirection and outright deception. The sad thing is, I don’t blame them. A lot of brands are disingenuous. What those brand managers don’t realize is that tricking someone into buying once is far less profitable than earning customer loyalty and trust over the long term.

Investing in your Brand for the Long Haul

Branding is so much more than just looking good. You need to pick up where we leave off.

Good branding requires ongoing maintenance. But unfortunately, too many companies slow their branding efforts to a near-halt after unveiling the new logo and website.

In a number of ways, rolling out your new visual identity is really just the beginning of one of your most important branding endeavours… that is, a long-term and focused investment in building trust.

“Investing in brand development is increasingly important to build credibility and differentiate,” says Cynthia Round, executive vice president of brand strategy and marketing at United Way of America, which recently rolled out a completely revamped brand campaign. “People are making purchasing decisions based on how closely aligned their values are with an organization and how much they trust what that organization is providing.”

Your brand platform should accurately and honestly represent your organization’s core values, but it is equally important that your actions and business practices follow in line. Trust and personal connection are at the foundation of employee and consumer loyalty, both of which have a significant and direct impact on your bottom line.

Brand Trust: as Simple as Lather, Rinse, Repeat

Building and marketing a good base image is only step one. If I’ve heard of you, I’m more likely to trust you at the outset. But trust is built over time, accrued from a consistent collection of experiences and perceptions. To get to level two, you need to do what you say you are going to do. It seems easy, but it’s a step that so many fail to reach. Finally, customer trust and loyalty are confirmed and reinforced when you simply repeat step two at every opportunity.

Deliver on your promise in a consistent way, and you’ll never lose business due to a lack of credibility.

Free Advertising: it Goes Both Ways

If your brand promises gold and delivers bronze, you’re finished. Bad news travels fast and far. So in failing to live up to the image you’ve created for yourself, you’ve not only alienated one customer, but have also lost out on potential business from all of the people your single unsatisfied customer has complained to. You may be able to hold your head above water for a while with this strategy, but it won’t last.

On the other hand, if you’ve planned your brand strategy on a basis of sustainable and honest values (i.e., you can and do deliver what you say you will) then what you’re reinforcing is a lasting impression of quality, value, and credibility. Good news may not travel as far or as fast, but the ROI (considering your investment is nothing more than doing what you do anyway) can be immense.

Approximately 80% of our new clients come to us via direct recommendations from former or existing clients. That’s a significant amount of advertising that’s being done on our behalf, at no expense to us.

Honesty and Authenticity = Tangible ROI

The bottom line is, every company wants measurable, tangible returns on their investments. This is especially true when it comes to branding strategies. Trust is a tricky thing to measure, but when the United Way undertook a campaign to determine investor and donation motives in 2003, they found that a strong brand was 67% of the reason people chose to invest in the organization.

Often, it’s the smaller daily interactions that illustrate how your brand is working for you. And that’s precisely what you want. Small actions (both positive and negative) build upon one another, impacting the experience your brand provides, and acting directly on its strength.

Once you’ve built the visual aspects of your brand, success is as simple as delivering consistently on what you’ve promised. People will pay more for, and choose more readily, the experience and peace of mind that a healthy brand provides.

Features are the properties of a product or service. The features of a car might be anti-lock brakes, leather seats, or rear-window defrost. Benefits, on the other hand, show how those features will actually be of benefit (hence the name) to the user. Anti-lock brakes keep you safe if you have to stop quickly. Leather seats are more durable and luxurious than cloth. In copywriting, benefits are much, much more important than features.
Let me show you a real-world example.

Stainless Steel Shaft or Priceless Cooking Tool?

Have you ever read a product brochure or Web page that sounded something like this?

The Braun Multiquick Hand Blender offers a 200-watt motor, stainless steel shaft, five-blade chopper attachment, and aerator head.

How do you feel when you read that description of the hand blender? It’s not very exciting, is it? The thought of a stainless steel shaft doesn’t really get your heart pumping and instill the thought that you need one of these hand blenders. That’s because the copy above focuses on the “what” of the product. Now read this version:

The Braun Multiquick Hand Blender has a powerful motor enabling you to chop, whip, puree and blend with lightning speed. Its stainless steel shaft holds up to years of use without bending or breaking. You’ll create delicious meals with ease and be out of the kitchen in record time.

The first example focuses on the “what” of the product… the features. It simply lists the nuts and bolts of what the physical product offers. However, the second copy example focuses on the “how” of the product… the benefits. These benefits show the reader how this product will make his/her life easier or better.

Focusing on the “what” and not the “how” of a product or service is a common mistake novice writers make. It is also a deadly mistake that can cost you sales. But how exactly do you create benefits out of features? Easily!

Five Easy Steps to Creating Powerful Benefits

Here’s my five-step process for turning boring features into eye-popping benefits. Let’s use the example of a marketing e-book for this practice session.

1. List the features of your product or service. (Created in PDF format, information on e-mail marketing, search engine optimisation, PPC ads, etc.)
2. List the concerns or needs of your customers. If you don’t know… ask them. (Finding affordable ways to promote their websites to bring in the most qualified traffic and increase sales.)
3. Ask yourself, “Why does this feature matter to my customer?” Write your answers on the list. (PDF format means both PC and Mac users can view the e-book. Search engine optimisation is one of the most effective, highly targeted tools there is… and it costs nothing once you learn how to do it.)
4. Take it one step further. Ask yourself, “What problem or concern can this feature address?” (Getting more qualified buyers to the reader’s website so they can buy)
5. Write down the benefit and you’re all done!

So, instead of writing copy about a marketing e-book that reads like this:

Move It or Lose It is an e-book for beginners that was created in PDF format. It covers the details of e-mail marketing, search engine optimisation, and PPC ads in order to bring you affordable marketing tools you can use.

…you can write copy like this:

Move It or Lose It was created especially for new online business owners and covers – in great detail – everything you need to know about the three most popular, economical, and effective marketing methods:

• Search engine optimisation: one of the most effective, highly targeted tools there is… and it costs absolutely nothing once you learn how to do it.
• E-mail marketing: extremely targeted… this marketing method brings in consistently high returns on investment.
• Pay-per-click (PPC) ads: not only inexpensive, but also quick and easy to set up.

Move It or Lose It is available for immediate download as a PDF file, meaning both PC and Mac users can take advantage of this powerful information.

Which one sparks your interest more?

When it’s time to write your next piece of advertising copy, take some time to develop a solid list of benefits. Focusing on the “how” instead of the “what” will practically guarantee a better response and more sales.

Guest Article written by Karon Thackston. Karon is owner of Marketing Words, and a professional advertising and search engine copywriter. Check out her online e-course at the Step-by-Step Copywriting Course.

The number of times a client has uttered those words to us (or a close variation on the theme) is somewhat staggering.

Sure, we all want it. And for certain parameters, we can get it for you. But while Search Engine Optimization is a very important component of both web development and your overall marketing platform, it cannot stand alone.

Like anything worthwhile, coming up in the fiercely and tirelessly competed-for number one spot for any search word or phrase requires work. It requires quality setup work upfront, and it requires consistent maintenance work down the line. What many people don’t realize, is that it also requires support.

Imagine a scenario in which you’ve invested countless hours and considerable expense into getting your site into the number one spot on Google, to the exclusion of other online marketing endeavors. That’s fine, but now Google has decided (as they often do) to change a simple filter in their algorithm. Poof. Your site has fallen to page number two thousand or so. You’ve put all your eggs into one basket, and the basket’s fallen.

How will people find your company’s website now?

It’s always best to take a multi-faceted approach to marketing your services or business… an idiom as true in the virtual world as it is in the real one. You wouldn’t take out a single ad on one street corner and trust it to bring in all of your business… would you?

It’s more important to build a strong brand presence that people will recognize and trust than it is to simply be visible on page one. We all know there’s just as much garbage on that page as there are quality sites. In addition to building a strong search engine presence, you should spend an equal amount of time pursuing partnerships with other non-competitive sectors of the internet.

Supplementary Internet Marketing Options

• Press Releases
  While these are reserved for newsworthy purposes (new product/service announcements, acquisitions, events and trade shows etc.), they are a great way to introduce visitors to your website who are looking for information directly related to your product or service. Press releases also an excellent way to build your brand name, and to establish yourself and your company as an authority in your field.
• Directory listings
  This is one of the easiest ways to get your site indexed by search engines. There are many free directories that you can get your site listed in, and there are many fee-based directories that are worth the price of adding your site. The added value is that since your site is listed categorically, it helps to re-enforce what your site offers, since it will be found with similar sites.
• Articles
  Share your expertise. While writing quality articles can be time-consuming and challenging, it is an extremely valuable asset to your site. In so doing, you are creating unique content that isn’t found anywhere else – a very specific criterion that search engines will reward you for. It also gives you an alternative method for explaining your product or services, without putting on the hard-sell. Finally, writing relevant and unique articles on a regular basis will naturally grow the size of your site, and will establish it as a hub of relevant information within your industry.
• Newsletters
  This is an often-neglected approach that requires a bit of work, but pays off consistently. Your site should have an option or area in which visitors can sign up to receive a newsletter from your company. The people who do sign up feel that your site is worth their time, and that you are offering something interesting and valuable. Your newsletter is an outlet to promote new products and services to interested users without the risk of being intrusive, so if combined with the right amount of valuable content, it is one of the best places to make a sales pitch.
• Blogs & RSS Feeds
  While sharing the same benefits outlined in writing your own articles, having an up-to-date blog with RSS on your site gives people a reason to check you out, and enhances your visibility since RSS keeps your prospects in sight without requiring them to find you first. RSS lets you initiate contact. There are many areas to get your blog listed, and in addition to the SEO benefits a blog offers, it also provides an insider’s point-of-view into your company or personality, offering yet another way for users to identify with you or your site.

It’s safe to say that search engines will always be around, and will likely remain the primary source of direction for people on the hunt for information, but for your company to focus on them exclusively could be a costly business mistake. Just remember there are a variety of marketing resources at your disposal that will not only better establish your brand online and bring you quality leads on their own, but will also contribute in a significant way to achieving and keeping that number one spot we’re all fighting for.

Maybe not to “ruin”, so much… being busy is good. It’s fantastic, even. I love what I do, and the fact that so many people come to us on their own or through referrals makes me feel great about my work. But in periods like this, I do come to miss things like human contact, sleep, exercise and healthy food.

That’s one of the reasons I was so surprised this weekend to find a notice telling me that we’d been nominated and chosen to receive a CWA Design Award. Nice!

I don’t think I’ve entered a design award competition since our first year in business. At first, I thought winning design awards would get the word out, and get us recognized as legitimate and worthwhile. After a while though, and after having won several of these little accolades, I decided it really wasn’t a meaningful investment of my time or money. Sure, winning is an ego-stroker… but it offers little else. Aside from a lucrative profit for the companies collecting the often exhorbitant entry fees, of course.

I had a look at the CWA structure, and they represent one of the few independent design awards that are actually free to enter. The nomination made a bit more sense, now. These award programs that are free to enter (or have a realistic administrative fee) are much more representative and accessible than their largely commercial counterparts. Honestly, no freelancer, independent designer or small studio has thousands to spend on their own ego every year, regardless of how worthy their work might actually be.

A design award means quite a bit more in my mind, when it hasn’t been bought.

I have no idea who nominated us, but to that kind person who thought we were worth some of their own precious and dwindling free time, I sincerely thank you.