Redesign Your Website or How to Succeed in a Recession

Warren Buffett was quoted yesterday as saying that the US economy is in a recession. One indicator is that consumers and businesses are buying less products and services. And even though he mentioned the “R” word. Buffett wrote in a Friday letter to Berkshire Hathaway. “Despite our country’s many imperfections and unrelenting problems of one sort or another, America’s rule of law, market-responsive economic system and belief in meritocracy are almost certain to produce ever growing prosperity for its citizens,” Zig Ziglar, a famous sales motivational speaker, says that when some people believe that we are in a recession, depression or down economy, he chooses not to participate.

Now is an excellent time get motivated. There are limitless opportunities for your business on the Internet. Take a look at your website. Is it working for you? Is it bringing you new prospects? If not, then it’s time to redesign your website. Your website is an important marketing tool and website design is important to establish a brand for your business online. By redesigning your website, you have the opportunity to cost-effectively:

- Reintroduce your company to customers and prospects
- Present new products and services
- Freshen-up all of the copy
- Take new photos
- Add animation and video
- Develop database applications

There are many articles and examples on this blog that can guide you through the redesign process. So stop whining about the economy and take control of your company’s branding process. 

17 Reams of Copy Paper Equals 1 Tree

How do you market your company? Most businesses use brochures, sales sheets, reports and a wide variety of printed materials. The paper that these items are printed on comes from trees. Fortunately, trees are a renewable source and more paper is being recycled every year. But how can you help the environment, conserve paper and stay in business all at the same time? The first step is to find out how much paper your company uses with its printed materials. A website called Conservatree has put together information with statistics related to printing and paper usage. Below is a brief summary you can use to calculate paper usage.

- 1 ream of copy paper (500 sheets) uses 6% of a tree
- Nearly 17 reams of copy paper uses 1 tree
- A 16-page brochure (5,000 copies) uses almost 5 trees

The next step is to create a dynamic new website and warehouse all of your marketing materials online. Sales sheets could become PDF files that you can link from your website or send to clients via email. Reports can come alive through Flash animation. Annual reports can be customized for each viewer with a database application. Think about the new generation of prospects coming into the market. With cell phones, laptops, and wireless connection, they are online gurus. So moving your marketing online isn’t just saving the planet, it’s good for your business. Create a new website and save a tree or two.
 

Add Video to Your Website to Engage Your Audience

In the context of marketing and advertising, words use only one of our senses, our eyes. A voice over also uses only one of our senses, our ears. It is only video that engages both our eyes and ears. And the way to capture the attention of your target audience is to engage more than one of their senses. It’s the reason that companies such as Anheuser-Busch will spend 2.6 million dollars for one 30 second spot on the Super Bowl this year. It works.

Your business can use this marketing advantage by adding video to your website. Think about creating a 30 second commercial about your business and put it on your Home page. If you have a product, demonstrate the benefits and features in a short video spot. If you have a service and it can’t be described in a brief video, break the narrative into segments like chapters in a book. Create a simple navigation that make it easy for the user to view your videos.

Because the video should be professionally produced, hire a marketing firm to identify your brand identity, write a tight script and produce your business video. There are many methods to encode and upload the final video to your website. You can also use the free services of YouTube to upload and host your business video and link back to your website. The fact is that you don’t have to spend 2.6 million dollars to create a great video for your website. Get started and get your target audience excited.

A New Website Design Can Improve Your Business

A new website design allows you to re-introduce your company. Think of a company like Apple and how they are constantly seen as innovators of their market. One method for giving your business a boost in sales is to review your existing website.

- Does your website reach your target audience effectively?
- Have you reviewed your competition’s websites?
- Does your website reflect your brand identity?
- Is your website search engine ‘friendly’?
- Does your website design look professional?
- Have you budgeted for a new website this year?

Sales does not happen in a vacuum. If you’ve done your homework by creating an effective brand, then the next step is to build solid marketing support to reach prospects, warm them up to your product or service, and make the sale. The more qualified prospects you can get into the pipeline, the better the opportunity to improve your business. And the Internet is the most exciting playing field to plant your flag. Online, the world is your oyster.

That’s not to say that you can put up an average website. Your website needs to be the best. When prospects visit, you want them to stay, review and be excited about your product or service. The goal should be to get them to call or send for more information. On low-priced items, get them to place an order online. On higher ticket items, a salesperson usually needs to make the close. In either case a new website design can dramatically re-energize your business’ sales.

Ohio Website Design, Part IV

Website design is important in promoting events. The Ohio Auto Dealers Association has created a new website to promote the Greater Toledo Auto Show this month. Flash animation was used to enhance the website. The opening is fantastic.

Should You Hire a Website Design Company?

There are three ways to design and build your company website: Build it yourself, use an online service or hire a professional website development company. The first choice, building the website yourself, is easy and inexpensive. If you have the know-how, you can put a basic website up for in a short amount of time. Keep in mind that you need to think about the target audience, your competition and brand identity. There are other articles on this website blog that go into more detail about the web design process. There are also unlimited books and resources available on the Internet to help you build a website. The downside is the time it takes to build your website. If you own your own business, then you might have more pressing needs such as keeping the business running by focusing on sales.

The next method for building a company website is to utilize available online resources. Simply Google ‘website design’ and you will see hundreds of companies that offer pre-build websites for your company. I would recommend using this method if you are opening a new business. This give you the time to work out different versions of the content that defines your website.  There is a free service at ionWeb.com that offers a one-page, non-nonsense approach to get you started. When using this method, you won’t have a lot of choices, but it helps to get your website off of the ground without the fuss.

The third choice is to hire a professional website development company. If you don’t have the time or experience to use the other methods, then hire someone to help. When you find the right company, you get a more objective opinion about your company’s website. There are even businesses that offer marketing and search engine services that go beyond just the design and production. Obviously it will cost money to hire someone who knows what they are doing, but if you budget for marketing, including website design, your company stands a better chance of succeeding.

Before you start the project yourself give this some thought. When we remodeled our kitchen a few years ago, I reviewed the process and thought I could save money and do the work myself. However I don’t remodel kitchens for a living so I also assumed that I could only work weekends and weeknights and found it would take me a minimum of 6 months to complete the remodeling project. Along with the mess it also meant that we would be without a kitchen for that period of time. Long story short, we hired a kitchen remodeling expert; it was completed in a tmely fashion and we were serving meals to our family in our beautiful new kitchen no time.

Website Design Process, Part III

Now that you have identified your target audience and we now know who the competition is. We have a clear understanding of who is buying your product or service and who is selling it to them. What’s the next step in the website design process?

Step three is to establish your brand identity. This would include every aspect of your product or service. Think Starbucks for business people, Apple for ‘cool’ computer people and even Hannah Montana for ‘tween’ girls. Here are some thoughts for moving your brand identity forward. Answer these questions from the standpoint of your target audience.

- Does your company name make sense?
- Is your logo identifiable?
- Are the colors that you use consistent?
- Does your website match your print marketing materials?
- How does your brand differ from your competitors?
- What other brands does your target audience buy?

According to the American Marketing Association, a brand is a name, term, design, symbol or other feature that distinguishes products and services from competitive offerings. A brand has also been described as representing a consumers’ experience with an organization, product or service. Both descriptions are correct because a brand is what the product or service looks like and also what it feels like.

Spend a little time working on your brand identity. Ask current and potential customers what they think about your brand. Review the competition and see what works for them. You don’t have to re-invent the wheel. Just make life a little better for the target audience.

Website Design Process, Part II

Okay, you have identified your target audience. You’ve narrowed down the list of potential customers and their demographics. What’s the next step in the website design process? Unless you want to create your website in a vacuum, you need to see what other people are doing in your industry.

Step two in the website design process is to review the competition. What we’re talking about is good old-fashion research. And the great thing is that with the Internet as your partner, it doesn’t take long to accomplish this task. 

I’ve heard many businesses say that they don’t have any competition. Let’s get one thing straight, every business has competition. And competition is healthy for everyone. Consumers and businesses alike. Competition helps your website business because you don’t have to make the same mistakes that others have made. Here are some ideas to work with when researching the competition.

- Find 10 businesses that sell your product or service
- Where are they located?
- Are consumers buying their product or service online?
- Buy a product or service from a competitor
- Review their marketing materials
- Review their sales figures
- Try to speak with a sales person
- Find associations of your industry
- Research trends from statistics that associations provide
- Find 10 more business that sell your product or service

I could list 100 ideas for researching the competition. Just keep at it. Never stop looking at what others are accomplishing in your industry. Research, review and reevaluate. Keep updating your website and marketing materials. See what works for others and how you can benefit.

Website Design Process, Part I

Design is an important element in the development of your website. How a site looks and feels can determine if a viewer is interested or not in your product or service. Usually the visitor makes that determination within 3 seconds. That’s right, I said 3 seconds. That doesn’t give you a lot of time to get your message across.

The first step in the website design process is to define your target audience. If you say that ‘everyone is my audience’, then you need to go back to the drawing board and refine your answer. No product or service is needed by everyone. In fact, you could waste a lot of time and money finding that out the hard way. So do your homework now by clearly defining your target audience. Here are some basic questions to ask yourself:

- Who does my product or service help?
- Am I targeting consumers or businesses?
- Local or national?
- Is it men or women?
- What is the age-group?
- Do they buy my product or service online?
- How often do they buy?
- Who do they buy from now?
- What are my projected sales figures for the first year?
- What is the total market sales for my product or service?

Website design begins with knowing your target audience better than anyone. And most of the data is available on the Internet. Your competitor’s website can also provide a wealth of information. If you already have a website up and running, and you’re not getting the desired results, then redefining your target audience can help.

Keep in mind that the smaller the target audience the better the results. Just like in archery, many people can see the target, but the most successful hit the bulls-eye. Next in this series about website design, we’ll discuss how your competitors play an important role.

Ohio Website Design, Part III

Website design is important in building a brand identity. NEX Transport, an Ohio-based international contract packaging, distribution and export company, has created a new website to display their services to the shipping industry. Flash animation was used to enhance the website and the opening is great.

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