By Nora McDougall-Collins
NNFP Director of Web Services

As these blog posts discuss your web site model, the fact that I have never been to Macys.com is a great lesson in understanding why it takes time for a web site to make a profit. I’m not going to talk about how well the site works, or doesn’t work. I’m not going to discuss how beautiful or ugly it is – because I’ve never seen it.

Macy’s does the best job I’ve ever seen of training their staff to remind each and every shopper to visit their site. They are trained so well, it’s completely a part of the purchase conversation without being obnoxiously pushy. But, after a number of years of being reminded to visit the site at least twice a month, I’ve never been to the Macy’s web site. Ouch!

I shop at Macy’s in Missoula, MT very regularly. Between kids, step-kids, kids’ boyfriends and girlfriends, husband, etc, I have a whole lot of presents to buy for birthdays, Easter, and Christmas. In fact, I buy so many men’s size S, M, L, and XL that the fantasic sales lady in the Macy’s Mens Department asks me how all the boys (4 step-sons and 2 sons) are doing every time I’m there. But, I’ve never been to Macy’s web site.

If this sounds like a story about why not to have a web site, IT’S NOT! The actual point is understand who needs your web site and what they want from it.

I do shop online. Just this week, I spent about $100.00 on Amazon.com. But last week, I bought a .NET book from Barnes and Nobles store, instead of online. I have purchased clothing from LandsEnd.com, but never from Dillards.com or Nordstroms.com or Macys.com. Why is that?

Why did I buy two items from Amazon.com and one from a store? Because I already knew what I wanted from Amazon. One of the items is an audio book that is difficult to find. But I wanted to look at several .NET books before I chose one. (The one I got did give some terrible web advice on a few items, but bad examples are great case studies.) Why do I guy soap and lotions online? Because I already know what brand and products I want! I don’t want to waste time going to the bath shop to try to figure out how much mineral oil is in those bath products! Definition of mineral oil: a distillate of petroleum (especially one used medicinally as a laxative or stool softener)

Why did I buy from LandsEnd.com and not from Macys.com? Because we don’t have a Lands End store. I work on the web – all day! I like to go to a store for a half hour of getting away from the computer. I want to look at the clothes and think of who it would look good on. If there is a great sale, I might leave with 20 items. I surely don’t want to pay freight on all that stuff. Personally, I don’t see how Macys.com is going to do anything for me. I don’t want to shop online unless I can get in an out quickly, like in 10 minutes or less; so, why should I go there?

What are the web lessons here?
1. It helps to have an idea what your potential market wants from your web site. At this point in my life, the only thing I want from them is to know if there is a balance on my Macys card. Actually, I should go into their site to say nice things about my favorite sales person!

2. It helps to have an idea who your potential market is! Customers that are already in the Macys store are a pretty good bet.

3. Invite everyone who calls, emails, or walks into your facilities to your web site. They don’t let me forget that there is a Macys site!

4. Don’t give up because people like me don’t go to your site right away! It’s an ongoing process. OK, I gave in and went to the site while I was writing this piece.

5. Don’t fill your web site up with marketing gobble-de-gook that no one wants to read. I searched the Macys front page for less than 10 seconds to find a link to make a comment about the lady in the Men’s Department, but I wouldn’t have searched through several pages to find a comment link. Actually, their programming was very slick and easy to use! Sounds like they really want me to take the time to give them comments.

6. A web site is a great way to make it easy for folks who already know about your product or services to get it without driving somewhere!!!

7. Give your visitors a lot of photos and specifics about your services and products. The fact that you use sustainably harvested wood is lost on me, if I don’t get some great photos of your product.

8. It takes time and effort to get people to use that wonderful web site you just built!!! Sorry, no condo in Spain in 6 months.

By Nora McDougall-Collins
NNFP Director of Web Services

Your website is finally finished and online! You put a lot of work into developing a site that people will enjoy. Now, you can go back to your regular schedule and fill all the requests and orders that will come from your website. Maybe not. There is a missing link here: viewers – the right viewers. People are the ones who learn about your product and place the orders. If people don’t find your website (and like your website) there won’t be any orders. That’s why you should market your website. What is Website Marketing?

Web marketing is getting the word out – on the web. People will find your website through search engines, links from other websites, other media you use and word of mouth. The harder it is for viewers to get to your site, the less they will get there! A well-positioned link in a search engine is easy to use. Your web address in a magazine article or ad is not so easy to use because people have to retype the information into their browser. So, you can expect to receive more visitors from a good search engine position than from print. Those print ads are still valuable – just not as valuable.

Just having links on other sites isn’t good enough, the links have to be positioned where people see them and on sites people trust. The one key place you can be sure people visit is Google – and other search engines.

“The number of searches it handles has grown astronomically. In 1998, Google reported that it handled 10,000 searches a day. That number leaped to 500,000 a day in 1999. Google doesn’t share those numbers widely now, but research group comScore estimates that Google hosted 235 million searches a day in July of this year.”
http://www.forbes.com/2008/09/04/google-tenth-anniversary-tech-enterprise-cx_wt_0905google.html

Besides the search engines, your site needs to be part of the online community of links. What do you think of a business that is not worth any mention in your community? No one knows about it. It gets no attention – and therefore no business. Your website needs to be part of the online community, just like a business needs to be part of a community.

Time
Web marketing will take time – over time. It is normal for the new website owner to eagerly anticipate orders from their website within a few days. However, there are very few instant stars, either in show business – or on the web. As you market your website, you will see incremental results over time: increased traffic, increased emails and phone calls, and increased orders or donations. The length of time between launching the site and receiving orders will depend on 1) your web marketing efforts, 2) your market, 3) the economy, 4) the quality of your web design, 5) your competition, and 6) many other factors. These factors are discussed in other articles listed at the end of the article.

An example of a common pattern is a niche wood decorator/builder product website I recently did some updates on. The company had placed an ad in a very nice magazine to begin with; so, they had a jump on web traffic. After we got their site up and running, they actually received orders through their website within two weeks. That was phenomenal for such a niche product. However, they were disappointed because they didn’t receive enough orders to cover the cost of building the site. That expectation is totally unreasonable. If they recoup their costs in six months, they will be doing very well indeed. Now, they are starting to understand that they also need to be sure that people can find their site.

Persistence
Web marketing is not something that you ever finish. As soon as you stop: the ranking you have achieved will go to other sites that are being maintained and marketed. The great thing about persistence is that you can start with a few things in the list below and work on them over time. Regular marketing is more valuable than occasional marketing binges.

An example of a common pattern is a gift product business that made a big change to make their site search engine friendly and then were disappointed because their site didn’t maintain its position a year later.

Some Things You Can Do to Market your Website

1. Track your stats on Google and other search engines.
2. Make your site search engine friendly
3. Add to your website regularly
4. Get links to your site from other high-quality websites
5. Post your website on portals and other industry sites
6. Buy online advertising that links to your website

By Nora McDougall-Collins
NNFP Director of Web Services

As a web developer, here is a scenario I see on a regular basis. A colleague emailed me about a friend of hers that needs a web site for a niche business-to-business company. She said that her friend wants a small website with a counter, and she “wants to be at the top.” I didn’t need to ask what the “top” is! What those comments told me was that her friend is very new at the website business and has a long learning curve ahead of her. But, that’s my job – helping businesses learn about what it means to have a website.

So, I knew that I would have about 5 minutes to let the friend know that it’s not a one-time put-up-a-site product. The friend called me and said, “I want a few page website that will be at the top of the search engines. I told her, “Everyone wants to be at the top of the search engines. Whether you get there depends on how much work you want to do. For example, are you willing to add a new page to your website every month?” Her answer was, “But, I don’t need to have new pages on my site.” My response was, “Then you don’t get to be at the top of Google. Where you sit depends on how well you do with your site compared to your competition.”

At that point, many people are finished listening, but she wasn’t faint of heart. Actually, in trying to get my point across in 5 minutes, my answer was simplistic. Here are some of the points I will be going over with her when we meet.

1. As a website owner, learn everything you can about having a website before you start and as you go. Yes, you can put together a website in an afternoon. I have seen many of these sites do more damage than good for a business because they represented the business very poorly. However, with planning and gathering of images and text ahead of time, you can put together a site that is good for you and your viewers in an afternoon. This is called “rapid development.”

2. Understand that a website combines many business skills: user interface, marketing (search engine optimization comes in here), programming, graphic design, copywriting, and many others. Each of these major skills has many subsets. If you understand what tasks there are to do, you are more likely to get qualified people to do them. If your web developer suggests that you hire a photographer or a copywriter or another specialist, you have a web developer that is concerned about the success of your website.

3. Don’t expect to build a site and ignore it. Have you ever been to a business where it was obvious the owners weren’t putting any energy into it? Your website needs to have something new for your viewers on a regular basis. The great thing is that this is one of the main tasks you can do to “get to the top.” After you have had your site for a couple of years, when your developer suggests it needs a bit of a makeover, it isn’t just a way to drum up business, it’s good for your web business.

4. Being “at the top” isn’t as important as having a website for people. In most cases, everything that you do to improve your site for people will also help your search engine ranking. Start by listing what you like and don’t like about websites. Keep in mind that many of the people who go to your site don’t know you, have no reason to trust you and probably don’t know much about your type of business.

5. Don’t wait until your site is perfect to roll it out. When your site is “good enough,” go ahead and roll it out. You have to keep working on it anyway! You will learn more about your website by having it live and paying attention to what you need to change and add!

These 5 points are big picture concepts that will help you get started in the right direction. Now, success is in the details!