In Don’t Make Me Think, Steve Krug gives a spot-on guide to website usability— all that stuff that helps visitors to your site find what they’re looking for. What Krug’s book doesn’t touch on is the relationship between usability and search engine optimization (SEO) —how visitors actually find your site in the first place.

I really don’t fault Krug for this (too much) since it’s not his area of primary expertise, and there’s plenty written elsewhere on SEO. Still, a nod to SEO might have been nice since some principles of usability that Krug advocates can appear to be in conflict with best practices in SEO.

If you’ve read Krug’s book along with a few guides to SEO, you probably know what I mean.

The current maxim for SEO is “content is king” with textual content sitting high atop the searchability throne. If you want search engines to find your site, you need good copy. A picture may say a thousand words to most of us, but to bat-blind Web crawlers, a picture only whispers whatever you can squeeze into its alt tag.

In contrast, to make sites more user-friendly, Krug suggests you “Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left.” (Cue hearty shouts of approval from graphic designers everywhere.)

When less is more and when less is just less

In my first fresh-out-of-a-college writing job, I was confronted with a harsh reality: the 12 pages of brilliant verbosity in my college essays as an English major was not necessarily going to be rewarded in the business world. I’d just written my first article for the agency magazine, and I proudly passed it on to the graphic designer. It was promptly returned with “You need to cut at least 500 words to fit the page” written on top. How could I cut 500 words from perfection? And for what? “White space”?

Left with no alternative, I began the painful task of cutting my precious copy. I cut and reworded and cut and rephrased. When I was done, something miraculous happened: the fluorescent light above my cube glowed a little brighter as I realized my article was actually better, not worse. I hadn’t amputated any limbs — I’d performed lyposcution and lost the excess fat.

I think what Krug is advocating for is simply good writing. Unfortunately, the Web isn’t always the place to find this. With the lack of physical limitations like paper size, and the speed with which content is generated, the time and motivation to write tight-skinned copy is in short supply. Couple this with a sloppy understanding of SEO and “more” can feel like value added when, in fact, more is mess.

What’s a writer to do? Know thy audience(s)!

Fortunately, most of the principles of writing well apply to both SEO and usability. The key is to remember who you’re writing to. Every good writer knows that “identifying the audience” is step one. For writing on the Web, you have two audiences: the visitors who will use your site and the search engines who will drive them there. Do your due diligence on both. By researching what terms people actually use to find your products/services, you can make educated decisions about what terms are key (avoiding less is less) and what are superfluous (avoiding more is mess).

Consider the following examples of copy for RickySticky Widgets, a small company that helps users improve the performance of their Quicky Stickets:

Example 1:

In order to improve and enhance the quality of the performance, efficiency and speed of your Quicky Stickets, try our newly redesigned and highly innovative RickySticky Widgets which are the trusted and proven source to provide the perfect cutting-edge solution to resolve your Quicky Stickets’ performance issues. Buy your RickySticky Wickets Today!

Problem: the writer is making SEO the enemy of usability by cramming in every searchable keyword he can think of including many that are likely low-value. He loses clarity, and readers, in the process.

Example 2:

Buy our new RickySticky Widgets.

Problem: This is quite usable for a visitor who knows exactly what they’re looking for (and many will), but, with the important search term “Quicky Stickets” omitted, how many visitors searching for “Quicky Stickets” will never reach the page?

Example 3:

Newly redesigned for 5x greater efficiency, our second generation RickySticky Widgets are guaranteed to optimize Quicky Widget performance.  Shop online

Much better: This includes a few high-quality search terms but doesn’t overwhelm hurried shoppers with so much text that it obscures the action (i.e., “shop online”).

The good news is nearly all principles used to optimize a Web site for usability (alt tags, titles, clear navigation, etc.) are also things search engines reward. Which audience your site copy is most heavily weighted for (visitors or search engines) will depend on how well established your site and brand already is. And, if you want to have a bit more freedom in how much you write and a place to be a little freer with keywords, start a blog like this one. If I’d written the above advice on a page of the Hile Design site, it’d probably of kept it to 50 words or less. (Hint: notice how many keywords related to good Web design are included in this post.)

Poetry and fiction may be more personal works, thus requiring seclusion from the distraction of others. But agency copywriting is a different ball game altogether.

Marketing writing is a form of communication that is constantly evolving, and to be successful copywriters need to be actively involved with others. I have learned a few things from my experience in writing copy for Hile:

1. Swallow your pride. As a young writer in the advertising world I had to learn very quickly that not everything my creative little fingers typed out was gold. Writing copy for a website or a script for a video is not your personal memoir, so take a dose of humility and make adjustments, edits, and rewrites where the client wants them.
2. Respect the input of others. An advertising agency is a diverse community; there are designers, programmers, project managers, copywriters, etc. When your writing is under review (and it will be) don’t discount the critique of the web programmer just because he took fewer English courses than you in college.
3. The more perspectives the better. Think of the workplace as a microcosm for the larger, diverse communities of people that will eventually read your writing. So, send your copy to more than just your boss for review. This doesn’t mean you need to adhere to every single suggestion that you get back, but it will give you a better idea of how your work will be read by the public and the client.
4. Designers are your friends. Marketing materials are composed of both images and words, and the best kind happen when words and images are married to form a happy union that we dub “advertising.” As the writer, it is crucial that you work with the designer rather than simply expect him or her to create images that conform to your writing.
5. Don’t always expect a high-five. Writing is a personal endeavor because it is a form of intimate creation. It is also a measuring stick of your intelligence and creativity. But, just because the copy you wrote for that coffee company brochure is riddled with metaphor and alliteration, don’t always anticipate getting a pat on the back. Writing for the media is a job, and while it’s nice for good work to be recognized, don’t take every project as a personal appraisal of your worth as a writer.

In the words of the poet Richard Tillinghast, “humility is naturally rare, particularly among young writers, for whom the value of doing something remarkable is vastly increased when they can say it only took them fifteen minutes.”

Writing for the media is not about sitting down at your computer and producing a masterpiece of copy in “fifteen minutes.” In fact, no type of writing should be about quick and easy creation. Working in an advertising agency is a good way to learn that the best copywriting comes from collaborating with the people around you, whether through requesting editing and revision, a wider range of perspectives, or a simple dose of inspiration.

Maggie Tibus is the Copywriting Intern at Hile Design.

To make a point, I’ve turned my subject matter on its head. So instead of entitling this post “10 Tips Toward Business Success” (I know I wouldn’t read an article with that tired cliché of a title), I’ve written one with a more engaging name (and hopefully more meaty content as well).

So here are my tips in no particular order:

1. Be passionless. Look at your business as just a way to make a living and nothing more. That will assure you take the easiest path to any challenge, and will expedite your company’s demise.
2. Nurture your ego. Make sure you view yourself as the supreme expert in every situation. And while you’re at it, make sure everybody else knows it too. If you look to surround yourself with people more talented than you in their areas of expertise, and give them the freedom to exercise their gifts, you run the risk of losing power even if you end up ultimately being more successful.
3. Don’t define your brand. Every company has a brand. It’s simply a matter of whether you build your brand with intent and purpose or whether the brand is vague and accidental. So avoid defining your company’s core purpose, and its value promise to its customers, and you’ll keep your customers (and staff) guessing who you are and just why they should do business with you.
4. Make sure you’re resistant to change. Hunker down and do things the same way over and over again. And while you’re at it, notice that your industry is changing due to economical factors as well as your customers’ buying habits, but do nothing to respond to the changes. Yup, embrace solid downward spiraling.
5. Put your needs before those of your customers. Better yet, instill an adversarial approach toward your customers: “I know you are going to rake me over the coals if I let you, so I’ll rake you over the coals first.” Can’t you almost smell those Chapter 11 documents?
6. Embrace the illusion that the business world should always be fair. That’s right, when you have a difficult customer to deal with, take it personally. Nurturing those perceived slights and inequities will almost certainly lead to bridge-burning and as we all know, retaining customers is much easier than continually winning new accounts. So, tolerance and compromise should be avoided at all costs.
7. View marketing as an expense with no return. That will ensure that you never allocate enough budget, time, and resources towards promoting your company to see meaningful results. In turn, this will support your belief that marketing doesn’t pay for itself. Hey, you’ve just saved money … that you’ll need when you go out of business.
8. Make sure your management style is dour and humorless. This will ensure that top recruits won’t want to work in your corporate culture, or at least will have the energy sapped from them soon after they come on board. Research shows that employees’ work-a-day experience and peer relationships are bigger drivers than pay, so you’ll want to avoid a relaxed culture with flexible hours. Not getting the most talented people on your team will go far to assure a short lifespan for your business.
9. Positive feedback to your employees is a no-no. They will just take advantage of you. And of course you should never apologize to an employee because you aren’t ever going to be in the wrong. Enough said.
10. Don’t give back. Doing work pro bono or at reduced rates for non-profits is to be viewed as an expense you just can’t afford. All this talk about how today’s customers care about the values of the businesses they patronize is just a bunch of hogwash.

That pretty much sums up how to expertly run your business into the ground. You may decide to really focus on one point, which can be quite effective, but combining several of the points above will be your quickest path to a dysfunctional and doomed company.

As I peruse LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+ as well as other professional social sites I see marketing people describing themselves as Visionaries, Gurus, Luminaries and Pioneers. There are enough people out there labeling themselves as such that I can’t help but think, “C’mon, all these people can’t be Visionaries!” Besides, “Visionary” and “Guru” are such subjective titles—especially when ascribed to oneself. And for whatever reason, most of the people describing themselves with these monikers seem to be involved in the social media arena, which seems ironic.

As far as I know Albert Einstein never described himself as a genius. He left that to others. Albert Schweitzer, one of the greatest humanitarians in history, never considered himself such. In the arts Marlon Brando pretty much singlehandedly redefined acting, delivering a realism that forever changed the industry. But in interviews he described himself just a working actor, and nothing more. The great writer Ernest Hemmingway…. uh, wait a minute. He was a brilliant writer, but a braggart and a lout. My point is that we who are involved in marketing and social media consistently remind our clients that they need to be authentic, and not make subjective claims. As marketing Guru (my assigned term for) Marty Neumeier so eloquently states in his insightful book Zag, “Your personal reputation, like a company’s brand, lies outside your control. It’s not who you say it is­–it’s what THEY say it is.”

So, what attracts us to a company’s brand, or a person for that matter? How about honesty, authenticity and (dare I say) humility? Imagine if I saw you in a café and wanted to get to know you better professionally. Perhaps I knew that you were in charge of marketing for your company and in need of creative services. My best opening line might be something like, “Hi, I’m Dave Hile and I’ve heard a lot of great things about what you’ve been doing with your company XYZ. If you are ever looking for a creative firm to work with, please consider Hile Design. We would love to come in and meet with you. Some of our clients within your industry include…” Now compare that line to, “Hi, I am Dave Hile and I’m a marketing GURU! My pioneering efforts…blah, blah, blah.” OK, my example was a bit over the top, but I am making a point. Shouldn’t we use the same etiquette defining ourselves on professional social sites that we do when meeting someone face to face? I believe corporate and personal humility is a virtue that others are drawn to. So when I meet with prospective new clients I usually mention that I can arrange to have them speak with three or four of the existing clients we serve. I will leave it to our clients to define the value of working with us. (I know—when I talk about humility and hand out advice, I run the risk of not sounding humble!)

To clarify, I am not defining humility as a sappy, self-deprecating, fake modesty. If I weren’t totally convinced that my company and I weren’t providing significant expertise to move our clients forward and increase their sales, I ought to get out of the business. My point is that I can say whatever I want about our expertise, but in the end others will be the ones who will define my company’s talents and effectiveness.

Finally, the value of humility, whether corporate or personal, leads to the ability to continue learning. Have you ever been to a Twitter page, whether for a company or an individual, that has thousands of followers but chooses to follow only a few others? Whether true or not, it conveys that they want to speak and be heard, but they aren’t particularly interested in hearing what others have to say. I’ve been in the ad business for nearly 30 years and I am still (happily) learning every day, and often from people decades younger than me. Beyond listening to and learning from others, humility makes good business sense. In Jim Collins’ landmark book, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t, his main definer of what separates truly great companies from so-so companies or companies that don’t stand the test of time is corporate humility, from top management on down.

I apologize to any of my industry peers, whom I may have offended with this blog post. You may indeed be a Guru. But I definitely am not—unless you say I am.

Advertising, then and now

Things have changed radically in a relatively short amount of time. In the past, traditional advertising relied on limited research with a heaping helping of mass market messaging, based primarily on an agency’s intuition. But today, agencies and marketers have new, more sophisticated analytical tools where we can slice, dice and regress our customers’ likes and dislikes into all manner of demographic groups and sub-groups. So, agency clients are looking for defined, measurable results for the money they’re spending on securing their brand in the marketplace.

Today’s challenge

But even with these new tools there are challenges in getting a successful brand built due to the fractured media landscape (I’m old enough to remember when there were three major TV stations!) with the nearly unlimited message distribution outlets, including hundreds of cable stations, online and viral marketing, email, social media, radio and so on.

This has led to the end of mass marketing for all but the hugest consumer corporations (like those advertising during the Super Bowl). Perhaps more importantly, for the first time in advertising history, the power of persuasion is no longer with the company, but instead with the consumer. Neumeier points out that your brand “isn’t what you say it is. It’s what they (your customers) say it is.” Today consumers have had it with meaningless “adverspeak” (terms like Quality! Value!), and they are demanding to buy from, and do business with, companies on their own terms. In order to flex their newly found power, they are speaking out loud and clear on retail sites like Amazon and Crate and Barrel via customer reviews. In the business and service industries people are sharing their candid assessments of companies and their services on sites like Angie’s List, Yelp, blogs catering to specific markets and more informally on social media sites such as Facebook.

The end of selling as we know it

This consumer involvement has led to the end of selling and to the increasing importance of branding. As mentioned earlier, consumers are inundated with constant messaging. It’s estimated we’re presented with up to 3,000 advertising messages a day, and our brains can only retain about 100. So, the typical consumer is, well, crispy. Add to this the mistrust many of us feel toward formerly reliable institutions and corporations, and we are left with an overall mistrust of advertising in general.

Still, customers want something to hold on to in order to make sense of it all. They want to align themselves with companies and organizations with which they personally identify. Neumeier calls these bands of loyal customers “tribes.” And these tribes are based on more than just products and services alone. For instance, corporate philanthropy and values are becoming increasingly more important. (Read Embedded Philanthropy: The Future of Giving.)

What Neumeier calls a “charismatic brand” is a company or product that is radically different from its competitors. A good example of a brand that defined a whole new industry, and today retains a loyal tribe, is Starbucks. They managed to bring a European coffee shop experience to an American audience. The Starbucks experience includes the communal setting, the smells, the service as well as other core values important to the company. These include making sure that everybody down the sales chain, from the baristas to the coffee bean growers, are treated with respect and earn a fair wage (may be part of why that vente latte costs nearly $4)! My son currently works at Starbucks and besides a decent salary he also receives medical insurance and stock options in the company.

Starbucks also demonstrates that they care about what their customers think. Visit the Starbucks website and you will see My Starbucks Idea where, at the time of this article, I found 24,339 suggestions about how to improve their coffee and espresso drinks and 10,526 ideas about how to improve their atmosphere and locations. It takes guts to let the people speak, and not all companies are willing to have such open channels of communication because besides getting great ideas, you’re also likely to have your dirty laundry exposed for the entire world to see (or read). But such is the new reality of the company/customer relationship.

So, does your company have a charismatic brand? If not, perhaps it’s time for some company self-analysis. Are you selling or branding? Do you know why your company matters? Do your customers believe that you are indispensable? Are they a loyal tribe?

Maybe it’s time to take a fresh look at your brand and find out the vision, mission, core values and services that make your company unique.

Oh, and if you do, we will be right there with you, since our own firm has recently gone through its own self-analysis (which we call Key Discovery). Yup, we are in the process of making some major changes in our own brand. We think those changes will position us to be a more customer-focused, creative firm with a more refined branding process for our clients. And we are looking to express our new brand through a more informative website. Heck, our name might even change.

My only problem now is patience. As in, I can’t wait to get there. But branding is serious business and it takes time to implement. So, stay in touch and you’ll see our new brand presented to the world in several months.

• Branding is all about differentiation–standing out in the customer’s mind by offering something different than your competition. So, don’t get caught up in the “me too” mentality of listing the same services, and copying the look and feel of a competitor’s website. Actually, aim at the opposite. Different is good.

• Meet your customers where they live. Your customers are savvy and impatient, so do everything in your power to communicate with them and meet their needs on their own terms—not yours. Imagine they are sitting across the table from you. That means cutting out industry jargon and empty advertising “happy talk” from your website’s copy. Are they using social media? Then integrate it into your site. Are they accessing your website from a smart phone? Then make sure your site works flawlessly on hand-held devices.

• Capturing your culture is as important as marketing your goods and services. Your website is no longer just about pricing and offerings, because with so much competition out there, your customers can always find whatever they are looking for cheaper and faster. Today, people are looking for brands to identify with—so your corporate integrity and core values should ring out loud and clear. Blogs, which are generally more informal than the copy on the marketing section of your site, can go a long way to help round out your brand by providing your readers with a broader, more inclusive insight into who you are and what you stand for.

So as you busy yourself with figuring out your site map, search terms, navigation, categories, and all the other myriad considerations that go into building or updating your website, don’t overlook the forest for the trees. Make sure the true “you” (your brand) resonates loud and clear. Whether we acknowledge it or not, the decisions about whom we work and align ourselves with are determined by both our left and right brains—analytical and emotional.

The problem is that when marketing gurus become dogmatic, they are setting themselves up to be proven wrong, and based on our clients’ experience, as well as that of my own company, the presenter’s opinion is untrue.

Over the past few years I’ve questioned if my openness to using traditional print for marketing today is generational. Is it because I started in advertising nearly 30 years ago, before the Internet was used by anyone except a few universities and government agencies?

To clarify, I am not a tech-curmudgeon. I fully embrace all the digital and analytical tools available to connect people with brands. Currently my company has over 600 followers on Facebook, and we are active in over a dozen social media sites, some of which you’d recognize and others that are unique to the advertising industry.

My point is this: as advertising professionals, let’s keep our minds and options open to as broad a toolbox as possible because people access information in different ways. Here are a few facts that help present the case that direct mail is still alive (from a 2009 survey by the US Postal Service):

• Over 14 billion dollars were invested in direct mail in 2009, followed by an increase in 2010.

• 79% of direct mail recipients either read or scan their mail, which is higher than for electronic mail.

• Only 19% of retail catalogs are discarded without being read.

• 2.3: the number of weekly advertising mail pieces that affluent households (those earning $150,000-plus) intend to respond to.

Other factoids are also compelling; for instance, the belief that going interactive is the greener solution. In order for our digital world to exist, we consume huge amounts of electricity driven by power plants and massive data centers running 24/7, requiring the burning of enormous amounts of fossil fuels. And electronic consumption is increasing by roughly 24% per year. In contrast, paper producers are among the greenest industry in the world. Trees are renewable. Paper and forest industries plant about 1.5 million seedlings a day (much more than they harvest) and nearly all municipalities in the US have effective recycling programs.

Another myth is that young people aged 18 to 34 (an important demographic for advertisers) want all their information and transactions to occur online. Not so, says a recent Epsilon report. They found that 43% of the young people surveyed preferred receiving insurance information in the mail compared to 21% desiring digital delivery.

Still need convincing?

• A United States Postal Service press release points out that a market study by comScore shows that among visitors to retail websites, twice as many catalog recipients made a purchase as those who did not receive a print catalog—more than doubling the online conversion rate. A revenue increase of 163% resulted from a comparison of purchases and money spent by catalog recipients versus those who did not receive a catalog in the comScore study, and catalog recipients ordered 28% more items.

• Magazine ads? Who needs them? Well, that depends. One of our clients is in a specialized market with only several hundred prospective customers in the entire country. But all of the CEOs and managers of the companies they need to reach subscribe to a single trade publication. So the print ads we create appear prominently and regularly in the magazine—often with multiple ads in a single publication. This has been one of their major and most successful marketing media and we are happy to report that our client has not only weathered the recession during a time of rapid change within their industry, but has grown their market in the US as well as developed overseas sales (for which we have also created print ads).

• My own company walks the walk and talks the talk we advocate to our clients. Even though we are on the first page of Google for the keyword terms we have targeted, we continue a robust direct mail campaign. And our proof of success lies in the fact that our most predominant keywords remain our company’s name (with plenty of variations—hile, hile design, hile design ann arbor, dave hile, and even hill design), which indicates that people are responding to our direct mail appeal to visit our website. I know because I track the campaigns through Google Analytics and measure the increased traffic after each of our mailings.

Of course, websites, social media, digital marketing and search engine optimization are essential to growing your business and defining your brand, but let’s keep all our options open—which includes print promotions. Print creates an emotional connection with customers that digital doesn’t. Consumers hold it, view it and engage with it in a manner different from their online experiences.

Finally, since I receive over 100 emails a day, going to our mailbox to collect the mail has become a treat. As a matter of fact, I daily have to attempt to outsmart Lindsey, our Production Designer, since she also enjoys collecting the mail. And with the overall decrease in direct mail over the last several years, the print mail I receive actually gets my attention. Perhaps snail-mail is the NEW, “old” advertising medium!

• They liked that we listened before we spoke. By doing so before presenting our capabilities via PowerPoint, we learned that one of their top criteria was finding an agency with people they liked and felt they could work with, since they had never hired an outside agency before. Good to know! Later, after receiving their RFP (Request for Proposal) we put a lot of emphasis on our personalized service and long-term client relationships.
• They liked our team approach. We presented our company as a team. We allowed each of the four staffers present to discuss their areas of expertise and what they would bring to address the client’s needs. It was clear after reading the client’s website that they placed a great deal of emphasis on humility among their leadership as well as an open, participatory corporate culture.
• They liked that our design portfolio showed a broad range of styles, tailored to different industries. Having an agency look and feel is neither right nor wrong. There are many extremely talented creative firms who have honed their design approach to perfection. (Check out Charles S. Anderson Design at http://www.csadesign.com. Personally, I’m a HUGE fan of their retro-inspired design work!) But that approach requires customers to conform to the agency’s aesthetic. We intentionally highlighted divergent styles across several different industries to demonstrate that we target each brand to the appropriate industry and end user.

So, hearing from our new client was a reminder that our pitches shouldn’t be solely about our company capabilities, but also about serving our customer. And the payoff for such basic customer-centric etiquette? By focusing on our customer, we took care of our own business (in this case in a big way, as our new client is a national leader in their field).

1. Focus on quality first. Try your best to ensure that customers will love what you deliver, whether that’s a product or a service. Otherwise, your marketing efforts will be in vain.
2. Keep wooing your current customers. They may have needs you haven’t yet discovered, so stay in touch and find out if there is more you can offer them. Landing a new customer costs 10 times as much as servicing an existing one.
3. Conversely, some customers may not be worth pursuing. Why give your time and emotion to customers who make unreasonable demands, are never satisfied with your pricing and make up only a small part of your business? Center your efforts on those who are already fans … and help them grow to another level.
4. Know your competitors better than they know you, and then distinguish yourself with advantages they don’t offer.
5. Give to get. Offering as much as you can for free—whether it’s industry tips, time and cost-saving tricks, consulting or pertinent white papers—will help build a sense of expertise and trust with prospective customers. They will see you as the go-to expert when it comes time to purchase your goods or services.
6. Your website is your most important marketing asset, but your customers have to find you online. In addition to using search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click advertising, drive customers to your site with a well-orchestrated, integrated campaign. The campaign could include email; online or direct mail; radio and TV; outdoor advertising; and blogging and other social media outlets such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
7. As much as possible, don’t let your short-term response to the economic downturn deter you from your long-term marketing and growth goals. Hunkering down and slashing marketing costs are not effective strategies for riding out an uncertain economy. Winning new customers is the only hope for success, so keep on promoting your business. This doesn’t necessarily mean spending more money. Instead, the ultimate performance of a marketing campaign or program flows from correct targeting. If you target with the right message, you’ll realize increased success.
8. Don’t think in terms of selling your services. Instead, think of solving your customers’ problems—today’s customers don’t want to be sold to. If you can’t fix or alleviate a customer’s nagging problem or situation, why would they want your products or services?
9. Be open to change. Advertising that may have worked last year, or even last quarter, may not work in today’s rapidly changing economic climate.
10. You can create your own PR. Writing frequent local press releases is free advertising. There are also sites such as www.pr.com and www.prweb.com, which for a nominal fee will assure your press release gets dispersed to all major search engines.
11. Remember, consistency is key. It’s more effective to reach customers with frequent, targeted marketing initiatives than to blow your budget on one massive “Wow” effort.
12. There is no magic trick that will alter the current economic climate. One thing is certain: Doing nothing will produce nothing, and doing little will produce little!

Here are a few important considerations to keep in mind:

1. Since most of your traffic will arrive via your homepage, it should clearly and concisely communicate exactly who you are and what you do, all within a few seconds.
2. But some of your visitors will come to your site via sub pages, so be sure you have full contact information on every page.
3. Your visitors are impatient. You can’t say everything about your company and services. But you need to define your key points with the goal of prompting a personal contact with your company. Include multiple calls-to-action within your site copy.
4. Have defined site goals and determine in advance how you are going to measure success (drive sales, raise awareness, create buzz, engage and educate).
5. Cut out the jargon and advertising “happy talk.” Communicate as straightforwardly as possible. Imagine your potential customer is sitting across the table from you.
6. Search engine optimization (SEO) is not an end in itself. It’s no good to be ranked #1 on Google if your site isn’t compelling. You’ll have lots of short visits with no conversions. Content is king!
7. Have your site built with a Content Management System (CMS). This allows non-technical people to keep your site updated with current content without having to rely on an outside web company. And keeping your site updated will help with your Google ranking, since Google loves new content!
8. People love to look. Consider communicating a complex concept through an interesting graphic, video or animation.
9. Lay aside your personal preferences for the good of your site (you may love the color pink, but it’s not right for your construction company’s site).
10. Appoint a few people from within your company to manage the project, and give them the authority to make decisions. Committees kill creativity.
11. Your website has to be true to who you are (your brand). Customers expect that your company will be truthfully reflected through all your marketing touch points, and especially with personal face-to-face contact.
12. Nowadays it’s important to assure your site reads well on mobile devices like the iPhone and Blackberry.