Answers to questions you might have about your website:
Yup, there are a lot of words here, but you can get through it all in 5 or 10 minutes. It's all written with
you in mind to get you up to speed with what's going on in the Web world today.
Do you have a long-term Web strategy?
Do you even have a website?
Granted, not every organization would benefit from a website, but you'd be hard pressed to name one. When
was the last time someone called and asked you to send them your brochure, or even give them directions? These days inquirers just want your Web address. That's because it's instant, no waiting—for them or you. And you can change content on-the-fly, adding and editing
whenever you need, giving your visitors the very latest you have to offer.
Planning a website is a big deal, even if the build-a-web-site-in-5-minutes tell you otherwise (beware). To do it right,
and not do more harm than good—make sure you work with someone who's been through it—a lot. It's serious stuff when your brand is at stake.
How does your site support your brand strategy?
Your website is probably one of the first places your target audience comes in contact with your brand.
Remember, your brand is not just your logo, it's the sum of all the impressions a visitor might form while on your site:
look and feel, tone and personality, culture, positioning, language, quality, and support.
So, comb through your site and ask yourself if there is anything short-changing that brand experience.
Does you site lend itself to "pull" marketing
Pull marketing is a response to the older traditional forms of promotion ("push"), such as print ads, commercials, cold calls, and
direct mail. Pull methods take advantage of recently available technology and the move towards more trusted social vehicles:
Facebook, Twitter, blogs, e-news, Webinars, e-books, public speaking, and magazine articles. You are informing your customer, gaining their trust, not just selling them.
Your website needs to be structured to support your pull marketing as you move in that direction.
What are the goals of your site?
Is it just "brochureware"—simply communicating information? Or something more?
What do you want visitors to do once they reach your site? Are they doing it? How are you measuring that?
Do you think there is any missing functionally that might get you better results?
Is the design of your site fresh and contemporary?
Has your site been redesigned in the last couple of years?
The Web is young, just over 23 years old. Not only has the technology has changed, but how we use the Web. These experiences are often reflected in the design trends—
sites are wider, cleaner, bigger, scroll deeper, respond quicker. Web visitors aren't dumb, they can tell when a site
is hip and new, or if it's relic of the early 2000’s
For example, is your site wider than 800 pixels?
That's not the only example, but one of the most telling. There was time when sites were designed for our smaller
monitors and so we made sites only 800 pixels wide, often with glitzy tiled backgrounds and navigational metaphors. These old sites were usually shoved up
against the left side of the browser. But now screens are bigger, so sites are now wider, the fonts are bigger, and everything feels a lot more roomy.
Does it still just use the old standard typefaces, like Times and Arial?
Just few years ago, Web designers were limited to only a few typefaces (Times, Arial, Georgia, Verdana were the most common).
But now thousands of fonts are available, making sites fresher, more unique, and better branded—a big boon to brand identity.
Other warning signs:
Granted, when Flash first came out it was awesome. We couldn't get enough of it, but that was before we all realized
that sites needed to be agile and dynamic. Flash is neither. Besides, Flash sites pretty much kill any attempts at SEO because Flash sites
can't be indexed by search engine robots. Bottom line: dump Flash.
Finally, does your site have any of these: white type on a dark background? Animated gifs, or annoying animation?
Sound files that play when people land on the site? If any of these, probably time for a redesign.
Print collateral still has its place and always will, but the Web adds several new dimensions to the traditional print piece. It's dynamic—easy to update in only seconds. It can also be interactive, responding and reacting to your visitor's input. It can show video, play audio, and serve up content based on visitor actions. Websites can be searched, hold conversations, and organize communities.
The Web hasn't always done this; in the early days websites usually just regurgitated the content from our print materials. But the Web has fostered new technologies at a breakneck pace, giving us new ways to tell our stories and connect with our audiences.
We're keeping an eye on all this technology for you.
At Highgate, we've been working on implementing some of these tools in ways that you can manage on your own using simple and easy-to-use interfaces that don't require any technical chops other than moving a mouse. Ask us about Highsite and it's many "plug-ins."
Can your visitors send you information using a smart form?
The worst kind of contact page will just list email addresses. Besides making you a target for spam, you lose
out on maybe the only opportunity to control what your visitors tell you by not using a form. Our smart forms allow you to create your own
without programming. They check for entry errors, send notifications, store and export collected data.
Have you considered individual customer portals?
The Web allows you to create unique places on your site where you can interact with clients and customers individually.
Each can have their own login so they only have access to their special pages—places where you can post files,
conduct private conversations, and display project details. It will make them feel like VIPs, giving your brand a boost.
If you Google your keywords, what is the resulting page rank?
‘If you build it, they will not [necessarily] come.’ A brick and morter store sometimes has a better chance
of being discovered than some websites. Making websites found and ranked high on the search results page (how often do you
go past the first page on Google?) is big business. It's part science, part art, part luck, and lots and lots of due diligence.
How is your site doing?
Do you have an optimized introductory paragraph on your home page?
Page rankings start with well-crafted text on your home page. Google, and other search engines, put a lot of stock in
the first 100 words. Some sites don't even have this, and the chances of being found are low. Sites built with
Flash are SEO suicide because there are no words to index.
Have you had your site audited for SEO?
Our SEO partners will do a 10-point audit for $400. It's a super deal.
Are you using Google Analytics or a Webmaster account?
Google has some great tools to monitor traffic to your site. You can find out where visitors have come from, what pages they
visited, and how long they stayed. It's free, and it's easy, you just have to do it.
Have you been to a website where it wasn't immediately clear what they were selling, or offering, or even what they did? This probably falls under "content" but it should be painfully clear, within seconds, what you do and what you want the visitor to do. If they are indeed the person you want on your site, what can you do to keep them there and get them to act. You have about 4 seconds before they click on the next Google result.
Do your pages, links, and menus allow easy navigation?
The Web has been around long enough so that the seasoned Web surfer can get around the average site without too much trouble.
However, they do expect to find common conventions, pages, links, and functions—things all sites should have. And are
your pages arranged in a hierarchical commonsense way for intuitive drill-downs. Sites built with
Flash are the most frustrating.
Are your pages dense with content?
The trend today is "less." Spreading content over more pages, with bigger fonts, more white space, and with intuitive eye-movement that encourages your visitors to read what you've worked so hard to write.
Do you have a search function on every page?
People expect to be able to search a site for content. The dynamic display of results as they type is a real popular development.
They took the time to find your site, now help them find what they are looking for.
Are your galleries and slideshows intuitive to use?
Over the past few years, galleries and slideshows have gotten cooler and cooler. Technology has given Web designers some great
new user-interfaces for viewing images. Are you taking advantage of them? They are free, but require some setup.
When was the last time you added or edited content on your site?
Old and out-of-date content is one of the first signs of neglect, and your visitors can spot it right away, believe us.
Two comments: 1) you want people to come back, but they won't if they know nothing will change. So, give them something
to come back for! 2) search engines favor sites that are constantly updated (look at how fast today's news story ends up
in the search results).
And remember, being able to add/edit/delete content on-the-fly gives the Web a huge advantage over print—because once that
brochure comes off the press, it's permanent, at least until the next printing. So, see it as a privilege to be able to update your site so easily.
Can you add pages and content easily without programming knowledge?
Is your site using a CMS, or content management system? These can easily and intuitively allow you to add new pages,
remove old ones, edit content, upload and place pictures, and manage the navigation. Some make managing galleries,
slideshows, and forms easy as well (Highgate's own Highsite
CMS is a good example). And again, sites built with Flash are difficult to update.
Are any of your links dead or photos missing?
This really hurts the impression you make and can affect your SEO. Our SEO audit will spot these for you.
Can your site still be navigated on a mobile device?
We don't have to tell you how big mobile devices have become. And increasingly, people are using them as their primary
access to the Web—as high as 50% of all Web traffic comes from a mobile device. People are searching, buying, learning, dialoging, commenting, and signing up on their phones.
If you have something you want people to do on your website, and they can't do it on their mobile device, you might be
missing an opportunity. What does your competitor's site look like on your iPhone?
Your site can be "responsive."
There are two ways have a mobile-friendly site. The first is talked about below, but does involve an additional process that
gives older sites a mobile presence without a complete redesign. However, if your site is a new one, or is ripe for a
redesign, you'll probably want a responsive site, or one that automatically reformats itself based on the size of the
screen or device—from a desktop, to a tablet, to a smart phone. If it's built that way from the start, it can be
very cost-effective.
Have you thought about a special mobile site with specific content?
Entire sites can be designed and built to be responsive and reflow content to fit any device. But maybe you
don't need your entire site to be read on a smart phone, just content that would be especially helpful to the mobile user, like
directions, phone numbers, or contact information. Highgatewebworks offers a special mobile feature that turns your website into
an application, but one that you can still edit and control easily.
Hopefully you've stopped laughing and realize that social media services, like Twitter and Facebook, are now
serious outlets for news, information, and conversation. Quoting a recent article in Fast Company Magazine, “Your brand is now
what people are saying about you. So, you have to control the conversation.”
But why aren't you doing it? Because it's another piece of technology to get your head around, and another chunk of time on your plate. Yes, you know you need to do it, but it's just making it happen. Fortunately, the use of social media has gotten a lot more sophisticated, with proven tools and strategies—so the barrier is lowering.
Are you blogging? and if so, when was the last time you posted?
Have you ever landed on a blog only to see that the last update was three years ago? That's too bad because it sends
the wrong message and hurts credibility across the site. Unfortunately, like social media, it takes time. You need a plan, a content strategy, and then you need to stick with it.
Or take down the blog.
Literally thousands of new blogs are started everyday—by well-intentioned people. But many of those blogs go neglected and end up with just a couple of old posts. All of these would-be writers find out just how hard it is to not only come up
with something to write, but to do it on a regular basis.
If you fall in to this category, there's no reason to beat yourself up—you're not alone. It's evn hard for us, and
we're in the business! So, how to fix it? Here are a few quick suggestions:
Limit yourself: keep it short. Well-known Internet marketing guru, Seth Godin, posts daily, but sometimes it's only
a sentence or two (albeit, really good sentences).
Don't edit it to death, or keep changing your point. It's better to raise a little dust!
Stick to what your know, your area of expertise, something that you can write about almost off the tip of
your head.
Create a list of potential topics on your smart phone's note app, and update it as you think of topics.
Blogs are more about your opinions, or your personal take on something. They're not a place for raw information—
that's usually for websites.
Turn it into a habit, maybe one hour a day before the office opens, or in the evening before bed (yes, TV is
a creativity killer).
Post a short, provocative link to your latest post on Twitter and Facebook
Great question. Even though it's free, you should know how it works and what you'll receive from us. We'd love to start with a short phone interview (optional) so we can learn a little bit about your company or organization. Then we'll follow it up with a written summary and some suggestions and recommendations. Here's what's included: