After the site went live, she indicated that she did not like the flow of the PayPal system and requested that I change it. I tactfully informed her that I could not change PayPal’s processes even if I wanted to. I am not convinced she believed me. She never did anything with her website, nothing ever changed. After several months she pulled all the products off her site and now she’s canceled her site and her domain name. I feel like I let her down because her site wasn’t as successful as she wanted it to be.

One thought led to another and I thought about many of my clients and the misconception that a lot of small business owners seem to share, “I have a website, where are my customers?”

A website, especially one that’s as easy to use and maintain as a ProFusion Ultra IS website, is a fantastic marketing tool and when used correctly, can bring in new customers to your business, helping it grow and thrive. Unlike a phone book or print ad you can add all the color you want at no additional cost. Add additional pages, video, forms, photos – things to make the website easier for your visitors to interact with your business easily, quickly and often – with no waiting for publication dates.

It doesn’t end there however, to be an effective marketing tool a website must be kept sharp, up to date and fresh. It’s like a garden, it’s never done. Ignore it at your own peril and like this customer did weeds will grow and choke the life out of it. It will languish with the millions of other websites, never found because no time was taken to keep it fresh and updated – no reason for search engines or humans to visit or ever come back. This is the main reason why Search Engine Optimization is so important for your website – it keeps your site from becoming just another pretty face among the millions of other pretty faces in Cyberspace. Use your website like the tool it was designed to be, keep your site sharp and up to date so you can reap the rewards it can offer you for years to come.

Even though I can rationalize why my client canceled her domain and took down her site, I still hate losing her as a customer.

Most Blogs can be described in terms of things that used to be common but have mostly been replaced: Journals and/or Diaries. Journals and Diaries were used by people to record their thoughts and ideas. Personal Journals were traditionally used to record daily experiences and observations. Professional Journals, were geared toward a particular subject matter – i.e medical journal, law journal, and local journals or newspapers geared toward a specific region or location, etc.

Blogs are today’s Journals. They allow a site owner to post a comment (idea or thought) and allow others to view these posts and make comments of their own thereby expanding the communication thread. Most of the successful Blogs have a relatively narrowly defined focus reflecting the interests or knowledge levels of their authors. But the very nature of Blogs allows for expertise and incoherent ramblings to be intertwined at the whims of the Blog owner.

The favor or Blogs over websites was primarily the design of a few popular Blogs applications that allowed non-technical users the ability to post their thoughts using nothing but a tool similar to a stripped down word processor. While most websites required a much higher technical knowledge of things like HTML, Dream Weaver, Cascading Style Sheets, File Transport Protocol (FTP) and design because the typical website had no pre-defined form or constraints. The lack of form and constraints gave a web designer a blank canvas with which to create anything they could envision. The same lack of form and constraint made it very difficult for a typical site owner to manage and maintain their own website.

Over the years, companies like ours have worked hard to create applications that required no technical knowledge other than a basic understanding of typical word processor functions in order to manage and maintain their website: create new pages, add or change content, add images, audio and video files and even change the look of their websites by arranging basic building blocks.

Today, when you search blog vs website for which is best for a particular company or individual you will find lots of articles touting the ease of use of Blogs vs traditional websites. Most Blog proponents tout ease-of-use as the primary reason for using a Blog today. And though this can be true, it is not a universal truth. Products like our ProFusion brands provide the best of both worlds: A product a business owner can use simply by changing colors and uploading images or a designer can start with the blank canvas and create most any design and upon integration of that design to our ProFusion Ultra Internet Solutions, the site owner can easily manage and maintain the site with no technical knowledge.

What we have found is that a company that is serious about promoting its business needs both a website and a Blog. A Blog that is not updated is no better than a static (never changing) website. But a website that is dynamic (constantly changing) and a Blogger capable of writing interesting and valuable Blog content on a consistent basic can rise to the top of the search engines and provide real value to customers and prospects looking to buy or educate themselves about how to buy.

As a consumer of your company’s products or services, I do not want to wade through a seemingly un-organized series of ramblings to find out specific information about your products or services. I do want to quickly be able to determine if you can solve my immediate problems with your solutions. Once I can answer that question, then I want to know a bit more about your company, and how your clients feel about you. Depending on the product or services you are providing I may then want to read more about why I should do business with you. What value do you provide? What makes you better or more knowledgeable than your competitors?

An exceptionally well designed Blog may be able to provide a business with all of that information in a very short manner, but more often than not, a traditional website’s structure will provide all of the quick confirming information and the Blog will be like the icing on the cake. If you sell a technical product or provide services that, as a consumer, I may need but do not buy on a regular basis then I may need more information and hand holding before I am comfortable with knowing how to buy what you are selling. And to get a Blog application that was originally designed to present journal information easily, to now function as both a Blog and a traditional website, may not be so easy to manage and maintain when trying to be all things to today’s more sophisticated Internet users and what they have come to expect.

A combination of a easy to use and maintain website along with an easy to use and manage web log may in fact be the very best of both worlds when it comes to helping a consumer understand what you sell and why are the best choice and value.

So when it comes to a new website or a Blog, maybe the answer is not one or the other, but what is best for your customers? What will help you, as a business owner, best get your message across to your customers and prospects. What web strategy will help serve your customers best?

Just as you are unlikely to take the advice of a friend or neighbor when you have a serious tooth ache or you need medical attention, if you are serious about solving your web related business problems, you may want to discuss these issues with the professionals whose livelihood depends on providing the right solutions to their clients. Discuss your strategy with a professional web applications development company who can advise you on the merits of both a Blog and a dynamically generated web content using today’s web application tools.

Pictures of employees can help visitors connect with the business more quickly; it makes the website seem a bit more personal and warm. An employee’s photo with a friendly smile can tell a visitor a lot about a person that the bio can’t and can help build rapport.

Photos of employees and owners help tell the world the company message and promote the company brand, whether fun-loving and professional such as
http://www.netsolutionsna.com/content/company/team.asp
or strictly professional: http://www.itssimplyplaced.com/content/about_/the_team.asp

A website works as part of your company’s brand which is a permanent voice or message that your company communicates to the public. A brand rarely changes – it should always be consistent, clear and personable. Using a Website as a portion of your company’s brand and people will come to know, trust and visit your site because of who your company is.
Branding isn’t just promotional because no matter what the trend is at the time your brand should always be the same, just as your attitude towards your potential customers will always be the same.

A website has one hurdle to overcome when a visitor enters – it has to show the brand and the personality of the business in the virtual world. This can be done by building a Website that is clean, clear, concise and most importantly personable.
Photos of employees on the Website can also help the visitor connect with employees they may talk to later – they will feel that they know the employee and feel they have something in common. People will deal with a company or individual that they like and can identify with.

Customers will come back because they like the brand; they like what is being put out to the world and in most cases photos on the Website of people who work for the company help create a relationship with these people.
There are a few instances when photos of employees are not placed on the Website. Companies who deal with sensitive issues and policies may not want to show the employee photos in order to protect them from the public that may disagree with the company’s stand.

In this case the brand will stay consistent and clear by telling the world the message in a confidential manner. This will display a strictly professional image and create a brand identity of a different manner.

No matter what type of brand you attempt to display to the world, personable and warm, or confidential and strict it is important to always remain consistent and concise in your message. Whether or not employee photos are placed on the Website or left off helps to deliver that message.

Deciding what makes for good creative is subjective. Results are all that really matter. But how many ads do you see that make you cringe? For me, this one did. It’s ugly. But what’s important is that people click on it. Following the rules is not top priority, like in David Ogilvy’s days. Click. Or not. And I wouldn’t.

Ogilvy, the author of Confessions of an Advertising Man and Ogilvy on Advertising, would argue that every ad needs a compelling headline; “Does Your Website Stink?” is attention-getting, for sure. He would also require an appropriate graphic. Using the gas mask assumes the reader wouldn’t get it without this literal reference. I’m thinking an outhouse or litter box may have been considered as well. In Mr. O.’s day, a good ad needed a call to action, like the logo and link to the company’s site that I removed. I don’t want to point fingers. Not today, anyway.

To me, the ad says a lot about this web design firm–it makes them look crass by appealing to crass sensibilities–which may have been the goal. If so, they achieved it, and I hope they have thousands of hits today.

At least they didn’t ask, “Does your website suck?” with a picture of a straw.

I tried to respond on her blog, but it wasn’t working, so I sent an email response that said…

I am the owner of the company whose ad you are critiquing. Feel free to put our logo back on the ad as we are not embarrassed or regretful for creating that advertisement. Please feel free to post it as you found it which also had a link back to our website (www.netsolutionsna.com). Whether the ad annoys you, offends you, or hurts your eyes, it made you look, you read it, and you even took the time to Blog about it. I can only hope now that our ad is recognizable enough that people will want to go to our Blog to see if we have a response to what you have written. If that happens, then our ultimate goal of getting a potential customer to our website will have been achieved.

The one aspect of your post that I found insightful was “To me, the ad says a lot about this web design firm–it makes them look crass by appealing to crass sensibilities–which may have been the goal.” Certainly, this is not the goal. We know that in advertising you have only a small window of opportunity to grab someone’s attention. We know that posting our logo does not grab anyone’s attention. But we knew that those 4 little words, for better or for worse, would grab someone’s attention. The clients that we get from these click-throughs are the “low hanging fruit”. They are the people that are already in the market, are feeling some pain because their existing website “doesn’t work” and they are looking to make a change immediately. For someone who is not looking to create a new website or web application in the next few weeks, this ad probably means very little to them. For those people, we need to find another way to get their attention. That is why we offer quarterly website classes that teach you how to build an effective website, how to optimize it, and how to edit and maintain it yourself. By educating our potential customers in our classes, we are putting in motion the law of reciprocity. If we educate them (not sell to them) they are likely to use us in the future if/when they are in the market for what we sell.

Since you are in the marketing/advertising world Teresa, I am sure you can appreciate the need for multiple ads that have different headlines and different uses. The ad that you critiqued is attention grabbing and is meant more as a joke than as a crude or crass comment. We try not to take ourselves too seriously around here and that is the spirit in which that ad was created.

What do you think? Is our ad offensive or crass?

Some of the notable projects are:

www.studioninefitness.com
www.nikondealerco-op.com
www.blackrockcharters.com
www.skitosea.com
www.shamrockhose.com
www.nmea.org
www.wynkoopaccounting.com
www.bellinghambizeview.com
www.extolohio.com
www.adkpropertymanagement.com
www.gamewardens.com
www.chriselliottfund.org
www.osirisendeavors.com
www.audioinnovationsnw.com
www.bbqchick.com
www.localbuildindex.com
www.cascadesfly.com
www.evolution-audio.com
www.prostockathletic.com
www.widenet-consulting.com
www.phoenixapplianceservice.com
www.mpelectric.net

We learned something from each one of these projects and have made changes to our base application (the ProFusion Ultra Internet Solution) because of the requests of these clients. All of these clients have elected to take their website maintenance into their own hands. Because they are all on our application, the website owner has the ability to add, edit, delete content, pages, images, forms, and more right from our easy to use website content management system (CMS).

The term CMS can be a little misleading. The PF Ultra IS is more than a CMS. CMS infers that only the content can be changed. With the UIS, all aspects of the website can be changed. The color scheme, the header images, the layout, the images… you name it, you can change it using the UIS. And the best part is that if you don’t want to do it yourself, we can do it for you. Or if you don’t like the way something works, we can customize the UIS to fit whatever your need is. That is way more than 1000 small businesses have chosen NSNA to be their web solution partner.

If you need to take control of your website, contact us today.