ForumsInternet/eCommerce

I strongly agree with much of what you have said.

The first thing I say in a sales meeting is the web site is not a magical thing. Building a website is a part of your business like everythning else and you want to manage it just like any other part of your business. As a web design guy I am not some kind of demi-god you should let do whatever I want because I know it all. You built that business and the things that make it successful should be what I follow.

And you are totally right on advertising. The website for most small businesses, mine included, is not the primary advertising tool. If you are advertising in the paper, with Val Pak, on cash register tapes, on your vehicles, or whereever I think you want to look at the website as backing up these other tools. Any web guy who does the age old pitch telling you he or she has the solution that will change your businses is just tossing you a pitch.

I can compare google numbers to actual server numbers they are pretty right on. I use Google Analytics which is free and separate from their sponsorerd search. It tells me traffic from everything, including Yahoo, MSN and other search engines. It really is a wonderful tool and it is free. It has some 80 different reports so you can see everything from a map of where people are coming from to the words they googled to get to the site.

SEO is really, in the whole, a massive scam on people not keeping control of their web presence. I cannot see any reason when the site is designed that the web person would not inlude this as part of building the site, and the good people who do this are drowned out by all the scammers telling you what they can do.

I agree with you about "blind seaches" although someone who is travelling may do this so in tourist towns it is important.

You ask how SEO works when someone knows what they want...My main guest checks competitor is a huge manufacturer called National Checking. Many restaurant folks order National Guest Checks. I use their name throughout my site to compare our products to theirs.

Now what I have found is tons of people do not enter a web address in the address bar, they will google what they are looking for...So if you Google, "National Guest Checks" guess who comes up under their name? And what is best about that is they sell to people like me and you cannot buy from their site. Needless to say we pull in a fair amount of traffic from people looking for National Checking and we beat all their sellers because they don't keep up on their sites.

I agree on the branding, I guess what I would say is make your Brand huge, as big as possible, and then make the other messages as strong as possible. This is one thing I got myself caught in, doing websites and selling guest checks and related stuff. We have a split brand, now we are stuck with being known for two very different brands....Good and bad to it because we do have lots of restaurants and seem to attract them from all over.

And will reitereate Iwrite and say the "human" thing is huge. I have built my website design company on cold calling and referrals. Very few of our sites come from the website referrals.

Great stuff Iwrite!

Does ranking matter? Yes and No....Many of the SEO people tell you what search words to use and then are excited when (if) they get you to the top. The question they often fail to ask is, "What search terms do the people using the site enter when they search?"

First this...

When you do a great job telling people what you do and what you are about you can go back to your statistics reports and find out all the obscure terms people are using and build in more content to those search terms. What you end up with is glidepath that follows the users of the site. I find this is far more effective than the experts telling you what people use to find sites. I would never have thought of the address, street and city for that pizza place, but as I add content I keep in mind what people are doing on the site.

Now keeping in mind a better way to do it, is it all that important? Sometimes. I have a concrete contractor and let's face it he does not get much business from the web, and these days he isn't. We still do the best for him, but he uses the site to show people his work. In his case ranking is not too important.

For my guest checks it is super important. Our rankings is worth about $1000 a month in brand new clients...Having said that keeping the old ones is even more important and that is good old fashioned taking care of people.

Of course with my site with all we sell we are really talking about many rankings and many possible search terms.

Interesting discussion and what this forum is about, sharing views and experiences!

I will say that a website needs to be designed for both people and search engines. You can't have one without the other.

Too often, the web designers concentrate their efforts on the design, perfect coding, and not enough on SEO structure. Once you've got a good base (design and SEO structure) you can start from there to work on your company marketing messages, articles, product descriptions, etc. Then the other very important parts off site are branding and marketing.

Hi Patty,

Thanks for the list, it's very helpful....

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Good questions to ask. So often, I have clients that don't know the questions to ask because they do not understand the importance of a website. Website owners fail to realize that a website is often the first (and only) representation a "potential customer" has of a business. They tend to have the website designed for their convenience instead of the convenience of the customer or website visitor.

just because a website is cheap doesn't mean that it uses templates, we are cheap but we don't use templates, although i agree that their are people out their saying they are website designers who use templates

I agree to an extent -- web designers DO NOT know it all, just like all professions, we can always continue learning. However, a web designer is hired for their expertise and experience. They dont know it all but they should be better informed than their customers so that they can provide guidance, quality service and a quality product.

Web design is subjective, and the opinion is in the eye of the beholder. No two websites are the same, and both design and functionality should be an ongoing process. The bottom line to me is, does the website work for the customer as well as the owner and does it have the voice of the company and demonstrate the professionalism desired. Have the goals been met? If not, what do we need to change.

Being the dominate company in the market I tend to be the target for the new guys coming on. They make their pitch by starting out telling my clients how dumb I am. Oddly enough they come with knowledge and promises that, upon reflection, really show their lack of connection with the people they want to sign on with them.

My message is always that our job is to compliment what the business is doing now. Business owners are wary of the sales guy who comes in and tells them how much they need their services and how much their businesses success will depend on the service or product they are peddling. Most of us dismiss these people. We know our success depends on how much hard work we put into our business, not the next person showing up to save us with their product or service.

Yet, oddly enough, the web person who shows up with a similar pitch is given a certain deference. The only reason for it is he/ she knows about technology and the business owner feels inadequate.

The bottom line, for me, is we want to follow the direction of the company while providing options and opportunities to the owner. We want to explain the options and opportunities leaving the decision to our customer.