5 Reasons Potential Customers Can’t Find Your Website

Here’s a good way to tell the economy is (finally) rebounding: more and more people are calling us wanting to get their websites ranked better on search engines. Regardless of your marketing budget, not having a strong presence on search engines is no longer an option.

When your website doesn't rank well, not only is it your loss, but to make matters worse it's your competitor's gain. If you're not ranking well it's probably because of some fairly basic things that you're not doing, and the good news is that once you start doing them you can see major progress in a pretty short amount of time.

Effective Use of Photography in Web Design

I've noticed a trend lately of websites that incorporate some pretty incredible photography as a central part of their design. We all know the cliche "A picture is worth a thousand words", and not only is it true, but I've realized it's especially accurate when it comes to current web design.

When photography is used well on a website it just naturally makes you want to interact with the content. To me, Apple's website really set the standard in how they presented ultra-rich images of their products, and I think that's one of the reasons they've seen such a dramatic increase in popularity and success.

Now, many companies don't have the budget Apple does to produce these images (or the extraordinary talents of their artists), but the good news is just about every website can benefit from some well thought out, homemade photography.

Unfortunately, when it comes to the business-side of designing websites, and really any creative corporate material, the natural tendency is to use stock images from one of the big online warehouse-sized libraries.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, stock photos have come a long way. Here's just some of the advantages:

1.) Comparatively, they're much cheaper then professional, custom photography
2.) Because they're watermarked, you can preview them in your design for free
3.) There's literally thousands of them out there so you have a lot of choices

These are all great reasons for using stock, but if I had to pick one word to summarize each one it'd look like this:

1.) Cheap

2.) Lazy

3.) Generic

Looking at it in that context, these are never words I like to use when making creative decisions. Conversely, here's the advantages of using real photos on your website:

1.) Personalization, no other website on the web will have these pics
2.) Specificity, you're getting the exact images you want the way you want them
3.) Quality, now there's cameras under $1,000 that can produce amazing images

Now that list is more like it. The bottom line is, few other visual elements can have a more powerful impact on a design then awe-inspiring photographic imagery. Here's some websites I ran across that got it right, if you have some examples you've found feel free to post links in the comments section.

50Back.com

I saw this site on a Best of Week over at Abduzeedo.com and was instantly drawn to it. Not because of the vibrant color scheme, slick use of typography or naturally smart grid-based layout. Nope, it was that big 'ol beautiful bottle of beer that immediately caught my attention.

With the drops of condensation lazily rolling down the bottle and big-enough-to-grab-a-hold-of presentation, that beer IS the design. It amazes me when product-based websites don't give the product the proper visual billing it deserves (and requires).

50Back is a perfect example of the right way to do it, the image of the beer bottle is incredibly clear and sharp and it seems as the page was designed around it, not the other way around. Not to mention, the cause it represents is a great one and if I ever have the opportunity I'll be proud to take a good long swig of 50Back.

MarieCatribs.com

This site was listed in a showcase on Tuttoaster and caught my eye for the simple fact that I love everything about food. Eating it, cooking it, you name it, if it has to do with food I'm down.

Not to mention, food makes for some killer pictures. Whenever I'm in a restaurant reading a menu description I think about not only how a dish will taste, but how it will look on the plate and this is a great example of that on the web.

Restaurateurs will tell you that you eat with your eyes and that's why plate presentation has become as fussy as it is now. But at the end of the day, high quality images of well prepared, appetizing food will always create a strong visual effect.

This website, much like 50Back, does a great job of letting the product speak for itself. It just does the simple things right, the photos of the food are bigger then anything else on the page and the designer clearly went out of their way to make the textures and details of all the food in the rotator stand out.

Emerald City Guitars

This one was posted on Six Revisions as part of a showcase and I bookmarked it right away. I love music and try to play guitar but aside from Margaritaville and the first few bars of Stairway to Heaven I can't play a lick.

But I think guitars are awesome looking, there's something iconic about them and they just make great pictures. Such is the case here, and all it takes is one glance at that stunning Les Paul you can practically hear how it good it sounds.

Using full width hi-resolution images isn't a new web design trend by any means, but seldomly do designers leave the photo alone and let it speak for itself. I've seen countless websites that crowd a beautiful product image with taglines, buttons and other distractive stuff that dilutes its overall effect.

Aside from the small, monotone call-to-action button tucked away in the bottom right corner of the pic, this design let's the guitar do it's work. And trust me, a Les Paul guitar can do a lot of work.

GavinCastleton.com

Saw this one over at webdesigndev.com and after initially scaring the bejesus out of me I realized how well executed the design is. I've noticed zombies are a trend now and a pretty overdone one in my opinion but this site manages to pull off the undead imagery frighteningly well.

Images like this, when used correctly, create a strong emotional reaction that good designers are able to leverage into engaging experiences. Which I guess is a fancy way of saying that when you see something like this you don't easily forget it, and for a lot of us that's a goal with all our work.

Not to mention, incorporating people (or half-dead people in this case) into a web design has proven to be a successful way to attract the eye. Usability studies have shown that our eyes are drawn to faces before anything else.

With that in mind, it's easy to see why this design is so successful.

Is your website photogenic enough?

We've taken on some new projects where we'll be using custom photography and it's been exciting to push the creative boundaries of what can be done with it.

Here's some links to a few photography showcases that inspired this post, and if you'd like to chat about adding some unique appeal to your website with photography let us know.

Smashing Magazine: Showcase of Beautiful Photography

Abduzeedo: Beautiful Black and White Photography

Naldz Graphics: 30 Amazing Examples of Waterscape Shots in Photography

Clients say the darnedest things #1

I've been kicking around the idea of creating an ongoing series of posts that chronicle my interactions with our customers. I've seen these types of posts on other design/tech blogs and by and large they're cynical, smarmy and downright negative. So I'm going to start up a nice one.

I'm sure there's some exceptions out there but as far as I know, every business needs customers. So if most of, if not all of us, need customers, why are blogs posts on them so gloomy and pessimistic? My 2 cents...

Because like anything else in life you need, sometimes customers can be a real pain in the tail. And that's why I love them so much! If customers were easy, A.) I'd be out of a job and B.) all of our jobs wouldn't be nearly as much fun.

The fact of the matter is customers can give you insight and perspective into their industry, and business in general, that will not only make the final product that much more authentic and ultimately successful, but enrich you as a professional designer of the web.

No matter how troublesome a particular client was/is, or how many times you've wanted to figuratively or literally strangle them, if you forced yourself to chill out for a second you'd learn something from each and every one of them.

They're your clients for a reason, something compelled you to do business with them in the first place. Now, your gut reaction to this may be "It's because they had money and needed my services". This is more of an endorsement then an argument to my original statement; if they have money it's because they're doing something professionally and, depending on your rates, doing it well enough to afford hiring you.

So having said that, let's show our clients some love! Without them some of us wouldn't be doing what we're doing. And besides, if they were normal and never asked for all the wacky stuff that drive us nuts our jobs would be pretty boring.

In the true spirit of turning a negative into a positive, I'm going to list some of the recent conversations/requests that I've had from customers that helped me learn how to handle new and existing interactions. I hope to keep this going as an ongoing post, if you have some material that you'd like to contribute for my next one please let me know.

1.) "I had no idea how much work this would be"

I heard this one after a web design client elected to manage their own Google Adwords campaign. I mean, if you look at Google Adwords, or the Sponsored Link results when you perform a search, it doesn't look all that scary. Write a short ad, enter a dollar amount into the interface (which is getting surprisingly tougher to use nowadays) and viola! You're off and running.

Not quite. You may be off and running, but you're also off and spending. When it's your money getting spent you realize how ubiquitous and just plain massive that search engine is. And you also realize it can take a large chunk of your available time to manage it.

This particular client is one of the largest service-based companies in town and a good percentage of their work is on the residential side. I nicely explained to them that if I needed to fix something in my house that they specialize in I could do it myself too, but since I'm not a professional (far from it in this case) I'd rather hire them.

Our value as a business partner is that we try to educate our customers as much as work for them. In this case, we're taking over the Google Adwords campaign for the client but we're also teaching them some tips and tricks to manage it themselves. After a few months, we plan to back off some and let them get more involved with it.

Sure, we may lose some business by handing off, but we increase our value as their partner and that's far more important to our long-term success as a company.

2.) "I don't know how I want it, do what y'all think will look the best"

This is some Kiss of Death-type stuff right here. Nine times out of 10, what the client is really saying is "Make a pass at it and I'll critique if I don't like it and you can change it from there". Two things wrong with this picture:

A. You're going to have to pay for it even if we change it later(something no client likes)

B. We're opening up Pandora's Box of the 3 R's; revision, review, repeat. Nothing drags out a project faster then the 3 R's

This is where you have the opportunity to really shine as a web partner. Good designers & developers can interpret this request properly and gently coax out the Holy Grail of client meetings: Actionable feedback.

I'm presently married and anyone else that is can relate to ambiguous and vague type of direction such as this. Quite often my wife will say something very, very generic and mean something very, very specific. After 7 years of marriage I've acquired a sort of "Spider Sense" to see a potential trainwreck coming if I mistake one for the other.

The same is true for clients. If one says "I'm not sure what I want, it just needs to 'Pop'" (my personal un-favorite), start browsing some sites, with them in the room, and see if they respond to any as "pop-worthy".

Or, whip out the erasable markers and go to town on the nearest whiteboard if you can. Something, anything, tangible is better then nothing at all. To quote the recently-released book Rework "You're better off with a kick-a$$ half than a half-a$$ed whole."

The language may be a bit strong but so is the message, because if you don't know how to extract good, substantial direction from your clients the final product will suffer and so will your bottom line (along with your sanity).

3.) "Everything is negotiable"

See, my background is sales so this one is kind of a stickler for me. Since 2000 I've been closely involved with the web and technology in general, but a large majority of my experience is in new business development, specifically generating good 'ol fashioned revenue. So most folks, when they say that to me it's with a "wink-wink, nudge-nudge" as if I automatically agree with that nonsense.

First of all, the subtext of what's being said is simple, "lower your price". Which, as anyone familiar with sales knows, I also have to lower my commission. That's understandable, and sometimes agreeable, but that statement in and of itself is still inherently flawed.

Because secondly, and more importantly, by all means everything is NOT negotiable!

Just off the top of my head, I'd say quality, service, warranty and deadlines are not in any way, shape, or form negotiable.

If your re-designed website looks worse and more dated then your current one, will you be able to negotiate with everyone that tells you they don't like it?

Will you be able to negotiate your way out of all the business you'll lose if your e-commerce store crashes when shoppers click the "Add to cart" button because you went with a cheap off-the-shelf template solution?

Or how about putting your negotiating skills to the test when your launch deadline comes and goes and you lose thousands of dollars on the marketing you spent to advertise a time-sensitive event because the site wasn’t done in time?

Sorry, rant over. I guess what I mean to say is that if a client says something to this effect, the good news is they like you and they want to work with you, just at a lower price than you originally came at them with. So adjust accordingly if you can, but be smart about it. And the silver lining here is that you just learned how they operate in these types of situations, and this knowledge can be leveraged in a future interaction.

To me, this one goes back to integrity and standing your ground, if you respect your product, and yourself, good clients will too. And if they don't, you probably don't want them as a client in the first place.

Parenting and project management

That's it for now, as a father of a 3 year old I hear all sorts of unexpected (and not so coherent) things come out of my son's mouth all the time and that inspired the title of this post. I said in the open and I'll repeat it here, I love clients and one of the most rewarding parts of my job is working with them and hearing their praise for what we help them create and build.

I feel more successful when I help make our clients more successful and when you do it right it doesn't feel like work. When I read blog posts that are full of complaints and insults about clients, I wonder if the person writing them really took the time to put the shoe on the other foot and do a better job as the vendor to find a solution.

Having said all that, I will admit I've shared a chuckle or two over some of customer's requests. But I can honestly say I was laughing with them, and it was a laugh I appreciated.

So let's have it, if you work with clients on a regular basis I know you've got some stories to tell and some insight to lend. Leave it in the comments below or get in touch and we'll post it here.

DiscoverTec's brand new brand

For the past half-decade or so DiscoverTec has incorporated @ Your Service as an important part of our online and offline corporate identity. A lot has changed since that idea was introduced and we felt it was time for our brand to change too. That's exactly what happened today when we unveiled our brand new brand.

Web Simplified.

After many brainstorming sessions, hundreds of Photoshop revisions and more than a few strands of hair being forcefully removed, that's the result. Since last year we've shifted our focus from what was at one time 7 separate company divisions, many of them service-oriented, to just one: cutting edge web services. Due to this shift we felt it was time for a change to the DiscoverTec brand.

We've learned over the years that what we do can get extremely complicated and that can be an obstacle for our brand. People are afraid of what they don't understand, and if there's one thing about web design and development, and technology services in general, is that they can be a little tricky to figure out.

We strive to offset that fear and misunderstanding by providing a unique and overall positive experience for our clients and partners when they do business with us. That's always been a major component of our identity and one of the reasons for our long-term success.

We'd like to think that our expertise and commitment to quality and innovation has been a big factor in the long-term relationships we have with our customers, but we know that's not all. It's the experience they have with us, and the fact that we go out of our way to be easy to work with, that defines what DiscoverTec is all about.

All of that needed to be distilled down into a single concept that would make up our new brand. And like many great ideas, this one started with a single impulse that gradually developed into one unified idea. It got me thinking about branding in general and this will be the first in a series of posts that focus on corporate and personal identity in general.

Over the years I’ve realized that memorable brands communicate well and that’s a key part of why they enjoy long-term success. As a Team and as individuals we all contributed different pieces to the final product and what helped me was to have fun, keep an open mind and let the ideas flow naturally.

Decades of constant bombardment by good, bad and ugly brands have clouded my objectivity and it was important to make sure I didn’t inadvertently let one that has seeped into my head make its way into my contribution.

At the same time, I didn’t want to dismiss the simple fact that if a brand stuck out to me for years and years there was something to be said for it. Chances are if you remember a brand it’s partly due to the fact that it effortlessly, and unmistakably, speaks to what it does.

I found that Kleenex is a good example of this. How many times have you heard yourself, or someone else, instinctively ask for a Kleenex instead of just “tissue”? Their brand and product type is one and the same because of effective, natural communication.

The name just sounds clean (by nature of it’s first syllable) and uses the “ex” suffix, which has an innate connotation of getting rid of something unwanted (in this case, well, you know). This suffix has been widely adopted for other successful brands, ranging from pest control (Terminex) to window cleaners (Windex).

Our goal with this effort was not to re-brand our actual company name, but moreso the idea that accompanies it. It was kind of a no-brainer to use Web since one of our primary objectives was to instantly and clearly state exactly what we do.

We felt that we now live in a time where people associate the word “web” with the personal and commercial use of the public internet. Now that it’s such an immersive part of our lives, we’re confident incorporating it prominently into our brand.

The second part was a little trickier. We feel one of our strengths as a professional web services provider is taking a technology that is largely complex and making it simple. And simple is a safe, comfortable and assuring adjective that people generally associate with a positive experience.

In short, people like simple.

If we could create a brand that successfully conveys the act of taking a medium that is considered difficult to understand and work with and demystify it to the point where it’s reduced to a simple and altogether gratifying endeavor, well then we may have something.

That’s when “web simplified” took shape, and for the most part we never looked back. It communicates the industry we work in and how we execute our work in it. Sometimes the form and presentation of a brand can mean more then the message itself, and we thought “what’s simpler than 2 words?”

All in all it was a great experience and everyone on the Team is thrilled with the result and I hope you enjoyed learning about our new brand as much as we enjoyed creating it.

If you’ve done any identity work recently and you’re cool sharing a recap please post in the comments below. And if you’re considering giving your brand a fresh coat of paint feel free to give us a shout and we can start brainstorming.

Website Pricing: General thoughts on Best Practices

I'm fortunate enough to attend almost all of our discovery meetings with potential new clients here at DiscoverTec and I've realized that there's only two hard and fast rules when it comes to website pricing:

1.) Every customer wants a quote yesterday

2.) Few companies know how to correctly provide them with one.

The first rule is understandable, how much something costs plays an important role in any purchasing decision we make. As for the second rule, that's something we're constantly refining and what follows is an attempt to explain some our thoughts on quoting web design, development and SEO.

If you think about it, most websites have big "chunks" in common. Things like the creative design, code writing, motion graphics, etc. are very common price points so it's easy to look at those as a baseline for quotes. However, it's all the additional little pieces that make one website different from another that makes it difficult to offer "off the shelf" pricing.

This is where the youth of our industry can create a challenge. Unlike other services and products that have been around for years and years there's no benchmark for pricing a website due to the fact that so much has changed in our business in such a short period of time.

If you were to look around you'd find some companies that advertise free websites, some that charge $100 a month and some that won't even talk to you unless you pay a "discovery fee" which can be in excess of $1,000. Our goal is to have the best price, not the highest and not the lowest. To that end we use some general guidelines as a basis for quoting all our work.

These are by no means the end-all, be-all to fairly and accurately quoting a website. If they were I wouldn't want to be in this business. I was taught a long time ago by an early mentor and sales guru that if you sell on price you lose every time. Maybe not right away, but in the long run if your customers look at you as just another vendor, and not a valuable business partner, they'll hire someone else with a lower price down the road.

You'll probably notice that these could be applied to just about any purchasing decision and I'd appreciate it if you'd leave your opinion on quoting and pricing new business in the comment section below.

You get what you pay for

This is definitely a principle that can be applied to any buying decision. I'm a little embarrassed to admit how much of a cliche this is, and I wanted to avoid that with this post, but it's too true to not include.

There's always something cheaper out there, and if that's what you want then that's what you'll get... something cheaper.

It may not look good, it may not work well and in general it may not do everything that it was supposed to. But it would have cost less, and if that's all someone is looking for then they'll undoubtedly find it. Now, if the cheapest website will give you what you need, and that's enough, then by all means go for it. But if you think it's going to give you the stuff you want, well, make sure to read the next point.

Separate the "Needs" from the "Wants"

Cars are a great example of this one. Think about it, when it comes to a car, what do you actually need? Starting up when you turn the key is pretty important, as is getting you from point A to point B. But what do you want? That differs for all of us, but by and large we're all guilty of choosing a car based on what we want versus what we need.

Websites are the same. We're approached by prospective customers that are professional enough to share their budget with us and we work hard to put together a custom quote that covers everything we identified they need at a price that fits their budget.

This is usually where the wants take over.

"Can you put music on it?"

"Will it do one of those cool flashy intro things?" (very rarely are those cool by the way)

"Will we be able to know the name of every single person that comes to the site?"

Inevitably these types of requirements are "nice-to-have" things that will severely bulk up a quote (not to mention the last one is illegal). If an unnecessary requirement forces our quote over your budget, and it doesn't contribute to the website being more effective and/or profitable, we recommend holding off. Which brings me to my next point...

Identify opportunities to Phase the project

Sometimes when you evaluate what you need vs. what you want, a third category starts taking shape. I call it the "kinda-sorta need". These are those things that fall in between, a good example is motion graphics. Many times, customers see a website with a dynamic motion-based header graphic (similar to what we built for www.SuddathLogistics.com) and notice how powerful of a first impression it makes and they want it included in their proposal.

Now, if a motion graphic piece helps engage visitors and they convert to customers then by all means, I'd call that a need. But getting there could be considered a want, because without it you can still have a very nice, professional website that will attract new business. Motion graphics, while more affordable then ever, are still an additional cost and if you're on a budget that could be an issue.

The solution? Leave it out of the first version, launch the site, get more business, then re-invest in the site and add it in Phase II.

We do this all the time and it makes a ton of sense, in fact, there's several things we want to do with our own website and we're intentionally holding off until we're ready to do them. A brand new, modern-looking website has a ton of value in and of itself. It's smart to get one up and live, then work on enhancements. Especially when the alternative is leaving it on a test site for months and months while competitors get all the new customers.

It needs to be a "Win-Win"

I list this one last because it really is the bottom line. Everything in life needs to be a good fit and all relationships you enter into need to be a win-win, from friends to family to business. With prices that run across the board and website building processes that are even more inconsistent, everyone will find something, and someone, that is the perfect fit to help them with theirs.

And in some cases, it's better to part ways as professionals early than try to enter into a long-term partnership with a company that is a bad fit. Ultimately, a mutually bad fit usually results in a sub-par final product due to a disconnected and tense build process and nobody wins.

As an analogy, there was this one time (maybe more then once) that I observed my wife attempt to cram her feet into an ill-fitting pair of shoes because she liked the way they looked. The end result? Her feet were tore up something awful and she complained about them the whole time she had them on.

Moral of the story: In the long run how well something fits is more important then any other factor in a buying decision, including the price. Because in the end, a bad fit always costs more then a good one, and it's not always measured in dollars and cents.

There you have it, my 2 cents on website pricing. If you have some stories you'd like to share about pricing sites, funny, helpful or otherwise, by all means please post in the comment section below. I enjoy hearing other people's pricing adventures, because until our industry naturally standardizes its practices, selling websites will still be like the 'ol Wild West.

You know what though? I'm not sure if that will bother a wanna-be gunslinger like me.