Your website and you
Written by Glen Hughes on September 22nd, 2008 2 Comments
I look at a lot of websites. Too many. If you have a business in Salem, I’ve probably seen your website. I’ve probably looked you up while researching a blog post or to find when your shop is open or to see when your band is playing out. One thing I’ve learned is that most of your sites suck.
Does my web site suck?
Look at the following rules and rate your website objectively, better yet have a stranger do it for you.
RULE #1 In today’s super-highway-information-tubes age people no longer pick up the phone to get the information they seek, they use google at any hour of the day or night and bypass pesky human interaction.
It might be hard for some elderly people to grasp but consumers comparison shop and gather information online. This is especially true for destination locations (like Salem, Massachusetts: the home of Halloween and all things spooky) where people might not be in the same time zone or don’t want to spend money for a long distance call. If people can’t find you, you don’t exist. Take the time to search for your site and see if it can be found.
When preforming a search, look for your business from the perspective of someone who doesn’t know of you.
- Don’t search for “Bella Verona” (yay #1 result)
- Do search for “Salem MA Italian restaurants” (boo not found in first 1000 results)
RULE #2 Just the facts ma’am
Once someone finds your site make sure important information is served up in an easily digestible fashion. Remember the five W’s of journalism (Who? What? Where? When? Why?) and show them to your potential customer. People don’t want to be burdened by lengthy load times or superfluous BS. Content is King!
Good: http://www.picklepot.com
Poor: http://www.cilantrocilantro.com
RULE #3 Your online property is just as important as your bricks and mortar property.
For the love of God people, get a good domain name and have your web site hosted with a real company! Your restaurant is in the bustling down town area or over by the college or on a heavily trafficked thoroughfare because you understand the first lesson in real estate - location, location, location. That lesson carries through to online properties. Own a domain name that is reflective of your business.
- Good : www.RedsSandwichShop.com - Name of business: Reds Sandwich Shop
- Fair: www.HipFinz.com - Name of business: Finz (I get it, they’re hip)
- Utter Failure: http://www.geocities.com/str_mw/ Name of business: who cares
Oh, and don’t let your domain name expire. If you buy a new one have the old one forwarded in case it’s indexed anywhere. Otherwise you might end up like this.
RULE #4 The design of your web site is more important than the visual merchandising of your product or the exterior upkeep of your shop.
A polite and well groomed doorman greeting you at your fancy hotel goes a long way to justify the price you pay to stay there. He is a welcoming ambassador there to serve you. Your website is a silent doorman greeting more potential customers than you can imagine. It’s in your best interest to put on a good face and inspire confidence in those who might spend money with you.
Your best friend might have a flare for decorating a room or your brother-in-law might be a networking engineer, that in no way qualifies them to be interactive designers. Keep them away from your web site. Let’s look at another three local Salem based websites and marvel at their design, which one is clean, has good use of color and font, is easily readable or inspires you to pull your wallet out?
That’s right, it was a trick question none of them do any of those things. This is not to say that they don’t provide good content but they fail on the delivery method.
Like it or lump it, a poorly designed site is a direct reflection of your actual business, by the same token a well designed site is also a reflection of your business. Can you walk right in and easily find what you are looking for or do you have to go through a few doors then guess at where to find things based on some kooky organization that is understood only by the owner (Derby Books *cough*)?
- Easily findable segmented information: http://www.sacredgear.com
- Wait a tick, is this a site about a dead dog? : http://www.goddesstreasure.com
- What the hell? Get me off this kiddie ride! : http://www.penelopespetboutique.com
For people doing some research prior to their trip to Salem, their first impression is made at your web site. Why would they come and visit your physical location if your competitor has similar product at similar prices but has made a better first impression?
RULE #5 Don’t piss off your reader with poor user experience.
Have you ever seen an ad saying that new HDTV you want is on sale but when you get to the store, you find the sale over? What about getting directions to somewhere but along your way you find an error and end up getting lost, stopped or misdirected? The same thing can happen on your website.
What makes a reader leave your page faster than a cop scooting down Washington Street on a segway? Broken links. Why even have a link on a page if it goes to nowhere? I understand that sometimes you might link off of your web site to some other site and they might change their pages (although you can check for that) but linking to a non-existent page on your own site is a total bonehead maneuver.
- Bonehead maneuver: http://www.historicsalem.org (click on site guide in the footer)
- Try almost any link: http://www.wlpssp.com pathetic
Any copywriter worth her/his weight in Red Bull and Twinkies will tell you usage of “click here” as a link is dead. Looking beyond that, if you are going to tell your reader to “click here” you had better a) make it clickable and b) make it go to a live page somewhere.
- Click here fail : http://www.redlionsmoke.com/index_files/Page790.htm
Proper Coding
People don’t like to wait around. The average person will only wait 7 seconds for a page to load. Honestly, there really is no reason for any site to take longer than 7 seconds to load if coded properly.
- Fail: http://strombergs.com/directions.html 27.789 seconds (due to third party app)
That brings about another issue: pictures on your web site. Make sure they are the proper size and resolution. Don’t try and cram huge images in a small space.
- Photo Fail: http://strombergs.com/calendar.html that little photo is 2288 x 1712 px and 882 kb - WTF?
Links as we mentioned above are a major issue:
- link coded wrong http://www.salemathenaeum.net/resources.html House of Seven Gables link has an extra quotation mark within the link code
- even the heavily-trafficked http://www.hauntedhappenings.org/stay_eat.php didn’t close their link tag on the Clipper Ship Inn link properly
Great lots of sites suck, what does this have to do about being a Salem Insider?
I’m glad you asked.
If we were in some podunk little town with only dial-up service, dueling banjos playing in the background and the latest Charlie Chan film playing at the bijou theater, then I might cut you some slack. But Salem, Mass is filled with some outstanding web professionals, freelancers, design shops and authors. Because this historic seaport city focuses it’s efforts on publicizing retail, museum and historic businesses, you might not be aware of the abundance of talent working in the internet arena.
Tomorrow I will introduce you to some local web professionals. I’ll give you some tips on finding the right designer/developer/company to help get your website to where you need it to be. And best of all I’ll teach you how to head into a new site build or site redesign with your eyes open, knowing how to get the most from the person you hire.
Tags: business · technology
