Marketing Emergency: Website Design

Our design firm sees its fair share of branding and marketing emergencies. The running joke is that our conference room becomes a make-shift triage for marketing patients. And for a variety of reasons, websites seem to be the most common marketing emergency that our design firm encounters.

In fact, if I asked 100 professional services firms if their websites were "under the weather" or worse, I'd be willing to bet over two-thirds of them would say, "Yes!"

An ill-performing website (more often than not) is the symptom of a larger marketing and positioning problem, rather than the problem itself. But that doesn't change the fact that these websites are presenting with some serious symptoms.

Does your firm's website qualify as a
marketing emergency?

If you're unsure, you can try your hand at a little self-diagnosis. Here's a simple three-step check up:

1. Examine your Positioning
At a quick glance, your website visitors should be able to identify who you are, what you do, why it matters, and how they should respond. We covered this in a little more detail in a previous post on website redesigns. Your brand's overall positioning can also be impacted by your website's design and appearance. If you consider your brand to be a BMW but your website feels more like a rental car, you may have a positioning problem.

2. Where does it hurt?
The most common pain point we hear about is conversion; the website gets good traffic but fails to convert visitors into qualified leads. If your website traffic is strong but you're not converting many visitors, consider testing alternate calls to action. What's your current call to action? Is it obvious? If your call to action isn't clear, more web traffic isn't necessarily going to convert to more business.

3. Perform a Google Search
This last step may sound obvious, but if you can't find your website by performing a Google search for yourself or your firm's service offerings, how will your clients ever find you? It's especially important that you can be found when someone searches for your industry within your market or territory--for example, "Indianapolis Architects".

Directly related to this tip are website statistics. You need to know your web stats. If you aren't reviewing your web stats at least monthly, you're missing out on some valuable traffic and search data.

Did you perform all three check-ups? How did your website do? If you didn't like some of your answers, you may have a bona fide marketing emergency on your hands. While these symptoms may actually point to a more serious problem, it sounds like your website may be due for a check-up. If you'd like to schedule an appointment, be sure to drop us a line.

Have you ever been part of a website redesign? How did your team decide it was a serious enough problem to go in for a check-up? Tell us below:

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Designing an Achievable Goal

It's just like I told one of our designers on Friday as we walked out to our cars, "One week down, 51 weeks to go."

What are you going to do with the next 51 weeks? Are some of your New Year's Resolutions already a little out of focus? What were those again? Eat healthier. Exercise more. Make more money. Sound familiar?

Last year, one of my clients said, "If you want something different, you have to do something different."

This year do one thing different.

Look at your list of resolutions and goals for 2010. (I'm assuming you have written them down? If not, do that first.) A long list can be intimidating. Circle the one big goal that will be the biggest game changer for you in 2010. Which goal would most impact your ability to live a healthier life, or most significantly change the way you do business? Next to that goal, write down why it's important. Maybe you really can achieve that, but so what? What's going to change?

Maybe your big goal is a business or marketing goal? Launch that new service package. Redesign your website to drum up more leads. Reposition your company. Leverage social media. Or simply create a real marketing plan in 2010.

Anyone who's been through a goal-setting workshop is probably familiar with the concept that to be achieved, goals first need to be S.M.A.R.T.

S - Specific
M - Measurable
A - Actionable
R - Realistic
T - Time-bound

That's a great starting point, but my guess is 99% of your goals last year were "S.M.A.R.T." and you still failed to achieve most of them. Why is that?

This year, do one thing different. Choose that single, most impactful goal and tell everyone about it. You may even try creating fun, positive and negative consequences for your performance. "If I do X on time, I'll reward myself with a new laptop. And if I don't do X, I'll owe my whole office a steak dinner." What would your rewards or consequences be?

Or try another approach. Condense your goal down to one word, print it out and post it on your wall, your desk, or your bathroom mirror. Focus on your one thing.

This year, my one big goal is to write a book. I've been talking about it for years. This year I'm actually going to get it done. Here's why. First, having a book will be a great asset for our business. And second, I made a deal with a friend of mine who is also "writing a book." We agreed that we would hold each other accountable to have a complete first draft of our books finished by July 1, 2010. He recommended that if it wasn't a short-term goal (in this case, six months) we'd put if off until the end of the year. But since July is already near, we have no choice but to get going.

In addition to being able to push one another towards this goal, we've also created some really ridiculous consequences for not achieving our goals (I won't give too much away, but the bet involves getting a tattoo and teaching a class in drag). So far, I already have one chapter written. That's one chapter more than I wrote in the past few years. All in all, not a bad start.

Think about your one big goal.

How are you going to get there?

Share your thoughts:

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Desiging for Impact: Citizen Effect

Miles Design had the pleasure of working with Citizen Effect (formerly 1WELL) to redesign their website and user experience, working closely with the team at ThriveSmart.

These brilliant and dedicated folks are committed to impacting third world countries in the areas of food, water, energy, health, and education through people they call "Citizen Philanthropists."

You won't find any celebrity endorsements here - Citizen Philanthropists are everyday people making serious impact in third world countries.

Here's how it works. A Citizen Philanthropist becomes the project's fund-raising quarterback, organizing anything from Facebook fundraisers, to garage sales or even dance-a-thons, all to raise money for a project of their choosing. Visitors can search for projects by global location, project type, or population impacted.

From their website citizeneffect.org you can search from projects like this one in Zambia in need of a "Women's Centre." What's really cool about Citizen Effect is how intricately it's tied to various social networks as well. Citizen Philanthropists can blog about their project right on the website, and as a project grows, various photos, videos, and other media will be posted.

So if you're looking for a way to design a little impact this holiday season, check out citizeneffect.org and see if you find a project that speaks to your heart.

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Website Redesign - Is Your Site the Problem or the Symptom?

Is your company considering a website redesign in the coming months? If you're like most companies, you're trying to figure out how to get the most out of every dollar spent. Marketing budgets are no exception. Because it's usually the first place potential customers will go to learn more about your service, even relatively strapped businesses grasp the importance of their website.

Many professional services firms come to us planning to discuss a website redesign. Often, after a brief discussion, they realize the need may be deeper. And that need is proper positioning.

We explain to our website design clients that we are first and foremost a brand strategy firm. To build a great brand you must first begin with great positioning, and that requires a great strategy.

It's easy to get intimidated by the word strategy, but on the most basic level, it's focusing on how you want to answer some basic questions. Here's a few you might consider when reviewing your company's brand online:

Who are we?
This should be the easy one. Is your name, product, or service memorable, fun to say, easy to read, and somewhere that customers will recognize it? Do you look and feel like your competition, or are you uniquely you?

What do we do?
Again, this seems kind of obvious, but what is it that your company does? Are your complimentary services visible, or are you inundating your visitors with a laundry list of services.

Why do you matter to the marketplace?
Who do you work for, and how is that different from your competition. "We help make sure you get quality, on-time service every time." First of all, who is "you"? And second of all, that statement could represent a law firm, a florist, or a plumber. The point is, there's no differentiation in that statement, and worst of all, it's nothing unique or memorable. If that's on your homepage somewhere, we should talk.

What do you want your customers to do?
Your visitors may not knowingly ask themselves this question, but your team should know the answer. Do you want your visitors to browse a photo gallery, sign up for e-news, call the 800#, or fill out the contact form?

If you've never taken a moment to consider those questions, pop open your web browser at some point today, and take a look at your homepage. How do you think your potential customers would answer those questions for you?

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