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It’s Not You, It’s Me: How to Know It’s Time to Redesign Your Website

A company—or even personal—website is our presence to the world, the cyber face by which we are judged as professionals and companies alike. But how do we know when our public appearance is turning visitors off and it’s time to redesign?

Jessica Melhorn, Director of Client Solutions at JPL in Harrisburg, PA, says this: Consider what frustrates you as a visitor when using a website, and put it to work when developing—or revamping—your site. Are the contents and graphics up to date? Does it load quickly? Does it use Flash? Is it easily navigable? Does it focus on the user and their needs?

Adobe’s Irina Guseva says that there are five traits of engaging customer website experiences:

1.       Personalized: Customers want you to know their browsing or buying habits and make suggestions based on those habits.

2.       Useful and contextually relevant: Customers want you to understand their needs at every step of the journey.

3.       Timely: Customers want the right experience at the right time.

4.       Omni channel: Seamless experiences across all touch points, digital or physical, make happy customers.

5.       Social: Social connects customers with each other and allows brand advocates to vouch for you.

The truth is, your website is only one part of the customer experience. There are many other factors that can influence the need to update your site’s content, appearance and functionality.

Foremost, Melhorn encourages, consider your business and business model. Has your position on industry perceptions or trends changed? Who is your target audience? Are you B2B or B2C? Is your audience primary or secondary, and are they influencers or decision makers?

Also, keep an eye on the competition. Is your business facing new competitors? Do they offer new or updated applications or tools that you don’t, or do they offer what you have, only different? Better yet, have you merged with or acquired any new businesses, or integrated new products or solutions that enhance your service?

Several years ago, my own employer became a victim of this circumstance through a business acquisition. The business that we acquired had a similar philosophy, different geographic reach and unique client base that didn’t conflict with our own, making it a perfect complement to our firm. We updated our website to include the newly acquired business practices with the markets we served as a singe company identity. But executive management chose to keep the former firm’s name as a “doing business as” brand through revamped printed collateral and business cards with a modified logo (against the marketing department’s advice). This created a marketing and identity nightmare. The executive and business development teams visited each of the merged firm’s key clients, explaining that the merged company was the same group of professionals, just working under a new business name. Visitors came to our website expecting to see the former company’s name, but it wasn’t prominently stated. Mention of the merger existed only in news posts and in the newly-added business areas of the site. Their clients were confused and frustrated. Who were they working with? What happened to the business they knew? After a year, executive management finally dissolved the “dba” identity and merged the newer business under our corporate name as a united marketing front.

But a website isn’t just about who you are, it’s also how people interact with you. With the increasing number of users accessing websites on devices other than a desktop computer, it’s vital that your site include responsive design for compatible viewing on mobile and laptop devices. Newer trends are also seeing more searches done by voice activation through applications like Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa and others. Website updates don’t always have to be visible in the front end user experience. Corporate website updates can also be the result of changes in back end technology.

With the number of corporate site highjackings and malware attacks popping up in the news, you need to make sure that your site host, plug-ins and content management system are up to date. If you are introducing a new product or functionality that will attract a larger number of users to your site, make sure that your site is scalable and can handle the increased guest flow. If not, you may face an overload that will crash your site.

As in the case noted above, make your content (and site in general) compatible with current search algorithms so that your clients can find what—and who—they’re looking for. To enhance your user’s experience, make sure that your marketing automation is up to date for streamlined inbound marketing and social efforts. Perhaps what may be the most important back end update of all, make sure that your site is accessible to all users in compliance with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Section 508 for those with disabilities.

Your website is your virtual presence, representing who you are and what you do. Make sure that it not only reflects current content, but also functions to meet your user’s needs and makes their experience enjoyable to make them want to return.

Interested in learning more? Contact me today at bmccoy@mccoycommunications.com to discuss how I can help!

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The Basics of Establishing a Brand

Brand.

One word that says so much without saying anything.

Have you ever imagined what makes you stand out or what makes you unique? Your brand is just that: it’s everything about you that you both do and don’t do, consciously or not. It’s your image, language, tone, stationery font and the colors of your marketing collateral. It’s your employees and your customers, what they say about you and how they say it. It’s your physical and virtual presence. Your brand is how others recognize, identify and remember you, good or bad. That’s why it is important to shape your brand to create a positive lasting impression.

While the intangible elements of your brand are crucial, this post focuses on the tangible elements created by your marketing communications and/or public relations efforts. Marketing materials, particularly brochures and websites, can be the most recognizable pieces of a company’s brand. These “first touch” elements are often the earliest exposure someone has to your business and what draws them in to want to learn more (or not). So when crafting your brand, consider your options wisely. Here are a few items to keep in mind when building your brand and branded materials:

1. Look inside.

What does your company do? What is your mission? What about your environment or culture? What do you want others to think or remember about you after reading your collateral or visiting your website? These affective questions should help to shape your content design, layout, color theme, font and font size. They reflect who you are, what your organization stands for and should be memorable (in a positive way). Simple and basic styles and designs are preferred over the busy and complicated. Remember: Your design should be reflected across all of your marketing and communications, from business cards to exhibit booth, stationery to signage. Consistency is key, so something simple—but not too simple—can help it be memorable.

2. Use professional images.

Your brand should exhibit quality in all forms, and this is particularly important when creating or selecting images for your site or collateral. Be sure to use professional photography and/or illustrations. Blurred images or amateur shots washed out by a flash are unacceptable. There are many free and low-cost stock image sites available, including Unsplash, Canva, Shutterstock and others that are filled with millions of professional images for virtually any use. Free is fine, but a small investment into a paid subscription if necessary will go a long way for your identity.

A statement of caution: Do not copy images from the Internet or another source without permission. Photographic or illustrated images are the creator’s intellectual property, and copying and pasting their work into your content without permission is a violation of the law, their copyright and simply bad practice. No one wants to launch a brand with a cease and desist order.

3. Use proper writing and grammar.

Your marketing pieces should be designed to inform and entice your readers to want to learn more. Remember, your reader may not be as familiar with your product or service offering as you are, so filling your marketing materials with improper grammar or industry-laden jargon is ill-advised. Write in full sentences, punctuate properly, use proper grammar and shape your story with descriptive items and phrases. Try to put yourself in your reader’s shoes and go back to basics. What product or service do you provide? What does it do? What benefit will they get from it? Most importantly, what’s in it for them? Your writing doesn’t have to be stuffy or formal. Readers will understand your content best when it’s presented as a casual conversation.

4. Proofread, proofread, proofread.

The purpose of developing your marketing content is so that it will be read and remembered. Proofreading is critical! No one wants to do business with a company whose marketing materials and website are full of misspellings, grammatical errors and just poor writing. Not all document and design development applications offer spellcheck, so it is vital to review your text before publishing it. To overcome this challenge, draft your text in a format that does provide spellcheck and then import the text into your design document. If this isn’t possible, ask a friend, colleague or family member to review your work. A second set of eyes can catch even the most innocuous of errors. If you’re pressed for time or no one is available, try reading your content backward word for word. This may not help much with context or grammar, but it certainly highlights misspellings very quickly.

5. Make your content easy for the consumer to read.

Again with the basics: English-reading consumers read content by moving their eyes from left to right, then top to bottom. Your text and graphical content should flow accordingly. If your piece is letter-sized portrait, don’t place text vertically up either side of the page that will make the reader turn the page (or their heads) to have to read it. Period.

Beyond text flow and direction, whether a website or printed piece, make sure that your material is properly formatted and easy for the reader to read (beyond proper spelling and grammar). Generally, this means that your website and printed material should have a white or light colored background with dark or black text in a serif or common sans serif font. Dark backgrounds fronted by white text are very hard on the eyes and difficult to read (and more expensive to produce when printing.) Overly artistic or cursive fonts may look fancy or creative, but are very hard to read.

When developing your brand’s website, most (but not all) web content management systems will automatically adapt the layout size of your site accordingly based upon the device on which the site is being viewed: desktop computer, tablet device, or smart phone. This makes the layout portion easier, but the readability guidelines noted above still stand.

6. Should it stay or should it go?

Beyond your design, be sure to consider what will be done with the material once read or consumed. Will it go on a shelf in the office? Placed in the breakroom for others to enjoy? Shared electronically with executives or employees in other locations? Or go to the File 13 in the sky?

Production formats and finishes may delve too deeply into the collateral nitty-gritty, but again, put yourself in your reader’s shoes. If you received this piece of material, what would you do with it? What you plan or anticipate that your reader will do with your material after they receive it also goes directly to the cost of its production. Don’t spend 40 hours of your time creating a piece that will last 5 seconds in the reader’s hands before it goes in the trash. Spend your time up front on the design to make sure your piece is attractive and readable so it lasts more than 15 seconds and doesn’t go in the trash.

The above tips may seem like a lot, but when it comes to establishing and conveying your brand, there is no shortage of caution to take.

Want to learn more? Contact me today to learn how I can help you take your brand to the next level.

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How to Be Your Own News Source

(This post previously appeared in the Bennis PR blog.)

Let’s face it, not every business has a compelling story to tell.

When markets started turning south in 2008, the president of our firm called a meeting and asked us to brainstorm ways that we could generate income outside of our typical revenue stream.  Social media was just coming into popularity, so I suggested that we monetize our intelligence. As the market was falling and things began to move ever slower, I proposed that we share our intelligence with clients and prospects to establish ourselves as industry leaders during the downtime, so that when the recession passed, we would be top of mind when our clients and prospects needed our services.

But with no “news” or stories to share, how can companies become their own news outlet? The answer is easy: content marketing. Simply put, content marketing puts you in front of your current and potential clients.

Whether you offer a product or service, or are a B2B or B2C organization, your knowledge is your product. According to Tyler Bouldin, Senior Web Strategy Manager at WebpageFX, the benefits of sharing your knowledge are many:

  • It establishes you and/or your company as a subject matter expert.
  • It establishes you and/or your company as an industry leader.
  • It engages readers and gains followers.
  • It improves retention.
  • It can turn leads into prospects.
  • It fills potential gaps in the sales process.

But before you put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard to create your content, Bouldin notes that it’s important to identify who you want to reach. Is it existing clients? New prospects? Others? After you identify your audience, describe who they are by creating a persona. Are members of your audience men, women or both? How old are they? Where are they located? What is their education and income level? What are the pain points that you can address or resolve for them?

The last point is critical, as it is the foundation of your content. But let’s take a step back for a moment. Yes, content marketing is intended to ultimately bring in sales. But the purpose of your developing the content is to inform your audience and share valuable information. By educating your readers, you become a trusted source of information. Content marketing is not a one-way pushy sales pitch.

So what should you what should you write about? According to Bouldin, that question can be answered with another question: What do you know about that will interest your readers? Back to square one, right? Wrong. Consider what changes are taking place in your industry and how it impacts your audience–and most of all–how you can help. What do you do or offer that no one else does or that differentiates you from others? What are your clients’ most frequently asked questions?

After you’ve identified your topics, create a plan for sharing your content. Creating a content calendar is a helpful way to visualize what content is posted where, and to schedule topics accordingly around other related topics or events. Having a plan also offers a checklist of sorts to ensure that the work gets done.

So you’ve identified your audience and topics, written your content and created a plan to share it. Now get out there and promote it! Bouldin notes that if your company or organization doesn’t already have a blog, create one. This is an ideal venue for your content.

Be sure to share and promote your blog on social media. It’s important to keep your audience in mind when considering media platforms. You likely won’t attract many 55+ business professionals on Facebook, so make sure your message is appropriate for the platform and its audience.

You can also create an e-newsletter to get your content directly to your audience. Online tools such as MailChimp or Constant Contact are popular platforms that can help you track engagement so that you can see who is opening your newsletter and when, and allow you to adjust send times and content as appropriate. For extra mileage, share your expertise with industry trade publications and blogs.

If incoming calls and foot traffic don’t show the success of your content marketing efforts, get out your measuring tools. Google analytics can give a good overview of your content’s performance and allow you to drill down into pages, users, engagement and bounce rates.

Just like any other marketing tactic, content marketing is not a once-and-done deal. After creating and sharing your content, measure your message’s effectiveness and start again. Keeping your message in front of your audience will keep you and your organization ahead of your competition and establish you as a valued news source for your readers.

Want to learn more? Contact me:

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The Importance of Communication: Understanding Why?

In the various professional positions I’ve held throughout my career, I’ve often been asked to write or publish information about something that management feels should be promoted or published “because it’s good PR.” I’m always happy to share good news that brings value to readers, but to do so, I need more than, “Here’s the information. Promote it.”

One recent example was recognition our firm received from a statewide organization for being an organization that fosters its professionals for three predefined reasons. Having not heard about the accolade or its purpose, I questioned the requestor how we were notified about the award, who and or how we were nominated, what the judging criteria were and who our competition was for the recognition, if any. These, I felt, were valid questions any reader would be interested to learn about how and why we deserved the accolade received.

As a writing and communications professional, if I am going to write or post a potentially newsworthy item, I’d like to be sure that the content IS newsworthy. Any communications, marketing communications, public relations, writer, editor or other related professional knows and will tell you that issuing non-news in today’s content-driven world is not only a waste of time, but also a good way to turn readers off from your posted content.

Having sat on both sides of the writing and promotion fence, I recognize the need to build and raise awareness for a business or organization. But the ratio of value-based content to self-promotional content should be 90 percent to 10 percent, not the other way around.

That said, I always look at a news piece or other bit of potentially interesting information with one question: Why? Why should anyone who reads this care? What value or information does it give them? What value or benefit does it bring to us? Understanding and responding to these questions is key to getting your content read. If you don’t bring value to your readers, you’re going to lose them.

Think about your favorite blog or news site. Why do you read it? What if your favorite site started posting nothing but content completely irrelevant to your interests? You’d stop visiting the site, wouldn’t you? For those of you who still read print newspapers, what if your paper stopped carrying news articles and simply printed advertisements? The revenue might be good for the publisher, but you wouldn’t get any value from the content (unless you’re a spend-aholic, which is a topic for another time).

In the case of the recognition our firm received, I never received answers to my questions and it turns out the information was not newsworthy. A colleague received a link to the “award” and all they had to do was fill out an application. It was open to anyone and there were no rigorous criteria to meet, making this recognition nothing more than paper-pushing praise.

I posted the content to our website and social media not because it’s newsworthy, interesting or of value. But merely because not doing so would be negatively received. Can you guess why?