Great web design isn't just about being original, it's about connecting with your website audience

How small business owners can chose a great web design for their company

The biggest mistake in web design is letting your own design taste get in the way of choosing a really great web design. This is especially true for small businesses where one person is the sole decision maker on the design. This post talks about what makes a business web design great and shares some simple steps on how you can avoid this trap while still achieving a design you love.

There are many elements that go into a great business web design. Things like originality, usability and the marketing content itself which include elements like your logo, website colors, marketing copy (text) and images. The business website must communicate the essence of your company (your brand) and lay out a convincing case for how doing business with you is better than your competition (differentiation). It can be a daunting challenge.

Let’s get something clear as to what I mean when I say great web design.

I don’t mean a work of art that wins a design award or feeds your ego. I mean a website design that motivates a large percentage of your target audience to take action, such as call, email or visit your business. That’s the kind of great design I’m talking about.

Now that we have a common understanding about what I’m defining as good design let’s talk about how to avoid your design bias overwhelming your primary goal of getting more leads from your website.

Here’s the secret?

Process.

Don’t beat your head on your keyboard just yet, I know that sounds dull. Don’t fret, because this process is really good at helping you create or select a great web design.

Web Design Process

• Identify your customer
• Make a list of your website requirements
• Make a rough sketch or example of your desired layout (called a website wireframe)
• Use representative placeholder text and images to agree on layout and overall design
• Write headlines, marketing copy (text) and calls-to-action
• Apply the skin of our new design last, after you have your layout, wireframe, text and images sorted
• Get feedback on the design from a small number of real customers

Let’s break each of these down and then you’ll be ready to put the process in place with selecting your next web design.

Identify your Customer

Remember how earlier I talked about how web design isn’t just the pretty face thet greets your web visitor? Here’s what your design should be about: communicating to your customer and incenting them to take action. Therefore wouldn’t it be nice if our design was customer centric rather than business owner centric? Say yes. Good job, you’re getting the hang of this process already.

Make a list of your website requirements

This is about what you want the website to do and what content you think you should include on your website. These requirements start out high level and then you get more specific until you have enough clarity to make them actionable.  For example, a high level requirement might be:

• Include email newsletter signup widget

The more specific version could be:

• Place email newsletter signup widget on home page and right sidebar of all pages and blog

Requirements insure your website actually has all the right parts needed to address your target customers’s needs.

Create a wireframe

Click to expand. A website wireframe helps you and your web designer visualize your design and agree on layout with no fisticuffs

Ever doodled a graphical idea on the back of a napkin so you could communicate what you mean to someone? Even if you don’t have the slightest design skill you can make rectangles, circles and scribbles that look like text. Today we do this when we make websites but we borrow an engineering process for it and call it a wireframe. What you’re doing is identifying a web design layout that you can apply your actual design and content to. Like we would apply wood or stucco to a house frame. How does this help? We don’t get emotionally invested in wireframes. We see the layout and can more quickly determine the right overall shape and flow you’re looking for. They let both you and your designer agree on a key aspect of the design with cool, calm precision. Don’t worry, there’s still time for mental anguish and hand wringing in the last two steps.

Use representative placeholder text and images

Ever seen a print mockup or website mockup of a design and it was full of text like this:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Aliquam consequat ligula sed enim pharetra cursus. Praesent posuere faucibus metus in aliquet. Sed egestas erat at nulla imperdiet a rutrum mauris ultricies. Suspendisse varius nisl ut quam pretium nec aliquet nibh tincidunt.

Just like the wireframe, placeholder text and images help you narrow down your design look and feel without being distracted by the specific elements of your final design. When we use real copy on a design it’s impossible not to jump in and start wordsmithing your new marketing copy. We all do this. So don’t fight this urge, just don’t give yourself a chance to have the fight. Copywriting has a place in your new web design and it needs to get done before your designer starts to apply hair and makeup to your design (color, imagery).

Now that you have your requirements and design layout chosen you’re ready to start applying your marketing copy or text to the website. Hey, go crazy with your wordsmithing and headline writing. The tighter this stuff is the better the final design. You might wonder why we make text before we apply the last layer of lipstick to our design. It’s critical since your marketing copy is descrbing both your product/service and how you differentiate your business – all summed up to capture your company’s essence (or in marketing lingo your brand). This written description paints a mental picture in the mind of the reader. That’s good because that’s what your designer should have in mind before they design! Give this text to your designer to help them conjure up all sorts of images, colors, and ultimately a design that visually depicts what you’ve described in text.

Apply the skin of your design (hair, makeup, etc.)

With every other part of your design in place from your content, layout and navigation it’s finally the moment of truth. The designer has to bring all this together in a way that pleases your customer. And at the very least the design has to be something you believe in, even if it’s not to your exact taste.

The good news is that by going through this process you’ve already given your designer tons of feedback on what you need. Because of this your web designer often ‘nails’ a design on the first attempt and produces a design that knocks your socks off and more importantly those socks on your customer!

If you don’t like the design you’ll have already agreed on many aspects of overall design so you really hone in on what’s not working about the design. It makes this step less confrontational and faster to get through.

Get feedback on the design from a small number of real customers

Before you select a final design or throw your designers ideas out the window get feedback from 4-8 actual customers. It’s not hard to do – just get creative. People are happy to help out and no one has a hard time expressing their opinion when asked! You can ask your customer the obvious question: “how do you like the design of our new website?” but don’t worry about negative feedback unless it represents the majority opinion. Remember, just like you your customers have a design bias. So ask less subjective questions like ‘would this website address your questions and give you a reason to contact us?’. Use this real world customer feedback to tweak your design. Fixing design issues are typically small tweaks that can make a big difference like using a different picture or headline.

Wrap up

The process we’ve outlined is one that an interactive web agency like we have here at LOCAL Na8ion can do for you (including the actual design) but it can also feel too process heavy for small business and sounds expensive. It doesn’t have to be either of those things.

It’s true that this process (like any) can turn into a runaway. But you can avoid that by sticking to your goals and keeping your time and business size in mind. A website requirements list for Bank of America can be 50 pages long. Yours should fit on one. The entire process could take a big company six months to get through but you can follow each step in this process quickly and be done in a week. That’s a good investment in time given that your new web design will be around a few years.

Most designs made for small business don’t follow any process at all and the results are similarly hit and miss. You often feel you’ve accomplished your goal when you’ve selected a web design that you like. Don’t measure success by your design bias. Let the results of your web design be judged by the effect it has on producing new customers leads. Thinking this way will redefine your small business marketing in more ways than just your web design. It can be applied to all your marketing decisions.

Last Word

Can this process work with inexpensive design templates and WordPress themes? You bet!

Custom design can be expensive. A minimal design might set you back between $1000 and $8,000. That’s just the design, don’t forget you may need to budget for marketing strategy (identifying your customer and figuring out how to best connect with them), search engine optimization, social media optimization and copywriting. Great designers design stuff. Don’t ask them to perform SEO or develop a marketing strategy.

One of our specialties here at LOCAL Na8ion is the use of design templates for projects (we specifically use WordPress to power all of our business website projects). We believe in design templates so much that we used a design template on our original website and our recently ‘re-designed’ website. You’re looking at it and it cost me $70. It met my website requirements and it also looked much like the wireframe I made before I got into the hair and makeup phase of the design. Using templates for our client projects allows us to focus on providing services to small businesses that normally couldn’t afford them like local search engine optimization, training on how to use Facebook or online video to market your business.

Your website is just one part of an online marketing strategy to get your business new customers. Building your new design using this process gives your offline and online marketing a platform that can connect the missing dots in turning shoppers into buyers while saving you precious time and money along the way. Oh, and chances are pretty decent that you’ll end up liking your new web design, especially the results part where you make more money.

Julian Seery Gude, ed LOCAL Na8ion

The biggest mistake in web design Small Business Web Design, Local Internet Marketing, Local SEO, Online Video, Training | LOCAL Na8ion West Palm Beach, FL -

Issue 2 – March 2, 2010

Featured Article | Don’t let Flash happen to you

Last week I got a call from Fantasia Floral Design, a local florist on the upper east side of New York City. They were interested in the article I wrote on the Google Enhanced Business Listing. Before calling the business I performed a quick assessment of their website. What I found was a critical and all too common problem. Read full story…

Video Podcast | Think Global – Market Local | Episode 23 Local Knowledge

February 24, 2010 | For those of you who have products or services that can be sold anywhere the Internet has opened up new revenue and growth opportunities for small business that never existed before. But just because you can get business from anywhere doesn’t mean that your marketing effort should be similarly broad. While I encourage you to think globally when it comes to your ideas and marketing differentiation I would strongly suggest that you act locally when it comes time for targeting your message and advertising. Watch Video.

Watercooler | How Google’s Algorithm Rules the Web

It’s impossible to market your business online today without paying great attention to Google. Watch them closely, obey their rules and reap the rewards of free leads pouring in to your website. Steven Levy of Wired Magazine published a very informative article February 22, 2010 called How Google’s Algorithm Rules the Web. The article covers the evolution of their algorithm changes and gives us some great hints on what’s to come. Please read it.

Local 141 | Juicy links & status updates

March 1, 2010

Google just bought web-based photo editor picnik. Here’s my video lesson on picnik http://bit.ly/ruR4G & story here http://bit.ly/a5Q7Ap
Dec ’09 54% of small businesses used social media to monitor feedback about their business. Here’s how: http://bit.ly/diYSag
69% of small businesses used social media to post status updates or share links according to eMarketer http://bit.ly/99VW2T

February 27, 2010

How local is local?  @gsterling reports buyers make large % of purchases within 6 miles of home. http://bit.ly/dav8RJ
If u r unsure of how to write an SEO friendly article, blog post or press release then scribe for WP might help you http://scribeseo.com/

February 26, 2010

Great post by  @davidmihm on the complexity of local search (local SEO) http://selnd.com/ci90S5
Want better local Google rankings? Read this real useful post & video by  @localseoinc http://bit.ly/197jqE

February 25th, 2010

5 Tips for Using Online Video to Market Your Small Business GREAT post by  @morganb on  @reelseo‘s site http://bit.ly/aEEcpt
Small Business Owners: According to Forrester your chance of appearing in a Google search are 50X more likely with video than website text.
Small Business Owners: According to Forrester your chance of appearing in a Google search are 50X more likely with video than website text.

February 24, 2010

My latest LOCAL Na8ion video on local internet marketing for small business: Think Global – Market Local http://bit.ly/b0RzQS
Mobilize your small biz WordPress website with WP-Touch plugin. Works for iPhone, Android & BB Storm phones http://bit.ly/7acG7Q

February 23, 2010

How’s your mobile website? Mobile Local Search is now 28% of all digital searches http://bit.ly/bHFvXP

I hope you enjoyed this week’s edition of Local Bits, Bytes and BS.

- Julian Seery Gude
LOCALNa8ion.com – Where you are is where it’s at

About | Local Bits, Bytes & BS is our weekly online magazine and email newsletter for small business owners that need to connect with local buyers for next-to-nothing using practical online tools and methods. We publish content every week that reveals secrets from the leading edge of local internet marketing, local search engine optimization, social media, online video, web design and WordPress.

Subscribe: You can find Bits, Bytes & BS online at www.LOCALNa8ion.com or subscribe to the weekly newsletter.

Local Bits, Bytes and BS | Weekly Issue No. 2 Small Business Web Design, Local Internet Marketing, Local SEO, Online Video, Training | LOCAL Na8ion West Palm Beach, FL -

QuickTime, iPhone or iPod Download

Episode 20 continues our Local Knowledge video series on basic skills you’ll need in order to run your small business Website using WordPress. Our lesson today kicks off with some background on how your normal website (the frontend of your website) relates with the WordPress Dashboard (the backend of WordPress) and concludes by hightlighting the most often used parts of WordPress. Our examples even give you a sneak peak of editing and adding a blog post and page – something we will cover in greater depth in our next video lessons.

This lesson assumes you have a working WordPress installation and that you have logged in.

Part II – What every small business should know about WordPress | Episode 20 Local Knowledge Small Business Web Design, Local Internet Marketing, Local SEO, Online Video, Training | LOCAL Na8ion West Palm Beach, FL -

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Episode 19 begins our Local Knowledge series on basic skills you’ll need in order to run your small business Website using WordPress.

Our lesson today kicks off with some background on using WordPress to power your small business website and concludes with a how-to video showing you how to log in to WordPress. This lesson assumes you have a working WordPress installation.

I’ll be continuing the WordPress for small business video tutorials by covering the most common things you’ll need to know to update your WordPress website on your own.

You can also follow the Pictorial under the video if you don’t want to watch the video intro and video lesson.

Step-by-Step Pictorial Below

Step 1: Click on picture to see full fize image

Step 2: Click picture to see full size image

Step 3: Click picture to see full size image

What every small business should know about WordPress | Episode 19 Local Knowledge Small Business Web Design, Local Internet Marketing, Local SEO, Online Video, Training | LOCAL Na8ion West Palm Beach, FL -

QuickTime, iPhone or iPod Download.

In today’s episode of Local Knowledge I talk with viewers about how access to technology for small to medium sized businesses is creating big change fast in local online marketing. I cover easy-to-update websites and low cost online video to how Smartphones like the iPhone 3GS should be in the pockets of businesses like yours right NOW. Access to high quality low cost tools to make websites and online video offer companies with small budgets the chance to participate in marketing that used to just be for those with deep pockets. This is truly the age of The David’s triumphing over the Goliath’s. Here’s the link I mention in my video about the local CBS Television affiliate in Miami who used an iPhone 3GS to shoot, edit and upload his story to his station that broadcast it over the air.

Access means Big Change Fast | Episode 18 Local Knowledge Small Business Web Design, Local Internet Marketing, Local SEO, Online Video, Training | LOCAL Na8ion West Palm Beach, FL -

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If you don’t already have an easy-to-update website for your business check out this video.

Update your website for more leads | Episode 17 Local Knowledge Small Business Web Design, Local Internet Marketing, Local SEO, Online Video, Training | LOCAL Na8ion West Palm Beach, FL -

You may know WordPress as the very popular blogging tool that is now in use in over 50 languages and powers millions of blogs worldwide. What’s less known is the ability to use WordPress to power a regular small business website, even when there’s no blog involved.

Web marketers and website developers are increasingly using WordPress to power very large websites as well. Here are a few examples.

Customers around the world trust Network Solutions to manage more than 7 million domains, over 1.5 million e-mailboxes, and more than 350,000 Web sites.

Network Solutions Uses WordPress

Declared a National Historic Landmark in 1978, Timberline Lodge is one of Oregon’s most popular tourist attractions, drawing more than two million visitors every year. Considered an architectural wonder, it’s still being used for its original intent—a magnificent ski lodge and mountain retreat for all to enjoy.

Timberline Lodge in Oregon uses WordPress for their website

Camacho Cigars have been described as “The Best Habano outside of Cuba” by many cigar experts. Our brands are made with the original Cuban Criollo and Authentic Corojo seed tobaccos grown by the Eiroa family in Honduras.

Camacho Cigars uses WordPress

Just from looking at these three examples of business websites built on WordPress you can see why we love to use it here at LOCALNa8ion.

Central in our strategy in using WordPress for small business websites is the flexibility inherent in WordPress itself. Think for a minute about the diversity of small businesses. There are almost as many types of companies, products and services as there are people – each one with their own unique needs.

The diverse requirements of small business requires your website publishing platform to meet three main criteria:

1. fully featured
2. easy to customize design and add content
3. easy to extend or add functionality (extensibility)

WordPress is part of the newer class of website platforms called Content Management Systems (CMS for short) and it scores near perfect marks in these categories, making it ideal to adapt for any use.

Did we mention that WordPress is free?

That’s because WordPress is Open Source software, which simply means anyone is free to use and alter the software for any purpose. Due to its open source nature WordPress has amassed a legion of users worldwide and that in turn has created a massive development community (over 10,000 worldwide) that write software (called plug-ins) that add functionality to WordPress.

An example of this flexibility would be a plug-in to make your WordPress website an e-commerce store. With the addition of just one WordPress plug-in (also free) your small business website can be completely transformed to sell your products over the web.

This saves tons of money on web development costs. A site that could have cost $5,000 to $10,000 U.S. only a few years ago can be made for as little as $1,000 $3,000 today.

The amount of WordPress users and developers insures an almost limitless supply of online tutorials, how-to guides, video lessons, books (like WordPress for Dummies) and other resources you can tap into to help build your website (like us here LOCALNa8ion). You never have to worry about buying some obsolete dinosaur that no one will be able to fix or change a few years down to road.

So what are some other examples of WordPress flexibility?

DESIGNM.AG, is an online community for web developers that recently posted 11 non-traditional uses of WordPress. If you read the post you’ll see people using WordPress to do everything from running an online membership directory to an email newsletter or online job board.

That’s part of the backstory on why you should sign up wth us to get your own WordPress installation today.

Julian Seery Gude, ed
Small Business Internet Marketing, Website Design, SEO | LOCALNa8ion
Where you are is where it’s at

12 examples of WordPress flexibility for small business Small Business Web Design, Local Internet Marketing, Local SEO, Online Video, Training | LOCAL Na8ion West Palm Beach, FL -

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Today on Local Knowledge I discuss four main topics, including:

• Batch your work using time, tools & technology
• Edit a WordPress post or page (see LocalNa8ion.com for full video)
• Update your site once per month to maintain reader/viewer interest and improve your search engine results
• Promote other content on the web to save your own time when blogging or creating web content

Looking for the link for 100+ WordPress Video Tutorials?

Here’s SpeckyBoy.com’s post 100+ WordPress Video Tutorials, from Basic to Advanced

How to edit WordPress Posts & Pages

Now, here’s that videoTutorial by iThemes.com and ScreenTutorial.com on how to edit WordPress posts and pages.

Thanks for watching Local Knowledge, the world’s first video podcast dedicated to Local Internet Marketing

Julian Seery Gude, ed

LocalNa8ion.com

Where you are is where it’s at

You can do it all with the Internet | Episode 14 Local Knowledge Small Business Web Design, Local Internet Marketing, Local SEO, Online Video, Training | LOCAL Na8ion West Palm Beach, FL -

The difference between a local consumer and a local job seeker is the product they’re researching online.

Finding good employees is one of the biggest challenges any company faces and just like selling your products and services locally you have to position your company to attract new employees.

That’s why your local online marketing plan needs to include your job candidate. There’s a term in the recruiting industry to describe the majority of candidates – passive candidates. Because they’re not looking for jobs they’re tough to find – and even harder to woo away.

When Shannon isn’t helping me with Local Na8ion she’s VP Interactive at the largest recruitment marketing ad agency in the U.S.. Shannon’s pet peeve is when companies spend millions on a new consumer campaign and fail to include the job candidate in the process. Your current and prospective customers that you’re trying to reach with your marketing are also candidates that could be your next best hire. Think about it, many of us choose or reject the companies we consider for employment based solely on how we experience that companies brand or product.

You just have to make small adjustments to your marketing strategy to include job candidates. Make yourself a careers page. When you run online or print ads include a link to your careers page and make sure there’s a careers link right on your home page. That way your consumer or B2B marketing gets people thinking of you as a preferred employer, not just a product or service. Check out this interview of Shannon on using social media for recruiting on Bill Vick’s XtremeRecruiting.org. Use examples of Shannon’s career’s web site projects for Discover, BofA, and Fedex as illustrations of the content you want to include on your small business careers web site.

Finding your next star employee with Local Internet Marketing Small Business Web Design, Local Internet Marketing, Local SEO, Online Video, Training | LOCAL Na8ion West Palm Beach, FL -

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Episode 6: Time for us to get real. Time is short, money is tight, and we need ways to grow our company.

It’s time to start applying Local Na8ion’s three-phase local online marketing program in real life – the place where we’re overloaded with information and work and challenges.

We’ll do this by helping our friend Ed and his Firefighter partner get their new business Florida Fire Fitness off the ground (with hook and ladder if need be). You’ll get to come along as I chronicle each move we make.

In this video session that I recorded on SuperBowl Sunday 2008 while out for a bike ride with the kids I talk about our framework for getting you more local customers. It’s what we call our three-phase (create, publish, connect) local online marketing program.

We’ll cover the full range of topics here from the online publishing side where we’ll talk about selecting a web-host, installing WordPress, getting the WordPress options set up, and installing plugins to enchance WordPress’s productivity. Did I mention web site design – yeah, we’ll do that too.

Then we’ll get into some ways to create relevant local content efficiently for Ed’s site that will draw people in from search engines and online communities and keep them coming back for more. We’ll also discuss aspects like how to optimize his site content for local search engines like Google Local and Yahoo! Local. We’ll finish by submitting Ed’s new site to local directories and guides and look at ways to utilize web 2.0 sites like Flickr and Facebook to connect with customers while increasing search engine rank.

Come on – let’s start a three-alarm fire at Florida Fire Fitness!

Applying our three-phase local online marketing program Small Business Web Design, Local Internet Marketing, Local SEO, Online Video, Training | LOCAL Na8ion West Palm Beach, FL -