Just read this tweet from Pam Slim

wow, for such an amazing and prolific woman, what a bad website. http://www.mayaangelou.com/

And it made me realize something… that in the online world, our websites are the equivalent of ‘business attire’. And a poor site can actually reflect negatively on the person in the same way that shoulder pads and an outdated haircut will in the corporate world.

Our websites are what we are ‘wearing’ online – and I think we may need to call Stacy & Clinton to do a bit of website intervention for some folks. It is SO much easier these days to get a really professional website done for a very reasonable price (if you need a referral to someone let me know)… and for that reason I think that anyone serious about doing business online needs to be willing to invest in their ‘look’.

Perhaps it is time to start What Not to Wear – the website edition. Anyone care to nominate a friend for a makeover? Just pop their name here into the comments field and we can plan our ambush.

We just announced our newest Hot Skills VA Training program - the ‘Basic Website Design & Maintenance for Virtual Assistants’ course.

Both Cindy and I have been wanting to teach a course on how-to do basic website changes for quite some time now, but really neither of us is qualified to teach the ‘latest and greatest’ of what is out there. (Really, we need to take the course ourselves… hehe.)

So after much nagging from yours truly, my good friend and biz associate Amy Taggart of DesignFormare.com agreed to do this training with us. I have worked with Amy for over a year now, and she is certainly my go-to-gal when it comes to any website design based questions. She’s been both VA and website designer (over 10 years designing) so she understands both sides of the coin.

If you are a VA or other online support professional who would LOVE to add basic website design skills to your portfolio we’d love to have you join us – there is a $100 early bird savings if you register by August 15th.

>> Check it out at: http://www.hotskillsvatraining.com/websitebasics/

I came across the coolest tool today – Website Grader is a free seo tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. You plug in your URL and it gives you an analysis of how well your site is setup from an SEO and marketing perspective.

Here is my report card for OnlineBusinessManager.com – i’m not too shy to share, go ahead and take a peek.

I scored 66 out of 100, not too bad considering that my website has not been getting the attention it deserves in recently months.  At least i’m not alone in this regard… a report they have posted from from October 2007 says:

This report shows the SEO capabilities of the Top 20 Bloggers (from Technorati). Some interesting findings include that out of the top 20 bloggers, 40% are missing a 301 redirect, 65% are missing description metadata, and 80% are missing keywords metadata.

So i’m in good company, haha. Some of their suggestions are quick and easy (ie: change my redirect from OBM.com to my blog to be a permanent redirect – done!) and some not so quick and easy but at least they are there in black and white. I find half the battle of tweaking my site is figuring out what to change in the first place.

I also really like what they cover in the report – along with ‘traditional’ SEO stuff such as meta tags, incoming links and such they also take a look at blogging, social bookmarking and conversion elements too.

So put your website to the test and let me know your score! I’m going to make some changes and see if I can get my grades up a bit, hehe.

I got quite a nice little treat in the mail today - a copy of Sandra De Freitas’ new book Does this Blogsite Make My Wallet Look Fat?

Having had a blog now for over 3 years (did my first post in September 2004, yowza!) i’m a HUGE fan of setting up your website using a blog platform. Not only are they easy to use and update, the search engines love them too… a ‘dynamic’ blogsite will get a higher ranking than a ’static’ website anyday.

Blogs also solve one of my biggest pet peeves about websites – the high cost of going with a ‘traditional website design’ that can literally cost thousands and not make a dime. As Sandra says:

One of the main reasons I wrote this book was because I was getting tired and heartbroken of hearing Coaches, Consultants, Speakers and other entrepreneurs spend thousands of dollars (up to $8,000 usd) on a website that looks pretty but doesn’t work. If I could stop 1 entrepreneur from spending thousands of dollars on a website that sucks then my mission has been accomplished.

You go girl! 

Once upon a time this site was built using Movable Type. A couple of years ago I met and fell in love with Wordpress, and made the switch to the Wordpress system about a year ago now. I haven’t looked back since… not only is it free, I find it much ‘friendlier’ to use than Movable Type and recommend it wholeheartedly.

Enough from me, buy Sandra’s book and you’ll have everything you need to setup a blogsite before dinner.

For those not familiar with Google AdSense, it is an advertising system that automatically delivers text and image ads that are precisely targeted to your site and your site content.

You’ve probably seen them on some sites, a little box/column titled “Ads by Google” followed by a few ads offering various things.

Is it a good idea to offer Google AdSense ads on your website? No way Jose.

A couple of things to consider here:

First, when someone comes to your site you want them to take some kind of action that puts them into your ‘marketing funnel’. Be it signing up for your newsletter, or buying a product/service. The key to this is to keep your site simple and focused, leading them to take that action step.

When you put Google Ads on your site you are showing people an “exit door” from your website. They could become distracted by what the Google Ad is offering, and click through to someone else’s site never to return again. Eeek, not good.

Secondly, and so *very* important in my opinion is the trust/relationship that you have with your site visitors. With Google AdSense you have control over the types of ads that are displayed on your site, but not the actual ads themselves.

There is no way to know which ads will be shown and the ‘validity’ of the offers being made. Put simply – people could click on an ad from your site to a product that sucks. Eeek again.

Relationship and trust are so important online, and I personally don’t see the need to risk that for the sake of making a few bucks.

What is the appeal of Google Adsense anyways? From what I can see it is just the fact that you can make additional money from your site… which is cool. But I consider the value of a customer to be so much more important than that. Perhaps i’m missing something here? Hmmm.

My conclusion: Google Adsense does not make any sense for the relationship driven site/sale.

You know, if someone was to ask me the ’secret’ to building a business online I would say it is one simple thing:

Capture the email address of anyone who visits your website

An email address in the online world is the equivalent of a business card in the offline world.

Say you are at a networking meeting talking to someone who is a great fit for your service/product. What do you do? You ask for their business card and permission to contact them again.

If you don’t, that person will walk out the door and you have no way to contact them again. Doh!

The same thing applies online. Your website is simply a conversation with the people who visit your site… a written/read conversation instead of verbal. And in this conversation your visitors get to know you and determine if they have an interest in what you are offering.

If they are interested, you want to capture their email address to continue the conversation in some fashion.

This is the *ultimate* goal of any online marketing effort. With an email address you can contact the person again through your newsletter or perhaps a direct response. Without the email address they are gone with no way for you to reach them, and chances are pretty slim that they will come back to your site anytime soon (stats show that return visits are pretty rare).

I went to a website the other day, a coach who does swimming and triathlon programs here in Calgary. I came to his site already interested as a referral and looking to be notified of upcoming courses/programs… and you know what? There was *no* way for me to leave him my email address.

(BONK!) Sound of my head hitting my desk.

It honestly makes my heart sad when I see this online. Here I am, an interested and eager potential client, and there is no way for me to join his mailing list.

So is your website set up to capture the email address of your visitors? You can do this by offering a free report, a newsletter, heck even just a “join to be notified of my upcoming classes” form.

Some techniques are definitely better than others for capturing email addresses (that whole conversion thing)… but the main thing is that you have some kind of “join here” form on your homepage.

If you do any one thing to your website do this… my forehead will thank you.

PS – How do they get the caramel inside the Caramilk bar anyways? Has anyone ever found out? LOL

Hey everyone,

I just helped a client launch their first “pink spoon” website. Check it out at:

www.DiscoverSpirit.com

(Update June 2005: The above link takes you to a copy of the website I did for them in February 2005. The actual site has since been changed as i’m no longer working with this client)

Sidenote: For those not familiar with the term “pink spoon” this refers to your freebie offer at your website, and is a term coined by Andrea Lee in her Multiple Streams of Coaching Income Membership.

The approach for this website:

- to keep it short and super simple
- offer one call to action… all that they can do from this website is sign up for the 5 part course
- to make a somewhat “fluffy or new agey” topic a bit more down to earth and easy to follow

The purpose of this website is to start collecting a list of names so that we can build a relationship with these people and start offering them further products/services down the road.

Let me know what you think, share a comment below.

Video for websites has been lurking around as the “next best thing” for a while now. But it hasnt been very easy to set up due to technology, download speeds etc (think of video files as audio files on steriods! they are just that much bigger/complicated).

This is the first easy to use system that i’ve seen for video, just got this in my inbox today.

http://instantvideogenerator.com

Cool hey? Launching end of November.

These are the same guys who did www.audiogenerator.com, which is a great tool for getting audio onto your website.

I haven’t played with it yet, just wanted to share for those keeners out there.

Enjoy!

One of the key nuggets that I got from the Website Clinic with Dean Jackson last week was the purpose of a website – get your visitors email address so that you can “engage” with them and start to build a relationship.

And it clicked for me today that you can *not* actually create a relationship with someone on your website.

The relationship doesn’t actually start until there is a little bit of “back and forth”… each party must give something to the other. You give some value in the form of a special report or a newsletter or such, and your visitor gives you their email address in exchange for the value. Voila! At that point the relationship has begun.

So a relationship is not started (or continued) on your website alone. If someone comes to visit, takes a peek around and leaves without giving their email address then the relationship is lost before it has even begun.

What does this mean?

Simple. The ONLY purpose of your website should be to give something of value to your visitors in exchange for their email address. Nothing more, nothing less (yes, im being extreme).

Most of us have a tendency to throw everything up on our site – we tell them all about our services, products, articles we’ve written, bios, etc. This “info overload” approach can be an issue for a couple of reasons.

1. A confused mind doesn’t buy (or take the next step). If you have too much information on your website, particularly your homepage, your request to capture their email address can get buried and missed.

2. You may lose the opportunity to start a relationship with that person. If they can find out everything they need to know on your website, why would they bother to give you their email address to find out more?

Keep your website clean and focused, so the only thing a person can do at your site is give you their email address. Then, once you have their email address you can tell them all about your other offerings in a series of autoresponders (there is an art to doing a great autoresponder, but that’s another story).

Take a look at this webpage:
www.fireyourweddingplanner.com

The page is short, simple and compelling… you better believe that i’m going to sign up if i’m getting married anytime soon! (We need to be interested in what is being offered of course.)

You will also notice that she is not signing you up for a newsletter. She is offering a “wedding planning ecourse” and “free instant access to wedding saving secrets” – which is actually another sales page to buy her ebook!

I also love this “no newsletter” approach as it takes away that obligation to keep churning out a newsletter every week or so (for those of us who don’t want to work that hard . But, having captured my email address she can still contact me down the road.

Great stuff, I love it. And of course, fits my mantra of being “super simple”!

Curious, what do you think? How do you see this applying to your website? Post a comment below.