I recently had a client call me out on what they felt was a contradiction.  I harp on content being king.  For a successful site they need engaging content that people will want to consume and they need to present it in a way that is friendly for Search engines.

I must have over-harped because I suggest a redesign for a section of their site that was content rich and growing rapidly.  My client said, “But the content is great.  You always tell me to focus on the content.”  While I agree that content is most important, it can’t come at the expense of a professional layout.

Here’s why.  A poorly designed site degrades credibility.  Users have to have faith that the content is coming from a credible source.  If great content is displayed in an amateurish way, users will move on.

A professional layout is the ring to your content’s diamond.  It supports your content while displaying the information in a pleasing way that let’s users appreciate what you are offering.  A poor layout is like burying a diamond in mud.  It’s still a diamond but no one wants to undertake the work and the mess of uncovering it.

People tend to love designing the details of any marketing initiative.  I truly understand why too.  It’s the slick and cool piece of marketing.  Unfortunately, it’s typically the least impactful to your audience and should garner the least attention.  If you are doing any internet marketing activity, plan an overview before considering any details.

I was in a meeting where a new web design was being proposed.  A basic wireframe was presented with hierarchy and navigation for a website.  I felt the proposed layout was practical, provided good visitor flow (scent), and ultimately made a lot of sense for the company.  The company representative’s comment was that the colors should be brighter and that she couldn’t read the text.  She also pointed out a few typos.

While the presenter obviously did a poor job prepping the company representative for what she was going to see, I’m always a little put-off when I hear this response. 

The first problem was that the text was just sample text.  A lot of it was gibberish so I had to chuckle inwardly at picking out typos in the first paragraph.  The second problem was that the company representative was focusing on all the wrong things.  She was discussing design tweaks rather than hierarchy and navigation.  The latter two are much more likely to effect ROI.

When setting up, designing, or re-designing any online marketing initiative.  Get the overview down.  Clearly define a goal and then create a diagram that will support the audience taking action on that goal.  A slick layout will not convert your audience.  The detail and design is a supporting feature of the larger hierarchies.  You have to map out a trip before worrying about whether to take a left or a right. 

Many people miss the forest for the trees.  Make sure you understand what and where the forest is before deciding how to place the trees.

- Eric
eMarketing Innovation

P.S. No I am not the presenter in this story (though it seems like a “my friend” scenario.  I was involved to collaborate on how the email campaigns would update and be incorporated into a new design.

For the most part site owners are beginning to see the value in tracking their sites performance.  Several surveys have indicated that most people gather the data and never do anything with it.  That’s not the best idea as reports are nice but the whole point is to measure improvement.  However, there is a growing number of people that do take action on the numbers.  Unfortunately, many are finding that their actions are negatively effecting site performance.  Take time to critically analyse site data to make sure that the prescribed solution is not an oversimplification of the problem.

I recently encountered a site that had been performing moderately well, providing small niche recorded material.  The site owner had let data compile for two months and sorted through it to see if he could improve orders.  He was reasonably pleased with his traffic but felt that pages were being abandoned too much.  He had a 5% order rate. 

His conclusion was that people weren’t getting the information they needed because the time on page was small.  For his products index page the average time was 2 seconds.  Since it had the lowest amount of time per page he decided to focus his efforts there.  He set out to increase that time and felt some revised content that was more in depth would help conversion.

Here’s the problem, the products index page only listed the items he had for sale with a photo.  It was a good thing that people were only there for a very short period.  Page tracking showed that 93% of them moved off to one of his half dozen products.  The page was working perfectly by getting people to the information they wanted.

He added descriptions to the links and found that time on page increased to around 25 seconds.  He was pleased until he found out his monthly revenue dropped slightly three months in a row afterward.  Upon further analysis we discovered that he had gone from a 93% rate of people making it to the individual product page to a 79% rate.  Site abandonment on this page went from 4% to 7%.  People couldn’t find the product they wanted as easily and were getting lost in added descriptive paragraphs.

The site owners oversimplification of the numbers blinded him to user experience.  He tried to apply a “universal rule” to his numbers and found it was actually detrimental. 

Understand who uses your site and how.  Always think critically about why analytics are showing what they are showing before making changes.  Most importantly track changes you make so that if you miss the mark on an optimization you have the ability to recognize the error and correct it.

Great content is only good if people can find it.  Some thought towards navigation is always necessary in any internet project.  This means social networking sites, blogs, wikis, traditional sites, forums, etc.  Make sure that all your online efforts provide an easy way to access information.

Most of us know that website navigation is important (look at all these articles).  Navigation doesn’t end with just the website.  Any content driven media online should provide convenient ways for finding desired material.  People tend to ignore navigation outside their website.  The good news is that it’s not too challenging.  It just takes diligence.

A blog is an easy example.  Most of the navigation is built in for you.  Search features are common and adding categories or links is a good way to provide an ability to sort material.  It’s just a matter of doing it.  Many people get caught up in writing content they don’t take the last step to categorize it.  Be diligent and always make sure that people can find what you’ve written.

Another danger is getting caught up in “the rules” or “the style guide”.  Having defined standards on a site, blog, forum, etc. that people can follow is essential.  However, there needs to be some room for exceptions.  Don’t be afraid to buck a rule if it causes confusing navigation.

I recently encountered an example.  The site I was revising had several pages that served as indexes for different sections of content.  So far so good, the sections were all unique categories.  However, the second level provided the quandary.  The site rule was that all lists would be in alphabetical order. 

Not inherently a problem.  However, one of the category pages had a link that 83% of visitors ultimately clicked.  However, the time on the page was much longer than one would expect to simply move on to a content page.  Furthermore the service group routinely got calls asking about the location of this link.  It was by far the most popular link on the page but was not easily located. 

Where should it be placed?  Logically we would expect it to be right on the top of the page, right?.  Wrong, the link started with “Materials” so it was the 21st link out of 28.  It wasn’t even visible without scrolling down.

Now anyone freshly looking at this information would say put the most popular link on top.  Maybe it should be bolded or emphasized in some way as the analytics are clearly showing it’s what visitors are looking for.  However, the site owner fell into the “rules” trap.  The rule was alphabetical lists so “M” was toward the bottom.  No exceptions.

Make sure navigation is available and logical.  It’s important to remember that it has to logical to visitors rather than site owners.   Don’t make rules that work for you but not your visitors.  When visitors can find what they are looking for, the credibility of your content and your organization increase.

I previously posted about making social networking sustaninable through a single content source.  There is a hidden pitfall here.  A single content source needs to be singular.  That means it speaks to a single topic.  My blog is an example of stretching about as far as possible.  I cover internet marketing, SEO, email marketing, and website maintenance.  These three pieces are pretty closely related.  I could probably include something like web design to stretch it further if I chose.  What I can’t do is make posts about an action movie I just saw, coin collecting, or my favorite recipes.  They aren’t related so they don’t belong.  The single content source needs to have a single consistent topic.

Many people that have social networking sites and point them to a single content source start bending this rule because it saves time.  There professional blog starts getting notes about a party with their friends.  Worse yet the two worlds collide when their crazy friend leaves expletive language about how crazy the party was.  Pick the singular content and never stray from it.

Breaking largely varying topics into categories is not appropriate.  Categories should be very specific and interrelated to other posts, not a whole new topic.

So what if you have a professional blog but want to write about stamp collecting?  Easy, start another blog.  You can write about as many topics as you’d like, time allowing, just make sure it’s in the right place. 

Two problems arise when you break your topic into multiple blogs:

• The amount of work has just doubled
• Social networking needs to be intelligently segmented to get that audience to what they want.

For the extra work, there’s no way around it.  Think of it as opening up double the audience.  For segmenting social networking, you can start by reviewing some I covered in a previous post.

Identify who likely wants the content.  LinkedIn likely doesn’t need your stamp collecting posts.  Business contacts probably want info from your professional blog.  Facebook might not be interested in your professional site but your stamp collecting friends will want an update on your stamp blog.  Twitter might need both.  Since commenting is restricted that might not be terrible, just make sure titles make it clear what people should expect.  You don’t want your professional blog readers stumbling into your stamp blog and thinking your business has taken a radical turn in expertise.

The real reason to make a single content source singular is to provide readers with the content they desire.  It promises content about a certain topic.  Filling it with unrelated material is not only confusing, it betrays the people that find it.  Make sure that people who find their way to your single content source via social networking or search engines receive what they were promised.

After posting about funneling social networking sites to a single content source, I had several questions arrive that showed how expansive social networking has become.  One person had 12 profiles.  Twelve!  While my suggestion was still to funnel to a single content source, simply updating that many sections could still be a maintenance headache.  Make sure that a profile is worth updating before wasting time on it.

A good way to thin out the workload of social networking sites is evaluating which are appropriate.  Below is a sampling of three of the most common sites and my observations on their best use.

• Facebook - Facebook is great for cultivating an online contact list.  However, it’s suited for the individual and while they are making strides to incorporate company info, it tends to be an afterthought.  It is almost impossible to have meaningful connections while maintaining a “company” profile which forces an individual within the organization to take ownership of the profile. So while it is a great social environment, any business/marketing use has to be monitored as the lines between personal and professional tend to get blurred.   If they get too blurred there is a distinct risk to reflect negatively on the professional.
• Linked In - Linked In is designed for the business user.  The contacts are designed to be a professional reference and many tools are available to sync the profile up with professional websites and/or blogs.  It’s set up to promote the professional individual but is easy to incorporate into company profile information.  It tends to be a poor fit for personal social interaction and for some professional organizations it can be too sterile.  If your organization has a social aspect to it, the business focus can send the wrong message.
• Twitter - Twitter is flexible enough to be used in any way.  Since profiles tend to have less one-on-one interaction, personal contacts can bleed into professional ones.  Since posts are less personal, organization profiles are much more feasible.  It’s really up to the poster to decide what focus they want to take.  It is limited by how much can be input and doesn’t have the expansive features that other sites do.

These are just a small sampling of some of the most popular sites.  There are literally thousands of sites with different topic or industry focuses available. 

Before creating a profile, make sure that the sites focus is a good fit for you or the organization.  If it’s not relevant, don’t waste time setting up a profile that other members likely aren’t interested in. 

Secondarily, monitor the activity on the site.  If no connections are made or no meaningful responses result, then disregard the site.  It’s either proving that it doesn’t have a viable user base or that the user base is apathetic toward your content.  Maintaining a socail network profile takes time and energy, make sure that it’s a good investment with potential for a return. 

Everyone likes the idea of using social networks to build business or raise awareness of an organization.  However, most people don’t like the time involved in having a presence in the most popular social networks.  I am one of those people!  We all have a lot of things to get done and social networking is rarely our highest priority.  So how can we leverage social networking without sacrificing a lot of time?  Set a sustainable content funnel to maximize content across social networks.

Here is a common business approach to social networking:

• I’ve heard people can generate business through sites like facebook, twitter, linkedIn, etc.
• I signed up for all of them and created a profile referencing my website.
• I try to keep up with content on all the sites.
• I’m falling behind on checking the sites.
• I used to have an account on those sites but they don’t generate any business so I quit

The problem with this approach is that it’s too time intensive.  Few people have enough time available to adequately keep updates flowing over multiple social networking sites. For those that have the time or make the time, congratulations, that is the ideal way to handle social networking.  For anyone who struggles to keep entries current, a content funnel can be a life saver.  It provides frequent updates but funnels all sites to a single content source. 

What’s the source?  You’re reading my single source right now, it’s my blog.  All my profiles get updated with new blog posts and direct people here.  So I write my post once, update my profiles and I’m done.  You don’t necessarily need a blog.  Facebook provides ample areas to make posts (either through a blog or on the wall) that people can funnel to.  The only concern here is making sure that your profile is accessible to all, so that people don’t have to bother with befriending you to see content.

So here’s my funneled approach to social networking:

• Create a single source for frequent content updates (blog, dedicated website section, open social network page)
• Create a profile for the sites you’d like a profile on
• Update those pages with links to your single content source when something new appears.
• Reply to responses from the single content source and/or from the social networking sites.

This model provides most of the benefits of social networking sites without an overwhelming time commitment.

Everyone could use some extra time right?  One of the biggest time consuming maintenance activities on a website is having to update something on every page of your site.  Depending on the change, it’s usually a cut and paste exercise but wouldn’t it be great to change it once and have that change appear across the site?  It’s a life saver for large sites but even small and medium sites can benefit from that.  When building or modifying a site identify every recurring feature and ensure it is up-datable from a single source.

There are several ways of doing this.  The most common is a server side include.  Rather than discussing the technical aspects let’s focus on common recurring elements that can benefit from includes.

• Primary Navigation - It should be on every page and is an obvious beneficiary of using includes.  Further more it ensures consistent navigation
• Secondary Navigation - Secondary levels can also benefit from includes and also ensures consistency.
• Headers - If there is any advanced header that’s more than just an image (though that too can benefit from being an SSI element) it’s a good candidate.  In some cases it can be combined with the primary navigation depending on the layout.
• Footer - The footer should be consistent and this is especially useful if a copyright or general notice that runs throughout the site is in the footer
• Promotional Section - Any recurring area in the layout that highlights a current promotion.  This typically needs to be carefully planned as the promotion can get monotonous on every page.  If the layout and content are effective though, this is a simple way to ensure attention to current offers.

Don’t waste time.  Identify every recurring element in your site and set it up as a single source update.  Not only does it save maintenance time, it often holds site owners accountable to consistency.

Of course there are many web professionals that will honestly and fairly detail the pros and cons of how they build a site.  Furthermore, they will reflect the amount of work in their fees.  However, there is a significant subset of designers and developers that use tabless/W3C compliancy jargon to make their proposal sound ultra official, hopefully enhance their “professional appearnence”,  and raise their price. 

It seems that tableless is becoming the only unique identifier for these groups.  Typically it’s wrapped up in a lot of technical speak that puts down any other way of building a site.  I tend to look at it as a bogus value proposition.  Rather than talking about turn around time, value add services, prices, or long term benefits to having a business relationship, they laud tableless design as the end all in site creation.  If a designer or developer harps on tableless or W3C compliance and doesn’t cover many other issues beware.  There’s a good chance they are trying to make themselves appear as one of a limited group of people offering this service.

The good news is that many designers and firms are beginning to use tableless and W3C compliant code.  Using it a unique identifier will likely disappear over the next few years.

Most companies and organizations wouldn’t be content with just having a site.  Many people settle for that, but it isn’t their ideal situation.  Most people want to generate revenue or some kind of action item from their site.  Tableless design does nothing to promote that.  It’s an exercise in clean code and to some extent, accessibility.  That by itself won’t create any conversions on a website.

My rule of thumb is to make tableless or W3C compliant code on the “nice to have” list.  Priority should be placed on meeting business or organizational goals.  Put resources in place to ensure people can locate your site and have clear direction to convert to your desired next step.  If resources are left, then it’s time to explore ideal ways to build the site.  Make sure the end goal is met before moving on to secondary preferences.