If you’re in the market for a new website, you need to make sure that you’re asking the right questions. Or at least, that the firms you’re talking to are asking you the right questions. I cannot say this enough: web design has become highly commoditized. There is a very low barrier of entry to being able to call yourself a “web designer.”  My father has built a website before, but you don’t want him building your business a website!

Everyone has a cousin Max, or knows someone who can “build a website,” but if you’re interested in really driving growth for your business through the Internet, just walk away…

Cover via Amazon

Here are some thoughts to consider if you think that you need a (new) website:
Building the site itself is only the first step.  This isn’t Field of Dreams, and you are not Kevin Costner. If you build it, they will not come. Get that idea out of your head altogether.

If you are going to launch a site, a good rule of thumb for most SMBs is that you should devote 25% of your budget to the site itself, and 75% to driving traffic and promoting it. So, if your web designer or firm doesn’t mention anything about what they are going to do after your site is launched, thank them for their time, and walk away.

Online success requires your interaction, so if anyone talks to you about building a site that cannot be easily updated (by you) in the future, then you need to keep interviewing vendors. There is absolutely no reason to build static websites anymore; not unless you are a true designer and can’t code your way out of a paper bag.

There are some amazing, free products that do all this for you! WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, just to name a few. If your web designer can’t build you a site on some type of content management  system, then you need to look elsewhere. There are many opinions over why you should use open-source or proprietary, but that’s another topic entirely.

Lastly, if the people you’re talking to are only asking questions about your taste in colors, and the kind of content you will have, and what imagery will be used; then walk away. Don’t get me wrong, those are all very valid questions, but that isn’t ultimately what will make your site successful. If you keep with the 75/25 rule, then on 1/4 of your discussion about the site should revolve around the site itself. The other 3/4 of the discussion should be focused on your business and what will be effective at marketing it online.  How is your audience, what appeals to them, what are their pain points, what are your differentiators from the competition? These are questions that can lead to a successfully developed website that will have some legs under it.

If you’re in the market for a new site – make sure you talk to at 3 firms, too.  It is very difficult to compare apples to apples when it comes to web design/development, and also with online marketing. TALK to your prospective vendors and make sure you feel comfortable with them, and have a high level of confidence that they know what they are doing.  Look for case studies, check references, do your homework and see if they can back up what they are telling you. Find out what/who they use for project management, and how they can ensure that your project will be completed on time, within scope, and within budget.

Good luck, and if you get stuck – we can always help you vet them out! 

Content management is a must for building a successful web presence for a variety of reasons. If your prospective design firm isn’t talking to you about a CMS, then they may not really understand what it takes to bring about true online success.  Choosing a firm that understands how to make you successful is important, and so is understanding how a CMS factors into the online mix.

Definitions:
In order to make the distinction between the two, I’ll define a proprietary CMS as one that is built from the ground-up by a particular development/design shop. The cost for these systems is likely figured into the overall cost of the web project.

Open Source content management solutions are developed through the collaboration of many individual developers who contribute to code to the project in hopes of building a better mousetrap, so to speak. Open source software typically has no cost.

Pros and Cons:
There are many reasons for one system or another depending on the needs and the goal, but here are some points to consider:

What does the site need to do?
Seems pretty straightforward, but this needs to be drilled down to a granular level right off the bat. If the main goal of managing the content on your site is to allow someone in your organization to update the homepage copy and image gallery every quarter, then that is very different from needing a site that allows users to register and post their own content, or includes e-commerce capability.

The more complexity that your site most have, the less likely that a proprietary CMS will be a good fit for you, for the simple fact that in a proprietary system, that functionality will likely have to be developed from scratch.  Open source platforms like Joomla and WordPress have thousands of already completed plugins and components that can be installed, which saves a tremendous amount of development effort. Odds are, someone has already thought, “I would really it if my WordPress site also did…” and a component was developed for that specific reason. The open source community, being the nice folks they are, would then post that for the rest of the world to use. Pretty sweet.

Who is going to be maintaining the site?
How savvy is this person, and how often will they be making these changes? Often times, the motivation for building a proprietary CMS is that the end-user if considered more than the functionality.  Meaning that a proprietary CMS may not do as much, but it can do specific tasks much easier than something like Joomla. We have colleagues who have gone the proprietary route, and their system is so simple that a lobotomized monkey could use it. That’s awesome if you have a really non-technical person who is going to be maintaining the site, and the site will really serve as an information-only web presence. That is definite advantage for the proprietary systems. Open source systems vary in user friendliness. WordPress is idiot-proof, but Joomla and Drupal are software; and like most software, you would have to be shown how to use it initially.

What are the cost differences?
The differences in cost can range widely, so that’s a tough one to answer.  Due to the decreased functionality of proprietary systems, and the fact that the people who built it know the thing inside and out – you can often land a custom website with a proprietary CMS for relatively low investment.

That’s not to say that you can’t find someone to slap a Joomla site together for you on the cheap either. There are some questionable firms out there who are offering $500 Joomla sites with a pre-made template. The flip side of that is that we’ve worked on open source CMS projects that reached into the $50k range.

A better question is: how much will it cost you to start over?  Or, how much are you willing to pay to have your site worked on down the road?

What are you going to do in the future if…
Say you have a falling out with your development team for whatever reason, what would you do? Obviously, you need to find someone else who can work on your site. The issue with a proprietary CMS is that it is proprietary and most firms who offer these solutions do not really “sell” you the website in the traditional sense.  You own your site and it will be online, as long as you continue your relationship with that firm. But if you ever decide that you want to move your site to a different provider or have another team work on it, you may find that you’re out of luck.

I have worked with several clients over the years who were badly burned by this policy. And it may not really even be the proprietary developer’s fault. Simply put: you probably cannot move your site to another server and have it work. These sites need special libraries on the server, so moving the site to a cheaper hosting provider, for example, is impossible. That’s another thing to consider, too: hosting cost.  Hosting your proprietary site with the developer is likely to be more expensive. They like to call this “hosting & maintenance” but there is very little you can do about it, since you must host with them.

If you want to change hosts and you’ve gone the open source route – then no worries!  Host wherever you want, any decent hosting provider in the world will be able to accommodate you. If you need to have someone else work on your site for whatever reason, then you’re fine. There are thousands of people/companies that can work with open source CMS platforms. For that reason, you can truly “own” your website, and not just lease it from the original developer.

Summary
The first thing we try to nail down with any client is: what is the goal. I think that’s a really good place to start when considering a content management solution. Know what you need right now and what you don’t, but try to think about the future, too.  If you might start selling online in 12 months, that should factor into your criteria.  If you’re never going to need any more than an online brochure, then that will certain help you know which direction you should go.

Some related reading:

• Content is king when it comes to Web sites (news.cnet.com)
• Joomla versus WordPress – CMS development (teabreak.pk)
• How Did WordPress Defeat Joomla And Drupal As The Best Open Source CMS? (blogherald.com)

Its exciting that Facebook gave us their Facebook Connect interface which allows us to build online communities that utilize your FB login, as well as all your profile information. So I would ask you: why try to start your own social network right now that just creates another ‘silo’ of friends, photos, and infomration. People have too many silos as it is: MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube, the list goes on and on.  And, it should be mentioned, that people will ultimately grow tired of your silo when they decide not to keep up with so many accounts across so many sites. People are already tired of the silo effect- how many Facebook users do you know that converted from Myspace?  Yeah, that’s what I thought- a lot, and that’s pretty common right now.

Facebook gives us the answer by providing a single login that will work on any site that uses Facebook Connect. So now, instead of building your own social network, you just piggy-back on FB’s unbelievable success. (85% growth in 2008 is not too shabby)

We’ve signed several of these projects lately and that’s a trend that is going to continue, unless I miss my guess. What’s got me excited today is that the good people at the ‘book have continued their movement towards a more socially connected Web and provided Facebook Connect for iPhone. With 30 million iPhones sold, that means that we have another rich and engaging platform that we can now access and interact with using the social network that everyone seems to be a part of these days.

I was talking to the guys at Resolute Games about an idea that I had for an iPhone app that we could then offer to our customers. I’m just dying to find a project where we can develop an iPhone app that will somehow tie into our other Internet marketing efforts on some project or another. Talk about having some potential to engage your audience… iPhones and Facebook seem to be a match made in heaven for time-killing!

Yesterday, at the Adobe MAX Conference in San Francisco, a joint collaboration between Adobe and a some third party developers announced a simplified solution for tracking Flash content called Google

Analytics Tracking For Adobe Flash. I have had the opportunity to work with many clients who have used the power of Google Analytics to identify and analyze trends on their web sites. But, one of the most common implementation challenges has been tracking Flash content on their pages. With this launch, tracking your Flash content has never been simpler.

What It’s All About
This feature is a translation of the current Google Analytics tracking code into the ActionScript 3 programming language that dramatically simplifies the ability to track Flash, Flex and AS3 content. This new Flash tracking code can be used to track Flash content such as embedded videos, branded microsites and distributed widgets, such as online games.Now it’s simple for Flash content developers to answer questions like: How many people have watched my video? Are we developing the right creative that attracts new users? How effective is my content at getting people to take action? The ability to answer these questions is now a reality, and the best thing is that they’re providing our entire AS3 code base under the Apache 2 License as Open Source! [From Want to track Adobe Flash? Now you can!]

We consistently work with clients who have copy on their site that doesn’t properly convey their message. Understanding how narrow your window of opportunity is that you have to reach your target audience means that you need to have effective copy that gets right to the point and properly conveys your message. Check this article out:

Most web copy is still being written by people who aren’t writers and don’t have time. The good news? Anyone who touches copy can make a difference by insisting that every chunk of text on the site do something concrete. [From Writing Content that Works for a Living]