Jay Conrad Levinson, the Father of Guerrilla Marketing, recently released his 4 secrets for successful website projects:

1. The nuts and bolts must be communicated prior to starting a website: the company’s overview, business model, goals and objectives, core competencies and competitive advantages, an industry overview, a key competitor review, target prospects, web analytics, strategy overview and action recommendations and benefits.

RDesign comments: If your website focuses on features instead of benefits, you’re missing Sales 101 in the text of your site. If your site shows a list of services and your contact information without explaining why you are the best at what you do while at the same time reflecting your company culture, you’ve invested in a cookie-cutter web site and prospective clients who visit your site will think of you as a cookie-cutter business.

2. Using the above information, your web design team should put together a work-scope document outlining the scope of the project from beginning to end, in a written and easy to follow outline.

RDesign comments: This allows your web team to communicate amongst themselves clearly, it allows you to make sure everyone is on the same page about what the project consists of, and it keeps details discussed early-on in the project from getting forgotten along the way.

3. On more advanced web implementation projects, you will need to get an engineering group involved for a “Functionality Specifications” document. This document takes each line item within the scope document and gives you engineering solutions, with all functionality and features defined in accordance with the planning set forth in the work scope document.

RDesign comments: Not every web designer is a programmer. Often this is the difference between a Web Designer and Web Developer. Be sure your design team and programming team outline details early on to avoid future mishaps or redesign due to miscommunicated functionality.

4. Consult with a web professional if you are not 100% positive what will apply to your website project. Demand excellence.

Jay goes on to say, “If you are not willing to invest the time and energy into a website project, you will not be as happy as you could be with the outcome. First, true guerrillas know that it’s crucial to invest time, energy, imagination and knowledge. Their marketing strategy is then based on psychology, not guesswork. True guerrillas … base their marketing tactics on the target market’s mindset. They must make informed decisions, based on the data and psychology of their consumers.”

At RDesign, we use data and web usage studies to guide us when designing a site. Of course we want a site to look great, but one that is pretty and does not lead the audience to your desired outcome has no value to your business. 

When you’re ready for a web site that achieves your goals with a blend of art, science, research (on both humans and search engines) and up-to-the-minute knowledge - we’re ready to help you get started! Contact us today.

We’re on Facebook… is your business?

If you’re not sure if a Facebook fan page is right for your industry, call us and we’ll discuss it with you in plain English.

Or, you can take a tip from the “big guys”. Coca Cola and Unilever are foregoing creating specialized campaign sites, or “microsites”, and instead putting their marketing on online social networking sites such as Facebook and YouTube. What can you learn from this? Market where your customers already are instead of trying to convince them to come to your site. (Part of the whole “don’t reinvent the wheel” thing.) We hear Coca Cola has also created an internal guide to educate its employees on how to interact with the social media audiences. It seems as though for 2010, social media will dictate more and more marketing activity.

If you want to learn more about why businesses should have Facbook fan pages, here’s an article one of our design friends wrote about it - there’s no need for us to reinvent the wheel either!