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.

I’m asked all the time by people what I think they should do to change their website to help grow their business. Sometimes they start with, “Should I change my prices?” or “Do I need to pay to advertise on Google”.

To really understand what needs to be updated on a website, you should first read through your site’s reports or statistics. These numbers can tell you haw many people come to your site, what phrase they searched for to get them there, how much time they are spending on your site, which pages get viewed the most, which web browser your site is being viewed in, etc.

If you have a bunch of visitors, but they leave your site right away, something needs to change. If you aren’t getting visitors because your site can’t be found when searching for words related to your site, something needs to change.

Don’t start by lowering prices if your online store isn’t selling. If you are priced right with your competition in your marketplace, there are lots of other web-related things to look at.

When I look at statistics, the 2 items that intrigue me the most are:

1. what phrase did someone search for to find the site

2. how much time are they spending on the site.

How can you view your web stats?

That differs for every web site. Perhaps your hosting company has reporting automatically installed. Maybe your web or SEO company has placed an analytics program like Google Analytics directly on your site. You should be able to find out with an email or 2 to the people you’ve worked with.