Knowledge is Power – Know What To Look For In A Web Consultant
* This book gives business owners the knowledge to collaborate with their Internet Consultants *
Define: Web Designer = (Programmer – Graphic Artist – SEO Expert – Business Consultant – Customer Service Expert – Copy Editor – Internet Marketing Expert)
Some web designers wear many hats and others wear just one. One web designer may be limited to just knowing how to write programming code. Another might be good at graphic design, making your website look beautiful. Another might be experienced in good SEO practices and another might have expertise in business consulting / customer service (possibly even knowledgeable within your specific industry).
Most industry experts would agree with the following statement:
“Web design and search engine optimization are two different disciplines – usually individuals specialize in one or the other.”
OK – I borrowed this statement from a blog comment somewhere (I can’t remember where). The challenge is that many business owners view this process as a single step – after all – you just want a website that works – right?
The reason I like this statement is the whole right brain left brain thing. Just be aware that it might take a “team” of people – unless you find that rare individual that excels in all areas.
Good advice is to develop a scalable website. In others words, as the needs of your business grow, your current website can grow with it to expand your efforts in all areas of Internet Marketing.
A Website Should Be A Living – Portable Entity
In order to achieve this “scaleable” strategy you either need to (A) Be sure your current web designer can grow with you, or (B) Be sure your web designer has designed your website so other “experts” can come in at some point to scale your website. Maybe that’s an SEO expert, a Graphic Artist, a Copy Editor, a PR firm – or maybe even you at some point.
*** This author will always recommend website designers who (#1) Specialize in both web design & SEO and (#2) Design websites in code that can be handed over to other experts as the needs of the business grow ***
Top Ten Qualities of A Good Web Designer
* Please keep in mind – this is a “best case ” scenario and there are many factors to consider. One being costs and two being your own competency level in empowering yourself to manage some of these activities. Each web designer will have their own strategies and opinions. Therefore, you should take a “holistic” look at this list and not get hung up on any one particular point.
1. They ask a lot of questions and really listen – taking note of your business goals.
2. They advise you in easy to understand language – minimizing technical jargon and never talking down to you .
3. They encourage you to take an active roll in the design and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of your website – empowering you to make simple changes (changes that you are confident in making) like uploading new images and changing text, which should be done on a biweekly basis.
4. They are available for emergency fixes and programming issues in a timely fashion (establish what is timely up front).
5. They build your website from start to finish with three goals in mind: (First) User Friendliness – (Second) Search Engine Friendliness & (Third) Business Growth.
6. They employ good SEO tactics and never do anything which can get you penalized or banned by search engines.
7. They supply you with all of the programming code and necessary passwords needed to maintain the website in their absence.
8. They will work with you in creating an “image” keyword strategy comprised of a good image file naming convention and image ALT tag strategy – which helps for Google “Image Search”. (You are an expert within your industry and know all of the keywords and buzzwords – but don’t forget to ask your customers what they searched for in finding you – especially the “non-techie” customers.)
9. They will embed YouTube video “placeholders” into your website – so you can upload your own videos to YouTube, and then “embed” the YouTube video into your website.
10. They are available to facilitate, advise, or take the lead on new and old strategies to improve SEO and online business growth. A few examples include – Article Submission, Backlinks (relevant backlinks – not link sharing farms), e-commerce (shopping carts), Blogs, Social Networking and ultimately Building Trust for your website visitors.
Word of Advice
As with any relationship, the relationship between the client and the website designer can be challenging. Especially if the client does not have some knowledge of the process and expectations are not set up in the beginning.
The goal is to work together to come up with a website that grows your business online. Who will be responsible for what? How involved will the business owner be?
This book and the various services provided in support of the book (consulting and presentations) has taken a slightly new direction. The author, Greg Bright knew of the potential for issues between the client and the website designer when writing the book.
However, since publishing this book, readers (both website designers and business owners) have elevated this concern and they have asked for help to improve the process.
One mistake is that the business owner did not retain the rights and receive all the passwords and user names for the three main components of the website.
Speaking of rights, part of setting the expectations up front, would be to put in writing who owns the design of the website. Some business owners might think that by paying (commissioning) someone to design the website, this automatically transfers ownership over to the client. (This website can not offer legal advice – but good advice is to put everything in writing.)
“If I were paying someone to design my website, I would want to retain all the rights to that design – the same way I would expect to retain the rights to my company logo if I paid a designer to design my logo. I would want all of the original artwork files, from the program used to create the logo, not just the final JPEG image. The same would hold true for my website. Get copies of the original programming code.”
Again – discuss this up front and put it in writing.
Here is an Alarming Situation
The business owner is having a little difficulty getting good customer service from the web designer. Maybe it’s taking too long to get new pictures posted or making small text changes to the website. Ultimately, the website is performing poorly and not helping the business grow.
So, the business owner decides to take some action. Maybe they want to hire a separate company to do some internet marketing or search engine optimization.
The original web designer has all the passwords and more importantly all of the programming code of the entire website and does not relinquish control of this to the new firm. The only option is for the business owner to start all over and build everything from scratch.
This creates a problem, especially if it’s an ongoing business that can’t afford to shut down the website for any extended period of time.
The tip box on page eight of the book talks about web designers. Basically a website is composed of three components – all of which the business owner should retain the rights to.
A. Registration information (user names and passwords and expiration dates of the “www.yourbusiness.com“ (Your domain name)
B. The user names and passwords of your hosting company
C. A copy of your programming code for the entire website, stored on a CD ROM off premise. You should ask for this quarterly.
What is the Business Owner’s Responsibility?
In all fairness to good website designers, it should be stated that the business owner has a ton of responsibility in the website design process. If the business owner does not gain some basic knowledge (as provided in this book) then how can they guide their website designer?
The business owner knows their business best and it is up to them to lead their website designer. If not, the business owner is going to get a generic, templated website.
In fact there are some things (like writing articles in your field of expertise – as explained in chapter four to increase relevant “backlinks” to your site) that only the business owner can do. The business owner is the expert in their field of study – they have to write the article and they have to get the attention of the editor of their trade publication to publish the article – a website designer can’t (and should not) do this.
In chapter three we talk about image keyword strategy and how this helps for “Google Image Search”. Is it prudent to have your website designer manage all of your keyword file names for every image on your website? Probably not. In most cases the business owner is already giving the web designer the images to upload. Therefore, the business owner should go ahead and name the image with a “keyword” file name at the time they originally save it. The business owner should keep a spreadsheet which organizes image file names by each page on the website. This spreadsheet should also include a proper “ALT” tag composed of keywords for each image.
These are just a couple of examples of how the business owner needs to GET INVOLVED!
Quote from the Author:
“I would rather have an ugly (but user friendly) website that ranks high on all search engines than a pretty website that can’t be found – having both would be ideal.”
