Mary Schmidt Marketing Troubleshooter

Many companies (and nonprofits) have sites that - there’s no nice way to say this - are very sick, if not terminal.

However, here’s the real problem - many otherwise smart people don’t want to admit they have a problem. And, sure, don’t we all hate feeling like we’ve blown good money and done something stupid? Besides, maybe if we ignore it…(“Hey, it’s just a little pain…” “Maybe the red spot will go away all by itself!”) But, it ain’t gonna get any better if you ignore it (and you’re continuing to spend money anyway on band-aids, hosting, and a “web master” who is anything but.)

I agree with Seth Godin that there is a great need for “web podiatrists” But here’s where - um - the toes get stubbed - yep, you’ve got to admit you’ve got problems (and be willing to spend some bucks fixing them).

Seth notes two types of podiatry that should be very valuable:

A pretty smart web-savvy person could have a checklist of fifty items and work her way through a corporate website. She could come back with a simple, easy to execute list of things worth changing:
–put USA above Afghanistan on your country pull down list
–make it so clicking on your logo takes me back to your home page
–the font is too small on this page and it’s hard to read
etc. etc.
Low hanging fruit, stuff that doesn’t need approval from the CEO to fix. Maddening idiosyncracies, worth the few minutes it takes to fix them.

Second gig: Web analytics pro. Someone who can, for a generous hourly fee, set up analytics for a website and do weekly reports (by email) that are actually useful and actionable.

Here are eight more tips (I’ve got at least 50) I’d add to Seth’s examples:

1. Lose the black background. (Yes, I keep saying this ad nauseum, but I keep seeing black sites ad nauseum)

2. Selling something online? Have a buy button/link on every page. Make it easy to see. Don’t make people roam around the page (or worse yet) the site. Those little shopping cart icons, while cute, can be awfully hard to see.

3. Don’t force visitors to register or fill out a long form, including snail mail address, simply to get a “free” white paper or to look at your catalogue. Then, don’t abuse the email info. No “email blasts.” (People who download my free troubleshooter guide get only that and the monthly eletter. That’s it. They’re not “leads;” they’re busy people.)

4. If you’re doing direct mail, make sure you’ve also got the same info on the web site, easy to find.

5. Put the phone number at the top IN BIG FONT of every page. (Yeah, your designer may grumble, but your site is about business not art. Many people google to find phone numbers these days and the sooner they see yours, the sooner they’ll call you. Duh-oh.)

6. Get rid of the “visitor” counter at the bottom of the page (this is a oft-seen relic of sites done by web hobbyists) Makes you look small-time…and if you’ve only had 258 visitors since 2001, that’s not a good thing to share.

7. Be consistent in fonts. Don’t have any more than two on the same page. I’ve seen some that had as many as five (and this was a “professional” web developer. yikes!) Otherwise, your web pages look like ransom notes.

8. If you’re selling a product, prominently display your tech support links and contacts, including phone numbers. Don’t bury them in tiny print, several clicks down under “About Us” or “Products.” Otherwise, what started out as (usually) an unhappy but still reasonable customer will be a frothing, fuming furious maniac by the time he or she actually talks to anyone at your company. Not good for anybody.

Tags: marketing, small business marketing, marketing troubleshooting, web sites, web design, web development, web marketing, emarketing