There are a lot of things to consider:

• How much time do you have? Do you have time to learn how to build a website or is there a tight deadline?
• What’s your level of knowledge — design knowledge, XHTML knowledge, CSS knowledge, cross-browser issue knowledge….etc?
• What’s your Budget? Large, small….nonexistent?
• What’s your desired level of control (both short and long term)? Are you interested in updating your site daily? Or are you interested in being highly involved in the design process?
• What’s your desired functionality on the site? Simply information conveying or is it interactive (can make reservations, purchases, fill out forms)?
• What are the goals you have for the website? Do you want to be a top search engine result or are you interested in creating a community with your existing customers?

Let’s compare and contrast the pros and cons between these two –very different — paths.

TIME & KNOWLEDGE: DIY vs. HIRE

Do you have the time to build a website….REALLY?….Really, really? Be honest and realistic with your time budget and if you have time to do it yourself. Or if your plan is to hire out, make sure to budget time to manage the project (writing copy, reviewing designs, getting photos)

DESIRED FUNCTIONALITY: DIY or HIRE?

What does your website need to do?  Does it need a shopping cart, a dynamic map, or need forms for people to fill out online?  Would you like to incorporate message boards, news articles, file downloads, or automated customer service?

Some websites simply spread information about their brand, products, services and/or contact details.  Others engage the customers and compel them to take an action: go to a location, make a purchase, post a comment, or fill out a form.  What is your desire for your website’s functionality?  What is the priority for these functions? Are these “nice to haves” or “GOTTA haves” for your business to function?

Don’t give people a toothache

Kids and puppies are great images to use for your site if your business involves or encompasses children and/or animals….but if your business doesn’t, it’s not so appropriate.

If your images are too sweet and not reflective of your business, you are only making yourself look, exactly that, sweet and not the right fit.

Make sure when choosing photography for your site that it illustrates YOUR business or service.  Ask yourself, have you ever bought a product or service because of the cute kid or doggie in the window?

Use photography poignantly

Your site’s photography gives a message about your business without saying — or reading –  a word.
Photography can reinforce your brand, tell your audience what kind of business you are, illustrate scale (large or small business), even tell about your company culture.  But misuse of photography will send mixed messages that will send the visitor to the back button and going forward with your competitor.

Organize your content

Many sites are very content driven…chock full of illuminating articles, informative links, educating whitepapers and highly involved product breakdowns….but what good is all this information if your visitors can’t find all this great information?

If people get confused, they leave…and all that great information is for not.  Planning and organizing your site’s great content effectively can covert their interest/research into sales and/or action.

JASC has literally thousands of products, but with some great organizational breakdowns, all the products are easily navigatable; making it easier for customers — of all types — find exactly what they are looking for.

See more at jasc-controls.com

Brand everything

….even your photography.   Take advantage of opportunities to use product or logo placement in photography and throughout your design whenever it’s possible or appropriate.

It’s not vanity…it’s your brand.  And the more your clients….and possible new clients…see your branding the more they recognize and trust it, have it at top of mind, and the more they will use your product or service (aka sales).

See more at libertymarket.com

Don’t be afraid of color

Color can help segment a site that has a lot of content or bring life to more technical information.  Color can also convey visual hierarchy, create dynamic composition, or put focus on an element or call to action.

Just make sure to use color carefully and stay within your branding.  Adding color just for the sake of using color, can make your site look unfocused.  There is psychology to color; use it wisely.

See more at finelineprototyping.com

Show off what you got

The more illustrative you can be, the better!  If your business is very technologically advanced or has some really great features, show them off.

Polished product photography can illustrate the professionalism of your company, while showing off all the bells and whistles of your product(s).  It entices the viewer to interact and to covet your product.  Its a one-two punch that very few consumers won’t swoon to.

See more at insight.com

Don’t be afraid to point

Is there something in your website that you want people to look at?  Point at it.  Maybe not as literal as we see here with this little castaway and monkey, but notice the subtle arrow with the boomerang in the top left, “Great Bearded Reef” towards “VOTE NOW,” or the arrow created in the yellow and green surfboard pointing towards the sub-navigation.

Think of subtle ways you can direct your website’s visitors to where you want them to focus or how to navigate through your site.

See more at thegreatbeardedreef.com

Make your company look bigger

Doesn’t this site look like something out of Martha Stewart Magazine?  But did you notice that it’s a MOBILE cupcake and coffee bar?  How much smaller business can you get than a TRAILER sized office?

This website conveys a highly organized, very high-end, highly editorial business that people would literally stalk for their next chocolate fix.  Great design can make your business look larger and more reputable than you are, attracting a larger customer base…and more opportunities.

See more at meacuppa.be

Show the real you

Candid pictures or a scrapbook style on your website can be a great way to create intimacy with your new (or current) customers.

If you are a very locally based business — show your favorite customers, show your employees loving their work, put a face to the (business) name.  High end, glossy photography is not always needed to convey your message.  Sometimes showing a
sincere reality can hook your customer base to your brand, service, or product.

See more at whathappensnextbook.com

Simplicity sells

Beautiful graphics can make your website stand out in the webosphere.  Photography isn’t always needed if you have great graphic visuals.

Graphics, like these, can be customized and can grow with your campaigns…they also don’t have to be terribly complex — simple, clean lines created these characters and carry the story.

See more at thegirleffect.org/question

Say it loud and clear

If it takes more than a few seconds for your website’s visitors to find their desired information, one of two things will happen….1.  They get really frustrated with your site and grumble as they drudge through (or worse) 2.  They get so frustrated they navigate away (to your competition) to find their desired information or service more easily.

Make sure your call to actions, navigation, and contact information are clear and easy to find.  You may be loosing customers without it.

See more gimmedelivery.com

Play with your demographic

Many great websites use “plays” on their products, services, or business names to reinforce their brand.  In this your viewer will “play” along with you and your business making a lasting impression.

So why not have fun with the idea of your business?

Play to your strengths, play to your audience, play to their interests…and in turn they will want to play with you.

Are you meeting their needs

Are your graphics/photography reinforcing your brand?

Is your website reflective of your business (through graphics, imagery, content)?

Does the visitor want/need information/service/products you are providing?

Does your content match your audience’s expectations?

Is your website a site that a potential or current customer will return to (2, 3, 4, or more times)?  What will bring them back?

Is the content technically correct and up to date?

Can people find the content easily?

If you have any questions or comments please feel free to CONTACT US at Newhouse Studios and let us know your thoughts or leave a comment below. Download a printable version of this article HERE.

When considering the techniques below remember it is important that the domain chosen makes sense in relation to the content on the site and is ethically sound. Search engines are sensitive to abusive tactics and they can, and have, banned many domains for spam-like application of search engine optimization techniques.

First Approach to Selecting a Domain Name

Is there a large marketing campaign planned to get the word out about the business and the new website? If so, the techniques listed in this section are ideal.

Even if this is not true, these concepts still apply when thinking about a domain name. However, when resources are limited for creating site awareness additional tactics are available and should be considered. You will find them listed in the “second approach to selecting a domain name,” that follows later in this article.

The domain name should be relevant and memorable

A memorable domain name that does not make sense in relation to what the business does can work if there is a large marketing campaign connected to the launch of the business. Google certainly made no sense and neither did Yahoo in their infancy, but they had a strategy to get the word out and used a unique, memorable name.

There is very little time to capture attention and insert the business’ site address into the memory banks of those who give a few seconds of their day to watch or read an advertisement. Consequently a business or domain name needs to make sense in relation to the product or service offered while being emotionally interesting and thus memorable.

The domain name should be easy to type

If a domain name is hard to spell or uses an improper spelling, it will frustrate and lose site visitors. Using an “x” instead of “ex”, “ph” instead of “f” and “z” instead of “s” is trendy and examples of ways to confuse visitors. If the misspelling must be used, buy the properly spelled domain as well and have it automatically forward to the more creative spelling.

Double letters connecting words are also challenging, such as “beinggood,” it reads funny and is harder to type and spelling it to someone will always go like this, “That’s right, “B E I N G G O O D. Yes, that is two Gs.”

Avoid using numerals in domain names. Humans do not know if they are being spelled out or if there are literally numerals in the name. Likewise search engines do not know if the numeral is referencing a quantity or replacing a similar-sounding word, such as using “8″ for “ate.

Choose .com for a domain name extension.

There are many domain name extensions, such as .org, .edu, .biz, .net, and .me. An educational institution should choose .edu. A non-profit, a non-commercially related project, typically should choose .org. While there are exceptions, most businesses should use .com. since most people assume .com is the extension. There is something out there in .com format that will work. It just might require a little extra brainstorming. This is a very good reason for a domain name to be thought out simultaneously with the branding and naming of the company.

Make sure the domain name is legible to humans and machines.

To help the search engines, the domain should read clearly to a machine.If words are put together in the domain that can read as other words, it may confuse search engines “Who Represents” has the domain of “whorepresents.com,” and can easily be interpreted as “whorepresents.com”. “Therapist Finder” has the domain “therapistfinder.com” and also reads as “therapist finder.com”.  Test the name by giving it in writing to people who do not know anything about the project and have them read it out loud.

Shorter domain names are better.

Two or three words in a domain name are ideal. They are easier to type and remember. A search engine might benefit from four keywords over two or three, but then the humans start to have problems typing and remembering the name. It’s also more difficult to put a long url on business cards, web banners, and print ads.

Do the research.

Do some research before selecting a business name. Is there another business out there with the same one? If so this can cause problems with copyright and marketing efforts. Plus, chances are both business owners will want the same or similar domain name and you certainly don’t want to send your customers to a different business’ website, or even worse that of a tawdry service.

Hyphenated domain names are clumsy.

Telling a person that the domain is “super hyphen data hyphen processing” (super-data-processing.com) is very difficult to say, and from a usability standpoint, hyphens are harder to type than just letters.

In years past, it was believed hyphens in a domain name helped search engines read words because they read hyphens as spaces. Today search engine algorithms have become sophisticated enough to sort through most words, hyphenated or not.

Second Approach to Selecting a Domain Name

It is important to maximize every part of the web site so visiting search engines are crystal clear about the site’s intention. Search engines do not know anything about a new site’s content, publishing patterns, or validity. No one has linked to the site and it has not made it into the social media buzz. Having a domain name that tells search engines about the content can be a very successful approach to giving it a boost in rankings. If the marketing investment is to be a small one, the techniques for selecting a domain name listed in the previous section should be considered in addition to those listed here.

A strong domain name should have strong keywords in it.

What? Shouldn’t the domain be the business’ domain name? It can be, but if the businesses’ name doesn’t have keywords in it, there are probably a lot of missed opportunities, especially if there is a limited amount of resources available to promote the new business and website.

Should the domain used on marketing materials be keyword-rich? It makes the most sense to send a consistent message to the consumer. If the business has a non-keyword name that coordinates with the business’ name, use that for all marketing and then set the name to automatically redirect to the keyword-rich domain name, which is where the site actually resides and what the search engines look at in order to understand how to rank a site. If the domain is superzoom.com and the business, Super Zoom, provides a service that increases the speed of processing data, the search engines have no idea that the site has anything to do with the speed of data processing by the domain name superzoom.com. A more effective domain name might be superzoomdataprocessing.com or fastdataprocessing.com.

Additionally, the content at the web site has to be legitimate and relevant for users and search engines to find the site equally valuable, so if there is a site that uses the domain fastdataprocessing.com but the site only talks about data processing on one page out of a hundred, the search engines and the human visitors will find the domain name irrelevant. In this case, a strong domain name will not help the site rankings. But if the site addresses data processing throughout the site, the site will be useful to visitors and the domain name will only add to the search engine’s confidence in ranking the site for the topic of processing data quickly.

Put geography in the domain name if possible.

Search engines want to help local results. They know that a human is typically not going to use a roofing company that is in a different state. If the business makes sense to target locally, put the state abbreviation in the domain name. Sammysdogtrainingaz is appropriate, but if Sammy has a pet food business, it is probably better to stay with sammysdogfood rather than sammysdogfoodaz.

Domain names are important, but content is the most important factor in high rankings.

Asserting opinion and expertise through involved, up-to-date, meaningful content is critical to driving traffic to the site, encouraging respect from clients and clients-to-be, and from industry contemporaries. The business can have an outstanding domain name, but without solid content throughout the site, the search engines will not rank the site for what was hoped, and visitors will not stay. Continue adding content to the site after it is initially launched. This requires discipline and will force the authors of the content to grow in the understanding of the product and how others relate to it, which makes the business stronger on all levels.

Just remember…

A site’s domain name should be relevant to the content, easy to remember, easy to type, and well, just easy. Creating a domain name that no one can say or remember will defeat the purpose and if it looks like spam, it probably is. If the domain name is crafted with relevance, ease of use, and memorability in mind, it will be a name that serves the human visitors as well as it does the search engine algorithms.

We have spent quite a bit of time getting our site just so and now we are ready to write our newsletter.  We don’t have anything published yet, but our first few articles will revolve around techniques to help search engines find your business easier, planning for your web site, and a discussion about different ways you can have a site built that grows with your business and is a site you can edit yourself.

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