January 14, 2010

Ok, so you’ve decided to start using the Internet to promote your business more actively and most people you talk to who know about the web tell you the same thing … you need to redesign your website. The problem for many small businesses is that getting to the point when you actually have the budget or manage to get the right help to do it may take some time.

In the short term, this leaves you with an interesting challenge that there just isn’t much advice for – the moment when you realize that you still need to promote your business despite having a website that you hate and which you know is less than ideal. Can it really be possible to use the Internet effectively for marketing without a good website?  Yes, definitely.  Here are a few ideas on how to do just that.

1.    Announce a non-existent redesign. The first thing you need to do with a subpar website is to give customers the impression you are working to improve it. The only thing worse than a bad website is one that seems like it will be bad forever. So put a note on your homepage in some way sharing that your redesign is “coming soon.” If you think about it, this is exactly what retail destinations do when they hang those signs saying “please pardon our progress.” Progress takes time, but the first important lesson is that your customers need to know that it is coming ... even if you have no idea when.

2.    Create other homepages. The nice thing about the web today is that you can get up and running on a host of other sites to create a branded presence for your business in less than an hour. What this means is that your website doesn’t need to be the only place that you share information about your business.  Need a page telling people where you are located? Populate that information into Google Maps and use that link. Want to tell people about your business and share some images? Create a Facebook fan page for your business. There are lots of sites out there where you can share information about your business without needing to just point people to your site.

3.    Fix your homepage first. The homepage of your site is the gateway to your business and the first impression someone is likely to have. While a full redesign may be some time away, getting some help to recreate your homepage can be a good investment to start people with a positive experience of your site and then potentially drive them to other homepages as mentioned in #3.

4.    Use more direct communications. When you can’t rely on your website to reach your customers, you may want to consider a more direct model. Email marketing certainly fits into this category – but starting a Twitter account and sharing updates directly can also be a way of offering a more consistent stream of content or information without relying on your website to do it.

5.    Leverage your other materials. I have seen more than a few small businesses struggle to create a quality website while at the VERY SAME TIME they have an expanse of good printed materials such as brochures and other collateral they use in the real world to promote their business. If you have these kinds of materials, work with someone (or buy a relatively inexpensive scanner yourself) to digitize some of the best of your content. Then you can upload to your site or post it online in another location to make it available for customers and prospectives.

Join the conversation ( 14 )

• JAN KASAL 2 years 0 months and 7 days ago

  

  Rohit,
  Would you attach your answer/comment directly to each commenter as a thread, if you had such an opportunity, instead of grouping your answers and attaching the comment to the end?
  Moderators, can you imagine 100 comments on an article? Nightmare. Push the site developers more:)

• Rohit Bhargava 2 years 0 months and 10 days ago

  

  Some great commentary in the comments here, thanks to everyone for commenting. A few thoughts from my point of view:
  
  @David Harper - the premise behind #1 isn't that you lie about having a redesign, but that you announce one before you have all the steps done. In my experience, sometimes simply announcing that you are working on something can be the motivating force that is required to actually get it done instead of having it remain on a to do list for months.
  
  @Jay Bauer - Thanks For sharing a great point about thinking beyond the homepage. Excellent advice to raise.
  
  @Joe Lima - Good point about needing to do more than just scan images or documents to have good content ... but I so often see the opposite where business owners treat their online and offline content as so separate that they fail to take advantage of some printed materials that they already have. The easy way (though not necessarily the best) is to scan or add PDF materials. Getting smarter about it certainly means that you can tag these properly so they get indexed ... and the ideal case would be that the content is completely converted into a format that is better for the web.

• Michelle Newport 2 years 0 months and 16 days ago

  

  Please visit http://www.NewportDesignConcepts.com to learn more about how to have a professionally designed website for minimal expense.

• Michelle Newport 2 years 0 months and 16 days ago

  

  In coaching my clients on how to get and keep business, one of the most important tips I give is to be honest with your clients. People appreciate honesty.
  
  While I think it is an awesome idea to social network on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. I think it is also important to give your company a brand clients recognize online by creating a site that is individual to the company.
  
  A tip for those who scan and upload marketing material to their site - graphics are not "search engine friendly" so any information you have in the marketing material will not be accessible to the search engine robots and won't be indexed by the search engines.
  
  It can actually be relatively inexpensive to have a professional online presence created for your business so you don't have to be ashamed of your website. My company offers many solutions to small and medium sized business. Even a FREE 1-page website template for new customers that purchase 1-year hosting with NDC. A value of $120 per year.
  
  I also agree with the tip on Email marketing. 68% of customers leave a company due to not feeling "loved". Maintaining a honest, relationship with your clients is key.

• Joe Lima 2 years 0 months and 16 days ago

  

  I agree with Magicbus completely. There's little excuse these days to have a poor website. I know freelancers that will create a stunning static html website for $50.
  
  I also disagree with point #5 in this article. Scanning your images and thinking you have a webpage is the wrong way to go. Scanned images without tags cannot be crawled by search engine spiders which means those pages will not appear in search results. At the very least, they should use a service like OfferLounge that scans printed materials and turns them into items that are searchable.

• CHRISTIAN MARKS 2 years 0 months and 17 days ago

  

  Greetings All, Honestly, I have to disagree with the premise of the article. No-one should have a poor website these days. Most companies spend more money on traditional marketing where the costs are HIGHER and the results are usually unmeasurable.
  
  The Internet is still the cheapest means to advertise yourselves. A good website, simple in execution, should cost LESS than most advertising mediums.
  
  Most companies entrust the WRONG people to the important task of creating an effective website strategy. If people were influenced by results instead of pretty pictures they would not find themselves with a poor website, no traffic, and little hopes of online sales, leads or whatever it is that grows their business.
  
  By entrusting people who do not eat, sleep, and breathe Internet technology you are already headed for disaster. Would you have your interior designer architect your house? So why would you let people who split their time amongst other advertising mediums handle this important task?
  
  For those whose budgets are nill, be advised there are great free services such as Google Sites and others. Some basic research into static websites will yield your most impressive results and Internet Gold.
  
  Advertising agencies are driven to advertise (continual spend with their company). The Internet works 24/7 and could care less if you do not 'pay'. If you entrust your hopes to online advertising your sales will cease as soon as you STOP advertising.
  
  A company must address the basics when it comes to an Internet Strategy before it thinks about spending precious time, resources, and budgets on buzzword of the day. What are the basics?
  >> Build a website in static HTML (less code the better)
  >> Skip the FLASH animation (budget waster)
  >> Ensure the META Tags are included (good Titles, keywords, descriptions, ALT tags)
  >> Register a descriptive domain name
  
  Here is a great article on static websites: link
  
  Cheers.

• Ivan Walsh 2 years 0 months and 17 days ago

  

  I'd echo what Jason Baer (@jaybaer) says and add that you need to focus on the top ranking inside pages on your site, ie the pages users find via Google which are not always your homepage.
  
  You also want to consider some brand damage limitations and give the re-design to someone else before your credibility takes too much of a bashing. Odesk is always worth checking out for resources.
  
  Ivan

• FELIX FIGUEREO 2 years 0 months and 19 days ago

  

  Nice, but the right relationship with the right vendor is what makes a website experience great. A vendor who does not understand the goals of his/her customer fails to deliver a simply cost effective site. There is a great misunderstanding about web design and development; it is costly and a major head ache. This is only true if you are not using the right vendor. Think of a web design firm as a tool in your tool box. Hammer is not used for all tasks - in other words one size does not fit all.
  
  For free consulting on your company's web and SEo needs give us a call. We'd be glad to see if we can help.
  
  
  
  --
  Thank you,
  Felix Figuereo - Managing Director
  Nicasio Web Design & Development
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  O - 912.292.1716
  C - 912.441.7011
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  http://nicasiodesign.com
  http://nicecomm.net
  http://blog.nicasiodesign.com
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  http://www.linkedin.com/in/felixfiguereo

• Norman Smit 2 years 0 months and 19 days ago

  

  If a small company already has a website, it already has hosting. A new replacement website can be done for only the time the small business owner wants to put into it using open source technology, which is free. Some site hosts will even install open source content management systems for you which can be configured with sophisticated templates and addons. A poor website in an internet-driven world is one of the fastest ways to create a poor impression of a company. The conclusion people often jump to is that the company matches its online presence: poor quality website=poor quality goods or services. With new customers being the hardest to obtain, companies should weigh the opportunity cost of losing potential customers due to poor first impressions.

• Jason Baer (@jaybaer) 2 years 0 months and 19 days ago

  

  Great stuff as always Rohit. The one I'd take a bit of an issue with is the home page. Agree that it's a good way to change your stripes. But, it's important to recognize that most sites' "home page" is the first page only ~40% of the time. Other pages serve as the "home page" - via search, deep links, etc. So, it's important to treat every page as a possible home page, and give visitors branding, way-finding, and call-to-action cues that make sense.

• DONNA JOHNSON 2 years 0 months and 19 days ago

  

  This is interesting. My recommendation would be different though. I'd say ditch the website altogether. Get a blog with e-commerece capabilities, a FaceBook fan page with e-commerce capabilities, a Linkedin profile, a YouTube channel and a Twitter account and connect them together to reach your customers. The above example seems to deal more with the symptoms (lousy website) rather than the real problem (no sales).

• David Harper 2 years 0 months and 20 days ago

  

  #1 reinforces my (negative) stereotype of a certain type of pure marketer that don't care what's actually true, only the perception of what's true
  
  #1 espouses a white lies and start you don't a road that doesn't engender trust. Just don't act later why you aren't a trustworthy.

• JAN KASAL 2 years 0 months and 20 days ago

  

  Excellent article setting the direction. Once you define your specific needs you can use Twitter, for example, to address them.
  
  Jan

• SUZANNE VARA 2 years 0 months and 20 days ago

  

  Great advice for people who may feel overwhelmed by the thought of creating a new site and hesitant to promote the not so pleasing site.
  
  Suzanne