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Is Your Web Site Having a Mid-Life Crisis? By Jennifer Schiff
March 19, 2007
In the summer of 2006, after a decade of providing legal guidance to entrepreneurs and small business owners, attorney and e-commerce entrepreneur Nina Kaufman and her partner, Ron Paltrowitz, took a long, hard look at their legal practice — where they had been, where they were and where they wanted to go.
After speaking with customers, colleagues and friends, the law partners agreed it was time for a makeover, particularly of the firm's Web site, www.palkauf.com.
Time for a Makeover: The "before" version of a law firm site.
"Your Web site is not just a marketing vehicle for your business, it's the face of who you are," says Kaufman, who spent many months working with a developer/designer and a copywriter to bring the new site to life. But the effort and the cost, she says, were well worth it.
"O, the joys of simple navigation (no confusing nonsense of having nav bars on both sides of the screen)! Clear descriptions of what we do and how we can help entrepreneurs (check out our practice areas)! Giving prominence to our speaking and writing expertise on small business legal issues (we're bilingual — Legalese and English)! And most importantly, easy access to our premiere communications vehicles," wrote Kaufman in a recent e-mail to customers, colleagues and friends, announcing the new site.
And although the revamped site just went live March 1, Kaufman is receiving "wonderful feedback" and getting queries.
Your Web Site Is the Face of Your Business Whether your Web site is 10-years- or 10-months-old, if it's not accurately portraying who you are, if you hate the way it looks and feels (i.e., you can barely navigate it), if it's not getting you customers — or the right customers — and/or you have no or low rankings on the major search engines, your Web site needs an overhaul.
"Since your Web site is one of the most important aspects of your brand, no matter how large or small your business, you need to make sure it's up to the task of representing you well," says Larissa Schwartz, an Internet and communications consultant who has worked on many Web site redesigns.
New Design a Cause for Reservations Schwartz practiced what she preached when she recently helped a client (who asked to not be identified) redesign its online reservation area.
Why did the company decide to retool its system? It wasn't getting orders in some key markets and wanted to improve sales.
"Screens were designed by developers and weren't ever user tested," explains Schwartz. "There were performance issues, horribly slow load times. Results pages only displayed five items, making it very difficult in larger markets for people to easily find available options — and sometimes people thought there was nothing available, so they'd bail and not make a reservation."
In a nutshell, the site was too difficult to use.
Working with a fellow consultant and the client's vice president of marketing and sales operations, Schwartz interviewed key stakeholders, surveyed customers, did a competitive analysis and came up with a plan for redesigning the online reservation system, so customers would actually use it.
Gevity HR Puts a New Face on Business Like Paltrowitz & Kaufman, Gevity HR, a leading provider of outsourced human resource services to small and mid-sized businesses, was concerned about its online "face." So in the summer of 2006, the company hired creative business strategists Frame360 to find out what customers really thought of the company and its Web site.
According to Frame360's research, "the language we were using was all wrong," says Cathleen Dennett, Gevity's director of Web and online marketing. "And it became really clear that we had to clear the blackboard [or in this case, whiteboard, as Gevity's old Web site had a lot of white space] and start from scratch on a number of things, the Web site being one of the key elements."
Before plunging into a massive Web site redesign, however, Dennett and her team, which included representatives from interactive marketing communications company Duffy & Shanley, sat down and determined what it was they were really trying to accomplish.
"We developed a brand manifesto. Then we established a creative brief, which laid out how we wanted to talk to our audience… and how the Web site should interact with either a client needing information or a prospect looking for information," she explains.
Gevity had hoped to complete the site redesign in just seven weeks, but it wound up taking longer. The extra time, however, was time well spent, says Dennett.
"We put ourselves in our customers' shoes," she explains, taking several days to test the site. As a result, the new Gevity Web site, which went live February 5, has a much cleaner look, is easier to read, and much easier to navigate, with information just one or two clicks away.
Equally important, Gevity's new Web site more accurately portrays how the company wants to look to its existing and prospective customers, with a new face, "Gina Gevity," a Gevity human resource consultant (literally Gevity's face to customers), welcoming and guiding users through the site.
Already the redesign is paying off, says Dennett, with the number of unique visitors way up, as well as they amount of time visitors are spending on the site.
The Bottom Line "If someone doesn't like your site, doesn't want to be on it, they're not going to do business with you," says Sharilyn Horne, the owner of Sharilyn Horne Business Concepts. "It's as simple as that."
How to Approach a Web Site Redesign While no Web site redesign is painless, the following tips should help you to minimize the pain — and keep to your budget.
Determine what it is you don't like about your existing Web site.
"Do you not like it because it's not bringing you results with the search engines or because it's ugly or difficult to use?" asks Sharilyn Horne, the owner of Sharilyn Horne Business Concepts, which redesigned Paltrowitz & Kaufman's Web site. Before beginning a redesign, Horne asks clients to fill out a design questionnaire, find Web sites they like and explain what it is they like about these sites, though she is quick to discourage customers from using Flash and graphical buttons on their sites (elements those search engine spiders don't see and that often annoy prospective customers).
Come up with a basic strategy, that you should continue to refine with your design/copywriting team.
"When you take on a Web site redesign or begin a new design, it's critical to make sure you know what you want to accomplish with your site," says Schwartz. "Key things to consider are: who you're communicating with, what you want your visitors to do on your site… and how you will maintain the site once it's built."
Create a budget.
As Kaufman emphasizes, "you really need to know how much you can spend, because this sort of project can grow and morph. It's all very well and good to come up with all sort of lovely ideas, but you could wind up with a $10,000 or $20,000 price tag, which may not be in the realm of possibility for a lot of small business owners." With the right planning and people, a comprehensive redesign, including writing and programming, can cost as little as a few thousands dollars (depending on the size of your site and what you want to do with it).
Don't do it yourself.
Unless Web design is your area of expertise, hire great people whose business it is to help you translate and bring to life your vision. And make sure to vet each vendor, "to get a very clear sense of what they're going to charge," says Kaufman. "They may have a flat fee, as my designer did, for the skeleton of the site, but then after a certain number of pages charge per page."
Involve your customers.
"Make sure that stakeholders have an opportunity to be part of the development process and provide feedback on an ongoing basis," says Dennett.
Don't rush.
"Spend some time sitting back and looking at [each piece or page], instead of saying, what's the next thing we need to do?" says Dennett.
Have fun with the process.
Don't let little day-to-day glitches discourage you, suggests Kaufman.
Test the new site with a few key customer or clients before you go live.
Having a few good customers test the site pre-launch could save you a lot of heartache and money.
Double your timeline.
It always takes longer than you think — and that's okay.Jennifer Lonoff Schiff is a regular contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. and writes a blog for small business owners.
Do you have a comment or question about this article or other e-commerce topics in general? Speak out in the SmallBusinessComputing.com E-Commerce Forum. Join the discussion today!
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