AUDIN Web Design

I saw a BMW the other day from about forty feet away.  I saw a Volkswagen Beetle from about two hundred feet away the day before that.  And the day before that, I saw a PT Cruiser about three hundred feet away. 

I’ve ridden in about a half dozen Chevrolet, Ford and GM cars in the past several months and I couldn’t recognize one if it was staring me in the face. If it sat on me or ran me over, I wouldn’t know if it was a Ford Capri or a Chevy CheesePuff.  (As you can see I just made up some names; that’s because I couldn’t recall any actual car names and models for this blog entry!)  But a PT Cruiser, Volkswagen and BMW come to mind so easily.  They come easily because they are designs that are so recognizable.

Volkswagen doesn’t need a logo. It is a logo!  The PT Cruiser is a logo.  These models have not changed in years and it is so easy to recognize them from so far away.

If I saw a well detailed Volkswagen Beetle, I would not know in what year the car was produced. It could be a 2002 or a 2008.  I wouldn’t know. I’d have to ask.  But not true with so many cars out there.

I saw a Honda Accord the other day about twenty feet away and going about forty miles an hour past me, but I knew immediately that the car was at least ten years old.  I knew this because Honda Accord has changed its body style about ten times for the past ten years.  Each new model dates itself.  How crazy is that?  (By the way, I recognized the Honda Accord because I had previously owned one, otherwise it would have been just another car to me.)

If you have memorable design (that is consistent and uniquely you) you don’t have to work that hard on building your branding.  It comes naturally.

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A customized website developed for you–and you only–will be the only way you can achieve sufficient branding and differentiate you from an over crowded market.

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Putting weather reports on your (travel) site is a bad idea for several reasons:

1. It distracts the visitors on your site from the main objective which is to call you to book a room.
2. It may invariably send the visitors off your page to an actual weather page (since most weather reports are scripts embedded into your site).
3. Most importantly, when  people are looking to book a trip somewhere they are mostly likely (I’d say 98%) are in good spirits and are thinking good thoughts.  You do not want them to think twice about your destination by seeing a negative weather report on your site. 

In sum, a weather report will usually hurt your conversion rate rather than help.

When I booked my trip to Hawaii, the last thing I thought about was rain. I had images of sunny beaches, cocktails and so forth.  If I knew there would be rain, I might have thought twice about making my holiday plans.

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I get a lot of calls from people who have a great idea and want a website but they really don’t want tell me this great idea (for which I need info to develop or even discuss their website).  First and foremost, congratulations on your great idea; but its usefulness is only to you and maybe to the 0.0000001% of people you will encounter.  In other words, no one is going to take the few words you say about your idea and suddenly run with it.

If your concept is truly a good idea, only you know how it will function, who the target market is and how to develop the process.  There were plenty of MP3 players out there before the iPod.  Was that a great idea that someone could turn with just a few words?  No, the iPod is a product backed by a series of decisions

Secondly, you are telling a web designer, not some intellectual property stealer.  In other words, we (web designer) are in the business of developing website, not stealing intellectual property.

I recently had someone call me about an idea about a website which was about baby sitting schedules.  The conversation is somewhat in-depth, but when they gave me the written outline (which was scribbled in notebook paper, scanned and then e-mailed), it was in some type of code—which I could not understand.  The babysitter was now the “said client” and all sorts of jargon to hide what was really going on.  Even knowing the background of the project (from our initial phone conversations), I could not make heads or tails of the project based on the cryptic outline I received through the e-mail.  I quickly passed on the project. I’m still not going to steal it.  It’s a good idea, but a web designer is not a baby sitter scheduler entrepreneur.

In sum, don’t get in the way of your great idea.  If you really have doubts about divulging the secrets of your great website idea, then ask to see the web designer in person and develop a trust with that web designer over several meetings.  Don’t try to get interested web designers over a phone call and a cryptic e-mail.  The only ones you will get that are interested in your project just may be the one will steal your project.

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When developing your website try to avoid gimmicky things like, Virtual Spokesmen.  When you use these gimmicks it says to your customer that you are grasping at straws and you will do anything to get new businesses. It really looks cheap and shoddy.

Please do not miss-interpret my intentions here. I am not saying that a Virtual Spokesman is a bad idea in part, but the fact these Virtual Spokesmen are new and fresh, it is gimmicky and should be avoided.  When the rest of the world is using Virtual Spokesmen in a serious and positive manner (and become more mainstream), then and only then you should use these types of devices on your website.

So, what about being new and innovative?  What about blazing a new trail?  If it’s easy, it’s gimmicky.  And if it’s gimmicky, you are not blazing a new trail.  You are just following—what everyone else is doing.  All it says is that you are not creative and got suckered by some salesman that convinced you it is a good idea.

Does anybody remember “Tell A Friend”?  Where are these links now?  I admit, I had this on my website (many years ago) but I realized it was gimmicky and pointless.  I also, considered that if I wanted anyone to tell their friend about my website, they could easily (and quite possibly easier) tell their friend by other means such as e-mail or instant chat.  In the end it was quite a gimmick.

Gimmicky things such as virtual spokes-person might jeopardize your credibility.  I’m not saying these virtual spokespeople will never be a good idea, but now it is a knee-jerk gimmicky idea.  You should wait.

In sum, try to be as original a possible.  That’s why you got in the business you are in.  You are trying to tell the people out there tat you do whatever it is do better and differently than everyone else.  Copying gimmicky techniques will not help.

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Don’t fall into the trap of “making money on the internet”.  Ask anyone running a legitimate business online—either solely an internet business or an online version of their brick and mortar store—they will tell you that it’s nearly a full time job to run the online business.  It’s not a passive pursuit where you kick back and watch the money roll in.

I get many calls from people wanting to develop an online business as a “side business.”  It’s not impossible but very, very tough.  And many times they fall into the trap of selling ads on their website with the thinking that it will be easy passive income–even if it only turns out to be few hundred dollars a month¹.  (Don’t get me started on what it takes for people to actually get to your site and everything else that’s involved in generating that “passive income.”  That’s another article.)

I recently got a call from a young man who wanted to create a website, so he could sell Google Ads.  This always sends off warning bells in my head because it tells me that the person is really just grasping at straws and looking at the whole internet backwards. 

To start, you first should have a great site that gets lots of traffic before trying to sell ad space.  That’s usually how it works—especially in the off-line world.  Any advertiser is going to ask what your numbers are: meaning how many people read your publication, what the target market is and so on.  However, with Google Ad Words and Ad Sense, much of that has changed².

Without having an existing website, my phone caller wanted to have one developed, so to sells ads (GoogleAds).  No matter what his idea was, I knew it was not going to be good because of this backwards thinking.  Anyway, when he told me he wanted to showcase Windows Paint images, I just cut him off at the pass and told him that I was unable to do his project and kindly cautioned him about the pitfalls of “making money on the internet.”

I have dozens of examples of people who have called me with this type of backwards thinking.  If you read other articles you may find I have brought up those examples from time to time.  It is a common theme.

1. To even make a few hundred dollars a month on many online ad programs, it takes a lot of click-throughs,–somewhere in the tens of thousands.  Each click will only be a few pennies.  Do you have that much traffic?
2. The special novelty about Google Ads (as part of Google’s AdSense program) is that they (Google advertisers) do not care how much traffic you get because the ads are not paid for until someone clicks on the ad.  This is not a piece about Google Ads and how they work, but this prospect wanted to sell ads on a website not yet developed.  This is all backwards thinking.

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Henry Paulson and George Bush obviously have never taken a marketing class or even consulted with a web or interactive designer before pitching this 700 Billion Dollar Bail Out to the American public. If they did, this bill would have passed with flying colors. Let me explain:

They (the bill’s supporters) were pushing a whole lot of numbers without a whole lot of explanations. They should have set up some kind of website like www.700BillionDollarRescuePlan.com and put up a short presentation on how this bill would be good for the American public.

They could have visually explained how this bill would be an investments package, where the government is going to “buy” the bad mortgages now, allowing the banks to offer more credit (being relieved of the bad loans) to the American economy, and then later sell those mortgagees once the market rebounds.

This would have proved a much more successful approach, rather than standing before a podium with a microphone and tell the people that they wanted to pass a 700 billion dollar bill to help the financial markets. And oh, by they way, it’s a three page document.

I believe Newt Gingrich had a website when trying to push the “Contract with America.” I understand time was of the essence for the Bush Administration, but they still could have pulled off what I had explained.

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There are many discount hosting companies that are offshore.  The benefits (in the short run) may be a lower costly rate but the drawback is that the farther away your website is hosted from your target audience (i.e. here in the united States ) the slower your site will load.

For example there are some discount hosting companies in or Bombay but trying to load a website on their servers will take quite a long time, no matter how efficiently the website was put together.

So be sure your (discount) hosting company has a server very close to your target audience.

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I see this lot.  Companies have found their new web designer and suddenly take their old website down and put up a “New Website Coming Soon” sign and telling people it will be great.  I’ve never really understood why.

I’ve read somewhere that you need to prepare the market for your arrival, such as putting up bills outside a new building construction site.  That makes sense because you may walk by the site all the time, and the old building really does need to be torn down in order to make way for the new building.  But a website is different.  You can make a switch rather seamlessly. 

As far as preparing the market for your arrival, it really does not apply here to replacing old websites.  That make sense if you are new and you really have nothing to show, then you should get something up letting people know that your site is coming soon.  But I have seen pretty good sites replaced by: "New Website Coming Soon” signs:  As an actual consumer of these businesses, it is really frustrating.  Now I have to figure out when the new website will be up.  I can guarantee when it does come online I’ve moved on to bigger and better things.

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