Breaking Down the Costs of Websites
UX discovery
User Flow Strategy
IA design
Component & Wireframes
UI Design
Setting up hosting environments
Preparing for any 404 pages or redirects
Content creation and collection
Graphic Design
SEO strategy
Credential collection for any connections (Google Analytics, FB etc.)
Approval Process
Website development
Content Population
Testing Phase
Preparing for a live push (setting up all connections)
Validating Google Analytics, Search Console, Social Pixels
Testing and Bug fixes
Site Maintenance
Holy Checklist Right!?!??!??!?!
Building a website is certainly more than a few pretty pictures, some nice colors and cool animations. Having all of those with bad content delivery, information architecture, slow hosting and a poor user interface… only leads to a happy designer, if that.
Building a website experience that end users will appreciate and value, takes research, studies, understanding, patience and time.
Keep expectations in perspective
The expectation of spending $1400 on a Mini Cooper and getting the looks, performance and value of a Ferrari are common in the industry. What I’ve discovered is that nine times out of ten, it’s not because client’s are cheap. They simply don’t understand the entirety of the process and value that comes from it. The old saying “you get what you pay for” applies to website experiences hands down.
The WWW has evolved tremendously, it’s big, it’s somewhat overpopulated with bad examples, it’s competitive and it’s constantly evolving on so many levels.
I get it, not all websites are equal nor intended to be used in the same capacity. Some sites are used as digital business cards for a simple reference point. They have no intent for inbound purposes or discoverability. This is a very small percentage of the website experiences I’ve had the opportunity to design and develop.
The list above give or take some items is a pretty standard checklist. Some items may take longer than others depending on the scope of work.
Small talk with big impacts
I’ve highlighted two items above… hosting and maintenance, 90% of the time clients don’t see these as actual investments.
These are two costs that typically occur monthly, quarterly or annually. Hosting and maintenance are probably the two topics that I get questions on the most. Sometimes it’s full on pushback, mostly due to the costs associated.
The reason for high quality hosting.
Hosting, in its simplest explanation, is the service that hosts your website content to be served to the World Wide Web. Drilling down into hosting, it’s much more than that and has an impact in ways you may not be aware of.
Part of a strong SEO plan is having a website that falls within specific page load times. Page loads are impacted by many variables that I’m not going to cover here. However, the speed of your hosting service, along with the type of hosting plan you’re using will have a positive or negative impact on the speed of your website.
During the onboarding and discovery process, assessments are made of any current hosting plans. Diagnosing whether it provides the services, support and capabilities needed for proper hosting, proper development environments and proper maintenance.
What you spend in high quality hosting services will save you in the long run. It’s never a matter of “if” when it comes to websites, but more a matter of “when”. And when that time comes, having the right hosting in place streamlines the process and reduces the workload and costs per hour associated with repairs.
This leads right into maintenance.
Most websites run on a database, use third-party plugins, require php and require updates about once a month, unless it’s a major push. Then the update should be managed immediately.
That statement alone puts a heavy emphasis on how important it is to keep sites up to date. Having outdated plugins, themes, CMS platforms etc. leave vulnerabilities to hacks and breaches. There are constantly bots and programs running that search for these vulnerabilities and exploit them when they find a weakness. Leaving websites in shambles, databases compromised beyond repair and websites out of commission.
Is this to say that with updates your site is not still vulnerable? Absolutely NOT!
I’m simply stating that these are steps we take to ensure that we are at least doing the most that can be done to protect websites.
The good hosting services are WordPress dedicated hosting. They do daily backups and provide development environments. They allow for maintenance to be quick and painless, turning a traditional cPanel maintenance job into a simple few clicks.
So as we can see… in the long run, as with all other things in life these costs save money and become more than a monthly bill. They are an investment that provides an assurance.
What Is A Digital Marketing Funnel
What are digital marketing funnels?
They’re tailored strategies that apply to social media, digital ads or email marketing campaigns. Typically a well structured marketing funnel will find your digital advertising campaigns in sync, utilizing similar touch points for specific audience messaging.
Digital marketing funnels actually share the same conceptual foundation as outbound / print marketing, but vary in approach based on the platform used for your messaging. I typically describe funnels from the top view and with two approaches. Prospects believe it or now enter a funnel at various stages. The journey may begin through a search result, a website visit, a targeted display or social ad, e-blast and believe it or not… print advertising.
It’s all about the ability to understand the data, make the connections to patterns and apply a strategy for messaging. Making sure to capitalize on each opportunity by creating unique touch points to deliver tailored messaging and move them through the pinwheel to a conversion.
2 Models for 1 Funnel
The first model I’m going to cover is AIDA (Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action), the most well known marketing model used for decades. AIDA is the foundation to all marketing campaigns, whether you know you’re using it or not. AIDA helps us to define the mediums, messaging, creative and overall strategy that applies to not just a digital marketing funnel, but marketing strategies as a whole. Below is an example of an overhead view of the AIDA model, this model puts the targeted audience in the center opposed to the traditional linear view.
The second model is the PINwheel (Prospect, Insight, New Relationship) which defines strategic touch points. These touch points provide unique messaging that offers insight into your brand. As prospects continue their discovery process in their journey to becoming a new relationship. The PINwheel model is more granular and applied strategically to campaigns like social media and display advertising.
The strategy development process relies on AIDA as the foundation and combines data research with strong content marketing. The PINwheel uses audience targeted, custom audience remarketing, search, custom events and more to create the flow. Applying a form of conditional logic, for example:
- if a prospect performed this action, add them to this audience and send them this message
- If a prospect performed this action but not this action, sent them this message
- if a prospect is in this audience and not this audience, send them this message
- if a prospect performed this action, and this action and is in this audience, stop serving them ads
As we can see, combining these two models outlines a clear path for strategic messaging and the building blocks for successful marketing campaigns. Enabling the ability for stronger reporting, more successful measurables all while preventing throwing good money after bad.
How does this funnel thing work exactly?
Here’s a little example:
Our strategy has put a focus on making sure we have strong organic, targeted and search campaigns for brand awareness. A Prospect is researching a product or service related to your brand. They discover you in a search query and click to visit your website. The prospect is now in your funnel and we have messaging in place to nurture the relationship.
As a prospect continues their discovery process on your brand. Our strategy begins using content marketing to provide insight, serving ads based on the type of engagement they have with your brand. The touch points are not limited in this process, each is designed to move them one step closer to a new relationship. This touch point is a social media ad offering them to learn more, they click through and they sign up for a newsletter. They receive a newsletter with a highlighted piece of content and click through to your website to learn more. The prospect is deep into the funnel at this point. The next touch point is designed to show them an ad as they surf the internet, offering a unique selling proposition.
At this point, by identifying how we want to communicate with prospects we’re able to make data driven decisions that maximize budgets. The unique selling proposition offered the deal they were looking for. The prospect trusts your brand, has confidence in your product or service and they’re ready to convert to becoming a new relationship.
We don’t stop here, from this point on we use content marketing that builds on the relationship. Ensuring our new relationships that we care about them and value their commitment to our brand.
What’s Next?
As with any successful campaign, the process begins with data and research. We need to understand audiences, habits, interests as well as identify new opportunities.
After the data research, it’s time to shift focus on patterns of the data and how we can apply what we learned to create the touch points and best mediums to use.
At this point the strategy is merged with design to develop engaging messaging and creative content, intended to communicate a balance of who you are while answering the questions your audiences are looking for answers to.
Why do you need a funnel?
The question is if you’re spending money, why wouldn’t you want a digital marketing funnel? Analytics and insights continue to provide information about your audiences giving us the opportunity to make data driven decisions and maximize ROI.
Identifying the components of a successful digital marketing funnel and what are the best approaches to creating engaging content to move customers through the funnel.
Social Media Handbook – Beginners Overview
Maximizing ROI in Social Media | Facebook & Instagram done right.
The rate at which social media has evolved and grown in the past 10 years has been both fun to watch and at times a bit scary. Both in how it began as a tool and how it has evolved and what it’s used for. This blog is going to focus more on the branding and marketing side of Facebook and Instagram.
What we still see a lot of these days when it comes to social media branding and marketing is many people still view social media as somewhat of a sales tool, when it’s really more of a relationship tool. Understanding and buying into this reality can be the difference between success and failure in your social media campaigns.
Breaking down problems and providing solutions.
Today I’m going to talk about six or seven things that we see happening within social media. For many clients these are problems that are resolved by helping them to understand, so they can better manage their processes.
I’m going to try and provide some deep insight without divulging the process as a whole. I’ll touch a little bit about why we use social media and the whole Business Manager side of ownership, pages and controlling the permissions. Also, understanding the social ecosystem and the power of audiences. Scratch the service of successful funnels and saying bye bye to the post and pray methodology. The power in pixels and finally bringing it all together.
So let’s start with Why social media?
This is actually a pretty broad question with answers that could go on for days due to the many different pieces associated with social media.
Let’s start with why brands use social media. Social media is really about building relationships, your brand and establishing a trust through your presence. Working towards that goal of moving them through the funnel and converting on your site or shop.
Again, I will reiterate that understanding this concept will change how you balance your messaging.
Social media is a large part of what you should be using as a tool but it’s really a small part in the overall ecosystem of digital presence. It’s just a part of the overall strategy that typically involves SEM, SEO, inbound marketing and other forms of media.
Is social media a sales tool?
An easy way to break all of this down is to look at how people use social media to communicate, learn and shop for brands. Patterns and data show us that social media is building relationships through answering questions, brand recognition and engaging consumers with content that relates to their needs. Businesses that are getting this right are building trust in diverse, relevant and balanced messaging.
Understanding the social media ecosystem.
For most social media users it’s pretty clear how it’s typically used. We’re posting, we’re engaging, commenting and reacting. Sharing our STORIES… this is a key word, because in the end, it all comes down to storytelling. The most engaging content typically has the best storytelling in some form.
As a brand when you begin to develop ideas about awareness and how to build relationships and ultimately get conversions. Strategizing the best tools to use in the social media ecosystem is a really important step. The social ecosystem is quite diverse and much bigger than most people understand I believe.
When you put in perspective how many options we have between boosted posts, Ads Manager the various types of campaigns and ads that can be created. Mix in the power of custom audiences and how to use them in our ad groups and apply a balance to ad delivery that creates a kind of conditional logic.
Investing dollars wisely to deliver ads to specific people based on the engagement, actions or another form of interaction with your business.
What are custom audiences?
Creating custom audiences provides the ability to create buckets of individuals based on how they’re engaging with your brand. Audiences allow these buckets to fill based on website visits, specific page visits, button clicks and other events. Simply having audiences at your disposal is just scratching the surface.
Audiences become extremely powerful when used to create touch points in any marketing funnel. Optimizing not just who is seeing specific messaging based on certain engagement, but also to exclude serving ads based on engagement.
Of course none of this is possible unless you have the a Facebook pixel installed on your website so that you can you track the IP addresses that are engaging with your brand. Audiences are the foundation to social media marketing funnels.
Understanding social media marketing funnels.
Social media marketing funnels are just a part of your overall marketing funnily or digital phone. It’s just another entry point to bring people into your process and build that relationship and ultimately move them to a conversion. A successful social media final typically it is strategize to around data some research and really understanding the messaging you trying to deliver and the overall goal you’re trying to achieve. So social media funnels really can ranged from having to to sometimes 2 to 5 varying touch points throughout the process.
A successful social media funnel begins with a strategy that revolves around insights and data research. This defines the messaging and creative you’ll deliver to achieve your overall goals. Establishing various touch points that maintain top of mind awareness while moving potential leads through the process to becoming a conversion.
All of this work really is about finding that balance between audiences, events and how you’re going to set those up between boosted posts and Ads Manager campaigns.
Bringing it all together.
Clearly we can see there’s a lot of power in social media advertising and particularly Facebook. Bringing it all together with a solid strategy and great campaign messaging increases the ability to maximize your budget and prevent you from throwing good money after bad.
What is the best recommended process for managing my social media?
In 2014 Facebook launched their Business Manager platform. Business Manager didn’t change the way that we posted or ran ads. Business manager was designed to create an admin interface where we could do a few things.
One of the key pieces of functionality is removing the personal connection between businesses and individuals. We manage connections, admin and editor roles all through the admin panel. To reiterate, the bonus to all of this we’re not using personal connections, we’re using work related email addresses
The Business Manager dashboard makes adding, removing and changing roles as simple as a few clicks. We can link ad accounts, share assets, manage pixels and much more. This creates ease in scaleability along with security assigning ownership. by an individual typically a manager of a business or an owner of a business and there may be one other admin which is recommended and these admins can just go in and basically select who uses white and it’s a very simple user friendly interface that makes managing the process of admins and pages much simpler much quicker.
Designing a Balanced Website User Interface
Researching User Experience to Balance Who You Are with What End Users Are Looking For
These times are really exciting in the digital landscape with so many mediums at our disposal. The awesomeness with all that’s available and the data that each provides, to better understand flows and trends about markets. Believe it or not, the foundation to building a strong website experience is supported by extensive data research. Offering the insights necessary to build a user experience and user interface that finds the balance between communicating who you are while offering users a simple, branded content delivery that quickly answers their questions.
The really cool kicker to all of this is the creative ways we can use animations, video, great photography with really well written content to effectively answer questions that consumers are asking about the products you sell or services you offer. Vast opportunities to better communicate with engaging content… content that distinguishes you from the rest of the market.
What are some of the challenges that may come with these exciting times.
Simply answered, the landscape is big! This is not a negative. It’s just a reality. Understanding your users and comparing their trends with data research helps to develop informed strategies. Here comes the buzzword mania… the goal is to develop a website that provides a user experience, user interface design and information architecture that balances your brand with an end user’s expectations and answers questions quickly.
There’s a lot happening in that last sentence. A lot of buzzwords or keywords all related to the industry that might not make sense. I’m going to take the time to define the keywords, explain a bit on how data and research are used and what types of data and what types of research assist with making really good decisions. Then bring it all together to develop a user experience and interface that can really help communicate who you are effectively.
What is user experience design?
User experience or UX encompasses how an end user interacts with all aspects of your business. In website terms, UX design is a reflection of user experience research and data which are combined for a strong information architecture. Delivering content to effectively help an end user navigate through your website and answer questions quickly. UX is not the process of visual design. It primarily revolves around the feel of the experience as a whole.
What is user interface design?
In web terms, user interface design revolves around the process of creating elements both for visual and interactive purposes. Creating a visual guide based on brand standards that remains in line with the rest of a brand that is both aesthetically pleasing and understandable.
Overall, it’s an interface that is creating an experience that’s intuitive to an end user and answers questions quickly and effectively.
What is information architecture?
Websites are puzzles, and information architecture is the process of putting those puzzle pieces together. Primarily focusing on how the organization, labeling, structuring and navigation of items relate to each other within the system as a whole. The overall goal is to help end users find information to answer their questions as easily as possible.
If you’re just doing without really knowing, you may not be failing but you certainly aren’t succeeding.
Now that we have the buzzwords cleared up and you’re feeling up to speed, it’s a great time to say that this stuff doesn’t really just come together. Ultimately what’s happening is you’re investing a lot of time, money and resources into developing a brand that you’re proud of and that also relates to your target audience. The process isn’t to just kind of come up with a couple ideas and say hey this looks right and that sounds good and put everything together. That’s not really how this process works.
Developing a website that speaks to your end users can be managed many ways. Simply taking a few ideas, a bit of instinct, a lot of opinion and topping it off with some creative flair with the expectations of a successful outcome is not a very good recipe.
The balancing act… brand, end users and stakeholders.
A good amount of focus goes into appeasing or satisfying stakeholders of a company and their views or values of how they see their business. Stakeholders are key voices in the process and it’s vital that we work with them to find a balance by taking into consideration how end users see their business.
We need to ensure we are not just satisfying both voices, but validating why we make the decisions that lead to this satisfaction.
What happens when we accommodate opinion over research… a website fails to serve the true purpose. End users are traveling 3, 4 possibly 5 pages deep, they aren’t getting the answers they’re looking for quick enough. All of the time and financial investment ultimately doesn’t provide the conversions expected to get from a new website. A bad user experience, interface design and information architecture have a tremendous negative impact through the entire ecosystem.
The most successful websites invest a lot of time in tracking data analysis and understanding users flows and engagement on their website. The data is compiled to make informed decisions and begin capitalizing on a user experience that’s much cleaner and effective.
What data is used for data research?
I mean Colonel Sanders hasn’t shared his secret recipe… fair to say some secrets will remain close to the chest. That said, there are many tools native to sites and add-ons that provide strong insights into end users and behavior.
When all of the data and research finally comes together there is a much stronger understanding of your end users, your product, your peers and competitors. This offers the ability to make informed decisions and problem-solve more effectively. Strategically create an information architecture that’s clean, simple and to the point. End users visiting your website understand exactly what they’re looking for and you’re telling them where to go to find it.
With all of these pieces in place we now have the ability to focus on content and content delivery. Speaking to who you are, how you benefit an end user and the simplest path to conversion.
The best approach is the team approach.
Working together to empower clients with the knowledge necessary to understand the process, best practices and why specific decisions are or are not implemented. In the end, the goal is an experience that we all grow from, with healthy communication which ultimately produces a website that is fast, accessible and a representation of your brand that an end user finds happiness in using.
Balancing the Designer & Client Expectations
I wanted to take a moment to talk a bit about designer / client expectations and the balance I feel comes with being a responsible designer. After all, client’s are investing with the expectations of getting a great ROI and trusting in decisions being made that are in the best interest of their needs.
I’ve witnessed in many instances throughout my design journey where clients are somewhat at a disservice. It’s not a negative comment or necessarily of ill intent. Experienced designers value their clients and brand, they also value their insight, knowledge, expertise and skill set. When we see designers put the value of their experience and preference before the clients, that’s where we often see relationships fail due to trust and lack of results.
It took me many years to find the balance between my preferences and what’s best for my clients.
Let’s start with who I am…
I’ve spent much of the past 25 years involved in the arts in some form or another. Along the way I’ve had the good fortune to meet many types of artists, hear stories, indulge in technicalities all while learning and growing from these experiences.
I’m an artist through and through. I have a beautiful studio for my fine art, I sing, song write, play guitar and love all forms of digital media. I’m an artist in the sense that I love to communicate and be communicated to, and I have a very deep appreciation for the technical aspects of master craftsmanship.
For me though… that’s where it stops. I’m not necessarily an artsy artist.
I feel art and artists often push boundaries that just aren’t always necessary. There’s this trend of making more of things than they really are, complemented with some overthinking. I get it, I really do… artists are blessed with a unique perspective of life. We’re inspired to be creative, unique and establish our style. More often than not, I’ve experienced overthinking as an unproductive waste of time, resources and money… especially when it applies to brand and strategy.
Where am I going with this… lets start with an example.
It’s really quite interesting the outlook that artists have on art, meaning and how they relate. I’m going to draw a comparison between my music and digital media. Since having children, the guitar has become my immediate fix over spending hours in the studio painting
I’ve played out a few times on open mic nights, I get offers from friends as well to play out. My approach to playing music though is that I do it for myself, I play the songs that I connect with and that bring me absolute joy. If I were to play out, I would have to edit my set list to accommodate the crowds and play fan favorites that connect with them. That just does not work for me.
But when it comes to my clients…
I find great pride in problem solving… especially when I know I’m applying 20 years of experience that’s helping a client grow their business. I’m not much different than most designers. I see things, I question them, I critique them and I also reverse engineer some things to learn how, or why or what I may do differently.
When it comes to client expectations vs my preferences I begin to balance client expectations over my own preferences. I don’t approach it with “what do I like”… I approach it with what the client has communicated, what does the research and data say and how can I add my touch to make it unique to my style?
Because there is a balance.. From a designer perspective, there’s a uniqueness to each of us. There’s pride in the quality of our work and many of us have built our reputations on exactly that.
This does not mean that as a designer I won’t share my preferences for client reaction. Clients are relying on me to offer unique perspectives, but they also need to be balanced with data and overall expectations. This type of communication is what builds trust which becomes the foundation to healthy client relationships.
So what does this mean for you as a client?
When client’s understand this, they trust in decision making, they understand that they’re working with a designer who has attention to the details and expects a client relationship that values both their brand and the designer’s skill set. Just as much as the designer values their goals and expectations over their own personal preferences.
Clients choose their designers based on many different factors. I prefer to educate prospective clients on my approach and style; and how it will compliment their brand and goals. This helps them to understand that I have expectations of the quality of work I produce, which helps them to decide if my approach fits within their overall expectations.