Work Better, Not Harder

Every time I do online research, I find broken things. I'm curious; I like to see how things work. And it's quite amazing how many times I find things that don't work, or don't work well. I'm not just talking about small business websites - even big brands fail sometimes. The thing is, big brands usually have a reputation which leads people to forgive or ignore more easily. I've written before about how important it is to audit your website at least quarterly. (I pay someone to do it for me and it's well worth it.) If you haven't done a website audit recently, now is a great time. Here are a handful of specific things to check. Is your website doing these things well? Be really clear about the benefits to potential customers and put that front and centre. More money and more time are great - but how much? Read and test everything yourself. Don't rely on what others tell you. I've seen a lot of non-functional website forms and suc...

There have been many good things about moving my website to a WordPress platform late last fall. And there have been a few frustrating things. I'd been doing a pretty good job of ignoring some of those frustrating things until I received an email from Google Search Console with the subject line:  Increase in "404" pages on daleyprogress.com . Oh no! That sounded pretty ominous. The accompanying graph was even more so. Here's the backstory: all my website links changed with the move . Previously my pages all ended with '.html' and now that's truncated. There's a plug-in for redirecting when people click on an old link out there somewhere, so I set that up for every current page. I also had to move several documents and files hosted on my old site to the new one, and then go change all those links on my various blog posts about them. Tedious, painful work but I thought I had it handled. It turned out I was so very wrong. These '404 errors...

How's your static content? Say what? Yup, I'm inventing new words to categorize all those things many of us small business owners call 'marketing stuff'. The word 'content' is part of my everyday vocabulary but maybe not part of yours yet. Whether you call it content or stuff, it represents you, your business and your brand to everyone that encounters it . There are lots of ways to slice and dice content but one important distinction is whether it is dynamic or static. Dynamic content is new and ever changing - the articles and videos you create, the messages you post on Facebook and Twitter, your newsletter, and so on. Static content includes the messages you create once and continue to use. Things like your tagline and advertising text, everything on your website, your social media profiles, business cards, and so on. While you're busy working on your dynamic content all the time, it's easy to forget about that static content. You might ...

Your newsletter has just gone out and your inbox is filling up with out-of-office auto-responder messages. Are you deleting them unopened? They might be worth a closer look. Other than vacation notices, you might also find that some of your contacts have changed their email addresses due to new jobs or other reasons. You’ll want to search them in your list and replace their email address. (If you delete them and add them as a new contact, you’ll lose the electronic trail of your contact history.) The Phone Lady told me a nice story about reconnecting with someone as a result of following up on a change notice. The lesson is that you can use this as an opportunity to reach out and touch someone that you haven’t talked to in a while. photo by rich115 / Flickr Click to Tweet this Article

In the normal course of my day, I am constantly looking businesses up online. If I am going to talk to you, meet with you, consider buying your product or using your services, I've looked you up online. Increasingly, I am finding content that I am certain you do not want representing you. Maybe you think you do not need an online presence. Maybe you have an old website that you think is working to the extent you need it to. And maybe you are wrong. Think of all the reasons you Google a business: looking for a product or service looking for a location looking for directions or a map looking for a policy preparing for a meeting If you are using an online search to find what you are looking for, it stands to reason that others are as well. Many, many others. What do you want them to find when they look? We've said it before and it is worth repeating. Google your business at least quarterly. Set your website as your browser's default home page so you are seei...

I know, I know! Doesn't it sound dreadful? The Audit. Conjuring up images of spreadsheets, accountants and bad hair days. But wait... this isn't about that kind of audit. This is much less stressful, yet just as important. We have talked about auditing your website before. But if you are online, you need to be auditing your entire online presence. It should be done on a schedule. We suggest quarterly. Review all online content related to your business, testing all links and reading every word . Broken or irrelevant links are an annoyance to readers. Make sure there are none when they visit you. When testing links, stop long enough to ensure the referenced content is still there. Some places to check in addition to your website are: Profiles. Remember when we found out that online profiles helped search engine ranking? Suddenly, we had more profiles than was manageable. Check them. Find your log-in or request a new one and keep the profiles current. If they are ...

screen shot of email header There's nothing like getting an email addressed to 'fname' or 'subscriber' for making you feel valued. Yes, I'm being sarcastic. This is definitely  not the message you want to send to your readers. You want to make a personal connection with your readers but using form fields is not the way to do it , even if you use them correctly. A form field is simply another automation. People know. Am I blown away when I get a newsletter addressed to 'Linda'? Not usually. Sure it takes a little more time to set up and maintain. Various experts will tell us that using a person's name will have a subconscious impact. Is the sender suddenly my trusted advisor? No. Let me start at the beginning. What do I mean by a form field? They're places in an HTML document used to insert specific data from a database. As an example, [fname] will insert the person's first name from the database. You can type "Hi [fname]...

I was surprised and delighted to hear that my website had been used recently as an example in a webinar that Susan Sweeney facilitated for the Centre for Women in Business. You see, without knowing it, Susan has had a huge impact on my website. The first workshop I attended of Susan's was in Regina in 2002. It was long before I actually had a website. Among the many takeaways that day, one has always stuck with me: the importance of fresh content and quality control for your website. When I started my business, I knew the only way I was going to have fresh content was if I took control and managed my own website. By constantly working on it, I’m inspired about what changes to make. Keeping content fresh creates another challenge – it means a lot of changes. And a lot of changes mean opportunity for mistakes. I’m a stickler for details and I know how I react when I click on a link and it doesn’t work. When I asked Danielle to be our official Daley Progress website au...

Recently I have been doing a lot of web research which had me landing at many different websites. I noticed some common problems that are easily corrected. Although none of these tips are new, here are 3 tips that are worth repeating: Make your website easy to maintain and maintain it. While it might be appealing to pay a lot of money for a flashy website and hand over the updates to someone outside your organization, take a good look into it first. Make sure you pick a company that will process your updates inexpensively and quickly. Make sure that you keep control of the branding and look of your website. If you are handling your website in house, make sure you are updating it quickly as changes occur within your organization. Events and resources are particularly frustrating for web users when they are not current so it is best to always include a link to the organization's website rather than a link to a document they have provided. Audit your website. Busine...

Make sure your website and other online places are showing current copyright dates. Old dates can have people questioning if you're still around and how current your information is. If you have print or electronic material with copyright dates, also remember to update those! Click to Tweet this Article