Would you like to be more visible on the Web? Who wouldn’t? But good SEO advice seldom comes cheap. Sure, you can cross your fingers and hope to God you don’t end up with an over promising SEO bozo… but if you are going to find a self-professed SEO Rock Star on eLance and spend only $500 bucks — trust me: You’re going to get what you paid for and you are going to be $500 less richer and a few more months away from getting what you really want: Online visibility.
This blog and my contribution to the thousands of digitally challenged REALTORS and countless business owners that don’t have a clue what to do, where to go or who to turn to for some practical advice will find a lot of no BS, no whitewash answers right here.
What is Website Usability?
See my photo on the top right? Allow me please to demonstrate what website “usability,” really means in a nutshell. Because 90% of all websites have the same problem: No one has tested them for usability.
Bart Wilson, (505) 466-24*** damn! You can’t read the whole phone number. What jerk would post their contact information and to be so stupid as not to show the full telephone number to prospects who REALLY WANT want to contact you and do business with you?
Welcome to my world and your first lesson into understanding how the web works. [ And how it doesn't. ]
Remember how frustrated you were when you finally found a website you were looking for on Google, but then you couldn’t find the contact information? No phone number. No easy way to contact these people. What moron creates a brick and mortar business, then never publishes the company phone number in the Yellow Pages?
That may sound incredibly stupid — but there’s thousands of websites out there with NO phone number and NO address. These websites are NOT to be trusted with anything personal from you. Buying a book or report from these sites even for $9.95 is pretty stupid. It might seem safe because it’s a PayPal thing but watch what happens when you get his with the $39.95 a month subscription you had no clue you were signing up for. GoogleMoneyTree.com did this. They were very bad. So much so that Google pulled the plug on their website. Rule of Thumb: Stay away from any website that has no phone number and no physical address posted on their website.
Soon there will be more people using the Internet than there are people in the World
Funny statement, but it might be true. So says an early Pacific Bell TV commercial. Providing YouTube doesn’t bust me for posting it, take a look below. It’s hilarious.
In an already over crowded Internet world, the million dollar question for you is this: How are you going to get visible and get customers to find you and buy your products or services? Before you answer that question, you need to know a few things about people.
1.) We judge a book by it’s cover. If you’re ugly, fat or dumpy… why would people want to spend any time shopping at your site?
2.) If you design skills suck, if you have no clue what CSS means or if you still think Microsoft’s Front Page is going to turn you into a J. Walter Thompson Creative Director overnight… I’ve got some really bad news for you.
I’m 40-something years old now. I’ve learned a few things about the Internet, and the difference between USE-able websites and those that just plain suck. I’ve been blessed with being present when the first “big bang,” took place in advertising when the Macintosh computer landed on my desk in 1990. Back then I was at Levenson, Levenson & Hill Advertising. My first mentors were Fred Randall, Jerry McPhail and the now late Bill Hill. They taught me a lot of things about advertising and good design that I use today even though Websites weren’t around in 1990.
If you’re responsible for your company’s website — if you need to fix usability problems or if you have no clue what A/B testing is then I welcome you. You’ll find plenty of common sense help here for the “Do it yourself,” type right here.