Here, take the wheel, you can drive

I used to be the webmaster for a large corporation. I was in charge of creating websites and web applications. I worked with internal departments to get their message and data published to the external website or the intranet. The company that I worked for had 50+ departments and over 3000 employees. Keeping up with the information and data of that many departmental clients took a lot of juggling.

Very quickly I learned that my job’s true purpose was to help people help themselves. I created tools and processes that allowed clients to control their information and manage their web presence themselves. Many clients were hungry for this, embraced it, and pushed the boundaries of what we did. I loved this. Some greeted me on our first meeting with “Oh I am so glad you are here, our area of the intranet is so out of date, I’m glad that you can finally get to it”. I would excitedly tell them – you don’t need me, you can do it yourselves. They would become confused and mumble something about it not being their job and they wanted me to update the content. I would agree to start them out on the right foot and ask them for what they wanted changed and would get a perplexed look.

This is an important difference of perception that highlights a danger for many small business owners.

My clients at the large corporation, who wanted me to do all their updates, didn’t really want me to do their updates. They wanted me to relieve them of the responsibility of managing their portion of the website.

I have found many clients (my own and others) who let their designer take control of the content and strategy portion of their website redesign. They are relieved that help is available and leave everything up to the professional. Which is fine if you are working with a professional who will bring an array of choices to you for important decisions – who will have a dialogue with you. Unfortunately, sometimes this attitude switches the goal from creating a website that reflects a business (that is unique) to just creating a website.

The point is — ultimately you control your website. You are responsible for its content and for updating it. You are responsible for the message it sends to your customers. You don’t have to build the site, or even figure out the best way to build the site – you just have to be involved and stay engaged with the process. Resist just being a passenger and navigate what you know best – what makes your business unlike any other.

Stay focused on your goals

I had the good fortune to talk before a group of small business owners last night. My presentation was about how a website should fit into a businesses’ overall marketing strategy. They were a very receptive audience.

I talked about what a website is (a collection of interconnected documents) and what it isn’t (IM, email, RSS, a listing on your local chamber of commerce website) and I went on to give examples of businesses and how each business used their website differently (based on their overall strategy of how they wanted to interact with customers).

Not every business needs a website – whether you need a website or not depends on how you want to generate your customers and how you want to dialogue with them. There are also as many ways to define a website as there are to define a business. A restaurant may only need a simple brochure site with the essential basics – brand look and feel, phone, fax, address, directions, and menu. A realtor’s site will need to go further to generate leads – a clear call to action, a subscription form, feedback process (automatic emails), etc.

The difference between an effective site (and thus a website that costs no more than it should) and a website that is a useless money sink is simple – planning. Every website should have a mini strategic business plan to focus it (and its owners) on what it needs to do.

What I tried to leave my fellow business owners with were the following ideas:

• Have a goal for your website – and do only that – focus on it – and your website will cost less and be more effective.
• You don’t have to know how to do something – you only have to know what you want.
• Nothing is free – even if there isn’t a dollar cost there is a cost in time and emotional dollars.
• A good website acts like a garden – it never stops needing attention – plan on this.
• Stay excited – if you aren’t passionate about what you are doing, no one else will be excited either. Make sure your website reflects why you do what you do.

In case you are just tuning in

I build web infrastructures. I design web-based applications and processes – which is a fancy way of saying I build websites that do stuff. More importantly than building websites – I help my clients simplify processes that save them money and make life easier.

I have worked for large corporations, solving large corporate problems. Large corporate problems often have large expensive solutions. I have found that small businesses have them same problems as large businesses, but less resources. Because they have less resources they are frequently overlooked by vendors and solutions providers. This is where I come in.

I provide my clients with the expertise to solve their problems efficiently. I have created solutions of every size from custom-coded applications to PayPal setups.

This blog, Harnessing the Web, is meant to be a way to share my experiences with small business owners so they can learn what they need to know – and how to get what they want.

There is an important distinction here – I don’t think entrepenuers need to know how to create websites or code HTML. They do need to know what they want their website to do and how to go about getting it done.

Welcome to my conversation – and thank you for tuning in.