Indeed, I met someone the other day who was asking, well really, what’s the point of paying for nice design? What’s the ROI of design, when I can see plenty of basic, unlovely websites that seem to be doing just fine?

It’s true. Some horrible-looking websites do very well. Why?

Let us analyse.

1. They don’t actually depend on their online presence

Despite everything that Mashable might tell you, there are plenty of enterprises which carry on their merry way without their websites really making much difference to their bottom line. My vet’s website has had an Under Construction sign up for 6 months now, but the waiting room’s still packed.

Loads of businesses still rely heavily on personal contact, with the website merely playing the part of corporate brochure.

2. They offer something which people want very, very badly

This is really the heart of it, and it accounts for the success of Facebook, Megaupload and all of the major GetRichOnTheInternet sites.

Hopping dayglo graphics and the faint hint of Soviet viruses ready to empty your Paypal account if you click the wrong link? Hmm. I might balance that against a pre-DVD copy of The Iron Lady.*

3. They are in a position of power over their users

This applies to tax offices, concert ticket purchasing, Verified By Visa and all job recruitment sites anywhere.

Jump, my pretties! Jump higher!

4. It doesn’t look crap to the target market

This applies to Myspace (back in the day) and any popular site featuring animated penguins. It may not be your preferred aesthetic, but maybe it works fantastically well with the end users.

(Equally, the kind of pared-down minimalism that is popular with some graphic designers can look really thin and unwelcoming to non-designers who are not stroking their beards about the elegant use of slab-serif).

5. The voice and writing are outstanding

Plenty of successful blog-based sites fall into this category: personal voices, writing beautifully (like Belgian Waffle – wonderful content, unremarkable design), and business voices which aren’t afraid to be different.

(But oh my, different is damned difficult. ‘Renegade’ is very popular right now and it’s very hard to do it in a way that’s truly attractive and convincing.)

6. There’s a very strong connection with readers

This usually goes with outstanding writing. It applies particularly to some successful business coaching blogs, where the readers are hungry for connection, and the coach has absolutely nailed their customers’ interests and deep concerns.

7. It’s crap, but it’s a special kind of crap

Very popular horrible-looking sites tend to be aesthetically off-putting but actually very functional.

Bulletin board styles, for example, as seen on open-source help forums and fan sites, look pretty vile but work beautifully. The font is readable. You can search, you can comment, you can get emailed updates. They don’t break the basic rules of readability. Well, mostly. With some Doctor Who sites, all bets are off.

It’s the equivalent of having delicious coffee in a tacky sandwich bar.

But of course the real question is:

Can you or I be terribly successful with our ugly websites?

Maybe.

Got a unique writing voice, fantastic relationships, and a VERY highly desired product or service? Go to it. Spend most of your time and money on building your connections. (Just stay away from green and blue text).

Not very dependent on the internet? Then your online presence is one part of your overall brand identity, and it should reflect that. As we lose our phone books, a decent, functional, attractive online presence is going to matter more and more. Get a decent one.

Nice voice, okay relationships, and a modestly desired product or service? Design can make the difference between considered and not-considered. It’s not a magic bullet, but it will support and deepen your offer. And it can occasionally take you from good to amazing.

Thoughts?

*I wouldn’t really.

(And yes, I do website audits, web strategy and redesign. Usually, it’s 50/50 between design improvements and content improvements – they don’t really stand apart. Work both your content and your design, and you’re good to go.)

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One of my guilty pleasures is to stroll around the local terraced streets at dusk, around the time that people put a light on, but haven’t yet closed their curtains. Each lighted window is like a diorama, a box briefly displaying the inhabitants living their lives – watching TV, playing the violin, rocking the baby, in an environment that could be anything from Arts and Crafts to Zen Minimalism.

It’s a lovely glimpse of real lives. (I don’t think I’m a voyeur, really)

And that brings me to an important website function. As a window on your world.

If your website doesn’t actually sell anything at all, it’s quite possible you stopped reading this series some time ago.

But websites also exist to present a face to the world – a window on the organisation’s workings, if you like. You might want to share your knowledge with the world, or show off the stuff that you have inside. You might want to justify your public funding by sharing what you have with the people who can’t visit. Ultimately, you might want to attract visitors, or great job applicants, or demystify what you do.

And one great way of doing that is to use the website as a way of making some of your hidden work much more visible.

There are two kinds of strategies for doing this. One is resource-focused, the other is people- (or story-) focused.

Resources

Or, in the unlovely phrase of one of my old bosses, ‘Sweating the assets’. Making good use of your stuff.

If you have a lot of stuff (like a gallery or a library), then you may want to work on bringing your hidden treasures out and talking about them. For example, the Wellcome Collection (a London museum dedicated to the history of medicine) has a lovely blog in which curators talk about important objects and current exhibitions.

The British Museum took this one step further, in an inspirational radio series last year (museums! on the radio!), called ‘A History of the World in 100 Objects.’

More simply, the curators of important collections are now making it possible for people all over the place to appreciate what they have hidden away. Old databases are being digitised and catalogued so that they can be explored by people who are too far away ever to drop in.

This approach isn’t just for museums and galleries – if you have Stuff, you can talk about it, show it, and generally weave a story around it. The key is to find a story, and bring out the connections.

People (Getting behind the scenes)

Readers love to get behind the scenes. Websites don’t do it enough. Think about film and TV. Many films on DVD are released with a director’s commentary, or a making-of documentary. Reality TV has spawned thousands of hours of behond-the-scenes footage, often of pretty mundane stuff. There’s something very fascinating about seeing how things are done.  If your work is very abstract, then simple behind the scenes stories can really bring your work to life.

What’s interesting here is that you may not be the best person to spot the interesting story. It can be sparked by the wrong-headed questions that you get at parties, when you tell people what you do. Or the war stories that you swap down the pub. You might need to put yourself in someone else’ shoes entirely.

Some ideas:

A day in the life of a…(Sales trader at a Tokyo bank)
Interviews (Sir John Sulston, talking about genomes)
Standard questionnaires
Lists (10 things we should know about you)
Case studies
Before and after stories
Diaries and blogs (Expeditions to Antarctica)
Stories about the work
Stories about all the different people who make it happen
The virtual tour – video and photos
Confessional/confidential
The story behind the launch
From idea to reality

Finally, some advice on creating people stories: get your colleagues involved, and always seek permission. This can be creepy when imposed from above, but people are pretty good at thinking through these ideas, given the chance. Hidden little human stories that bring your work to life.

If you’d like a detailed site review, with loads of inspiration for creating new content – do get in touch. My Strategy Sessions help you review your current presence, and map out a straightforward, compelling path forward.

So here is my guide to choosing a good theme that will work for you and not take over your waking hours. Seven questions to ask yourself.

1. What’s your skill level with WordPress, CSS and HTML?

Honestly?

Every time you see the phrase ‘Easy to use’ attached to a theme you should mentally add the phrase ‘…For a professional designer.’ Yes, themes are easier to use than ever, but most themes do involve a substantial learning curve, if you’re not already familiar with WordPress.

Drag and drop themes, in particular, make life very easy for designers creating small websites for their clients, but they can be a total non-starter if you need help to put your design together in the first place. (Quick tip: The ‘happy customer’ testimonials should tell you a bit about the user base. Are they all web designers?)

Similarly, all premium (paid) theme companies say they offer good support – but they will expect you to know the basics. I’ve used about 4 different premium theme providers by now, and I find that customer support is pretty technical. It’s not impossible to use these as a total newcomer, but if you need your hand holding every step of the way, you may find that Support is just not supportive enough.

2. How perfectionist are you?

You need to know yourself. Happy is the woman who can download a theme, activate it and move on with her life. Personally, I’m a tweaker. I always want to change something. Over the years, I’ve learned that I need to make sure I’m pretty happy with the overall site scheme, before I start putting it in place. Text size is easy to change, blog layout rather harder.

The problem with this admirable get-your-hands-dirty mentality is that you may hope to build a Ferrari but have the skills (and budget) to simply acquire an old banger. This is where cheap really begins to be expensive. It may take you 3 days to do something that a pro developer would solve in half an hour.

Most DIYers never consider the cost implications of their own time investment. OK, if you want to build your WordPress skills. Not so good if your main business is something else entirely. The true perfectionist should probably save up and hire someone.

3. Should you go with free or paid themes?

I have a whole rant on this.

My own position is that free often ends up pretty expensive. There are some very good free themes out there, it’s true. The best are the classic, popular themes in the WordPress theme directory, especially the basic-looking ones which are designed to be used with your own stylesheet. (Are you a web designer? Off you go.)

Unfortunately, free can also mean a theme which doesn’t get updated much, offers no support and doesn’t work well with all the major browsers. I’ve had some really frustrating experiences with free themes. At worst, there are free themes out there which contain nasty code – if you check out Smashing Magazine’s 2011 round-up of themes, you’ll see a number of comments underneath about themes which contain malware.

Personally, I tend to work with premium themes and frameworks, because they’re tried and tested, there is support available, and the developers have an incentive to keep updating them.

Premium themes aren’t perfect either. There are some really expensive premium themes out there – usually totally unnecessary, but catering to newbies. You shouldn’t need to pay any more than $100 for an individual theme with everything you need and usually rather less. (I really don’t think you get what you pay for in this market).

Check out that you will get everything you need – some theme companies make their money through add-ons. It’s like buying a Lego starter pack and then realising you don’t have enough to make a spaceship with.

4. Will your core website content look good with this theme?

As a general rule, text-heavy blogs do better with a light or white background, while video and photography sites stand out with a deeper background.

If your site is blog-led, look very carefully at the design of the blog index view (often a featured post and a list of abbreviated recent posts), as well as the individual blog post view. These are where most of your readers will spend their time. Do you like what you see? Does it look good?

Also look at comment layout, if you’re interested in conversation. Good layouts for comments will use gravatars/avatars and signal the difference between comment and response (through indenting or colour, for example).

Investigate the menus/navigation, and see if your own style fits with it. For example, some themes are optimised for simple, pared-down navigation. Others look great with lots of pages on display.

5. Does the theme deal well with all your content?

Good themes will offer layouts for different content types, e.g. portfolio, gallery, contact form, archives, alternate pages.

6. What are the implications of this site for your images?

Take a close look at the theme demonstration, which is usually optimised for a particular type of use, and mentally swap in your own content. Look at the image sizes and types being used.

Will that leading-edge site with all the dramatic architectural photos (see Paragrams, in the photo above) look equally good with the head-and-shoulder shots you tend to use?

Does the site use image dimensions which might mean you need to work rather differently? For example, Letterbox styles (wide narrow rectangles) are popular at the moment, but these can be time-consuming to create from conventional images. The theme I’m using at the moment, for example, needs home page slider images which are very wide and narrow, and somewhat boring on the right hand side.

And finally…

7. Is your chosen theme here for the long term?

(Or at least, as long as you need it).

I look for a theme that is popular and updated frequently, and suits current/future plans.

There are some lovely-looking free themes out there which just fall apart once you start to look at them in detail, and which don’t really get updated. If there’s a showcase showing the theme in use, click through to the organisation to see if that theme is still being used. Not only does this show you a live site using the theme, but if the theme’s not actually used any more, that can raise a little flag of doubt. (But note that some site developers are just very indecisive!).

The latest themes are stressing their suitability for mobiles and tablet as well as desktop/laptop computers (often termed ‘responsive design’). This is great for people in businesses where people read or look up content while travelling, or which cater to a heavily mobile-focused demographic. Many of us …aren’t. *sadface*

So there you go. Buyer beware. Non-buyer, beware more. Interested in your experiences of choosing and if you have any tips to pass on.

*This entire post is about WordPress.org, which you host on your own domain.

ETA: I’ve been asked about themes that I do recommend. I’ve only used a small number of theme families, but I had had very happy experiences with Elegant Themes and the StudioPress framework.

PS Need help with your WordPress site? I can help you with a makeover, tweaks, or total redesign, which will make your site look exactly right for you. And if you’re a diehard DIY-er, I can offer strategy sessions that will provide you with loads of ideas that you can put into action for yourself.

(The other part of his tradition was a laser-guided trip to the wee off-licence round the corner, where he bought industrial quantities of Tennent’s Lager, Whyte and Mackay whiskey, and ginger ale. And several teeny bottles of Ball’s Advocaat and Babycham. There’s my Celtic Twilight history. Ah well. )

Anyway. I haven’t managed the soup making but the hall’s all freshly vacuumed and there’s home-made lemon tart ready to take to our New Year gathering. Nothing to do but wait. There’s the beat of a moment between now and next year. I love that sense of warm possibility.

The post I’ve been meaning to write here was about voice. I hate to admit it, but not every great business has a website to match. In fact, I see some businesses who (from here) seem to be doing perfectly all right, yet have rather horrible websites.

Visual design isn’t everything.

Yet, if I examine the websites that make my teeth ache, I usually see two things that are very, very important.

First: Great web-based businesses provide things that their audiences want very much. Could be a product or a service. Whatever it is, it’s highly desirable and the audience will put up with a lot to get hold of it.

And second (this particularly applies to the coaches and consultants out there): Successful online enterprises have a strong, confident, unique voice. A great voice will overcome the less-than-perfect visuals.

So, when I look at a website, I look at the visual design, but I also examine the content carefully. We’re drowning in websites. So many voices, so many options. People struggle with visual design, but they really, really struggle with their voice.

A good look is a great starting-point, but it’s useless without mission and conviction. The uncertain voice is easy to dismiss, because there are so many other things out there just like it. The clear voice is hard to define, but you know it when you read it.

Of course, finding your voice is easier said than done. But I think it’s the key. Once your voice and mission is clear, everything else begins to fall into place.

So that’s my New Year sermon. I’ll raise a glass to you and your enterprises, whatever they are. Find your vision, project your voice, and wrap it in a way that brings your audience running to you.

Have a great New Year.

In an average day, I’ll work on the iMac with its massive screen, and then look at stuff on the desktop PC or laptop PC with widescreen monitor in the evening.

It’s…interesting.

Here’s what I’m noticing about my website viewing experience.

1. Text always looks better on the Mac

Fonts that look perfectly acceptable on the Mac may look like wobbly spider poo on the PC.

Fonts that look a bit iffy on the Mac look downright terrible on the PC.

Groovy fonts that look downright beautiful on your own system MAY NOT EVEN SHOW UP when your visitor views the page.

I always knew this in theory, but I’m noticing it a lot now.

There’s a site I’m reading at the moment. On the iMac, I can happily read the text in the original fancy style. Back on my PC, also running Firefox, the fancy style reverts straight to the basic fallback. And the basic fallback is very basic.

You need elegant degradation. I like that phrase. A stepped fallback, from fancy through safe bet to basic.

2. Wide layouts look horrible on the PC

On my PC monitor, wide sites (bigger than 1000 pixels) end up with a horizontal scroll bar. Little floaty bits float right out of sight.

Sure, I can make it bigger or smaller.

Then I can see your floaty Twitter bar but I can’t read your text.

On my Mac, wide sites look OK when my browser window is very wide; but most of my browser windows are fairly small. There’s no scroll bar, but elements that don’t fit horizontally just get squished. (As they do on the PC, ugh).

I’m seeing this a lot at the moment. Wide layouts are particularly bad for reading text – we scan narrower columns much more easily than bloated columns. The width of a paperback page (just slightly bigger than this column) is about right.

Widescreen text tends to lose the reader. It breaks the flow of your argument. You know that phrase about reading fiction, ‘the willing suspension of disbelief’? Very wide screens break that rapport. You wouldn’t want that.

So, beware the curse of wideness. You’ll thank me.

3. People use different systems.

(And just because someone uses a different system does not mean they are a bad person.)

Windows systems still dominate. (Unless you run exclusively in design circles, in which case it’s Apple all the way. Possibly).

Internet Explorer is still massive. IE is followed by Firefox and Chrome (running neck and neck), then Safari, and then Opera.

If you have a diverse market (and most of us do), then you need to build sites that deal well with the diversity of screens and systems.

If you are working with a designer, they should know this. Unfortunately, people get caught up in the loveliness of their design, and they fail to consider whether it will work across the typical range of machines and systems. But you owe it to your audience to make their reading experience pleasant.

Do I like these tigers? I'm not sure now.

My son’s worst shopping moment with me took place last Christmas. We were out shopping in the January sales, and I went into WH Smith (a newsagent) to buy a few things. They had some brand new self-service checkouts. I ignored them (hate them with a passion) and queued up to pay a real live person. Then one of the sales staff wandered up and pointed out the self-serve checkouts.

I said I didn’t want to use them.

He said they were really easy to use if I would just try.

We had a little stand-off. A little voice in my ear started going ‘Nooo please Mum nooo, don’t make a scene’ as I launched into my Self Serve Checkouts Spell The End of Retail Civilisation Socialist Worker Rant.

So yes. Checkouts. Can make or break you.

Here’s my take on the online sort.

Your customers love what you do. You’re offering the right product at the right price, and now your customer is whipping out her credit card, ready to buy.

It’s a golden moment.

Unfortunately, this is the point at which many online  sellers mentally check out, too. They leave all of that nasty detail to the shopping cart system, and heave a sigh of relief. Job done, game over, just count the profits.

Of course, sometimes the detail doesn’t matter much. The sellers of popular concert tickets figured out years ago that they could throw rocks at you, and you’d still trudge through the godawful mess that is Verified by Visa. Because you want those tickets very, very badly.

Other purchases can be thrown right off-course by an insensitive or awkward checkout process.   If you don’t end up losing the customer altogether, you may acquire a customer who still sort of loves your product but is beginning to have tiny doubts.  Or at worst, has already decided that she’s going to buy the damn thing somewhere else next time.

Understand the psychology of the online buyer

Let’s explore the buyer’s state of mind a little bit longer.

Think about your buyer. If you have limited knowledge of your buyer, think about your own experience of online buying.

Here’s my take. The resolute buyer is pretty excited. She’s made a decision, and now she’s ready to see it through.

She is probably also a bit nervous. If your stuff is expensive, she may be damping down all the little critical voices in her head that suggest that a red cashmere mini-dress might not be a great use of her money, pre-Christmas. But she really wants it…

So now your revved-up, nerve-jangled actual customer is putting her doubts aside and …buying! Or to be more accurate, making her way through the checkout process.

Your task is to make this process as lovely as you can.

Easy. Straightforward. A process that will basically make your buyer feel (all the way through) that she absolutely made the right decision to buy from you. (Even if she returns the dress a bit later).

Here’s my 5-part checklist for keeping your customer.

1. Match your tone to your brand voice

The language used in the checkout process should match the rest of your site.

It might be slightly more formal (money tends to do that), but you don’t want to mix your, say, urban hipster approach with checkout instructions that sound like a debt collector on commission.

Be friendly, be nice, and be reassuring.

Check the automated error messages that your customer sees when they get something wrong.  These are often written in red boilerplate technical-speak, and can be seriously off-brand. Reword them so that they’re positive – make it easy for the customer to get it right. If necessary add help, to explain what you need and why you’re asking.

2. Request an appropriate amount of personal detail.

Your buyer will probably expect to give you a full postal address and a phone number, but he might balk at supplying the ages of all three of his children.  Yes, the marketing department really want that information, but this is not the time or the place.  It’s about making this sale successful.

Too many extra questions (especially if they ask for private information), and the buyer starts to get irritated with you.

Don’t ask for anything that you a) don’t use or b) don’t really need.

Those ‘where did you hear about us?’ questions can be quite offputting – for some reason they never include the real answer, which is that angels whispered the website name to you when you were fast asleep.  If necessary, get the Marketing Department to role-play their own answers. How do real customers come across you?

Basically, you should match the detail to the appropriate depth for your relationship.

3. Create a sequence that flows naturally.

For some products and services, this is very obvious.

Others may need some thought and work.

For a physical product, the flow is typically shortlist, choose, specify size and quantity, and check out.

Simple enough, but there are still some decisions to be made. For example, where do you add the postage/shipping information? If high P&P charges lead to customers frequently abandoning the checkout, you might want to put that information somewhere very clearly.

Go right through the selection and buying process, and make sure it flows.

Some purchases are very complex: buying an airline ticket, for example, is often part of a much bigger process where the buyer is trying to work out the lowest price in a given time period.  Services which make the buyer start from scratch each time, when they just wanted to check the prices on different days can really frustrate your buyer.

To create an experience that flows, you need to understand how real people buy your stuff.  Talk to your customers. Talk to other people’s customers. If you have competitors, look at what they do, and then try to make your own experience nicer.  Spot the pain points, and remove them. Customers love it when you make things easy.

4. Keep the customer informed throughout

If this is Step 3 of 5, tell them (you can just display it visually).

Show them what’s in their basket/their running total/ the time left to complete the sequence.

Use little connecting words if this is a sequence. First, we need your name and address. Next, your credit details. Be aware of it as a connected sequence.

Make sure they get the opportunity to confirm and check their purchase before they authorise the final payment.

Basically, nothing should be a surprise. Your customer should know where they are and what is happening right through the process. You keep them informed, you keep the flow natural, and they should continue to engage happily with you.

5. Give them a very, very happy ending.

(I think this came out wrong).

Make it very obvious that they’ve successfully completed the transaction.  Confirm that payment has been received, and give them important information about the next steps (for example, tracking their order). This immediate post-purchase moment is incredibly important in determining how they feel about you.

Generally set their expectations about what happens next and how long it will take. Give them clear information about what to do if there’s a problem.

And then thank them, congratulate them, welcome them in as users of your product or service.

If there is going  to be a wait until they receive your stuff, give them some things they can do to prepare.  At this point, your nervous yet excited buyer should feel that they’re getting a great product, and they’re now pretty much part of your family – and that sets a nice, positive frame for their experience of your actual product.

Now it’s up to the cashmere dress.

So: test it, check it, run it through with some willing customers. Large corporate entities test this stuff very carefully. You may not be Tesco or Wal-Mart, but you still owe it to yourself to get this right.

If you liked this post, share it! Retweet it using the button below.  And if you have questions, add them in the comments and I’ll answer. I have spent years of my life watching people use online checkouts, so ask away.

Need more specific advice on your website? Take a look at my Winter Strategy Sessions – review, advice, ideas and brainstorming in one focused package. 

The site owner has bags of personality.

Trouble is, she (it’s usually a she) doesn’t let one tiny bit of it creep onto the website.

Instead the web content is stuffy, over-formal or just somehow lacking anything that would really draw the passing reader in.

There’s another extreme, too. That’s the website where you know everything about the site owner’s struggle with depression/ongoing house renovation/gnawing fear of getting old…and that’s before you buy any of her art.

That’s not so good, really.

You’ve got to curate yourself well. I hate that word but I’m using it a lot these days. You have to make things, say things.

SHOUT THINGS.

BE AT YOUR BEST.

Generally make a splash, be enthusiastic, tell people why you are doing the bloody thing you are doing and what an amazing difference it would make to their lives. Somehow. Maybe not exactly in those terms, but you have to show up in your site and project all of your luminous value in a way that we poor fools on the other side of the screen can detect.

With our teeny authenticity detectors.

Get. Out. There.

OK. This is short, because the schools are on strike here. Have a good day.

I am pondering these things. In fact I am pondering making some resources to help people create and express their beautiful noisy selves in their damn websites. So I would be interested in your thoughts.

Today I’m going to look at five blog-heavy websites, most of which are pretty much Internet Famous.  All of the site owners run businesses which depend on the blogs, and together they demonstrate the power of five different elements: desire, rapport, content, headline, and brand.

Desire: Tim Ferriss, The Four Hour Work Week

Most very successful blog-based businesses are offering something that people want very strongly, and Tim Ferriss is a good example of that. 

My first reaction is a sort of horrified double-take (I am so not the target audience!) but as I read more I’m thinking, gosh he’s good. The blog is an extremely confident selling platform for his books and systems.

The design is simple and high impact: a dark background that’s a perfect foil for video and strong photography. The core blog design is really very simple and internet old-school: stories are black text against a white background, links are classic blue underline, and only the orange headings inject a touch of styling. 

But the story’s the message, and the stories are pretty powerful. Tim is in the business of offering outrageous, adrenaline-fuelled possibilities: it’s a kind of wonderful macho fantasy.  Only real. Or nearly. Read the blog, and you’re sharing that desire for a short, intense, high earning working life interspersed by tough workouts and Cabernet Sauvignon.

But the hardest thing to imitate is the man’s style. And there’s the secret.

BTW, I am also deeply amused that his Day in the Life piece involves pretty much an intense 7 hours of work.

Rapport: Marie Forleo, Marieforleo.com

Marie Forleo is another mega-successful business blogger. Like Tim, Marie’s site is blog-style (the regular content takes centre stage), and the layout couldn’t be simpler.

Unlike Tim, Marie actually doesn’t talk about herself very much, except as background illustration.  Marie puts up a weekly video-based blog post addressing reader questions (Q&A Tuesday). There are probably thousands of sites aimed at women entrepreneurs that use the same format, so why is Marie so successful?

Marie really, really knows her audience. That is actually unusual in this area – she talks about simple and more complex business dilemmas, and she invites her audience right in to share their own experience.  She puts a great emphasis on sharing, both in the video and in the comments.

(Marie is of course very, very lovely and honestly I do think that helps. We kind of want to be her, like we (kinda sorta) want to be like Tim. So perhaps nice clothes and some makeup for the video-blogging would help, too.)

Content: Erin Doland’s Unclutterer.com

Erin Doland’s site about decluttering is is a magazine-style blog, in that there is usually something to read here every day.

There’s also a forum, a link to the food blog, and that’s about it.

No big body or business promises, although the blog definitely caters to a modern need to get organised.

But what you can really learn here is how to mix up your content and set up a range of article types that provide variety and really involve your readers.

Headline: Copyblogger.com

Copyblogger is probably one of the biggest blogging advice sites out there, and it’s a little different from the last two, in that it’s far less personality-drive. Also, Copyblogger’s home page is not the blog home – instead, it’s a clear showcasing of the software products offered.

At first glance it seems to hard to dig advice out of such a plain-looking site. But there’s a lot in there. The post recipe is simple: long articles, dead factual how-tos, often in list form, that are introduced by a teasing headline written in sentence case. Oh, those headlines.  They are as cheesy as hell, and yet…even as I write this, I’m distracted by another 20 pieces that sound like I have to read them, right now.

The Mad Men Guide to Changing the World with Words 

50 Can’t Fail Techniques for Finding Great Blog Topics 

The headlines rouse your curiosity and drag you in, even as you know you’re falling for a bit of a trick.

Once again, this blog is also about desire – in this case, all those readers who want to blog better. The design is sparse, to the extent that content  appears to takes precedence. But the understated layout is elegant, and the typography is doing a lot of work.  

Dead commercial, very useful, very deliberate. It gets people wanting to read.

Brand: Michelle Ward, WhenIGrowupcoach

With apologies to Michelle, I suspect she is not Internet Famous in the same way as the others. I’ve included her site as a nice example of the last element in the list of five: brand.

As you’ll appreciate from the previous list, lots of very successful websites don’t appear terrible ‘designed’ at all. Michelle’s site, on the other hand, has a whole ton of obvious design – the cartoon drawings, bright green background,  animated video intros, and so on. 

What I love about this blog is the totally coherent package of Michelle, her services and her design – it’s a very happy, disarming site design, and it demonstrates Michelle as a cheerful positive presence.  

It may or may not resonate, but you know exactly where she’s coming from.

So, your job: build a site that serves deep desires, creates terrific rapport with its audience, puts up wonderful content, brings readers in with teasing headlines, and is designed beautifully to create a coherent brand.

Simple really.

In the comments I’d love to know what stands out for you, from reading those blogs. I have a load of little things I’d like to try, but I am very struck by the ‘desire’ part of all of these sites. Harder than it looks.

If you’d like personal help with your web strategy, or some practical help in making over your web presence, do get in touch. My Winter Strategy Sessions are still running – see more on this page.

Fasten up, this is a long post on the subject of emotional landscaping. First: how exactly do you turn a prospective customer into a paying one? And down below, my take on how it works for all you good people selling coaching and counselling as opposed to widgets.

You can find previous posts in the series here:
Website to Wonderful, 1: Makeover Edition (Introduction)
Website to Wonderful, 2: How not to make your visitors’ eyeballs bleed
Website to Wonderful, 3: Designing your site with real users in mind

If you like it, tweet it, bookmark it, share it with your friends.

If the product’s good, the path should match

We built a garden office this summer, which I’ve just moved into. It’s a lovely space, tall and airy. Unfortunately, in the course of building the studio, the builders (aided eagerly by the dog) trashed the garden completely. Right now, the journey from side gate to studio involves a muddy dash and a stagger over the potholes.

It’s great once you get there, but the journey is not very pretty.

I feel a metaphor coming on.

In my last post, we looked at all of the different kinds of customer journey, small and large, that you need to consider when putting your site together. Today’s post addresses the core online journey - how your readers and prospects become actual customers. (And how you can make that easier)

If your site provides something of value, then there is a point – maybe one point or many – where your site visitor says yes, I can act. They can enter their details, invoke Paypal and Visa, ask for more information, book a tour…but whatever the site offers, they can commit with confidence. (They can also be worried or excited about their commitment, but that’s a slightly different thing)

You need to lay out good paths

Your site needs to create good pathways from initial visit to eventual purchase. Not my wobbly studio path with its mud, but a simple path of exploration and discovery that makes becoming a customer into a natural next step.

To extend the metaphor, we’re looking for a confident step or jump into being a customer. You do not want your customer to come to a shuddering halt at the edge of a sudden steep drop.

What does that mean on the web?

Here my metaphor falls over. Websites don’t have physical paths. So what can a website owner do to make sure that prospective customers appreciate what they have to offer, and are able to become customers confidently?

There are two sides to this. On the one hand, you always have to offer something that people genuinely desire. On the other, you need to make that path smooth, removing the obstacles that exist to making a commitment online.

The details vary from one domain to another, but let’s consider this for some different types on online enterprise. As I run through, take a look at the domains that are outside your own experience, and consider whether there’s something you can apply to your own world.

Paths  for product sites

For someone selling a physical product online, the web design is fundamental to success. Above all, the site acts as a bright window display. Prospective customers need to be attracted to the product, through good deals, great photography, detailed specifications and motivating descriptions. They need to feel that they almost have it in their hands. And they need to trust the site, either as a known brand or through its guarantees.

If the site is unknown, the customer is constantly evaluating risk versus reward: it looks like a great deal, but: will the product really be that good? And if it all goes wrong will I get my money back (without a fight)?

Good product sites (even start-ups) minimise the sense of risk.

Paths for software providers

The developers of software products have also come up with a standard sort of approach. Their websites usually provide a simple explanation of the problem that the product solves, together with a list of features.

This is supported by demonstrations of the product in action – dramatisations, virtual tours, animations, FAQs – and case histories of happy, important users.

Software sites tackle typical questions that their buyers have: Will this do what I want? Is it easy to use? Will it work for me? Is it worth the investment? Do people that I admire use it?

Good software sites work hard to show the product in action, to make it really come alive for prospective buyers. And then they make it easy, by offering short software trials that allow users to test drive the product before making a decision.

Long and winding paths for online services

And so we come to online services. Here, I’m thinking of coaching, teaching, training, and e-learning. Experiential products, if you like.

These products are highly dependent on relationships (both real and imagined) between the coach and the customer, and they are frequently co-constructed.

What do I mean by that? Here’s an example. Perhaps you take an online class in making your old photos into a digital scrapbook (I haven’t yet, but I’ve considered it). You might sign up for the class because you adore the class leader and everything that she writes.

Your feelings about the class will relate to your own personal journey with the material, and the extent to which it engaged you and stretched you. In many ways, you become the product: the training merely facilitates the transformation.

If you took the class half-heartedly, or misunderstood its aims, or it wasn’t what you expected, you might end up feeling that you wasted your money. If it went well, you may be absolutely delighted.

A piece of successful coaching is almost a three-way fit: the right coach, the right customer, and the right process or plan to give the customer a successful outcome.

The business of choosing and committing to an online coach is likely to be drawn out over a period of time, compared with the simple product purchase. There are the same issues of risk, and trust, and money-back guarantees as with any other product, but it’s a deeply personal matching process.

How can online coaches improve the path for prospective buyers?

Here are three kinds of pre-purchase experience that help people to commit to these more experiential services. (And if this really isn’t what you sell, read on anyway: there’s a lot that you can take away and apply).

1. Create a relationship through your vivid presence

Lots of coaches blog – and the blog is really the heart of the imagined relationship that your prospective customer has with you. Your language, the things you talk about, the solutions you offer, your world view, your beliefs are all right there in your articles. It may just be a reading relationship, but it’s a relationship nonetheless.

Your style with your audience (and probably with your one-to-one customer) is right there on the page. It’s there in the way that you respond to comments or build community. If you don’t have comments, and yet you have lots of readers, I will bet that your writing style invites people into your world and resonates with their issues.

People read you, and they begin to feel at home in your space.

I could write a whole other piece on blog content, but for now just consider: what are you saying? What’s the conversation you are having? Is it trustworthy? Is it reliable? What sort of business does your writing represent?

Writing is of course very different to voice or face-to-face contact. It’s lovely, but it’s two- dimensional.

You need to come alive from the page.

But not in a spooky way.

If your service is live, then demonstrate your best live self, through audio, video, webinars and Q&A calls. Voice is wonderfully distinctive for many people. Video is fab, but it’s harder to do well.

So, maximise the experience of yourself, using the methods that are best for you.

2. Provide a safe virtual experience

The next best thing to trying something out for yourself is watching someone else try it. It’s not quite as good, but it’s safe and often very informative. As a customer, you can use these to fit yourself in the frame.

Examples of these include case histories, reviews, features and diaries. These are worthwhile if they’re authentic; unfortunately, increasingly they’re a little bit gamed. Third-party reviews can look good, but if they are all from your friends, that’s a little less useful.

The phrase ‘social proof’ is sometimes used here (show that you have hundreds of Facebook fans, for example), but I think it’s a bit misleading. The best proof is the uptake by people like you, or by people that you admire and identify with.

Case histories have the value of demonstrating the whole process to people, and that can be extremely helpful. It shows the breadth of your offering, not just a magic before and after.

3. Set up test drives and trials

Smaller versions of the real experience are extremely valuable.

These could be small services, free courses, sample chapters, e-books, taster sessions – just real but smaller embodiments of more expensive services. Small commitments that let people test out you and your process.

Packaged trials are less emotive – and probably less powerful – than live trials and tests (like free 20-minute coaching calls). Live test drives help people to decide if they have a fit with you, and they also build emotional bonds of trust and commitment.

But bear in mind that test drives tend to imply near-to-final commitment. You don’t usually take up the offer of a test drive unless you are already part-committed.

As I said earlier, if you don’t offer live trial, then audio and written samples can substitute. (Video is great, too, but it’s usually harder to pull off)

It’s all about finding a fit, helping the reader decide whether this feels like the right relationship for them, and whether you and your services will actually deliver the results that you claim.

The customer is balancing desire and risk, just as they do with physical products, but the stakes are usually higher. Virtual tours and safe trials help to eliminate the risks.

So, action.

How can you put this into practice for your own situation?

Take a look at your site, and check your answers to the following questions:

• How safe is it for my customers to buy what I’m selling? (Why?)
• Do I communicate the product/service really well, so that people get exactly what they expected, if not more?
• Do I show people how it works in practice?
• If I’m pretty much the product, am I building the positive case for choosing me, through the things that I say and write?
• Do I give people the opportunity to try out my services, virtually and safely?
• Do I minimise the jump on the path, so that it’s a hop (or a dive)?

Would love your thoughts, especially on any actions it suggests to you.  Do share, retweet, all of that good stuff.  I’m off to do some voice recording, try out some video and phone a landscaper.

My Winter Strategy Sessions are now available, for people who’d like individual coaching on creating a better website presence. Virtual or real. With scones (Real only).  I’m experimenting, too: it’ll be Pay What It’s Worth. Check out the page or email me (alison@thehumanelement.co.uk). Slots are limited and will run into early December.

Have a great Thanksgiving, if you’re celebrating that, and all the best with Black Friday. (UK people: this apparently makes Boxing Day sales look like amateur night).

(Website to Wonderful will resume next week)

It’s hard when your face doesn’t fit.

Especially when you’re the eager customer.

I got an email recently from a clothes store that I love, with an invitation for customers to take part in a market research exercise at my nearest branch. I got terribly excited, but then I realised they were looking for people a lot younger than me to take part. That was a little bit sad-making. I loved the brand, but I really wasn’t a core customer to them. I even wrote a little note explaining my passion and begging to be let in, but nothing came of it. (Yes, I cared that much, even though I have been on the other side…).

I was genuinely miffed. When I go into their shops, I see women of all ages buying their clothes. And I know that shedloads of women like me go clothes shopping there. But I get the feeling that they’d rather not have customers like me feature all that prominently.

(Incidentally, I spoke to a couple of friends about this, and they said they’d got the same email and just lied their way in!)

Often, we are not the fantasy customers of businesses

We’re a bit wrong, really. We’re older, younger(Facebook, anyone?), fatter, or poorer. Less cool. More cool. OK, this was fashion, and fashion constantly presents an ideal of age, shape and beauty. But I see this mismatch in lots of other places too.

It can be difficult to design for real customers. I’m not talking about ‘right people’ either, which is a little bit different. I am talking about the people who are keen to use your services but aren’t quite the way you envisaged them.

Real customers are a bit of a nightmare, really.

Real customers are messy slobs who leave their clothes on the floor. Real customers do not have Inbox Zero (although they might have Inbox 1500). Real customers had their website designed by their favourite uncle who just taught himself Dreamweaver, and they can’t use another designer because he’ll get upset.

So much of the time, we back away. We design for ideal customers. We write content for people who aren’t customers. We might produce content that mostly appeals to people in the same industry, to our colleagues. We might create for a marketing cut-out person, like a stay-at-home mother aged between 25 and 40 in a very tidy house. Or we may work for a fantasy customer, who is actually a little bit wrong for what we have to offer.

I was thinking about this, because things are noticeably very different when you come across communication that genuinely, genuinely speaks to your situation. It’s different because it feels as though the writer has been in your shoes – they know what you care about, and they understand the gap between the smooth goodlooking exterior, and the internal wrangling that goes on behind the scenes. The difference is like coming home. It’s wonderful.

Being understood matters.

Why don’t we design for reality?

Well, sometimes we are in the business of selling a dream.

Deep down, though, I feel that we don’t get that far.  We are a little scared of getting to know our audiences too well, and the fact that our relationships are mediated by the internet, Twitter and Facebook often makes it easier to keep your distance. Analytic information (hits, bounces, pages viewed) provides data but limited information on what drove those people to click. We end up with our own ideas, which are often a little bit out of touch with raw, jagged reality.

I don’t have a neat ending to this, because I feel I’m still on my own journey of understanding the people that I work with. I do know that every live project, every consultation moves me closer to that. It’s still gradually evolving.

And if you’re reading this, I’d love to know more about you. If you happen to know your readers or customers extremely well, how did you manage that?

Obligatory advertising: I’ve just launched my Winter Strategy Sessions, which are pay-what-its-worth consulting session aimed at making your website a better place to be. Check out the page, and get in touch if you have any questions. I’m also doing a small number of Get It Done website offers, so if you know anyone who really and truly needs a small website fast, and wants to avoid their uncle, point them here.

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