We’re often asked to look at existing websites and give recommendations.  It’s kinda’ what we do.  Well, here are our “Top 10″ ways to freshen up your web presence.

1. Focus on One Big Idea – A website about anything and everything quickly turns into a website about nothing.  Be sure your website is focused on your one big idea – whether that’s your mission statement or your vision or your sales goal.  If you have additional big ideas, maybe you should consider starting additional websites, so your online presence isn’t muddy.
2. Own Your Message – Know thyself.  What are the key features of your product or service?  What are the key benefits of using you instead of a competitor?  What do you want people to do after visiting your site?  Publicize your features and benefits.  Ask for the sale.
3. Know Your Audience – Who will visit your website?  Who will want what you’re offering?  Write to them.  Find ways of interacting with them, if possible.  The better you know your audience, the more effectively you’ll be able to communicate to them.  (For churches and schools – is your website for current members and students or future members and students?)
4. Get a Good Web Address – Make your web address short, simple, fun, and easy to remember.  Even if you have to go out and buy a new one, it’s worth the time and effort.  (more here)
5. Create an “About” Page – The “About” page is the most-visited page of any blog or website.  Tell people who you are, why your organization (or website) exists.  Make it short, interesting, and punchy.  Add pictures.
6. Make it Easy for People to Contact You – Put contact information in a prominent menu position or on every page of your website.  Don’t make people hunt for your location, phone number, or email.  I’ve seen beautiful (but entirely useless) church websites with no service times or locations and no way to contact a person for a response.
7. Have an RSS Feed – An RSS feed helps people get your website information all over the internet.  It can encourage return-visitors, and keep your audience up-to-date.
8. Help Readers Subscribe – Make your RSS feed prominent with a big “Subscribe via RSS” button.  Or set up a newsletter or email subscription service (like FeedBlitz).  That way, you don’t have to depend on people coming to your website.  You can push your website out to them (with their permission, of course).
9. Include Social Bookmarking – People are all-atwitter about Twitter and Facebook, Digg and Del.icio.us.  If someone finds an amazing product or idea or event on your website, you should make it very easy (yea, an obvious next step) for them to share that information with their friends.
10. Update Your Content – Eliminate old, outdated content.  Check for broken links.  Write something new every now and then.  If it looks like you haven’t visited your own website in the last 2 years, don’t expect others to visit either.

If you’d like help giving your site a facelift – or if you need a brand new web site – contact us for a free consultation.

Anymore, it’s not enough to name your business and hope a good domain name, or web address, is out there somewhere.  You almost need to be sure you can get a good domain name before you settle (in concrete) on what to call your business.

Since so much of your corporate identity can be shaped by the web, potential visitors, potential students, potential members, and potential customers should be able to easily understand and remember your web address.

Several years ago, my church website was at www.cornerstone-sda.org.  There were several problems with this web address.

1. When telling people on the phone, you’d say, “dash” and they’d be, like, “underscore?”  And you’d say, “no.  Dash.”  And they’d say, “slash?”  And you’d say, “cornerstone [dash] sda [dot] org.”  And they’d be all like, “Ohhhh!  A hyphen?”  “Sure, a hyphen.  Whatever.”
2. When telling people on the phone, you’d say, “cornerstone [dash] sda.”  They had no idea what an “esdeeay” is.  “Oh, they’re letters?  S? or F?  S, as in Sam?”
3. It was too long to remember.  What, with the dash and all.  And the meaningless letters after the dash.

So when we redid the website, we called it wichitacornerstone.org.  People got that.  I didn’t have to explain a dash.  I didn’t have to explain an “S”.  Wichitacornerstone.org just made sense.  (BTW, it was a pain to get all of our great search engine results to finally go to the new page.  We should have just got the right domain name the first time.  Oh, well.  Live and learn.)

Ideally, your web address should be short, memorable, and make sense in print and over the phone.

So spend a lot of your initial time trying to find a great web address! (you can use the domain name lookup tool at bluehost.com, for example)  It will be worth all the time you put into it to get it right.

In the world of the internet, content is king!

If you have old, stale, bad, or irrelevant content (or no content at all), the best design in the world isn’t going to help.  You go back to blogs that have new content.  You go back to websites with something new to see or read.  You may even go to the Drudge Report several times a day (even if it’s a plain white page with three columns), just for the content.

But a bad design can hurt.  I’m not just talking about ugly graphics.  If people can’t find your content because it’s badly organized, that’s bad design.  If people have to hunt down your contact information in a sub-sub-menu, some people will just give up.  That’s bad design.

So the Big Idea here is understanding what you want to communicate – your big idea.  And then designing an intuitive interface around that idea.

Any school can have an online photo gallery or a list of classes.  Any church can have a website with random listings of random ministries that care enough to put up content.  But a well-designed site will have a big idea (like the discipleship process or the vision or the mission).  And the site navigation will help people understand that big idea and take the next step to become part of that big idea.

If content is king, a good design is the throneroom.  It’s all about access to the king.

You want to share your big idea with the world.  Big Idea is here to help.

We give you resources to build your own web site.
The Big Idea DesignBlog will help you…

• design a great site around your big idea
• organize your ideas and content
• learn to create good graphics
• find free or inexpensive resources
• navigate confusing technology
• learn how to market your site

But maybe you’d rather just pay someone to design your website for you.  We do that, too.

Your Big Ideas on a Little Budget… Big Idea Web Design