Editor’s Note – This post is in follow-up and support of The State of Your Web Site, a checklist from Dunkirk Systems, LLC which helps guide Web site owners to objectivity on the current state of their Web site. You can download a free, no obligation PDF copy at TheStateOfYourWebSite.com.

Do you have goals for your Web site? Did you ever think of setting goals for your Web site?! As a Web site is a living, breathing 24/7 representative of your business, you should have goals – even just one goal – set in writing for your Web site. This fact is why it is near the top of the list on The State of Your Web Site checklist.

Yes, “goal” is a 4-letter word. Whenever people talk about goals, they often cringes or get defensive or have some adverse reaction to it. Even if they have goals for their life or their business in general, when it comes to their Web site, they will wonder why they are needed. With the expense and exposure that comes with a Web site, there is the reason right there to do so.

Where To Start

What your goals should be depend on your business and the Web site itself. If you have a store but do not sell products and services online, your goals would be much different from someone selling online with an eCommerce Web site. A “brochure” Web site is also much different than one with an extensive support forum.

Like anything in business, start someplace with goals, and review and refine as necessary. Write down statements such as “drive more traffic into my store” and “10% of overall sales made online.” Then you will want to ensure your Web site has the content or functionality to accommodate these – a printable in-store coupon and an eCommerce are part of this. Then measure – review your Web site analytics and ask new customers who come into your store how they heard about you. This is a simple example, but a point to start from.

If you are still unclear about your Web site’s goals, talk to your Web consultant. At Dunkirk Systems, LLC we work with our clients, both those with established Web sites or new ones, to set such goals, and integrate their measurement into their overall business analytics and review.

Do you have goals for your Web site? How has the goal-setting and review process worked for you? And if you do not have goals, why? Please share your thoughts in the comments for this post.

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Business • Strategize • The State of Your Web Site • Web Design • Web Development • (0) Comments • Permalink

In the September/October 2010 edition of NFIB MyBusiness magazine there is an article called “Click Here for Profits” which is geared towards new, moderate and experienced Web site owners. The magazine is published by the National Federation of Independent Business and is geared towards its members, all business owners. In the section titled “Getting Online for the Moderately Experienced” by Christina Galoozis, I was proud to have been able to contribute to this part of the overall article. You can read the article here at the NFIB Web site.

In the article, I shared several points, including offering a variety of content in your company’s blog, planning and writing a blog consistently, and on local search. I had a great conversation with Christina who asked me very insightful questions, and related my thoughts very well in the article.

Thanks to Christina for the opportunity to be in this article, and if you are visiting The Hot Iron as a result of the article, welcome! I also welcome your thoughts and opinions on the article here in the comments to this blog post.

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Recently I heard from a friend who had questions about starting a blog. As their questions were not personal in nature, and could benefit others as well as them, I have decided to respond in an appropriate manner, in an open blog post. Here are the questions and my responses.

Q – How did you come up with the name of your blog?

A – The name “The Hot Iron” is a play on the term “strike while the iron is hot” and is something I had thought of a few years before I actually started the blog. The idea for the name being I would write about not only topical items but would write while something was fresh in my mind.

I registered the domain name thehotiron.com right away, and it was ready for me to use when I decided to start blogging.

Q – What are the top 3 things I need to think about as a new blogger?

A – Audience, promotion and time.

Where you could be simply writing a personal journal out in the open, ideally you are writing for the benefit of others as well. Keeping in mind your audience, not only as you start but on-going, will help you focus on what topics to write and how to present the information.

If you write it, people may not necessarily come and read it. You will need to spend time to promote your blog. Whether it’s emailing all your friends, getting links to other sites or any other method, you will need to spend some time to do so.

And as you can guess, writing for and managing a blog take some time. However much you decide to spend on it is up to you, but keep this in mind with everything else you have going on.

Q – Are there any mistakes you made that you learned from when you were just starting out that you would pass on to a new blogger?

A – Are you asking about mistakes I made in the past, or continue to make?!

Whenever you start a blog, you have energy and excitement. Over time, this can change, and usually will decrease. You will need to motivate yourself to maintain a consistent blogging schedule.

You may also write something that will tick off someone, as I have done before. They may contact you offline to make a change to what you wrote. Don’t do it. I have made a couple of small tweaks to posts over time, showing goodwill to these people and in return asked them to comment on my posts, but they never did. A cease and desist letter form a lawyer is one thing, but in general your blog is your opinion, and you should be true to your convictions.

Q – Do you think there is a life span to a blog?

A – As someone said to me moments before he got married, “nothing is forever!” Everything has a lifecycle, and a blog could as well. When you get to the point where you think it’s over, you may have options to either shut it down or transfer or sell to someone else. But you’re just getting started now, so nothing to worry about regarding this now. Oh, and that guy has been married for almost 20 years now.

Q – What are your suggestions for evaluating hosts?

A – As I build blogs for a living, I recommend hiring my Web consulting firm Dunkirk Systems, LLC to build your, including offering and managing your hosting! However, there are many options out there. You could have your own hosting and then manage your own installation of a blog platform, like WordPress or ExpressionEngine. Or you could go with a hosted platform, like WordPress.com or Blogger.com.

However you go, I strongly recommend you do 2 things. The first is use your own domain name for the blog, and not use the default URL that may come with the host or hosted solution. Also, use Google Feedburner to manage your blog feed and not the default feed URLs that come with either. By doing these, you have flexibility to move to a new platform or host and not lose users or feed subscribers with a new URL for each.

Q – What blogs do you read regularly and would send me to view as I begin this process?

A – I subscribe to the feeds of over 200 blogs. This does not mean I read all of them, in some cases I simply skim the headlines or titles. I recommend setting up a Google Reader account, and then begin subscribing to the RSS feeds of various blogs, from ones in the same vertical of which you are planning for your own blog, to news services or blogs in different categories. Some blogs do all things well, many do some a few things well, and some do most everything poorly.

One blog I will recommend is ProBlogger – it is a tremendous resource for blogging, whether for someone new like yourself or a seasoned blogger like myself.

Good Luck

Good luck with the launch of your blog! As I wrote these questions out in the open, I welcome anyone to comment on these, and make any recommendations they may have for getting started with blogging.

Did you enjoy reading this? You are welcome to subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS feed or by email.

Blogging • Business • Strategize • (2) Comments • Permalink

Were you affected by last week’s outage of Chase Bank’s online banking? I was, and so were all of the bank’s customers in the US. Though the money in your account was still accessible via ATM or a branch, you could not access your balances, statements or bill pay over the Web. To add to the over 24-hour outage, there was no announcement from the bank about the problem and no reason given for it either.

Through the outage the login form on the Web site was replaced with a graphic saying online banking was unavailable. Once it was restored, small banner ads on the site linked to an apology Web page for both the outage and lack of communications for a few days. This past Monday morning I received an email from the bank – the only one through this ordeal – apologizing for the outage, and the following is a screen shot of that message.

The text of the message is as follows:

We recently experienced a service interruption that affected the chase.com website and mobile services, and we apologize if this created any difficulties for you. We have resolved the problem, and want to assure you that your account information was not compromised as a result of this outage.

We know that our customers rely upon the 24 hour access to their account information provided by Chase.com. This was not the level of service we know you expect, and we will work hard to better serve and communicate with you.

Your accounts and confidential information remain secure and we want to remind you that Chase will never ask for your personal information or login credentials via email.

Please accept our apology for any inconvenience this may have caused. We're continuing to work hard to maintain your trust and confidence.

We're always here to assist you.

After reading this, there was something glaring at me – no person signed the message.

Where Does The Buck Stop?

You don’t have to look any further than the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to see a poor example of corporate communications. Once the global oil giant realized the severity of the issue, it put its CEO Tony Hayward out front as the human face of the mechanical disaster. Over the weeks following BP commercials featured employees who were responsible for various aspects of the cleanup. These people didn’t necessarily make the problem any better, but they showed there were people behind the problem.

Even a few months back when Intuit’s QuickBooks Online had several days of outages, emails and blog posts were signed by management. Once again, it didn’t change the situation, but it showed someone was responsible; it showed where the bucked stopped.

This was not the case with Chase Bank. No person – not the CEO, or any Vice President – signed their name or came forward. This impersonal approach was certainly not for lack of staff or resources, so why did nobody own up to the problem?

As a former customer of Washington Mutual, which was taken over by the FDIC and sold to Chase Bank overnight a few years ago, the change to Chase was a huge contrast to me in the approach to serving its customers. WaMu’s free-standing kiosks where you could actually talk to and shake hands with a teller were replaced by tellers behind bullet-proof glass. I could only imagine there would be a person owning up to the issues with their online banking platform if it happened under WaMu’s umbrage. This removal of personal connections with customers is what, as a Chase customer, one has to deal with.

Interestingly, it was during this outage that I moved my business banking to PNC Bank. The decision to do so was not related to the outage, rather it was due to a PNC manager asking me for my business. Also interestingly, this manager was formerly with WaMu and then Chase, and left there for PNC. He knew my business, what I needed, and showed me how much better PNC can accommodate it. Yes, a personal connection was the reason for my change.

What did you think of the bank’s handling of communication? Does it matter to you if there’s personal accountability to such a problem? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Did you enjoy reading this? You are welcome to subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS feed or by email.

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Editor’s Note – This post is in follow-up and support of The State of Your Web Site, a checklist from Dunkirk Systems, LLC which helps guide Web site owners to objectivity on the current state of their Web site. You can download a free, no obligation PDF copy at TheStateOfYourWebSite.com.

By their definition, branding and logos exist to help you easily identify something. From a parking garage to the sneakers worn by a top athlete, branding matters. This is not the first article to talk about it, and surely not the last!

So why is it that many times we see inconsistencies in branding when it comes to the Web site or other online use of a brand by a company, organization or person? And note I am using the word “consistent” not “perfect” – nobody is going to expect your logo to be in the upper left corner of a Facebook page replacing their logo altogether. But where you can use your brand, it should be consistent with how it is used offline – in print, on products, etc.

This is thus the second question asked on Dunkirk’s The State of Your Web Site checklist. As we previously talked about your brand being prominent on your Web site, it should also be consistent to ensure its effectiveness online.

The measurement of consistency can be very straightforward. A brand guide will outline the parameters for a usage of a brand. Call it the “spaghetti test” for your brand. If it doesn’t meet it, it should be corrected. If you don’t have a brand guide, create one! In its absence though, a person or small team of people should serve as the “brand police” to ensure its consistencies.

So how do these inconsistencies manifest themselves? Many times a Web site is developed prior to the creation of a brand, or vice versa. A level of effort is then needed to ensure the business cards march the Web site, and so on. When a Web site is designed, if creative license is taken too far, it can obscure the brand in the design of the site. Providing a brand guide or guidelines to your designer, and working with a Web designer who not only can create a compelling design but will respect your brand, will also ensure this.

Catching inconsistencies early on will ensure the recognition of your brand no matter where it appears, not to mention The State of Your Web Site being that much stronger.

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