Updating Your Web Presence – Part 2

Two weeks ago I posted part 1 of Updating Your Web Presence. In it I described what I am doing to update my blog layout and promised to describe the project that helped me get past my mental block on my site. Here in part 2, I will describe the website review that I did for my new client that helped “get the juices flowing” on my own upgrades.

First let me say, never underestimate the connections you make networking. I stumbled into this recent job because of one of my local jewelry customers. While she knew of me first through local contacts, she had since signed up for my newsletter, seen my blog and shops, as well as a website that I had updated for a local organization. She had a friend that was in the process of redefining his career and suggested to him that I might be able to help him figure out how best to utilize his current web assets.

Her friend, my new client John E Dosher, has always been involved with music, mostly as a performer but also for several years as owner of a music store. After deciding to close his shop and focus more on recording and performing again (he has a new single), he needed to retool his web presence, but where to begin? That is where I came in. I did an initial consultation with him after reviewing what I could find on the web. I found one site that he had pretty much forgotten in addition to others that needed differing levels of updating and connecting. We brainstormed, based on what his current online contractual agreements and future growth needs were.

This brainstorming session concluded with my client still needing to mull over a couple of options about how to fairly easily update his main web presence with current content since it was paid up for approximately the next year. This would give him time to investigate other hosting sites to see if they would be a better fit for the long term. Other things were discussed including making sure that his different sites link to each other where appropriate and making sure that e-mail information is easy for people to access from all browsers.

Once my client figured out how he wanted to retool his main website, he sent me a link for me to review. I wrote out a page of notes to go over with him and we scheduled a conference call to do so. The new site did a great job of including all of his current career goals. My suggestions included some editorial and design ideas to polish the look, some navigation suggestions so that people wouldn’t get lost while investigating the site and its links as well as some ideas to help the site’s SEO. After the consultation, I wrote up a summary of the items that he had agreed would be helpful changes so that he had something concrete to work from when he had time to implement them.

I definitely credit my thinking about how all of the pieces of my client’s web presence fit together with helping me take a good look at my own web presence and seeing where I could improve visitors’ interactions with it. I have gotten a good start on updating it, however it is still a work in progress. You should give a good look at yours too at least once a year to make sure everything is up to date, easy to navigate and coherent. Contact me if you are interested in an objective consultation.

Updating Your Web Presence – Part 1

It is a good idea to do a periodic review all of the places you have created for your business on the web. New features may have been added to sites you are on, information you have posted may need updating to stay current or you may need to prune out a site from your web presence that isn’t working for you. Two recent examples of this that I have been involved with made me think that sharing them with my readers might provide them (you) with a helpful reminder.

It has been about a year now since Blogger added the ability to add static pages to the blogs it hosts. I remember finding out about this fairly early on but didn’t get a chance to check it out for a while. When I did, I found that it was a pretty easy thing to do. (I suspect that it is even easier to do for a brand new blog than retrofitting an old, modified template like I am using.) Just click on the posting tab on the blogger design page for your blog, click on the edit pages button on the line below the tabs and follow the prompts. You can create up to 10 stand-alone pages this way. I knew intuitively that I wanted to do this and that it should make it easier for people to connect with my information that would be useful to them, but it took a while for me to figure out exactly how I wanted to use this great new feature.

My mental block finally dissolved and currently my blog is a work in progress. I have fleshed out the “bones” by creating my static pages and picked the option to have them show up as horizontal buttons placed under my header. I then placed a bit of content on each page. Some of this content came out of my side bar so that it is not as cluttered. As I have time, I will be adding content (text, links and visuals) to my tabs with an eye towards cohesiveness, ease of navigation and SEO. Feel free to check back and follow my progress. Perhaps it will give you inspiration for your own blog’s facelift.

What fueled my inspiration to be able to dissolve my mental block? I think it is due in large part to a website review that I just completed for someone that was changing his direction but seemed to be suffering from his own mental block on how best to proceed. (Isn’t it always easier to see what someone else needs to do than to fix your own things?) I’ll do a review of that project next month as this post is getting lengthy.