What does it entail? You will need a domain and a hosting company. The WordPress software and theme will need to be installed. Content is usually provided by the client, but often needs editing or enhanced to fit into the layout. Images and photos need to be researched, curated and sized. Pages and links need to be planned and a blog started or imported from the previous website. As many or more than ten plugins that add important security and functionality need to be procured and configured.

Check for broken links, test for mobile, and publish. Revisit the domain and point to the correct url. Test for broken links again. Test for mobile again. Wait ten days and check again. Finally add Search Engine Optimization with researched keywords and google analytics to track your progress. It’s a lot of work. But the cost is one time and can be financed over months. The site is yours and can be edited and altered as you grow.

You can alternatively go to a commercial website and hosting company such as Squarespace, Shopify or Wix, and many do. They use predesigned templates  that are not builder templates and cannot be modified except with CSS coding. You pay a monthly fee indefinitely and if you decide to change companies, or self publish, you cannot take the site with you.

If you need a simple site that is quick and less complex that may be the way to go. But if you are in the long haul, a self published website is worth the time and effort.

Are you building a new site, or does your content need a review and some revisions to ensure it’s still accurate and communicating the right messages? Here are some good reasons to outsource your web content development and maintenance.

Cost/Time
An experienced web content writer will usually work faster and more efficiently and perhaps at a significantly lower rate than you earn yourself. And wouldn’t you rather spend your time focusing on doing things only you can do to build your business, organization, or personal brand?

Expertise
A seasoned web content writer is not only a professional communicator who is a whiz with the written word and helps you convert site visitors to customers. He or she is also someone who stays up-to-date on technology trends in things like search engine optimization, digital marketing techniques, and information architecture that will help your website be found, compelling, and easily used.

Insights
A fresh perspective from someone who is outside of your organization and works with a variety of clients can bring new ideas and insights to your website, which can help you get more attention, and translate to more sales.

Zoom Fatigue
Back in the spring, for many people using Zoom or other video conferencing platforms for the first time to connect with family and friends as well as work colleagues was both a novelty and a blessing. It didn’t take very long for “Zoom fatigue” to set in, however, as people tired of sitting in front of screens and trying to remain engaged for sometimes hours on end.

But I think 2020 will still be remembered, among other things, as when video conferencing entered a new era. Think of the societal benefits – and not just keeping people safe and healthy rather than meeting in person during the current pandemic. Fewer vehicles on the road means less traffic, less air pollution and climate change, and fewer accidents.

In my daily professional life, I’m using video conferencing to teach my adult education students and coach clients, meet with prospective clients, and attend board and committee meetings for the non-profit organizations I work with pro bono. And it saves a lot of time as well – an hour meeting only takes an hour, as opposed to an hour and a half or two hours or more when travel was necessary.

Hopefully you’ve realized some benefits in your professional life from video conferencing as well. Here’s a good article if you want some tips on optimizing your video conference experience.

https://www.howtogeek.com/663874/12-tips-for-video-conferencing-while-you-work-from-home/

You can hire Brett for his writing services through deb@perugi.com or go to his website at peruzzicommunications.com.

For a limited time, free to current clients who pay for regular Web Care, I am offering to print a data driven report of your website upon request. This will include Security Checks, SEO / Analytics, and Broken Links, as analyzed by the software that has been handling your web updates.

By appointment, over a cup of coffee, we will sit and go over your website together, maybe something we haven’t done in awhile. Let me help you make a plan for updating your site’s outdated theme or layout, and improve content and user experience. We can discuss what is still working and what is broken or if your website is becoming “stale”.

Your company has grown and your website needs to mirror that. Let’s meet to discuss goals for 2020 and beyond! Email me to request your report and set up a meeting by phone or in person. I look forward to it!

Recently, a client in the whole health and beauty business who provides Chinese herbal medicine and acupuncture added massage therapy to her services. She wants to write a new page for her website to introduce this service. There are two options I recommend. 1. Write a blog post introducing the new service and categorize it as “news” and/or “new services.” Any blog category or post can be added to the menu like a page. Or, 2. If you want it to be a page then do both. Use the content from the blog post and insert it into the page. You can link the post and page to each other. Finding new information in more than one place on a website is a good thing!

I can’t emphasize enough how important blog posts are and should be a regular practice. Here are the reasons why:

1. Posts immediately get sent to anyone subscribed to your blog and encourage people to sign up
2. Posting enlivens your website and makes it more attractive to people seeking information
3. Posts get sent out over the internet apart from your website, pulling in new prospects
4. Posting enhances your search engine optimization and should be a part of any SEO plan
5. Posts can be added to your social networking and newsletter as part of your overall marketing strategy

So, When you think about new activity on your website, don’t forget the blog is waiting to work for you more than just a web page can. Need some training? Give me a shout!

“What is the passive voice?
The passive voice is a grammatical construction. The easiest way to explain the passive voice is by contrasting it with the active voice. The active voice is the standard English sentence structure. Thwie simplest possible sentences feature an actor (the subject), who does (the verb) something to either a person, animal or thing (the receiver).

Mom hugged me

In the passive voice, the actor and receiver are switched around. The receiver becomes the grammatical subject. Note that the meaning of the sentence stays exactly the same. The only difference is the word order.

I was hugged by mom

In some passive sentences, you can omit the actor. ‘I was hugged’, for example, is a perfectly sensible passive sentence, although it provides less information.

Why should I avoid the passive voice?
Let’s cut to the chase: using the passive voice almost always makes your writing more distant and your message less clear. There are two main reasons for this.

Wordy
First of all, the passive voice is wordy. The passive alternative to an active sentence is simply longer. Consider these two sentences:
1. The passive voice almost always makes your message less clear.
2. Your message is almost always made less clear by using the passive voice.
You convey the same message by using the passive, but add three words. When overusing the passive voice in your text, this can really add up.

Sentence structure
In addition, the passive voice uses a sentence structure which requires more cognitive effort. Your reader will spend valuable working memory on making sense of the sentence. This decreases the likelihood of you getting your message across.

Let’s explore why the passive voice demands more effort. As I told you before, the basic active sentence structure is quite consistent and logical in English. The passive voice turns this all the way around. You first read what was affected. Then you read what happened to it. Then you learn how it was affected. You discover who or what was responsible only at the very end. This sequence differs from how we usually make sense of events. Moreover, we expect the actor to be in the subject position, so we are slightly disoriented. This means constructing an image of what happens takes a tiny moment longer. Again, these moments can easily add up if you overuse the passive voice.

In the example I gave, there is no added benefit to using the passive: the active sentence conveys the same information. Whenever you use passive voice, always consider whether a better, active alternative is available.

What are the exceptions?

Sometimes, using the passive voice can be the only logical way to word a sentence. Mostly, this occurs when the actor is unknown or irrelevant. Let’s look at an example I used in the first paragraph of this very text:

In the passive voice, the actor and receiver are switched around.
There is no identifiable actor here, nor would he or she be relevant. After all, we’re talking about a general action here, not a specific one. Any alternative active sentence would be less clear and concise than the passive sentence I wrote, so it’s the best option available.

Alternatively, you may want to use a passive sentence to focus on the receiver. This works when the object is more central to the topic than the actor:

J.F. Kennedy was killed in 1963 in Dallas, Texas by Lee Harvey Oswald.

This means that we’re not here to tell you to avoid the passive voice like the plague. If it beats the active alternative, by all means: use it! Rules pertaining to style are seldom cast in stone, so don’t make the mistake of following the rule of thumb too strictly. Do what seems right to you and what makes your text flow nicely. A maximum of 10% generally suffices. You should be able to achieve numbers even lower than that by following our advice.”

At our group, we pass mostly experience-based referrals. Experience referrals are from using a service and passing on your good experience about the service you received. They’re very important, but they’re not the whole story.

The article “Referral Marketing and Your Professional Services Brand” by Lee Frederiksen, PH.D, is from Hingemarketing.com. He states that another source of referrals, In fact, 82%, are from folks that have not worked with you directly. He says, “These referrals aren’t made in the dark”,

Chart by Hinge Marketing, 2016.

“Specifically they draw on your reputation and what referrers understand about your areas of expertise. These referrals are built on your brand.”

The chart at right reveals that brand-based referrals are driven by your expertise, via speaking engagements, blog posts and social media engagement. Many of my customers have heard me recommend blog posting as not only a way to show you are an expert in your field, but to attract inbound marketing to your website.

Professor Frederiksen goes on to say, “It’s common to hear service providers say that they can win new clients reliably…if they can just get a foot in the door to talk with them. In many cases, that may be true. But what if you never get the chance?”

And get this: Hinge research shows that over half of buyers—a full 51.9%—report they have ruled out firms without talking to them.

Potential clients usually receive the names of several providers.  And most buyers check out providers online, with a firm’s website being by far the most common source of information. But often the provider is ruled out after things go wrong from the website experience. Bad user experience is the main reason a website fails to win over your visitors and you lose them as customers.

I know that good website design improves user experience by answering the questions a visitor wants to know about your services. It provides good user flow. Or, if the website has poor quality content, is unimpressive or too focused on selling, you have wasted a good referral.

In the end, I learned that it takes BOTH a good referral AND a good website to win over a new customer.

1. THE WEBSITE IS BROKEN

Which of these can break your website?
(a) You did not renew your domain
(b) Your hosting company went out of business and dropped your site
(c) You have malware and Google has blocked you
(d) All of the above

If you purchased your domain or domains from a different company than where you are hosted, be sure to stay on top of when they need to be renewed. I had a client lose a domain only to have it snatched up by a web shark who held it ransom for thousands of dollars.

2. NO ONE CAN FIND YOU

Reasons why people can’t find your website?
(a) Your site is broken (see above)
(b) You never submitted your site to search engines
(c) You have not added keywords or used a Search Optimization Plugin
(d) All of the above

It’s important that your website is built with content that includes many of the keywords people use to find you. This is called “on-page” search engine optimization. It should be included in the fee for building the website.

3. NO ONE STAYS ON YOUR WEBSITE

Reasons why people don’t stay on your website
a. People can’t read the text
b. The menu is confusing
c. The map was set for the wrong address.
d. All of the above

These days, attention spans are short. If your content does not catch the eye of the visitor, they are gone within seventeen seconds on average. Work with your web designer to create “Purposeful User Flow” and good visuals to beat your competition.

4. YOUR WEBSITE IS STATIC

Reasons why you should be able to edit your site
a. It costs less if you can make small changes
b. Being able to write blog posts increases traffic
c. Your webmaster went on a long vacation
d. All of the above

You should be able to edit blog posts and/or add new ones to keep your site fresh. Ask your webmaster to give you editor status so you can make changes and additions on a regular basis.

5. YOUR WEBSITE IS OVER THREE YEARS OLD

Why should you update your website every three years
a. The internet and software that supports it changes
b. Your brand is in need of an update
c. Your text and graphics are not attracting new clients
d. All of the above

The plugins and even some themes have a shorter lifespan than you may think. If they don’t keep up with the WordPress updates, they may even be inviting malware.

6. YOUR WEBSITE IS NOT RESPONSIVE

Why Should Your WordPress be Responsive?
a. Over 70% of visitors access the web with their cell phone
b. You will lose business if it isn’t
c. People will think you are not paying attention to your website
d. All of the above

If your website looks great on a laptop but fails to adjust for tablet and especially mobile, then you are missing a lot of opportunities to find new customers.

7. YOUR WEBMASTER IS NOT RESPONSIVE

Why you might need a new Webmaster
a. They graduated from high school and moved away
b. Your site is written in a code that only they can understand
c. Your webmaster is not updating your website
d. All of the above

Make sure you hire a professional who is in this business to stay. Custom websites may make the web developer feel accomplished but if they fail to update the code, then your site will quickly fail. A well established theme company with Premium Themes is a safer bet.

8. IT’S NOT MADE WITH WORDPRESS

Why is WordPress the most used CMS?
a. The software is open source
b. The software is free
c. It is the most widely used CMS Worldwide
d. All of the above

There are thousands of web developers and web designers around the world who use wordpress. New plugins are constantly coming on market so that you can find all the functionality you need.

P.S. Did you guess “d” on all the questions? You are correct!

I arrived at 8:15 or so and found a nearby parking lot for only $12, despite being warned it could cost $30 due to a Red Sox game held today…. making up for the $75 parking ticket I got last month at a meter during a Red Sox game! But, that’s another story. If you’d like to skip this first hand account and read real transcripts, go to the WordCamp website.

I found out from the first talk, Intuitive Editing Workflows by Erik Bernskiold, that Structured Data Input is an important feature to offer clients, so they can keep their web sites fresh. Problem is, there isn’t a plugin or theme that does this very well yet. We have two options: Create Custom Post Types for the client to write in updates or use a Builder type plugin or theme. The second option can be dangerous as the design can get destroyed without the client realizing it. Some themes, such as Divi by Elegant Themes allow editor roles, thus limiting the ability to change the format.

Next that morning was, The Frustration with Website Security, hosted by Surcuri software. It was labeled WordPress 101, which I took to mean it was for “beginners”. I picked up a few tips, but basically it reinforced what I already knew. 1. Back up your site, not on the server, for instance with Amazon SImple Storage, Dropbox or on your hard drive. Do not rely on the hosting to do it for you. Their backup may also get infected. 2. Attacks are highly automated. which make money for the hackers, even with your small family website, as it can act as a jumping off point to infect other sites. 3. Use a password manager, such as Evernote, so you can have a different password for everything. 4. You can get malware from many places, even plugins!

Designing and Theming for Performance by Matt Dorman was really nerdy, so I won’t go much into it. In a nutshell, Performance of your website, i.e. speed, is important. And there are various tools to determine and help you fix that problem. Obviously, you don’t want your site to load in more than two seconds or you’ve lost the smart phone customer. Sometimes it’s the size of your imagery, or its a plugin or the theme or even the hosting. Test your site on Pingdom, Yahoo’s YSlow, or Google’s Page Speed Insights and then let your web designer/developer know there is a problem so they can help you.

Designer’s Panel with four designers/developers of various backgrounds was next. A lot of chatting, but the important points were: Sliders are on the way out… too much movement especially for phones, which is where all the design is focused now. Give reasons for your design decisions and back it up with information. Quote data and anecdotes. Clients don’t always know what is best for their websites. Consider that what is fast for you and the client, because we have good wifi, is not necessarily the case with many of our users. Someone said the next iteration of WordPress, REST API, will focus on design components and not just the whole page.

Page Builder Showdown given by Gina Deaton rated six or so page builder themes (such as Divi) for creating web page design. A couple came out at the bottom, a few in the acceptable range and two on top. Surprisingly, Divi got knocked down a few points because Gina felt there was a learning curve and the theme only builds out to four columns. She acknowledged that it is a powerful theme, but that in order to use it at it’s full potential, you need to know css coding. The winner was Beaver Builder and a simpler free new theme called Elementor.

Why Good Design Matters was given by a young designer, Andrea Trew,  from the agency Fly Wheel. She mentioned a few books on design or design philosophy including As Little Design As Possible by Dieter Rams. She designed a clever intern campaign based on the Wes Anderson movie, Moonrise Kingdom. New interns were given notebooks backed with fake fur. The take home was “It’s not how it looks, it’s how you make people feel.”

Organizing Your First Website Usability Test by Anthony D Paul, was all about testing web design prototypes. Some results can be “too much content” which can be determined early in a testing environment and problems with Brand Perception, which usually takes some time to uncover and shopping cart abandonment. His favorite quote is “The Price of Light is less than the cost of darkness, by Arthur C.Nielson, market researcher.

Intro to Wireframing, by Karalyn Thayer pointed out that wireframing saves time and money, because you can easily make changes early on. A wireframe, either low fidelity such as a sketch on a napkin, or high fidelity made with software,does not contain any color, fonts, or other stylish elements. The client can more easily understand the hierarchy of content, layout and path of the user.

Are we having fun yet? That’s it for Day one!

But consider other sites, such as Yelp or Zillow, or even where your client feels comfortable. Then copy the text and add it to your testimonial page on your website. Professionals recommend testimonials appear on your home page, scattered around the website or even on every page.

Here is a few reasons why testimonials are so powerful published by entrepreneur.com. These examples are for B2C product sites, but the same principles can be applied to B2B.

• Testimonials build trust.
  Whether your customers are raving about what your product has done for them or about the great service you gave, they’re telling your visitors first and foremost that they had a positive experience with your products and company.
• Testimonials aren’t “salesy.”
  Because testimonials aren’t written in your “voice,” they stand out in your copy as candid and unbiased accounts of how well your product works.
• Testimonials overcome skepticism.
  A good testimonial has the power to convince even your “tough sell” visitors that your product or service really made a difference in your customer’s life–and can help them, too.

If your client doesn’t offer a testimonial as mine did, don’t hesitate to ask for one, especially if you think you did a good job and they seem to be pleased. They may send you a nice note for a job well done. That’s a good time to ask if you can use it or a longer testimonial for your business. Ask before they get onto another project and the glow has worn off. If you’re really lucky, you may be able to use a photo of the customer as well. That personalizes their testimony even more.

89% Effectiveness Rating
“A study found that customer testimonials have the highest effectiveness rating in content marketing at 89%. This means that businesses that used testimonials or reviews somewhere in their marketing effectively reached and engaged more people compared to all other means of content”, states another expert.

Testimonials, used correctly, are authentic reviews of your service that build trust with your audience. Combine them with case studies if that works for your business. More on case studies in another blog post!