Building a good website is more important and in depth than what a lot of people seem to think. It’s about more than just having a presence online – it’s about having a site that provides value and does its job effectively. It’s no different than any other piece of the organization and should be reviewed carefully to make sure it is pulling its weight. After working with a variety of clients using all sorts of different marketing methods, one rule holds true across the board: your website can either be a great place for reaching a lot of people or it can give your target a bad taste in their mouth when they visit. Rarely does a site fall somewhere in the middle.  As a result, organizations need to not question if their target audience will visit their site but rather when they visit your site will they want to come back or engage you in a more meaningful way.

I believe this is crucial to building a brand a market position regardless of the field. The following list is made up of important factors that should be considered when analyzing your website and deciding how to make it better represent you, your products and giving your consumer the user experience that helps – not hurts – your goals.


Plan. Every successful website I have seen has not happened by chance. There is always an underlying plan to how the site will be built, deployed and updated. Make sure you develop this plan before you begin developing your site. But more than this, make sure you involve your stakeholders in this planning process. By doing this, it will save you invaluable time and money as you proceed- not to mention saving you a great deal of headaches by allowing you to do a better job faster.

Form vs Function. Both important, but they need to be maintained in balance. If you over rotate on either the desired effect can be lost and the whole site can suffer. A fantastic looking site without easy to use functionality is still a bad site. the same thing is true if the functionality is great but the aesthetics are off. Make sure you weigh both of these issues when developing your plan – they both matter and help each other to be successful in building a site that will do what you need it to.

You can be too cutting edge. Technology is great and sometimes we get a little too excited about using new technology before it is ready to be used. This is even more true as you develop a website. A technology that is promising a revolution in the next year should not be adopted too far ahead of the curve. It will be difficult to develop, often times more costly and sometimes this great new technology is actually a barrier to visitors who are unable to utilize it because it hasn’t become the standard yet.

Your website is as much about your audience as it is about you. Don’t forget when you develop your site that your website needs to do two things well- represent you and your organization, but it has to do this in a way that makes sense and appeals to your target audience. Both of these goals have to be met. If your site appeals to you an not your customers you miss out on opportunities to begin having a dialogue with those people but if it doesn’t represent your company’s image you risk your brand image with your customers.

Your website is only part of the process. Keep in mind like any good part of a business or marketing plan the website is part of the whole. It should contribute to the success of other parts of the plan and it should benefit from activities as well. The most successful sites are built into the overall marketing plan and help identify how they can help move customers through the pipeline – regardless of if they are trying to inform, sell or entertain. Social Media, Public Relations, eMarketing campaigns and general awareness are all part of the success of your site and your organization.


Did I miss something or do you think I am totally off base? Let me know.

Why is the 'Fail Whale' smiling?

We have all witnessed the saving of AIG and GM and numerous other companies, all being talked about as necessary measures to keep the economy rebounding and to protect the country from financial shocks too big to be overcome. And actually this post isn’t even going to try to decide if that is correct logic or just standard government intervention. What I want to think about is: Are there other reasons that make a company too important to fail?

Going back to the GM reference, we would all still be able to buy cars and go about our daily lives if GM went under. Many people would have lost jobs and the reverberations would not have been small- I am not discounting that at all. Believe me I am from Michigan and know a lot of people feeling the impact right now. But my individual freedoms and access to information would not have been impacted. The damage is primarily economic. But what about the new wave of companies that have a different impact than a primarily economic one, would they receive the same consideration?

Would Twitter get the same reaction if it were to go under? I can imagine people rolling their eyes and saying that it is not nearly the same thing. But just the other day the US State Department asked the San Francisco based company to put off scheduled maintenance so there wouldn’t be a disruption in the tweets coming out of Iran.  (read about it here) With large media firms like CNN using Twitter as their eyes and ears in hot-spots like Iran the importance and profile of the 4 year old company continues to rise. It begins to make the case that the rapid rise of Twitter adoption has made it a necessary piece of society today.

However, Twitter walks a fine line of losing its credibility if it is viewed as a tool of a government or if it loses its grassroots charm. A company without a profit, a tool the government is apparently beginning to view as essential in some situations – is Twitter becoming a real force in the world that can’t be allowed to fail or will the act of saving it doom it to be rejected by its followers for being just another sellout or that wants to charge a user fee or bombard them with ads? Either way, Twitter is on the radar of just about everyone today – but the path ahead is not a clear one by a long shot.

What do you think – necessary tool or overhyped text service? Either way, an interesting turn of events for a company that has made the “Fail Whale” famous.

StrategyNoises.com is going to be about looking at the strategies of people, products and politics to try to find examples of great campaigns, horrible ideas and those topics that could go either way. In a slow economy you can see examples of companies doing a great job with planning and then you can see some that don’t appear to have noticed anything has changed at all.  I want to use this blog as a forum for talking about those ideas and learning from them regardless of if they are huge successes or failures.

I want to take a look a variety of issues and talk about all the things that are going on out there – maybe with just a hint of sarcasm tossed in for good measure. Right now the topics I am reading about include the Iran Election, Smart Phones, and the media in general -from ABC broadcasting themed newscasts at the White House (umm a little separation please?) to the new Bruno movie and on a more personal note why all of a sudden my pool went cloudy (any ideas?).  Thanks for stopping by to take a look at the blog.