Ryan Chapin's Website

During website content discussions with clients, NBI frequently hears the same three questions:

1. "What should we say about ourselves?
2. What do we want our website visitors to do on our site?
3. and how do we make it easy for them to do what we want?"

Our response to these questions is "Tell us about information that your typical prospect is looking for when they first contact you."

The answer to this question helps you craft content that is more appropriately targeted to your website audience, and this content will help you drive more traffic to your website.

An effective website is designed to provide information valuable to your target audience. Top ranked websites, in any industry, always have the same basic characteristics.

• They all provide free, valuable information,
• in an easy to use format,
• that is relevant to the target audience.

The three main reasons why writing your content with your visitor in mind is a good way to go:

1. Visitor centric content typically generates a lot of relevant traffic from links on other websites. What is relevant traffic and why is that good? Relevant traffic is website visitors coming to your site who are already interested in whatever product or service that you provide. Having someone come to your accounting firm, or catering company website who is already interested in what you do greatly increases your chances of making a sale.
2. Visitor centric content helps increase your search engine rankings. The aforementioned links that drive that relevant traffic, they also help with your search engine rankings. The more relevant links TO your site on the Internet, the higher your site ranks in search engines.
3. Providing good, reliable, free information is part of the nature of the Internet. The Internet is an open, vibrant, global community and much of what makes the Internet possible is free and part of the public domain. By offering your content you get the opportunity to contribute to what makes the Internet great.

When thinking about the content of your site, think about things that you know about your type  of business or organization that would be of value to a website visitor; things that would help make them an informed consumer and a confident buyer. Get that content out there, and you should see good things happen on your website.

An effective website contains a number of complicated and diverse systems:

• Content Management System
• E-mail Newsletter System
• E-commerce
• Forums
• Blogs
• Spam Hardened Contact Forms
• And more . . .

In many cases there are affordable, hosted services that you can quickly deploy for a fraction of the cost of having them custom built for your existing website.

Being open to the possibility of hosting different parts of your website on different networks provides you the opportunity to test out new features with little risk and minimal investment.

Here are two examples:

1. Using a 3rd Party E-commerce Provider:  Let’s say you’d like to start selling products online but aren’t sure if you are going to get a an adequate return on your investment in a custom e-commerce system.  Try using one of any number of 3rd party e-commerce providers such as PayPal.  You sign-up for an account, drop a button on your website and can now start selling online.  The cost and time to get it up and running is minimal when compared to a custom e-commerce system and it gives you the chance to test the waters and figure out what kind of features that you’ll need.
2. Spam Hardened Contact Forms:  Once a site starts to become more popular it is very common to receive a lot of spam through contact forms.  We recently had a client who needed to stop the flood of spam through his contact forms.  His site was hosted on another server and he was already set up so that he could easily update and maintain the site himself.  So instead of either moving his entire site, or redeveloping and retro fitting the form code to run on his server we set up a minimal Website Edit Engine installation with the Spam Hardened Bolt-On.  We made the necessary updates to his site so that it was completely transparent to the website visitors and now his contact forms are spam free.

So the next time you are looking to make additions or upgrades to your site, ask your website developer if there are any existing hosted solutions that you can deploy on your site, and keep an open mind when it comes to hosting different features on different networks.  It can help save you a lot of time, and money.

Many a time I’ll talk to a client about adding additional features to a site that isn’t yet hosted on our servers. Typically, we’ve already got a stock Bolt-On Part that does exactly what they need. I’ll let them know that we can easily take care of it for them, and that it will include an up-front configuration and a monthly service fee. “Oh, but we don’t want to move our entire website,” is the typical response.

There seems to be a common misconception that your entire website has to be hosted all in one place. In many cases you can maximize your flexibility and minimize costs by hosting different parts of your website on different networks. Assuming it’s integrated correctly, your website visitors won’t notice the difference and you’ll be able to deploy your website features more quickly and affordably. An effective website contains a number of complicated and diverse systems:

• Content Management System
• E-mail Newsletter System
• E-commerce
• Forums
• Blogs
• Spam Hardened Contact Forms
• And more . . .

In many cases there are affordable, hosted services that you can quickly deploy for a fraction of the cost of having them custom built for your existing website.

Being open to the possibility of hosting different parts of your website on different networks provides you the opportunity to test out new features with little risk and minimal investment.

Here are two examples:

1. Using a 3rd Party E-commerce Provider: Let’s say you’d like to start selling products online but aren’t sure if you are going to get a an adequate return on your investment in a custom e-commerce system. Try using one of any number of 3rd party e-commerce providers such as PayPal. You sign-up for an account, drop a button on your website and can now start selling online. The cost and time to get it up and running is minimal when compared to a custom e-commerce system and it gives you the chance to test the waters and figure out what kind of features that you’ll need.
2. Spam Hardened Contact Forms: Once a site starts to become more popular it is very common to receive a lot of spam through contact forms. We recently had a client who needed to stop the flood of spam through his contact forms. His site was hosted on another server and he was already set up so that he could easily update and maintain the site himself. So instead of either moving his entire site, or redeveloping and retro fitting the form code to run on his server we set up a minimal Website Edit Engine installation with the Spam Hardened Bolt-On. We made the necessary updates to his site so that it was completely transparent to the website visitors and now his contact forms are spam free.

So the next time you are looking to make additions or upgrades to your site, ask your website developer if there are any existing hosted solutions that you can deploy on your site, and keep an open mind when it comes to hosting different features on different networks. It can help save you a lot of time, and money.