We’ve been discussing web sites and blogs for the last few weeks. Today, I’ll pick up where we left off on Friday. But first, there’s a student in the back of the class waving her hand wanting to ask a question:
Susan asked:
How complicated is updating a blog on a website compared to one on Blogger? Doing it myself is not an option, and since I’m not independently wealthy, neither is hiring a webmaster to add a new post every few days.
Randy sez: It’s just as easy either way. That’s the beauty of blogging — you set it up once, and then when you want to post, you log in to your site and type a blog entry, without having to ask your webmaster to do anything for you. (You have to log in because otherwise, ANYONE could post entries to your blog posing as you, and you don’t want that.) It is a bit more work to set up the blog on your own site to begin with, but the rewards are high.
Last week, I posted a list of 9 questions you should ask yourself (and answer) before you ever start designing a web site or blog. I’m discussing each of these in more detail now, because your answers determine what kind of site you’ll want to create, the technology you’ll use, and how much time, energy, and money you’ll have to expend.
Question #4 is going to generate some controversy, I’m sure. I’ll discuss some possible answers to this question:
4) How “pretty” do you want your site to be?
Answer a) Extremely beautiful and cutting edge, with lots of motion and graphics
Randy sez: If this is your answer, the next question you should ask yourself is “Why?” This kind of site is going to be expensive. It’ll be hard for you to change, unless your webmaster takes care to make it easy for you to change. (For example, if he installs a blog in the site, that part of it will be easy for you to add content to. But the rest of the site may be far beyond the skills of mortals.) If the webmaster does it in Flash, the site may not even be indexed by the search engines. Remember, a picture may be worth a thousand words, but search engines still think in terms of words. I have seen web sites in which all the text was actually a picture of text. Search engines won’t index that, because they can’t see it.
Answer b) Professional looking
Randy sez: Professional looking is good, as long as it doesn’t detract from your goals. It is not my job, of course, to tell you your goals. It may be that your goals are in line with a professional-looking web site. Be sure that they are before you pay for one, because again, it’s going to cost you money if it’s a full-blown site. You can of course get a beautiful looking blog at no cost, because all the blogging sites have great-looking templates.
Answer c) Nice looking
Randy sez: There’s actually a continuum from super-glitzy sites down to professional down to nice looking down to awful. The nicest looking ones generally cost the most. The key thing is to figure out just how “pretty” it needs to be to do the job. Which means you have to define what “the job” actually is.
Answer d) As long as it doesn’t look like the south end of a north-bound rhino, it’s fine
Randy sez: This kind of a site will cost you even less. This is the kind of site you usually do yourself, using FrontPage or DreamWeaver or whatever, including the graphics. Sites like this can look “OK” but they are going to make a statement about you. Be sure that the statement your site makes is the one you want it to make.
Answer e) I don’t care if it’s ugly as sin
Randy sez: We have all seen incredibly ugly sites. The possibilities are endless: Pink text on blue background. Flashing banners. Dancing text. Tiny text that is fixed at fifteen inches wide. Unreadable Olde English fonts (or a handwritten font in gold ink on a white background.)
The question is whether a great-looking site or a horrible monstrous site makes a difference.
Of course, that’s an impossible question to answer. “Makes a difference” in what way?
Let me point you to a few different web sites, all of whom belong to tremendously successful internet marketers.
Tom Antion’s site. This is a pretty primitive site, as Tom himself will tell you. He did it himself in FrontPage, and it looks like it. But Tom’s laughing all the way to the bank, earning millions of dollars from that site and others like it. Tom is one of the best internet marketers I know. He’s not a techie. He’s a marketer. I’ve learned a ton from him.
Alexandria Brown’s site. Ali Brown is the “E-zine Queen” and she does a great job of teaching how do an e-zine. I learned most of what I know about doing e-zines from her. Notice that her site is pretty basic. It’s one page. The movie at the top looks squashed in my browser, though it might look fine in other browsers, I haven’t checked. Ali makes a lot of money from her site also. Why? Because she gives away good solid info and she has a good line of products to sell.
James Brausch’s new blog. This site is just a blog. It’s got a clean, utilitarian design. There are no Flash intros or glitzy graphics. James is a leading expert in such things as traffic, copywriting, and product creation. And if you look at his blog, you’ll see he spells that out: “Traffic + Copywriting + Products = Successful Internet Business”. He also makes a ton of money, and he deserves it, because I don’t know of anyone better at some of the things he does.
Perry Marshall’s web site. This is another small site. Notice that it doesn’t look like Perry spent a ton of money on a webmaster. It looks like it could have been done in FrontPage. Perry, by the way, is one of the world’s leading authorities on using Google AdWords as an advertising service. If found Perry a couple years ago when I wanted to find out more about AdWords. So I checked to see whose ad on AdWords placed highest. I figured those people would be the experts. Perry was right up there among the top 2 or 3.
What’s the moral of the story here? You can have an immensely effective web site or blog without having a “pretty” site. Of course you can an immensely ineffective site or blog that isn’t pretty. From what I can see, there’s not a lot of correlation between “pretty” and effective, at least if you define “effective” to mean “earns money.”
I am sure that many people are now going to tell me that a web site or a blog for a novelist is “different” and that it’s more important for a novelist to have a “pretty” site than for a mere million-dollar earning business mogul. I would be interested to hear why that is so.
Pretty is as pretty does. Readable is more important than graphics for a novelist site, just as it is for a novel. I’m interning for James Braush, and he does a lot of testing of every possible aspect of web design. He uses a blog, not because he can’t do web design or can’t pay for it, but because it works. He has very simple and clean web pages.
Here’s statistic from my own experience. I do a blog for my division at my school. I post every weekday, even if its only a class schedule. We have moved in six months from 2-3 hits a day to nearly 100 a day. Now we do get local traffic, but unlike the school’s website, we don’t just get hits from people seareching for the name of the college. The articles I wrote four months ago are stil getting traffic. That’s why you do a blog.
Our site is very plain, and has only a graphic banner at the top, which is as compressed a file as it can be. It loads in less than a second, though it is a bit grainy.
The only difference between a college website and a novelist’s website is the content of the articles. What do writers do best? Write.
For a great example of a writers blog (in addition to yours, Randy) is Tiffany Coulter’s http://writingcareercoach.blogspot.com She writes about her own life challenges as well as about the writing life.
I do have a blog hosted on my own account, and it is not all that hard to do. WordPress has very good directions and will sell hosting and domain name for $15 a YEAR. Blogger and Blogspot will probably do the same. Once you get the files copied to the place on the server, using the blog is just the same as the free sites, except that you have more “widgets” that the free sites won’t let you use–like putting Google tracking code and such.
Thank you for the specific examples of various kinds of websites. It helps to “see” what you’re talking about. You wrote: “From what I can see, there’s not a lot of correlation between ‘pretty’ and effective, at least if you define ‘effective’ to mean ‘earns money.’” This is good news for most of us!
I notice they all have a white or pale background, and I agree that simplicity is the best policy. I did my book site (link above) in black because it fitted better with my cover graphics; my author site www.gracebridges.com is in white.
If I’ve understood you correctly, we don’t really need an expert webmaster to make an effective site. Good point about the search engines too. Plain old HTML rules! 🙂 and no I can’t speak HTML, just mess around a bit for the fancy parts. To put the basics together I’ve never found anything better than Netscape 4.5 dating from the ’90s… colors, graphics, tables and links. Nice graphics are a must for me, with everything else real simple.
I am still noodling with my site. But I second Grace’s ‘dark text on light background’ comment. A decade or so ago I had an eye condition that made me functionally blind for about a year, coming and going, and I started noticing what was readable and what was not. Red text on white is the lowest contrast you can find. (Jesus’ words in my Bible disappeared. I got rid of my red-letter edition.) Now I routinely notice ads on passing trucks that somebody paid a ton for which can’t be deciphered, business signs in cutesy fonts where you aren’t sure what they sell.
But one other question on pictures: Dreamweaver lets you put in little alternate text tags for every picture. Don’t the search engines read those? Somebody told me that google will pick up the picture tags first.
I have a whole list of author sites with best and worst. Some of them have so many choices that if I went there to buy a book, I’d have forgotten after 4 minutes on their sites. Nice for me, but stinks for them!
Magically, after complaining about not receiving your newsletter for months and months, this past letter came through.
It’s like asking the clerk to help you find a book after searching for hours only to discover it’s been in front of your nose the whole time.
Thanks for the link to Alexandria Brown’s site. I began my newsletter in January and am looking forward to her tips to make it better.
I concur that readable is the most important factor in a site. I enjoy the eye candy only if it doesn’t distract me from the purpose of the site. Being able to read it easily and navigate through it is top priority for me.
Hi Randy,
I’ve noticed that your e-zine, and many of the comments that are posted on your blog, fill up only about half of the page. For reading that is great! For printing it out — it takes a lot of paper. I’m sure there must be a reason for that, and I’m not sure it is worth taking up space on your blog to answer it. Just thought I’d ask.
Me, again! I just remembered that a friend of mine did her own ministry site. She posted all her articles on it. Later, however, when she did a “search” for it, it wouldn’t come up on Google. I don’t know if she tried some of the other search engines or not. A ministry site that can’t be found is of little value!
She called a tech, and got such an involved answer that she finally thanked him and hung up. What can she do?
The local extension of our nearest community college is offering an evening class, about 15 to 18 hours of instruction, on web pages using FrontPage. I’m thinking of taking this. Any thoughts? Is FrontPage good software for a beginner? From your in-post statement, you seem kind of down on it. I just can’t see plunking down a few grand for a professional site during my unpublished phase.
Whew, I’m relieved that a blog on a website isn’t any more complicated to use than a stand-alone blog.
I agree with the other commenters. I like black text on a white background. Some blogs/website are so hard to discipher that I’ve given up on them. No matter how great the content, it’s useless if I can’t read it.
Another feature which captures my fancy: a blogroll. For me, this is the best way to locate other Christian writers.
I think it depends on the person who wants the site. It’s the same with yards. I’m in love with flowers and herbs and garden paths, so I garden a lot. It’s important to me. I also love graphics. It’s important to me that my website reflect my bent toward the aesthetic.
I truly believe you can have both. I have a nice looking website that I can change the content on, the best of both worlds.
Randy,
You might want to comment, even if ever so briefly, on your definition of “pretty”. I can think of several conflicting definitions, such as:
“Graphic intensive”
“Layout, white space arrangement, readability”
“Artistic color palette”
“Easy to navigate”
Personally, I think the greatest attributes of a great web site are readability, the ability to quickly find what you came there to find, and “classic beauty” (ie: complimentary colors, fonts, designing like a publisher, effective use of white space, color, graphics and text, and consistency from one area of the web site to the next.)
Those things make a site pretty. Flash, java, sound, bells-and-whistles, etc. can be useful [i]when applied under the guidelines and constraints of “classic beauty”[/i] but can also prevent one from reaching the goal of a “pretty” site.
I will say this: I specifically asked for great graphics, but not bells and whistles. I wanted folks to be able to see my site without having to wade through pop ups and such.