Get the basics sorted first!

Before putting energy into viral marketing and clever campaigns, get your website sorted. If the site doesn’t work and doesn’t get visitors to do something useful, sending more traffic won’t help. Start with the foundations and build from there.

Here in August 2010, I’m getting lots of emails from entrepreneurs who’ve built a website but aren’t getting visits or orders. They ask whether to start viral marketing or guerrilla marketing. But when I look at the site and ask questions, it’s often the basics that aren’t in place at all.

A pile of bricks isn’t a house

Imagine someone contacting a builder and saying: I’d like flourishes and a tower on my house. And can you add a drawbridge over a little lake?

The builder arrives to find a roof on the ground and a pile of bricks in the corner. They haven’t even dug the foundations.

Where the hell is the house?

Well, there are bricks and a roof. You just need to add the flourishes and drawbridge.

No, you don’t have a fucking house just because you have some bricks and half a roof on the plot. You have a ruin. Before talking about lakes, bridges and towers, there needs to be something to build them on.

That’s how I see websites where the owner wants a big clever campaign while the site itself doesn’t work.

Getting your website sorted starts with a purpose

Start by asking yourself: Why have I made a website?

If the answer is that you want to sell more products or services, look at the site with that purpose in mind. Does it even encourage a sale? Is there a clear action a visitor can take?

That’s what I call a call to action. You shouldn’t just have information sitting there. You also need to make it clear what people can do now.

For example, it could be a button to order your brochure. But explain what the brochure offers: It shows how you can solve the customer’s problem, save money or make the roof watertight. Whatever your business helps with.

Is that option available on practically every relevant page? And is the information the customer needs there too?

Make the ordinary things work

Does the site look professional? Have you removed spelling mistakes? Are the pictures good? Does everything work?

Those aren’t exciting questions if you’d rather invent a big campaign. But they matter. You can bring in all the traffic you want and get nothing from it if the website doesn’t turn visitors into what you want.

So start with design, information and the actions you’re asking the customer to take. Get those things working. Also read E-pusher about my experiences with online sales and marketing.

Can search engines find and understand the site?

Next is search engine optimisation. Is your website technically built so search engines have a chance of finding it?

That can easily be considered alongside work on the site itself. So it’s a good idea to talk to someone who knows about search engines before you even build the website.

If you’ve already built it, get someone to review it. Can the crawlers access the content, and is anything fundamental getting in the way?

In the video, I use a website built entirely in Flash as an example of a house built incorrectly. That’s a concrete problem from the technical reality here in 2010: If the choice of solution prevents search engines from using the site, you need to tackle the fundamentals.

Once that’s in place, you can work on links and the other things involved in search engine optimisation. I won’t cover the whole subject here. Read about it on Amino or get help from someone who knows what they’re doing.

An AdWords campaign needs proper work too

Once the website works and you can see search engines starting to send visitors, you can look at Google AdWords too.

Of course, you can work on several things at once. My point is that buying traffic for a site that doesn’t work yet makes no sense. It’s like building a tower on top of the pile of bricks on the lawn.

When I ask people what they’ve done with AdWords, some say they’ve entered 50 words. Then I think: Congratulations, you risk wasting your money on expensive, stupid and useless clicks.

In the video, I discuss campaigns with thousands of words and phrases. That’s an illustration of the thorough work I’m calling for. It isn’t necessarily something you can just set up properly yourself without knowing the field.

Get a proper campaign in place. In the video, I say very bluntly that I’ve yet to see a business unable to make money from AdWords if the work is done right.

I also say 95 per cent do it wrong. That’s my harsh assessment in this discussion, not a measurement or a guarantee for any individual business. My frustration is that many simply pour money into Google’s pocket without getting a decent business out of it.

Then Google can spend the money on organic food in its canteens and strange new projects while you’re left with the bill. Think before buying clicks.

Clever ideas come on top of the foundations

Once your website is in order, search engines are working and you have an advertising campaign making money, we can start discussing events and viral marketing.

There are lots of things you can do if you’re good at it. I’m simply saying they shouldn’t replace the basics.

Get the basics right and get moving. If you haven’t started yet, I say rather provocatively in the video that you can spend the next two years on it. The point is that this is real work that needs doing before we discuss the flourishes.

Lots of people want to build towers and spires on their house, but get the house sorted first…