So I just came back from having a lunch meeting with a meeting/event planner. For professional speakers, meeting/event planners are the source of all things good and wonderful, i.e. gigs. We had a fabulous time. But one thing she said really struck me and also gave me butterflies in my stomach: "Justin, you really need a more sophisticated looking web site."
Now let me just say, she’s absolutely right… my web site is largely homemade, and is anything but sophisticated. Way back in 1992, when I first heard about this newfangled thing called the World Wide Web, I learned how to code basic HTML. Once I figured out the<p> and <a href> codes, I went wild. I quickly slapped up a web page and voila, I had an easily accessible product brochure for my publications that anyone who was "online" could see. And given just how many times I have sold my family concerts internationally thru the site, I think we can all agree that it has been a resounding success.
Now of course, I would love to have a big fancy professionally done web site. But there are a couple of reasons why I don’t do this. First of all, it would not be cost effective for me to put in all the time and effort to become a high-level Web designer just to do a page for myself.
Second, I know many people who have gone out and paid someone to design and build a fancy web site for them. They look great. Unfortunately, every time they want to update or change the slightest little thing on this fancy web site, they have to go back and pay some designer x dollars per hour to make that change. The fact that there is a sizable cost to every single change creates a massive disincentive to update the web site. This is okay for a big company, but for a sole proprietor, the benefit rarely justifies the cost.
Another thing I notice often is that when a company or an individual hires a professional designer, the tendency is always, always, always, to look more and more like other web sites. So that is actually a reason why I have not done a fancy web site (other than sheer cheapness), as I don’t think I could really afford a designer who could deliver something truly unique.
Again, making reference to David Meerman Scott’s New Rules of Marketing and PR, web site content creates inbound traffic. And so, if your web site is more than just a business card and a mission statement and a pretty picture, and actually offers interesting or useful information, this will encourage traffic. Also, the more often the web site is change and updated, the more likely you will get repeat visitors.
No doubt someone else has already noticed this, but I’m noticing it for the first time today: personal or business web SITES are becoming like business cards or letterhead or the signs out in front of the building, and possibly the gift shop. They don’t need to change very often. Some web sites are like reference books. They don’t need to change very often. On the other hand, once they have made the initial impression, they become useless until a new person comes to see it. People do not visit static web sites more than once, no matter how beautiful a professionally done they are. The the thing that drives daily repeated Web traffic is the current content, the news, the way you interact . . . And it seems that this is all migrating to the blogosphere.
I just realized, I’ve never had a web SITE. I have had a blog the whole time. Just simple and informative.
I figured out early on in my web design career that content, even basic simple-looking content, draws a lot of traffic. And by keeping my web site extremely simple, that allows for fluidity of content, which draws yet more traffic, including repeat traffic. So that is the argument for keeping it simple and fluid. But… when one is working through layers of agents and gatekeepers, it becomes traditional and perhaps more effective to have something that is perhaps less folksy/personal and more fancy and "slick," to demonstrate at least an appearance of official-looking competence to committees of strangers during the approval process.
So coming up soon, look for a completely redone home page for justinlocke.com that will either be all blog with links to reference pages of publications for rent and sale etc. . . . Or keep the blog separate, and have maybe one big fat fancy graphic, and when you click on it you will land in the basic HTML pages with the content you are looking for. What do you think?
© Justin Locke
