April 7th, 2009
by Lorrie Thomas
I had a scary web marketing flashback (not drug induced, thank you) to my first website.
Caution: the following website homepage image may cause nausea.
I designed the website below as a final project for a HTML class I took in 2005. I passed the class and left the site up…then forgot it/abandoned it! While being a neglectful parent to my website, I failed one of our many wild web marketing rules:
“Do what you do best and pay the others to do the rest”
A little branding goes a long way - CLICK to see the site now!
I am not a web designer (yeah, duh!) But we all have to start somewhere and surprisingly, I actually got a lot of work off this site (that needed a web marketing intervention!) because the copy on the site was strong. However, the whole enchilada of my web presence was not gelling. The branding was wrong and the design positioned me poorly.
Web Marketing RX for the day:
Invest in marketing that matters and if you don’t believe me, read this post about web marketing to get it.
Laughter is the BEST medicine, we can’t be too serious, especially when all our old site archives live forever on www.archive.org/index.php. I still show my first website at conferences, in webinars and to my students to demonstrate that we all don’t always practice what we preach (and that we all start somewhere!)
Make your web marketing matter, count and pay. And don’t settle for crapola when it comes to web work.
Never, ever, ever, discount the power of paying professionals who know what they are doing. Return on Investment (ROI) is not just about the cash, it’s what you get value-wise in TIME, ENERGY and VALUE.
Web Marketing Therapy Related Links:
- Your web designer is not entitled to a link at the footer of your site
- Kaizen!
- Going Through a Website/Branding Facelift? Expedite the Process With an Optimized Coming Soon Page
- Get your small business brand building up in this down economy
Keith T.
(April 7th, 2009 at 9:49 am)
You definitely earned more She-Geek street cred by showing that you passed an HTML class and created your first web site…
However, I’d say you made a wise choice having SiteGoals take care of WMT
Web Marketing Therapy » Blog Archive » Today’s Healthy Dose of Marketing Motivation
(October 26th, 2009 at 11:50 am)
[...] You get what you pay for (and what you don’t pay for). Investing in smart marketing partners and investing in smart web collateral (like blogs, great design - tools that last the LIFE of your organization) are what save you money in the long run. [...]