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With such head-starts, the five figure medium-sized website cost quickly becomes four. The four figure small business website cost becomes three. The home-grown sideline business goes from three figures to two (many premium WordPress themes designs are available for only $50). You can even get a WordPress website on their sister site for free. Buy a domain name for it and you’re in business for just $10.

To the short-sighted web developer or designer it’s the end of days. To the business owner it should be the start of getting the website they always thought they were going to get, but never quite did, for a price they can justify, and that everyone can use. via – WordPress The Quiet Revolution

I found this quote on a website for web developers and I think that the implications of this trend are fantastic. In the old day of web development, any organization had to throw their hopes over the webmaster wall and hope for the best. They were dependent upon the webmaster for every part of the website including the design and getting the content just right.

The result was that websites were expensive, cumbersome and really didn’t help an organization deliver their message.

In my experience in developing many sites, I’ve actually found that the most challenging part of the process is defining the organization’s message. I actually believe that developing a website is the best thing that any organization can do because if forces a reflection on what the organization is all about.

I’ve worked with several organizations to refine their organizational message – their elevator speech that describes what they do in less than 30 seconds. Let’s look at an example. I recently completed a project with Taproot to help a small non-profit redo their website. The technical work to redo the site took less than 40% of the calendar time; the bulk of the calendar time was helping this non-profit define who they are.

Stagebridge helps older people fully express themselves and live life to the fullest. Their old site made it difficult to quickly understand what the organization was all about. Studies show that most people take around five seconds to decide if they’re going to stick around on a site before moving on. These five seconds are important to let someone know who you are ans what you’re all about.

After several brainstorming sessions we quickly narrowed all their work down into four overall categories. These categories not only helped Stagebridge refine their elevator speech, it formed the foundation for the organization of the new website.

The new site uses few words and some rotating slides to convey the message. It shows the possibilities of healthy aging and how Stagebridge’s offerings help older people live life to the fullest!

So, yes, I’m glad that the days of expensive unresponsive website design are numbered. I’m excited about the possibilities of using a new website as a catalyst to refine any organization’s message!

Imagine having a website that’s so popular that people subscribe to it. They get automatically notified when there’s a new update. This, in essence, is a blog feed. Blog feeds, often called RSS feeds, allow any web owner to regularly publish updates by text, graphics, audio or video.

RSS (which stands for Really Simple Syndication) is a solves a problem for people who regularly use the web. It allows readers to easily stay informed by retrieving the latest content from the sites they are interested in. You can save time by not needing to visit each site individually. You ensure your privacy, by not needing to join each site’s email newsletter. The number of sites offering RSS feeds is growing rapidly. The good news for site owners is that WordPress, because of its blog background, is easy to start an RSS feed. All you pretty much need to do is create a new post and it’s included in your feed.
We like RSS feeds used along with newsletters and social networking to make it simple to get your message out to many!

For many businesses your website is your primary marketing tool. At the same time, many businesses use a variety of tool to reach new and existing customers. You site then becomes your portal into you different communication channels. Let’s take a look at how your site can be an effective portal.

Email newsletters have been around a long time. Newsletters are a great way to stay in contact with your customers or those interested in your business. In most cases, email newsletters aren’t very effective to reach new customers. However, the cost of getting a new customer is much higher than retaining existing customers. We’ll talk about reaching new customers in another post, but don’t forget the importance of staying in contact with your existing customers.

The first step to produce an email newsletter is to collect email addresses of your customers or prospects. We recommend having an easy to find place on your homepage for new people to signup for your newsletter. Offer your existing newsletters the ability to see your existing newsletters or offer a nice, free benefit in exchange for their email address.

You can maintain the email newsletter list yourself, but it’s really difficult. If you have an email list of over 30 to 50 people, you’ll quickly outgrow the ability of sending the emails yourself. You’ll also need an automated way for people to subscribe and unsubscribe from your list. There are several great services we recommend – Constant Contact and MailChimp come to mind.

There are also open source (free) options to manage your email lists. Phplist is probably the best known open source option. One thing to keep in mind with the commercial services when compared with the open source options is delivery. Both Constant Contact and MailChimp ensure that you comply with anti-spam regulations and help ensure that your important content actually gets delivered rather than get hung up in spam filters.

The content of your email is important. Of course you have a marketing message; however, most people aren’t interested in reading marketing messages. We recommend that you write something of interest to your target market and wrap your marketing content in that message. Interesting content is important. Not only will interesting content get people to subscribe to your newsletter, but it will also help your email get opened! Think about it – how many marketing emails do you get that you don’t even open. Write your email so your subscriber can’t wait to open it.

The commercial services all give you data so that you can see how many emails were sent, how many were opened and how many were actually clicked. This data is key to help you understand what happens with your messages once you send them out. Stay on top of your open and click thru rate.

The final thing to pay attention to in email marketing is frequency. How often do you send your messages? What is the boundary between engaging your customers and nagging them? If you over-saturate your customers you’ll just get them to unsubscribe to your list. If you don’t send out regularly enough, they’ll forget about you.

We don’t believe that there’s a hard and fast rule – different audiences have different frequency thresholds. But pay attention to how often you send out your emails.

Of course there’s much more about email marketing and this just covers the highlights, but email newsletters can be a great way to stay in contact with your customers.