Double Dutch

400 years ago, an Englishman sailing for the Dutch East India Company, made the first exploration of what is now New York Harbor. His name: Henry Hudson. This epic voyage of discovery eventually led to the founding of New Netherland, including its trading post at the mouth of the river – New Amsterdam.

Early on, Dutch explorers realized that, in order to know where you’re going, you first have to find out where you are. Today, the same principle applies to those of you who sail the seven seas of the World Wide Web. My friend Fernanda is one of them. She’s a talented voice-over actress and a self-professed computer illiterate.

SITE-SEEING
One day she called me up and said: “You’ll never believe what I just did”. “You’re right”, I replied. “Did you climb Mount Kilimanjaro?” “Sort of”, she said. “For years you’ve told me to get a website, and I finally did. Aren’t you proud of me?” “Sort of”, I said. “What took you so long?” “Oh, stop it” she laughed. “Why don’t you go online right now and let me know what you think.”

I did. It was one of those free sites with a name you can’t spell, let alone remember. “Oops”, I thought. Mistake number one. But I didn’t want to be a party pooper, so I took a peek at her home page. It happened to be her only page, and most of it was taken up by a headshot that should have been updated a decade ago. The rest was contact info. At the bottom of the page was one of those silly counters. I was visitor number three. “Okay”, I said to her. “Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea”. “Why not?” she asked. “It took me three hours to build.”

“Well, for starters, there are 240 million websites swimming in the cybersea, and by the time I finish this sentence, the Chinese alone have probably added at least a thousand web pages to the one trillion that are already on the web. If you want people to come to your shop, you have to do a number of things.

One: make sure they can find you. So, get your own domain with a name that’s easy to remember. Nobody is going to believe that you’re a professional if your web address ends in ‘freebly.com’. Two: a headshot and an email address is not a website. Besides, before you know it, your mailbox will be overflowing with messages that you’ve won the grand prize in the Albanian state lottery. “Really?” she said. “How much money would that be?”

BACK TO BASICS
Now, you might think this is funny, but when I started this series about the value of websites in our business, so many colleagues asked me the same questions: “I have a website. Now what? How do I get people to even notice me? And once they’ve found me, how do I make them come back?” There and then I realized that, before talking about metrics, conversion and website optimization, I’d better go back to basics. That’s where the first mistakes are usually made. See for yourself.

Visiting websites of some voice-over actors is very much like going to a cemetery. First of all, you can’t find them because they’re hiding in the outer galaxies of cyberspace; the ones that are usually reserved for other life forms. Secondly, once you get there, there’s simply nothing going on…. Walk along with me and take a look at the tombstones:

“Here lies Harry in the rain. He tried to be Don LaFontaine.”

“Jackson hardly made a penny, sounding like a fake Tom Kenny.”

“Buried here are Hector’s bones. He never was a James Earl Jones.”

LOOK AT ME!
Remember this: a website is not a monument built to glorify your extraordinary talents. It’s really not about you. If you would like your visitors to come back again and again, make sure it meets their needs first and foremost. Here’s a hint. Assume for a moment that you are a lover of sea food and that you’ve found the perfect place to buy clams. Two days later you come back for more, and it looks like nothing has changed. That red snapper that was on display at the beginning of the week, is still staring at you. The next day you try again, and now you notice that things are beginning to smell. Not exactly a place you’d like to return to, is it?

The other day I revisited a website of one of my colleagues, and the first thing I saw on his home page was “Coming soon, my latest audio book. Scheduled release: February 2007.” Do I smell fish?

Another colleague was offering voice-over classes. “Hurry because classes fill up fast!” said one of the banners that moved across the screen. I clicked on the link with the schedule. You guessed it. The next training was about to start on April 5th… of ’08. I think I’ll pass…

THE REAL-TIME WEB
Meanwhile, Google is preparing the launch of a new upgraded version of its search engine, code named “Caffeine”. Webwatchers tell us that it is going to be more accurate, more comprehensive and much faster. Alex Watson, editor of Custom PC magazine recently said Caffeine was reflecting a general trend to what he calls “the real-time web”. Watson: “Caffeine now picks up news stories and puts fresher content higher up the search results.”

Four hundred years have passed and New York is celebrating “Holland on the Hudson“. Today’s explorers are internet explorers. What will they find when they discover your website?

Be sure to read the next installment: 8 ways to boost traffic to your website.

Paul Strikwerda © 2009

www.nethervoice.com