the old layout
Surprise!
No more brown, blue and green.
Gone are the windmills in the background.
Good old Double Dutch had to make way for the new Nethervoice. It might take some time to get used to, but believe me: it was inevitable. Let me tell you why.
If you have your own domain, do you know how many visitors come to your website in a day or a week; how they found your site; what they were looking at during their visit and for how long they stayed before going somewhere else?
If you don’t, you are in trouble. It’s like owning a store and having no idea how many customers come in and what they’re interested in. You cannot manage what you don’t measure.
As I was going over the Google Analytics stats for nethervoice.com, I had an epiphany. It turned out that in the last six months over 50% of my visitors had used a mobile device to access my website.
With millions and millions of tablets and smart phones sold, that was not exactly a revelation. My epiphany came when I realized that my site was never designed with mobile devices in mind.
DRIVING BUSINESS AWAY
Nethervoice.com looked okay on a 20″ monitor, but on an iPhone it was dreadful. Important information was cut off, buttons had disappeared and it was very user-unfriendly. No wonder my bounce rate was way too high.
Unknowingly and unintentionally, I was driving most of my visitors (= potential clients) away!
Now, do you know what your site looks like on an iPad or an Android?
Would you like to know?
Why don’t you visit this site right now and type your url into the test field. You can select “width only” or “device sizes” to find out what others see when they look at your website using a mobile device. If you’re on a desktop, make sure you enlarge the screen all the way to the right to reveal the iPad Landscape setting.
In my case the conclusion was crystal-clear: I would have to build a new site from the ground up. These were my criteria:
- It had to be mobile responsive to allow my site to automatically change layouts according to the visitor’s screen size, whether on a desktop, smartphone or tablet
- I wanted to maintain it myself
- It had to have a sleek, professional look
- It had to represent who I am and what I stand for
- I wanted to open an online store and make my demos downloadable
My content management system (CMS) of choice would be WordPress. Because my old Double Dutch blog was WordPress-based, I already knew how easy it was to create pages with little or no knowledge of html code. If you’ve never worked with WordPress, here’s what you should know.
The look and functionality of a WordPress site is determined by a template called a theme. Right now there are thousands of themes available, but not all of them are mobile responsive. Most themes can be customized to your suit your needs and reflect your style.
Some templates are specifically designed for bloggers, photographers, restaurants, bands et cetera. Many themes are free, but premium themes cost anywhere between $35 and $100.
The theme you’re looking at right now is called ProMotion. Try changing the screen size manually and see what happens. You’ll notice that the layout changes but that the content remains visible.
EASY DOES IT
The functionality of a theme can be enhanced by plugins and widgets. For instance, the Subscribe box in the upper right-hand corner of this blog and the list of Popular Posts are both plugins. Once installed, they can simply be dragged and dropped to the sidebar as a widget. No programming experience necessary. Because this is open source software, you can choose from a database of more than 18,000 plugins!
The WordPress platform itself, as well as the themes and plugins, are regularly updated. When an update becomes available, it can usually be installed by clicking a button. It’s that easy. If you’ve ever worked with a more traditional CMS, this is like going from a stick shift to an automatic. And since I’m not a computer geek, I prefer automatic.
ENTER THE EXPERT
I do know my limitations, and to make sure the transition would be smooth, I asked Joe Davis to give me a hand. Joe knows WordPress inside out, and he recently helped Dan Lenard, the Home Studio Master, with his new site. It was particularly important to me that my entire archive of blog posts would migrate seamlessly.
Before my new site went “live,” Joe uploaded the theme to his server and put the main building blocks in place. That way I could see what the site would look like as we worked on the individual pages. It’s almost like writing a book: you go through several drafts before coming out with a finished product.
I asked Joe about the biggest hurdle he had to overcome in this migration project. This is what he said:
When working with someone like you Paul, who has such a good understanding of what a website can do and brings out that functionality with plugins, it can be a challenge to make sure they all play nice with each other. The more plugins you have, the greater the risk of a conflict between some of them.
You work a lot with the WordPress content management system. What are the advantages of WordPress as opposed to the more traditional CMS systems?
This may come as a surprise to some of your readers but although WordPress started out as a blogging system, it has turned into the world’s most popular CMS. WordPress is a very fast, easy to use, robust framework to build a site in. With the enormous list of plugins available you can add almost any functionality you are looking for. The way themes are handled by WordPress also provides lots of flexibility for the creative folks among us.
With WordPress, web design seems to have become a lot simpler. But not everything is as easy as it seems. What are some of the things you recommend people get help with?
It depends on what the goal of the website is, but generally I would say the areas that people need the most help with are theme/layout design if they are creating a new design and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). On site SEO can be the difference between a great website that nobody sees and a great website that needs a new welcome mat because so many people have stopped by.
What basic mistakes do you see when you visit websites?
Everyone wants their website to be attractive but it is also important to remember why people are on your site. They are looking for something and that should be as painless an experience as possible. Many times I see websites that have huge beautiful headers with lots of pretty graphics. The problem is users have to scroll in order to see the content and must do so on every page. To add that extra step in order to get to the meat and potatoes, on a platform like the Internet where people decide if they are going to stay or leave within seconds, is not a gamble I’m willing to take. Other common mistakes include poor usability, content disorganization and lack of SEO.
Your main job has to do with SEO. Any tips for the uninitiated to improve their SEO?
There is so much you can do, but you will be ahead of most if you remember these life basics that apply just as much online.
If you are interesting, people will come talk to you! Content, content, content! If you don’t have good content, the search engines won’t give you much attention and humans won’t either.
Speak their language! What does someone do with a magazine they pick up that is in another language? Usually nothing because they can’t understand it (or maybe just look at the pretty pictures) but either way the text is lost. Often people will put important keywords that they want to rank well for… in an image. This is a big mistake. Be very careful what you put in graphics. Search engines can’t read anything that’s in an image and will ignore it.
You are associated with who you pal around with! Relevant inbound links are critical. Regarding linking up: Pretend you are looking for a date. Make sure that person is from nice folks with similar interests. If you are a voice actor don’t have your buddy with the real estate company link to you unless the page he links from has content directly related to your field. A link from an audio production house will have a much better result.
Where can people best reach you?
Well, let’s practice a little SEO here. Please visit us for more information about Voice Over Websites and Marketing. See what we did there? We created a relevant inbound link with relevant anchor text to a special page I created solely devoted to voice over that opens in a new window. And you linked to a relevant page which is good for your site. Everyone wins!
Meanwhile, why don’t you do some site-seeing and let me know what you think of the New Nethervoice. Your feedback is much anticipated and appreciated!
Paul Strikwerda ©nethervoice
We could all use more clients, but where to find them? Next up, I’ll offers you a counterintuitive strategy: stay under the radar!
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