Storyboarding Your Web Site

Storyboarding Your Web Site
Next you are ready to visualize and plan your Web site integrate your objectives, your target market information, the findings of the competitive analysis, and your own ideas as well as those of others. This is done through the process of storyboarding. The storyboard is the foundation of your Web site. Consider it the architectural plan or blueprint of your site. It should show you, on paper, the first draft of the content and layout of your site. It gives you the chance to review the layout and make changes before development begins.

A Web site storyboard can be thought of much like a hierarchical organizational chart in a business. In a typical business structure, the executives sit on top, followed by their subordinates, and so on. Think of your Web site storyboard like this: You begin with your main page or home page at the top. Under the main page you have your central navigation bar. Each of the navigation options should be available on each page, regardless of where the user is on your site. Within each of the sections listed on your main navigation bar, you’re going to have subsections, and so on.

The storyboard can be created with a software program, with sheets of paper, or with any other mechanism. Quite often when we are starting out we’ll start with yellow sticky notes on a wall. Very low tech, but it works! It is very easy to get a visual of the navigation structure and easy to fill in the content pages (one per sticky note) in the appropriate places. It is also very easy to edit simply move a sticky from one section to another or add another sticky note for a new page.

Once your first draft is done, you need to go back and review the proposed Web site against each and every one of your objectives, each and every one of your target markets (needs, wants, expectations, WOW factor), and each and every one of your products and services. You need to review the proposed Web site from the competitive analysis viewpoint.

Have you included all the must-haves and left an opportunity for the elements that fit into the would-be-nice category? Will the proposed Web site beat the competition? Review the proposed site with your stakeholders and a few members of your target market. Get feedback from your various target markets and fine-tune the blueprint until you’ve got it right. It is easy (and cheap) at this stage to add new content and change the layout.

When developing your storyboard, remember to keep the layout of your site simple and logical, as this is how it will be laid out for users once the site is completed. Do not move forward with the Web development process until you have finalized the layout of the storyboard, ensuring that the site will be easy for your target audience to use and that it provides all the elements you need to achieve your objectives. Review your storyboard to ensure that all of the target markets have been addressed.

If you want to address the media, be sure to include a Media Center. If you want to attract potential investors, be sure to include a comprehensive Investor Relations section. Give consideration to viral and permission marketing elements that can be included on your site and where they can best be positioned. We discuss these elements in depth in later chapters.

Once you have the completed and approved storyboard, it becomes the blueprint for construction of your site. You are now ready to move on to the actual construction. The next chapter discusses some of the content and design elements of your site.

Using Competitor Sites to Your Advantage

One of your Web site’s objectives is to always meet and beat the competition in terms of search engine rankings and Web site content. To do so, you must understand exactly what it is your competition is doing. Take the time to research competitors and compare them on an element by element basis.

There are a number of ways you can identify your competition online. You can find your competition by conducting searches with the appropriate keywords, seeing which competing Web sites rank highly in the major search engines and directories. Similarly, there are many other resources online you can use to research your competition, including industry-specific Web portals and directories.

Once you have gathered a list of competing Web sites, analyze them element by element to determine which Web elements your competitors include on their sites and how their sites compare to one another. You want to look at what types of content they are providing to your target market. Other components you should analyze include the visual appeal of your competitors’ sites, content, ease of navigation, search engine friendliness, interactivity, and Web site stickiness, or what they do to keep people on their site. This information can provide you with details on what you need to incorporate into your site to meet and beat the competition.

You have to realize that your online competition is different from your offline competition. Online you are competing with all organizations that have an online presence and sell the same products and services you do. When doing your competitive analysis online, you want to select the “best of breed” those fantastic Web sites of organizations selling the same products and/or services you do no matter where they are physically located.

When we do competitive analysis for clients, we reverse engineer or dissect the competing Web site from a number of different perspectives. Generally, you will choose five or six of the absolute best competing Web sites. Then you start to build a database using Excel or a table in Word.

Start with the first competing Web site and from your review start to add database elements to the first column. Note any types of content, target markets defined, repeat traffic techniques used, viral marketing techniques used, search engine friendliness features used, download time for different types of Internet connections, cross-platform compatibility, cross-browser compatibility, innovative elements, etc. When you have dissected the first competing Website and have noted appropriate database elements for comparative purposes, move on to the second competing Web site. Go through the same process, but adding only different or new elements to what you already have in your database. Continue building the first column of your database by continuing through all the sites you want to include in your competitive analysis.

The next step is to develop a column for each of the sites you want to include in the competitive analysis. Add two more columns one for your existing Web site to see how your site stacks against the competition and the second for future planning purposes.

The next step is to go back and compare each site against the criteria for column one, noting appropriate comments. For content information you want to note whether the particular site has the specific content and how well it was presented. For download speeds note specific minute and seconds for each type of connection. Tools to help you with this element can be found at:

• BizLand Download Time Checker (http://www.bizland.com/product/sitedoctor.html)
• Calculate Download Times (http://www.sercomm.net/download.htm).

For each repeat traffic generator, you may choose to include details or just Yes/No. Continue with this process until you have completed the database, including your own existing site.

By this time you should have a good feel for the users’ experience when they visit your competitors’ sites. Now you are ready to do your planning. In the last column of your database, review each of the elements in the first column, review your notes in your competitive analysis, and where appropriate, complete the last column by categorizing each of the elements as one of the following:

• A—Need to have; essential, critical element; can’t live without
• B—Nice to have if it doesn’t cost too much
• C—Don’t need; don’t want at any price.

Now you have done your competitive analysis. Having completed your identification of your objectives, target markets, products and services, and your competitive analysis, you are ready to develop your storyboard or architectural plan or blueprint for your site.

Products and Services

It is important to define the products and services you want to promote on-line. Sometimes the products and services you offer off-line in your physical store are the same as in your online store, but quite often there are differences.

Business owners who have a bricks and mortar location sometimes assume that their online storefront is an extension of their offline store front and that they will provide exactly the same products and services online as offline. In some cases, fewer products are offered on-line than in the physical store. This is often the case if you are test marketing, but also if some of the products you sell in your physical location are not appropriate for online sales because of competitive pricing or shipping logistics.

In other cases, your online store might offer more products or services than the bricks-and-mortar location. For example, your offline bookstore might not offer shipping or gift wrapping. If your online bookstore does not offer these services, you will lose a lot of business to your online competition. When a site’s product offerings include items that are appropriate for gift giving, it is essential to also offer wrapping, customized cards, shipping to multiple addresses, and shipping options. The consumer is “king” and is very demanding. You have to meet and beat your consumers’ expectations online to garner market share. People shopping for gifts online are looking for convenience, and the site that provides the greatest convenience and the greatest products at the lowest prices will be the winner.

Web sites and Internet marketing strategies differ depending on the product or service being sold. A company that markets toys has to develop a fun and interactive Web site that is attractive to children. The Web site should also give children a way to tell their friends about the site as well as a reason to return to the site. The toy company might want to offer an electronic postcard service whereby children can send a colorful and musical message to their friends and tell them about the site.

Another idea is to provide a “wish list” service. Children can make a list of the toys they want, and this list is sent to the parents via e-mail. The parents can then make better informed purchasing decisions and might become loyal to the toy company’s site. Likewise, some toy companies offer reminder services that send an e-mail message to visitors who have registered and completed the appropriate questionnaire to remind them of a child’s birthday and to offer suggestions for gift ideas. Once again, this promotes sales and repeat traffic and increases customer loyalty.

In another example, a software development company might want to provide downloadable demo versions of its software products and allow people to review its products for a specified period of time before they make a purchasing decision. When consumers decide to buy the software, a robust e-commerce system needs to be in place to handle the orders.

A travel agency’s Web site might include features such as an opt-in mailing list to send people information on weekly vacation specials or a page on the site detailing the latest specials. The travel agency’s site might also want to include downloadable or streaming video tours of vacation resorts to entice visitors to buy resort vacation packages. Another idea is to have a system in place to help customers book vacations, rent cars, and check for available flights. The travel agency might also want to store customer profiles so they can track where particular customers like to sit on the plane, the type of hotel room they usually book, and their credit card information to make bookings more efficient for the customer and the agency.

If you are marketing a service online, it is difficult to visually depict what your service is all about. Visitors to your site need some reassurance that the service you are selling them is legitimate and valuable. Therefore, you might wish to include a page on your site that lists testimonials from well-known customers. This gives prospective customers more confidence about purchasing your service.

The Fundamentals
Once you have clearly defined your online objectives, your target markets, and the products and/or services you want to promote online, you are ready to move on to the next phase of planning your Web site doing your competitve analysis.

Leveraging Your Sales Force

If your objectives include trying to sell your products, you might want to leverage your sales force by making use of an affiliate or associate program. Affiliate programs once again use the advantage of having your site recommended to create traffic to your site. The difference is that an affiliate program is more formal than just having your site recommended by site visitors. Most affiliate programs involve having a contractual agreement, having specific links placed on the affiliate’s site to yours, and having software to track where your traffic is coming from so that you can compute and send referral fees to your affiliates as they are earned. The contract usually states the compensation you will pay to your affiliates for the sales they produce. This is one more way to have other people working to build traffic to your Web site.

Using Permission Marketing
You always want your company to be seen as upholding the highest ethical standards and being in compliance with anti-spam legislation, so it is important not to send out unsolicited e-mail or spam promoting your company or its products. This is why it’s important to develop a mailing list of people who have given you permission to send them messages, including company news and promotions. When you’re developing your Web site, an objective should be to get as many visitors to your site as possible to give you their e-mail address and permission to be included in your mailings. You can do this by having numerous ways for your visitors to sign up to receive newsletters, notices of changes to your Web site, coupons, or new giveaways.

Creating Loyalty among Visitors
The way to create loyalty among visitors is to provide them with some incentives for joining your online community and provide them with proof that you really appreciate their business. You can do this by having a members-only section of your Web site that has special offers for them as well as discounts or freebies. When people sign up to join your members-only section, you can ask for their permission and their e-mail address to send them e-mails regarding company or product promotions and news. People like to do business with people who appreciate their business. We are seeing a real growth in loyalty programs online.

Including “Stickiness” Elements
To get your visitors to visit your site often and have them visit a number of pages every time they visit, you need to provide interesting , interactive, and relevant content. You want to have your site visitors feel as if they are part of your online community and to want to make your site one of the sites they visit every day. You create “stickiness” by including many elements that keep your visitors’ attention. Your site can have a daily advice column, descriptions of your many products, a discussion forum with constantly changing interesting conversations relative to your products, a news section that is updated daily, as well as a weekly contest that site visitors can enter. The combination of these elements makes a site sticky. You want your site to be a resource people return to often and not a one-time event.

A Final Word on Objectives
Setting your Web site’s objectives before you begin building your site is essential so that you can convey to your Web developer what you want your Web site to achieve. You obviously want to create a number of different objectives for your site, but many of the objectives you set can work together to make your Web site complete.

Whatever your objectives might be, you must carefully consider how best to incorporate elements in your Web site and your Internet marketing strategy to help you achieve them. Successful marketing on the Web is not a simple undertaking. Before you begin to brainstorm over the objectives of your Web site, be certain you have read and studied all the information that is pertinent to the market you are attempting to enter.

Read everything you can find, and examine the findings of industry experts.

Target Markets
It is important to define every one of your target markets. Your Web site is designed for them! For each and every one of your target markets, you need to determine

• Their needs
• Their wants
• Their expectations

For each and every one of your target markets, you should also try to determine an appropriate “WOW” factor. What can you provide for them on your Web site that will WOW them? Your objective should be to exceed the target market’s expectations.

Your main target market might be your potential customer, but other target markets might include existing customers, or the media, or those who influence the buying decision for your potential customers, associates, or affiliates.

When you look at really look at potential customers versus existing customers, you realize that what these two groups want and need from your Web site are probably different. Someone who is an existing customer knows your company. Your products, your business practices, and the like are not a priority for them on your site. A potential customer needs these things before giving you their first order. “Customer” is such a huge target market; it needs to be broken down into segments. Every business is different. If you were a hotel, for example, your customer target market might be broken down further into:

• Business travelers
• Vacation travelers
• Family travelers
• Meeting planners
• Handicapped travelers
• Tour operators
• Groups

You get the idea. You need to segment your customer target market and then, for each segment, you need to do an analysis of needs, wants, and expectations. If the media is part of your target market, make sure you plan to have a media center or if you want to reach potential investors, make sure you have an investor relations page.

If you intend to market children’s products, your Web site should be colorful and the text simple and easy to understand in keeping with what appeals to your target market. Chances are, fun-looking graphics will be used extensively on your site to draw children further into it. If you market financial services, your Web site requires a more professional approach. Your graphics must convey a clean appearance, and the text should be informative and written in a business like fashion. As this example demonstrates, the content and tone of your site must be tailored to your target market. After all, this is the best way to attract the attention of the people who are interested in purchasing your product or service.

Another aspect to consider when designing your Web site is your target market’s propensity to utilize the latest technologies and the configuration they are likely to be using. An online business that markets custom, streaming multimedia presentations expects its clientele to be technically inclined. These clients are more likely to have the latest software, advanced Web browser technologies, and faster machines.

On the other hand, clients of a vendor who sells gardening supplies online might be less likely to have fully embraced the latest technologies. Most people looking for these products are connecting from home rather than from their workplace. They might have a slow dial-up connection to the Internet, slower machines, and older software. They might still be using the Web browser that was originally installed on their system, simply because they are uncomfortable downloading the latest version of the browser, are unaware of the more recent version, or are uninterested in downloading a large file. If your target market includes this demographic, be careful with your use of Java, Flash, and large graphic files.

What does this mean for developing and designing your Web site? Well, streaming multimedia developers can design their Web sites with more graphics and dynamic multimedia effects because their clients expect to be impressed when they visit the developer’s site. If vendors of gardening supplies designed their sites similarly, many of their clients might be alienated because the site would be too slow to load. They might take their business elsewhere. The gardening supplies site requires a more basic design with less concentration on large graphics and multimedia effects and more focus on presenting information.

Designing Your Site to Be Search Engine Friendly

Creating a site that is search engine friendly should be an objective of every company that wants to do business on the Internet. Search engines are the most common way for Internet surfers to search for something on the Net. In fact, 85 percent of all people who use the Internet use search engines as their primary way to look for information. By using keywords relating to your company in appropriate places on your site, you can improve how search engines rank you. You want these chosen keywords in the keyword meta-tags as well as in each page’s description meta-tag. Some of the other places where you want to have these keywords are your domain name if possible, your page titles and page text, your Alt tags for graphics, and your page headers. Many search engines place a lot of emphasis on the number and quality of links to a site to determine its ranking. This means that the more Web sites you can get to link to your site, the higher your site is shown in search engine results.

Including Repeat Traffic Generators on Your Site
Every Web site should be designed to entice its site visitors to return again and again. No matter if the primary objective of your Web site is to sell your products and services or to create brand awareness, generating repeat traffic to your Web site helps you achieve these goals. Generating repeat traffic to your site is a key element of your online success and can be accomplished in numerous ways. Using contests and competitions, as well as games, advice columns, and many more techniques, can increase your Web traffic.

Getting Visitors to Recommend Your Site
The best exposure your Web site can get is to be recommended by a friend or unbiased third party. It is critical that you try to have elements of your Web site recommended as often as possible; therefore, you should have a way for people to easily tell someone about your site and its contents. The best way to encourage people to recommend your site is to include viral marketing techniques such as a “Tell a Friend” button on your site. You might want to include some variations on this as well.

Under articles or press releases, you can have an “E-mail this article to a friend” button for people to refer their friends and associates to your site. Virtual postcards are also a good way to get people to send more people to your Web site. There are many ways to encourage viral marketing.

Company Identity or Brand Awareness

Creating and Establishing Company Identity or Brand Awareness
Another objective might be to create and establish company identity or brand awareness. To “brand” your product, a memorable name and an eye-appealing product logo are necessities. Also, the graphics developed for your Web site must be top-notch and reflect the colors associated with the product logo. A catchy slogan further promotes brand identity. The same branding techniques are also applicable to establishing corporate identity. If building and reinforcing corporate and brand identity are important to you, your Web site must have a consistent look and feel. Likewise, all offline promotional campaigns and materials must be consistent with your online presence.

Based on the success of companies such as America Online, Yahoo!, Travelocity, Amazon.com, and eBay, it is apparent that branding a company or product on the Web can occur swiftly. It is amazing how quickly these relative newcomers to the business world have achieved megabrand status. Although they all had significant financial resources, each company used a combination of online and offline advertising to meet their objectives. Each of their sites features a prominent logo, consistent imagery, and a consistent color scheme. Check out the sites of these upstarts that have become big online players if branding is your goal. There is a lot we can learn from them.

Other Primary Objectives
Brainstorm with all the stakeholders in your organization to come up with other primary objectives for your organization. This process is critical to the organization’s online success. Everything else revolves around your objectives—the elements included on your site and the Internet marketing techniques you use. If you were building a new office, you would want to include the input of all people working in your office to ensure that their needs were taken into consideration and the office was designed appropriately. The same is true when building a Web site, everyone must be included in the brainstorming session. As much time should be spent in the planning stage as in the construction phase. By going through this process, you will be able to develop the best blueprint for your proposed Web site.

Other Things to Consider Up Front
Although setting your primary objectives is vital, it is just as important to identify your secondary objectives. By setting appropriate secondary objectives, you will be more prepared to achieve all your online goals. Many companies identify only primary objectives for their Web site and completely neglect secondary objectives that can help them succeed online. Following are some common secondary objectives for online businesses to consider:

• The site should be designed to be search engine friendly.
• The site should be designed to encourage repeat traffic.
• The site should have viral marketing elements that encourage visitors to recommend your products or services to others.
• The site should include elements to leverage its sales force.
• The site should incorporate permission marketing, where visitors are encouraged to give you permission to send them e-mail on a regular basis.
• The site should be designed to encourage customer loyalty.
• The site should incorporate stickiness, encouraging visitors to stay a while and visit many areas of the site.

Suppot Service and Corporate Information

Providing Online Customer Service or Support
You might decide that the main reason for your business to have an online presence is to provide more comprehensive customer service and support. A great benefit of a Web site is that you can provide customer assistance 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. If your company develops software, it is a good idea to include downloadable upgrades as well as an FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) section where you can provide solutions to common problems. By providing an easy way for your customers to solve their problems, you increase customer loyalty. You also increase the likelihood that they will return to your company when they need to improve their computer system. Include the appropriate contact information for customers who have more complicated problems and need to talk to a human.

Providing Product or Corporate Information
Some organizations simply wish to provide information on their products or services to a particular target market. Others might want to provide corporate information to potential investors. Information-driven Web sites tend to be text oriented, with graphics used only to accentuate the points being made and provide visual examples. These types of sites usually have an FAQ section that provides useful and pertinent information on the company and its products or services. If the organization courts the media, it might include a Media Center, which can include all its press releases, corporate background, information on key company officials, articles that have been written about the company, and a gallery of relevant pictures that the media can use, as well as a direct link to the company’s media person.

Advertise & Selling Product or Services Online.

Advertising Your Products or Services On-Line
The objective of some sites is simply to advertise but not directly sell an event, product, or service. A prime example of this is a movie studio that develops a Web site to promote a “soon-to-be-released” movie. The objective is to create awareness or a “buzz” about the movie, generate interest in the film, and, ultimately, have a large number of people attend the movie when it is released. This type of site might include multimedia clips of the movie, pictures and stories of the actors in the movie, viral marketing (“Tell a friend about this movie”) elements to encourage word-of-mouth marketing, an intriguing story about the film, press releases for entertainment writers, and other elements to help them achieve their objective with their target market in mind.

Selling Your Products or Services On-Line
Selling products or services online is a common objective. The Internet provides a broad geographic reach and a huge demographic reach. Often businesses combine the objectives of advertising their products or services with trying to sell them through their Web site. This works well because visitors are not only given information about your products and services, but they are given the option of easily ordering and purchasing online. The easier you make it for people to make a purchase from your company, the more likely they will be to buy. You will have to provide detailed information on your products and services, your return policies, guarantees and warranties, and shipping options. If you are planning to sell directly from the site, you also need to address security issues.

Common Objectives

Before you even start to create your Web site, you must clearly define your online objectives. What is the purpose of your site? Brainstorm with all parts of your organization, from the frontline clerks, to marketing and sales personnel, to customer support, to order fulfillment and administration. Generate a list of primary and secondary objectives.

Every element of your site should relate back to your objectives. When you decide to update, add, or change any elements on your Web site, examine how these changes relate to the primary and secondary objectives you have identified. If there is not a clear match between your objectives and your intended changes, you might want to reconsider the changes. It’s amazing how many Web sites have been developed without adequate planning or without ensuring the Web site ties in with the corporate objectives.

Some of the most common primary objectives include:

• Advertising your product or service
• Selling your product or service
• Providing customer service and product support
• Providing product or corporate information
• Creating and establishing company identity or brand awareness

The Fundamentals—Objectives, Target Markets, and Products and Services

Things have changed dramatically over the past several years in terms of Web site design and development methodology. Back in the olden days a couple years ago in Internet years it was quite acceptable and the norm for an organization to pack up all their brochures, ads, direct mail pieces, news releases, and other marketing materials in a box, drop it off at the Web developer, and after a short conversation ask when they might expect their Web site to be “done.” By going through this process, organizations ended up with “brochureware.” Brochureware is no longer acceptable on the Web if you want to be successful. Sites that are successful today are ones that are designed around the

• Objectives of the organization
• Needs, wants, and expectations of the target markets
• Products and services that are being offered.

Everything related to Internet marketing revolves around these three things objectives, target markets, and products and services. It is critically important to define these things appropriately and discuss them with your Web developer. It is your responsibility to define these things, not your Web developer’s. You know, or should know, what your objectives are more clearly than your Web developer. If you don’t articulate these objectives and discuss them with your Web developer, it is impossible for him or her to build a site to achieve your objectives!

You know your target market better than your Web developer. You know what your buyers want, what they base their buying decisions on, and what their expectations are better than your Web developer. You need to provide this information so that your Web developer can build a Web site that meets the needs and expectations of your target market.

Let’s spend the remainder of the chapter on these fundamentals objectives, target markets, and products and services so you can be better prepared for the planning process for your Web site.

Planning Your Web Site

With millions of Web sites competing for viewers, how do you get the results you’re looking for? When asked if they are marketing on the Internet, many people say, “Yes, we have a Web site.” However, having a Web site and marketing on the Internet are two very different things. Yes, usually you need a Web site to market on the Internet. However, a Web site is simply a collection of documents, images, and other electronic files that are publicly accessible across the Internet. Your site should be designed to meet your online objectives and should be developed with your target market in mind. Internet marketing encompasses all the steps you take to reach your target market online, attract visitors to your Web site, encourage them to buy your products or services, and make them want to come back for more.

Having a Web site is great, but it is meaningless if nobody knows about it. Just like having a brilliantly designed product brochure does you little good if it sits in your sales manager’s desk drawer, a Web site does you little good if your target market isn’t visiting it. It is the goal of this blog to help you take your Web site out of the desk drawer, into the spotlight, and into the hands of your target market. You will learn how to formulate an Internet marketing strategy in keeping with your objectives, your product or service, and your target market.

Overview:

• Defining your online objectives
• Defining your target market and developing your Web site and online marketing strategy with them in mind
• Developing the Internet marketing strategy that is appropriate for your product or service.