No To Arts District - Dot Com

I'm watching the 10:00 news the other night with my wife and there's a story on an effort to turn Topeka's somewhat dilapidated yet promising North Topeka business area into a cool arts district. I'm all for that! It's like it's own little downtown and I love the entrepreneurship of North Topeka, and I think those old buildings would lend themselves nicely to an artsy area.

The news announcer told us of their website, www.notoartsdistrict.com, and pronounced it NoTo (sounds like Toto) Arts District - Dot Com. My wife looks up from her laptop and sees it spelled out on the screen and says "no to Arts district?"

Chalk this one up to another really unfortunate choice of a URL. Yes, a campaign for something that, if read the way it is spelled, sounds as if it is against it.

Which reminds me of an old email I received a long time ago featuring really bad website names. I know it's getting ever more difficult to find good domain names -- trust me, I have to do this pretty often -- but SERIOUSLY folks, if you think it could have a double meaning that would make you and your organization look foolish, don't go there! 

Here's the list:

1. "Who Represents" is where you can find the name of the agent that represents any celebrity. Their Web site is www.whorepresents.com
2 . Experts Exchange is a knowledge base where programmers can exchange advice and views at www.expertsexchange.com
3. Looking for a pen? Look no further than Pen Island at www.penisland.net
4. Need a therapist? Try Therapist Finder at www.therapistfinder.com
5. There's the Italian Power Generator company, www.powergenitalia.com
6. And don't forget the Mole Station Native Nursery in New South Wales ,
www ...molestationnursery.com
7. If you're looking for IP computer software, there's always
www.ipanywhere.com
8. The First Cumming Methodist Church Web site is www.cummingfirst.com
9. And the designers at Speed of Art await you at their wacky Web site,
www.speedofart.com

Fast websites rank higher among customers, Google

One thing I've always recognized is the impatience of net surfers. I know it because I am one -- and have become even more impatient as the years and technology advances has brought us ever-faster loading times. What I used to tolerate in terms of page loading now will cause me to move on to another site if the one I aimed at is just a wee bit too slow to load.

I'm not alone. Here's a good read on the topic. In this article, it refers to an experiment conducted by Google in which they slowed down the delivery of search results. They found that increasing a page's loading time by less than half a second has a measurably negative impact on searchers. And, the author found, "the customer is highly, highly impatient. They scan a page like they scan a signpost as they're driving down a motorway. They hardly even read full sentences."

Which is why marketers who write the copy for their websites like they do an informational brochure -- heavy with graphics and large blocks of text -- are missing the opportunity. To take the article's author's metaphor a step further, it's like the highway department putting the "how to merge" section of the driver's manual on the sign next to the highway instead of the recognizable symbol for doing the same thing.

Writing for the Web

I'm often asked what distinguishes our web site design services from others. While I see some beautifully designed sites out there, they are usually designed by, well, designers. The copy on the site is usually provided to them by the client and is often the same kind of marketing material that would go in their printed brochures. My answer to them is that our web sites are written for the web, and we follow rules to make sure the site accomplishes its objectives in terms how people read a website and how search engines scan them.

The first thing you need to know is that online readers want their information quick -- they've trained themselves to scan pages for the content they're looking for. They pop from site to site and don't have the patience for reading long paragraphs of text on your site.

Your copy must be both written and organized in such a way to get the readers' attention fast and directing them to the information they want and will help them navigate your site easily.

Keep your sentences and paragraphs as brief as possible. Use headers to help the readers scan, and make them clever enough to compel them to read that section.Put some useful links in the body of your article that can help your reader find both the information they want or the product they want to buy. Like any convenience store, signs and good organization can help people have a rewarding experience -- and get them in and out of there as quickly as they'd like, while lingering long enough to do business with you.

If you link to outside pages, make sure those links open up another window so they're not actually leaving your site! Why on earth would you link somewhere else? Like I mentioned earlier, people are scanners and they want to find useful information. If your site is found to be a resource for useful information -- even if it lies outside the boundaries of your own site -- then people will come back to it.


And, lastly, look for the keywords you know your customers are searching for and be sure they are included a number of times in the body of the text, in headers and in meta tags.

One of the sites I wrote that I think works well is not one we designed at all. Check out www.ringomo.com. Not to brag or anything, but I really like the short bursts of useful text, interesting headers, and good use of links to direct you where you want to go for the right information.

Church Marketing

I'm charged with "communications" at our church -- which entails both internal and external marketing. It's the most fun you can have in ministry, until you have to come up with a new logo that somehow encapsulates and represents both the old-time religion folks and the Millennials who don't care much about the institution of "church" but just want to get busy helping people.

This video has been around for awhile, but I watched it again last night and I just have to laugh every time I see it.



I've never understood how the collective Christian church, representing the Person who without a doubt was the greatest communicator who ever walked the planet, could be so lousy at communicating. Church Marketing Sucks! Which is, of course, why there is a great website by that very name!

Because of the new logo project I've been undertaking, I've searched the web to see what other churches have done with their logos and websites. Ugly stuff, let me tell you! Like any organization, a logo needs to reflect the organization's purpose and culture rather than being contrary to it. If the logos and websites I witnessed are reflective of their respective churches, then I would expect the churches to be very cookie-cutterish, emotionless, and unimaginative.

There were, however, some gems out there. Here are some of the churches that I think really stood out for their attractive websites and logos:

Calvary Church
Grace Community Church
Kingsfield Church
Stonebriar Community Church
The Crossings

Getting noticed on the web

I've spent a bit of time over the past few days looking at church websites. Man, they're bad! Of course, that's why there's a website called Church Marketing Sucks! As the communication team leader at my church (charged with internal and external publicity), I want our church website to look good, offer usable content, and be easily found by people looking for a church home. Unfortunately, our website comes with a subscription-based church management system that offers a really grand "behind the curtain" online community for members -- and while better than most church websites, ours still sucks.

We're going to take matters into our own hands and develop our own website that looks much better, is written for the web, and is search engine optimized.

When you put together a great looking website, how do you get people to find it? If you're looking for local traffic, you can advertise it to your local market in the newspaper, on Facebook or Google, or on radio or TV (if that makes sense to your kind of business). Don't forget the obvious: put it on your business cards, stationery and brochures!

There are important steps you need to take that will pay off in much bigger results for building your web traffic. Include target keywords and phrases that your prospects would be using to find you online. If you don't overwhelm your pages with meaningless words, the prominent use of keywords will make the page more appealing to the search engines and more meaningful to potential customers.

Carefully evaluate the benefits of online advertising (banners and pay-per-click). The nice thing is you can tell pretty easily if your investment is paying off and then adjust your budget to those ads that get the best results.

And use a blog and social media (Twitter and Facebook are no-brainers for many kinds of businesses) to connect with and keep in touch with customers -- and remind them about you and your website.