Gold Coast Web Expert

Howdy.
In front of me I have a list of 13 web sites we are currently doing.
This is how we got the jobs:
Site 1. Referral from a Graphic Artist we use
Site 2. Referral from another client
Site 3. Referral from another client
Site 4. Newsletter mail out
Site 5. Newsletter mail out
Site 6. Referral from PR consultant we’ve worked with before
Site 7. Referral from Graphic Artist
Site 8. Referral from Graphic Artist
Site 9. Referral from client
Site 10. Personal contact
Site 11. Personal contact
Site 12. Personal contact
Site 13. Referral from client
The referrals alone from the Graphic Artist are worth in excess of $50,000 to me.
The newsletter mail out (I’ve mentioned the success of this before) brings our jobs obtained from a 2 piece mail out (we sent newsletters to 100 contacts twice) to about $20,000.
That’s a $200 expenditure for $20,000 in income.
What to take home from this:
1. Be bloody nice to your clients and your suppliers (take them out for lunch/dinner/golf/a show/etc/etc). Always.
2. When someone does something nice for you, do something nice for them.
3. Send out a newsletter to anyone and everyone who could possibly be your target market.
Act today.
Brendon

Howdy. Check out Bob Parson’s Blog. Bob is the CEO of Godaddy.com – one of the world’s biggest domain name registrars.
Check out the blog from 17 February 2005 especially – the one about their Super Bowl ads.
Bob’s blog also touches on the issue of using controversial marketing for best results.
Fantastic use of a blog by a CEO.
Could your business develop a blog? (I know I get a big benefit from my blog.)
Cheers.
Brendon

Hello.
If you are at all involved in generating high search engine rankings or running online ad campaigns, I have just reviewed 2 of the best available eBooks concerning Google Adwords and how to get high search engine rankings.
1. The Definitive Guide To Google Adwords – by Perry Marshall – is an eBook I first read about 4 months ago. It’s the guide to Adwords and a terrific resource for online advertiser.
2. Rankings Revealed – by Sean Burns – Sean is a search engine optimisation expert and delivers a very simple to read (and implement) guide to ranking high in the search engine. As I say in the review, I’ve been around a while and seen all the so-called search engine gurus. No-one is better than Sean.
Click here to read the reviews.
Regards
Brendon

Something that I’ve struggled with over the years has been managing the expectation of the client. We need to project our enthusiasm for how successful we think a web site can be in an effort to win the job.
But the trick is to not over-promise.
Because if you do – even if you do a great job on the site – the client might view the site as a failure.
Keep the expectations reasonable.
The # 1 Question To Ask
The # 1 question to ask potential clients is this:
“What result would you want for this project to be considered a success?”
Then you have something concrete to base your assessment on. If the expectation is too high you can educate the person to make it a more realistic expectation.
And you also have something with which to focus on to ensure the project stays on btrack.
Cheers
Brendon

“I’ve been talking with some people…..”
If someone starts off a conversation with those words you know there’s trouble just around the corner!
Me? I was sitting in a client’s office just about to take him through his new and improved web site when he started thye conversation with those words. We’d worked hard to develop a web site that, I have no doubt, will be a terrific asset for his business.
But, you see, he’d been talking to some people. Specifically people in his industry who he’d had a chat with about his web site.
You see, he wanted to run past these people what we were charging for the site (“They almost fainted…”), the new site design “Not as nice as our site and we only paid $300. Our designer could do that site in 2 hours.”) and the sales system (“No, that won’t work. It’s terrible.”).
Natural Thing To Do
It was a natural thing for our client to do. He wanted reassurance from external parties that he’d done the right thing in employing us. When he was told he hadn’t, well, then he got worried.
So my client sat me down and told me all of this – bearing in mind that we’d finished the site. The very same site we’d developed in close consultation with him.
What Could I Say?
What could I say? A bit actually and here’s how I went about it.
1. I told my client how I could understand his anxiety at the new site was being developed.
2. I empathised that asking others in his industry for their views was a legitimate way to ensure he had done the right thing in engaging us.
3. We then started talking about what we established as the goal for the web site when we first begun development: sales.
4. We then had a chat about how we were going to achieve more sales than the site had ever provided – by generating lots more traffic (strong search engine component), providing lots more content (a 30 page site rather than his old 1 page site) and having an excellent offer that was very easy to buy.
5. We chatted about how the design is only a small part of the overall web presence – there is also search engine optimisation, copywriting, content, load time, etc.
6. We discussed how we had developed the design in close consultation with him to meet our objectives of branding, positioning, demonstrating, ease of use, quick loading and lots more.
7. Basically, I reassured the client that the site was developed to meet the goals we have set. Nothing more and nothing less.
The Frustrating Part
The client is a lovely guy and an excellent client. The frustrating part of the whole exercise was two-fold.
1. The people giving the advice had no idea what they were talking about – I visited their site and it’s plain terrible.
* Splash Home Page that does nothing (except keep visitors away from the information they want)
* The search engine optimisation is extremely poor
* The product prices are unclear
* White text on a light blue background (very difficult to read)
* The purchase page requires credit card details but the page is not secure
2. The other frustrating thing is that there are plenty of web developers out there who would have designed my client’s site for $300 (we charged more than 10 times that and it was a cheap job for us).
There is no way in the world we can develop a web site for $300 and still make a profit. Developing a web site takes skill, knowledge, understanding, expensive equipment, detailed assessment, research and lots, lots more.
Sure, you can get a quick job for $300. But will it be a successful site? Nope, I don’t think it will be.
Regards
Brendon

I stumbled across an article in a magazine I subscribe to where a regular feature article they run is when they take an ugly and ineffective web site and redevelop it to be better.
I can’t remember if it has ever registered with me before to do this specific strategy as a marketing tactic to win web design jobs, but I think it could be hugely effective for many web designers/developers.
Click here for the full article on 1 great strategy to win more web design jobs.
Brendon

Howdy. An age-old technique for many businesses to generate more sales is to discount. But I’m thinking you shouldn’t discount.
People discount for 2 main reasons:
It’s easy and it works.
* But does it teach your customers to equate your business with low prices?
* Will they expect low prices next time?
* Does it position your business in the mind of the customer as a business of lower quality? (The research says “Yep, probably.”)
One of my oldest clients never, ever discounts his products. Ever. He positions the business as top quality and this is reinforced to his market by his premium pricing.
The thinking of his market seems to be “We’ll buy there because we know the quality will be top class.”
When often the product is the same as anywhere else.
Bike Store Charges Big Premium
I have another client with a specialist store – we’ll say it’s a Bike Shop (it’s not, but it is a similar industry). He prices his bike at a premium – in many cases he is $200-300 more expensive that the major chains for exactly the same bike.
But the feedback he gets is that people will buy from him because the perception is somehow that because he’s a specialist bike shop, his bikes must be better built/put together better/safer/whatever.
Long Term Value
Discounting attracts the short-term customer only interested in the quick fix.
Premium pricing attracts the customer that provides much better long term value for your business.
Take a look at the customer profiles next time you want to run a discount. Is it really worth it?
Brendon

Creating trust in you/your web site/your business can be a difficult thing to do. One thing we can all do is take a leaf out the book movies use.
You know the scene. It goes like this:
* Handsome hero comes into shot.
* He is greeted by his dog.
* He affectionately pats the dog.
Having the hero pat the dog is how the movie Director indicates to the audience that this is the good guy. That he is nice, trustworthy and just plain decent. And the Director does it like this because this is what works in establishing all those characteristics in the mind of the audience.
Now, you might not have a dog to use in your advertising but I’ve seen much the same strategy used by businesspeople advertising with their children in the ad.
Humanises The Business
What the dog or the child does is makes the business seem more personal. They humanise the business and the businessperson by showing that the business owner is just like you and me.
I generally mention my wife and kids in this blog because it just seems a friendlier way to write about what I write about. And I have no doubt that doing that goes a long way towards showing me in a more ‘personal’ light rather than just another anonymous person with a web site.
Personalising the marketing of your business increases the perception of friendliness and trustworthiness (is that even a word??!). Aspects that are great positives for any business.
Brendon
(This post, like many on this site so far, has been bought over from the Tailored.com.au site)

This is an easy one.
You mustn’t think like everyone else in business because most people fail in business. Something like 90% of business fail within 5 years.
That’s an excellent reason not to think like everyone else.
Another great reason is because thinking differently will cause you to act differently. And acting differently will make you stand out from the crowd.
And when you’re different you’ll make your own little niche. And having a market niche makes your business more specialised, more focused and more likely to succeed.
Brendon