One of the continual challenges for me as a business owner is trying to figure out how to market and self-promote effectively - for some reason personally I find it a lot easier to market and sell someone else's business than sell what I do!
Compounding that challenge is how to maximise impact and results but minimise the amount of time and resource I have to put into achieving those results. Networking. Newsletters. Christmas cards (I'd better do something about that soon!). Intuitively, I also know that having a good website is a key part of an overall practical strategy.
In my case I already had a website, which I was quite happy with. It looked reasonably good (well at least I thought so) and was helpful in having something to refer people to and help establish credibility.
However, now that my business has become established and continued to evolve, I wanted to go beyond having some pretty pictures and a few sparse words. I felt I needed a website that better defined what I did and engaged more directly (and quickly) with my clients. Even better, it would be great if the website attracted new clients!
So onto Carwardin Limited website, version two.
It's probably important to say this too - I imagine I am like a lot of business owners - I don't mind spending money, but before I do I like to have a good idea that I am getting good value for money.
I also like to pride myself in being able to figure out "techie" things but I freely admit that I hadn't quite got my head around Google searches, SEO and other techie terms and whether or not I was really maximising the results for any spend.
Personally I find that nothing focusses the mind like paying someone to help you do something - in my case I was fortunate to get in contact with Uli Knapp from Hello Web who was a great help to me in getting clarity around my message and how I wanted to engage with people. And, obviously, he was the one that could build the website. Again, I could probably do it myself if I really wanted to (but only ever to 80%?), but that detracts from time better spent on my day job.
It was useful for me to get that outside perspective from Uli - I had my ideas of what was important, but he was able to constructively challenge me on what my business offered. Did I just sell businesses? Or, was the discussion wider and more about ownership and real options? What sort of process do I lead people through and what can people expect? What do my competition do and how am I different? How do I quickly engage with people and not waste people's time? Many of these discussions I was clear on in my mind but I found this process useful in focussing the messages to be included in the website.
It's that time of year, but I was also reminded about school / university exams - Uli pushing me for relevant content that people would be interested in. There was also the need to back up every statement with a suitable client references and / or examples to demonstrate past experience and relevance. Sometimes this is a bit of challenge given how client confidentiality is so important in my game, but I think we got there.
And then there were the discussions over what images to use. Personally I hate stock images - they are meaningless to me and often seem so sterile and boring! It was also important that my website looked different to the competition to reflect how I see my business and brand. In the end we tried to select some images that related to big picture thinking that is so important in my work. It also helped some images reflected places I had been or wanted to be. Of course, if the feedback says something different then I am happy to change the images!
And I haven't even mentioned other exciting stuff such as hosting, languages, templates, back ups, security etc - that's all stuff I'll leave to Uli (but he can tell me about so I know I am getting value for money!).
Anyway, stage one is now complete in that the new website is up and running. Time wise its probably taken close to three months to complete, but that's fine by me as I have the results I want. Budget wise the project was good too - while I took my time to think things through and get them right it was a well run process.
I'll let you know how I go with stage two and getting my head around SEO!
In the meantime it would be great to get your feedback on the new website.