LANCE CUMMINS Website Designer & Online Strategist

Lance Cummins has been a website designer and online strategist for 16 years working with businesses all over the country, as well as locally where he is based on Massachusetts’ South Shore.  Lance has a wealth of experience in strategic marketing prior to a website build and following through to execute a clean and affordable design that maximizes each individual brand presence. Post-launch of the site, Lance stays on to assist in creating ongoing fresh content that serves as a great platform for Search Engine Marketing and Social Marketing purposes.

Hill & Partners asked Lance to contribute some of his expert insight on maximum website implementation and utilization:

1) Is just having a company website enough for an online presence?

Unfortunately, if you look around the web for a few minutes, you might come to that conclusion. Some think it’s kind of like the old Field of Dreams movie says, “If you build it, they will come.” Well, let’s just say it worked a lot better for Kevin Costner than it does for most companies.

Typically, a ton of time, effort, and money are put into building a site and getting it launched, and then months later, nothing else has happened to the site. No one is adding fresh, interesting content. No one is talking about the content in the social space. No one is analyzing what is working and what isn’t working. It’s just sitting there, like a stale tuna fish sandwich. And, as you can imagine, it starts to stink.

2) What common mistakes do you see on company websites?

1) Forgetting contact information

Many sites make it too complicated to contact them. A visible phone number and an easily accessible contact form is a must.

2) Failing to make the “ask”

Another big mistake is not making it clear what you offer or what you want the potential customer to do. Many companies assume far too much of their audience. It is helpful to ask some friends or colleagues who know only a little about your company to peruse your site, and then tell you their observations. If a company took a simple step like that and then made adjustments accordingly, a company’s site would be light years ahead of most of its competition.

3) Inconsistent writing

Thoughts & concepts should be presented in a consistent voice across all marketing. Grammar matters, but so does tone and attitude. Many companies forget this and the result is an non-engaging site.

3) How often should website content be updated?

That probably depends on the industry you’re in, and how frequently your customers need your services or product. Once a week is probably a great baseline, but some companies need to be turning out daily content. For many of our clients just starting out, we’ll help them create content twice a month. That gives the site a fresh feel, without taxing the company too heavily for ongoing marketing.

4) What should companies be careful of when it comes to design vs. searchability?

Be aware that the numbers of people viewing your website on a mobile device are increasing dramatically. You should be able to have a good experience on your site no matter what device you’re on. For some businesses, that means thinking about a special mobile site, or having a responsive site (a site that changes formatting based on the user device), or simply focusing on mobile first even for your desktop website.

Of course, if you love sweet animations and all of that on your main website, and it’s built in flash, just be aware that any user of an Apple mobile device won’t see it, so don’t do anything too mission critical in Flash. It’s great for some added spice, but don’t make your navigation or your main call to action with Flash, unless you have some fall back built-in for non-flash devices.

Part II: Maximizing Website Effectiveness

Read More from Lance at Nectafy.com  

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