Billy Beane demonstrated that the commonly used statistics RBI’s (runs batted in) and batting average were inferior predictors of wins. Instead, he focused on on-base percentage and slugging percentage. Let’s take a hard look at three statistics in your analytics, and we’ll see why they’re misleading at worst and irrelevant at best.

Bounce Rate

Everyone watches it in hopes that it will go down. It’s the percentage of people who leave the site after seeing just one page. It’s right there on your dashboard when you log into Google Analytics. So it must be important, right? Not necessarily.

(Exception: Low bounce rates are very important to websites that are doing a lot of PPC marketing.)

Your bounce rate doesn’t matter, at least not for most sites. Why not? Because some of the most important activities in content marketing – blogging, social media, email marketing – result in a higher bounce rate.

• Example: A bounce rate of 70% is high, right? It means 7 in 10 visitors see only one page. But Chris Brogan, arguably one of the most successful web marketers on the Internet, has a bounce rate of 72% (source: Alexa.com data on chrisbrogan.com) This is a genuine marketing superstar with fortune and glory aplenty. Why is his bounce rate so high? It’s because he’s so good.

If your bounce rate is below 65%, it’s too low. You’re not active enough in web marketing. Get blogging, get your newsletter out, be more active in social media, and your bounce rate will increase.

Average Pages Per Visit

This isn’t an irrelevant statistic, but it’s easy to misinterpret. Ideally, this number isn’t high or low. It’s a “Goldilocks” metric. For lead generation sites, the number should be between 2 and 5 (for e-commerce sites, it should be between 3 and 7). It shouldn’t take more than five pages to drop in, learn something, get to know you a bit, and decide if they’re interested.

Redesigning a website often reduces the number of pages per visit, since the improved design helps people find information more easily and efficiently. Ironically, as a website owner, you should seek to reduce the number of pages per visit through good design and clear navigation, thereby reducing the total number of page views.

(Exception: A high average pages per visit is important for sites that generate revenue through advertising.)

New vs. Returning Visitors

It’s that big blue and green pie chart you see as soon as you log into Google Analytics. Surely this is important, right? Nope!

It’s a nice looking chart, but I’ve never been able to make a meaningful decision from this statistic. It’s inherently misleading because it can always be read as both good or bad.

Percentage of new visitors is high:

• Great! Your marketing outreach is working and you’re finding new people.
• Bad! Your old visitors aren’t coming back.

Percentage of returning visitors is high:

• Great! Previous visitors are coming back.
• Bad! Your outreach isn’t working and you’re not finding new people.

Another problem is that it doesn’t really measure visitors, it measures devices. If I visit your site from work, home and my phone, I’m counted as three unique visitors… only I’m not.

So how do you make a good decision based on an ambiguous, inaccurate metric? You can’t. Ignore it.

Final Score

If you ignore the distractions and focus on what’s really important, you’ll filter out the noise, make better choices and drive better results. Play Moneyball with your analytics and before long, Brad Pitt will be playing you on the big screen.

What stats do you find most important for your site?

Yes, you can moderate reviews to make sure you don’t display anything inappropriate or overly negative, but you also have to be okay with some 3- and 4-star reviews. If every product on your site has excellent, 5-star reviews, you’ll lose credibility.

The bigger problem is that most e-commerce sites don’t get enough traffic to generate a good amount of reviews. For most businesses, adding a review feature means 95% of their products will have a “be the first to review” link. This isn’t meeting anyone’s goals.

Although I’m not in favor of a review feature for most e-commerce sites, I do love reviews, testimonials and recommendations. They’re little jewels of third-party content, but most people don’t know how to get the most out of them. So here are the DOs and DON’Ts of using them properly:

DO Mine Your Recommendations

People may already be saying nice things about your business, your products or yourself on other websites. If you find these, you can use them in other, more visible parts of your marketing.

Mine through these sites like you’re panning for gold. Be ready to copy any nuggets you find and paste them into your site:

• Google Places (find your listing in Google Maps)
• LinkedIn recommendations
• Google+
• Bing and Yahoo!
• Open Table for restaurants, Trip Advisor for travel, etc.
• Yelp!, Merchant Circle and other listings
• and yes…Twitter

You should be watching these listings anyway, either by subscribing to updates from each site or through Google Alerts set up for your business name.

DO Check Your Inbox For “Reviews”

In many cases, “reviews” show up in your inbox. They’re emails from fans and happy clients. Your first instinct should be to write back and say thank you. Your second instinct should be to use these in your marketing.

If appropriate, politely ask the sender to copy and paste the review into a site such as LinkedIn, Yelp! or your Google place page. If they do, you should be eternally grateful.

DO Solicit Reviews From Superfans

If you have a web page or business listing that needs a review, you can probably get one easily. Just pick one of your biggest fans and ask.

I know it’s hard, but you have to get over the hesitation and social awkwardness of asking for the favor. Do it. It’s worth it. Then thank them profusely. If they’re giving you a testimonial for your site, you may even want to link back to them.

All the stuff about “you should thank them” or “you should be grateful,” while true, may come off as patronizing. Adults don’t want to be reminded to do stuff their parents told them to do over and over again when they were children.

DON’T Make a Testimonials Page

It’s very common for people to want a page for testimonials. They’re great right? Of course! But do you think people will go to a page to read them all? Do you ever visit “testimonials” pages? Probably not.

In my experience, testimonial pages are not frequently visited (check your Google Analytics). Take them out and put them where they’ll help: on pages about products and services, or in the “conversion funnel” where they lend credit to other content. Testimonials are supportive content, so add them to pages like a cherry on a sundae. A cherry on top is nice.

DON’T Add Reviews Before Doing Your Research

Before you decide if you’re going to spend the money to add “reviews” to your website, please take these tips into consideration:

• Ask your web vendor what they think
• Look at your analytics to see if you’re getting enough traffic to your product pages to justify reviews
• Talk to other site owners that have implemented reviews and see what their experience was like
• Google yourself and see what people are already saying about your company or products

Bottom line, make sure that people like you enough to say nice things about you. No one wants a site full of bad reviews. Or even worse, no reviews at all.

So, was this review article helpful? yes / no

In this video, I’ll show you how you can use motion charts to learn what keyword phrases you’re ranking for, what keyword phrases are getting seen when they are ranking, and if people are actually clicking on the keyword phrase.

How do you use motion charts?

Listen Up

Actively listening is consistent engagement with your client no matter the circumstance. To show that you are tuned in, make eye contact and show general interest in the conversation. There will be information that you can use to formulate strong, open-ended questions. Positioning yourself to refer to what some might feel are mundane thoughts on the project, make it clear to the client that you care about them, their business, and the work you are doing on their project. Design is all in the details.

Feel the Vibe

Along with actively listening, showing empathy for your client’s needs is also imperative. The client hired you for a service they need in order to make their business better. Being empathetic to them has two very great effects. One, it demonstrates to the client that you understand them. Two, it will push you to ask questions that are sincere and targeted. Your work will reflect this.

Be You!

Be open about who you are, your creative processes, your technology and your opinion on their project. If you don’t know the answer, but another vendor may, share that vendor’s information. If you try and hide something it will seem like it. Demonstrate your transparency and that you want the best for them.

Don’t Hate, Educate!

Educate your client on the web. Pretty, pretty please! Make them smarter. It can be a difficult road to climb but to many clients web design and development can be an unknown territory. An unsure client can make poor decisions only because they truly don’t know any better.

When you educate your client it makes them wiser and you can continually demonstrate expertise on the subject you love, which reinforces value and why they hired you in the first place. Obviously your client needs to be receptive to it, but even the most difficult clients can walk away more knowledgeable. So next time when they come back with project work, the process gets much easier for the both of you!

Have Some Fun & Smile While Doing It

Who wants to work with a grump? No one. People want to be around folks who laugh, smile and have a positive attitude. Lets face it, you’re going to be working on this project together so why not make it fun? It makes the process both enjoyable and engaging. This doesn’t mean you need to be cavalier about things, nor refrain from being tough when you need to be. But being positive will build equity for when you need to have a tough conversation. What client doesn’t want you to be excited about their project, even if you have to use the “head-set lady” on the contact page!

Check out more articles on this subject:

• How to remain productive when working with clients
• 5 tips for improving designer client relationships

How do you keep your relationship with your clients or web designers strong?

Title

It’s the text at the top of the browser, above the address bar, for any web page. Depending on your browser, it may be in the tab. In the code, it’s whatever text is inside the <title> tags. It’s very important.

The title becomes the link when the page or post ranks in search engines. If it’s too long, it gets truncated so limit yourself to 66 characters. Be brief.

Titles are strong indicators to search engines what the page is about, so use your target keyphrase, use it once, and if possible, use it at the beginning of the title. The prominence of the keyphrase (in other words, how close to the beginning it appears) is very important.

It might be tempting to put your business name at the front of the title. Don’t. Search engine marketers have a saying: “brand last.” Start with your keyphrase, end with your business name. Remember, your first goal is to help people. Promoting yourself comes second.

Meta Description

Although Meta Keywords are totally useless, the Meta Description remains important. It doesn’t appear in the content of the page, but it’s highly visible in search results. Below each link in a search results page is a “snippet” of text. In Google, this snippet is either an excerpt from the body text or more often, the meta description. So make it good.

Write it as a single sentence, plain English summary of the content. Don’t just use the title or headline. Use your target keyphrase at least once, but not more than twice. Limit the number of characters to 155 to be sure that it will fit within the snippet.

Keyphrase Use in the Body Text

We recommend including the target keyphrase in the body of the article at least twice, but not more than five times. In each instance, all the words in the phrase should appear together as a “bonded” phrase. This should come naturally if the phrase is relevant to the topic. During editing, go back to make sure it’s used, but not overused.

• Tip: It’s likely that punctuation is dropped in Google, so if you’re having trouble incorporating the phrase, consider ending one sentence with the beginning of the phrase, and beginning the next sentence with the end of the phrase. For example, if you’re targeting “Tampa telephone repair” the following sentences includes one instance of the phrase:
• “We’re located in north Tampa. Telephone repair services include dial tone tuning and button replacement.”
• Warning: Don’t overdo it on the keywords. If you compromise your writing to the extent that it makes no sense to your human reader, you’re probably guilty of “keyword stuffing.” Using the phrase over and over in unnatural ways is both terrible for your readers and bad for search engine optimization. Google can see right through this and there’s a chance that you’ll be penalized. So don’t do it.

Formatting

People tend not to read online; we tend to scan. Content marketers must accept this and adapt by adding formatting to their content. Big blocky, dense paragraphs are less likely to be read. Content with more formatting is more likely to engage the reader.

• Headers and subheads: Breaking up the article into short sections makes it much more accessible to busy readers. Each section should begin with a header that serves as a mini headline for the paragraphs that follow.
• Short paragraphs: Generally no paragraph should include more than 3-4 sentences. Very short paragraphs of one sentence or even one word can be used to add emphasis.
• Bulleted lists and numbered lists: These are very easy to scan and work well within almost any post. Some very successful posts are nothing more than lists. Some blogs, such as 12most.com, are based entirely on list-formatted content.
• Bold, Italics: These are excellent ways to add emphasis and make content more easily scanned, but don’t overdo it.

Formatting is good for search engines, as well as humans. If you leave out the formatting, you miss opportunities to use your keyphrase in more ways. Subheaders and bulleted lists are opportunities to use words from a target phrase and indicate relevance a bit more.

Links

Your goal as a content marketer is to eventually convert visitors into leads and customers. As Barry Feldman put it, “Your site is the mousetrap, your content is the cheese.” But if you don’t help make those connections between the cheese and the trap, you catch fewer mice.

Look for opportunities within articles to link to web pages about your products and services, and to other content. Doing so creates a benefit for conversions and a visible impact on the “average pages per visit” metric in Analytics.

There is also an SEO benefit, as internal linking is an easy opportunity to use target keywords in anchor text when linking to other content, although these links have far less importance on rank than links from other websites.

• Tip: Every few months, go back and look at older posts. Try to find opportunities to add links to your more recent content.

Images

Posts with images are more interesting to look at and more likely to be shared. Some posts, such as infographics, are nothing more than a giant image and are extremely successful, sometimes becoming viral.

When content is shared in social networks, an image from the page is generally pulled in and appears within the post, making it more prominent. Shared posts without images have a disadvantage in social streams.

Some sites have a policy of never publishing a post without at least one image. If you guest post on these sites, they may reject your post unless you add an image, or they may add images for you. They may use a lot of bad stock photos and it might not be pretty. Plan ahead and find an image.

Mentions

Don’t hesitate to mention other people within your content. Input from experts adds credibility and makes your content more interesting. For promotional reasons, it can be effective to deliberately mention those who are active in social media. They may share it once it’s posted.

Calls to Action

Now that you have provided friendly, helpful advice to your readers, it’s time to ask for a little bit in return. Every great post has a call to action, inviting the visitor to become more engaged with your content or your business.

If nothing else, for Blog Posts, the call to action can simply be an invitation to leave a comment. Ask a question that they can answer with a comment, solicit other ideas that would complement the suggestions made in the post or even invite the reader to disagree with you.

Beyond comments, a call to action may be a one sentence pitch to subscribe to the newsletter. If the content was truly useful, the moment they finish reading the post is the high-point of their appreciation and the most likely time for the reader to subscribe.

For web pages, a call to action may be a link directing them to read more on another page, or an invitation to contact you to start a conversation about how your business can help them even more…by becoming a lead.

• Tip: Calls to action should use the same compelling language that you use while authoring subject lines, headers, tweets and anything else that you hope a reader to act on. “Contact Us” is not a call to action. “Ask Andy for more advice on web marketing” is.

Length

If you write a very long article, you might get a comment that says “TLDR” (too long, didn’t read)…if they leave a comment at all.

There’s a time and place for epic 2,500 word blog posts, but don’t do it too often. Generally, work within the length recommendations on the Periodic Table of Content. Make an exception when you’re truly inspired writing something longer and it’s not practical to break it into two parts. If your standard length is longer and your readers expect and enjoy the format, keep it up!

Author Box

Some blog software makes creating an author box very easy. Easy or difficult, it’s worth the effort, since it has social, search and conversion benefits. The ideal author box includes the following:

Profile picture: here are tips for picking the perfect profile picture

Brief biography: no more than a few sentences

Link to bio and/or link to Google+ profile: use the rel=author code, which connects your web content to your profile and makes your profile picture appear in search engines through the magic of Google Authorship.

Link to social network profiles: Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc…

• Tip: Create a semi-standard HTML code for your author box. This will make it easy to add to posts on your site or share with other sites when you’re guest blogging. Here’s what I generally use: Andy Crestodina is the Strategic Director of Orbit Media, a <a href=”http://www.orbitmedia.com”>web development company</a> in Chicago. You can find Andy on <a title=”Author: Andy Crestodina on Google+” rel=”author” href=”https://plus.google.com/113272929328812128697?rel=author” target=”_blank”>Google+</a> and <a title=”Andy Crestodina on Twitter” href=”http://www.twitter.com/crestodina” target=”_blank”>Twitter</a>.

Here is a PDF version of the 17-Point-Web-Content-Checklist for you to download or the Google document, if you’d like to share it.

If you have any questions or suggestions for this web content checklist, please let us know with a comment below.

Andy Crestodina loves, more than anything, to teach web marketing. In fact, he’s writing a book on the topic, which will feature this checklist. Feel free to connect with Andy on Google+ and Twitter.

A few user-experience points worth noting:

• Paid ad real estate has grown in size and visual emphasis.
• Speaking of real estate, Google+ content has moved to Boardwalk and Park Place.
• Sorting options are through the roof.
• Actual search results are in the sub-basement, barely above the fold.

For comparison, look at this 2007 Google SERP from a Rand Fishkin post:

Five elements on this page! Those were the days, my friend.

So here’s the question: Is Google moving forward or backward with all this complexity?

Conventional wisdom says “forward.” People want options. They want content-based and connection-based results. They want extreme fine-tunability. This all makes a certain amount of sense, but here are three reasons why I think Google is taking its search engine in the wrong direction.

1. The UX problem. Google products are notoriously non-intuitive. Gmail and Reader have gotten trashed on this score in recent months, but Google Search has been an exception – so far – delivering a good user experience. Complicating its search engine plays right into its weakness. We used to call that “leading with your chin,” because your competitor would knock your head off.

2. Mushrooming mobile. Complex slicing and dicing and re-slicing and re-dicing of search results is challenging enough on a desktop monitor with 1280×1024 resolution. Try it on an iPhone or iPad. Tablets and smart phones are pushing search in the direction of simple. As users develop simple search habits and preferences on mobile devices, they’ll want the same on their computers … if they still use them.

 3. The last straw. By all appearances, Google is aggressively changing its business model to highlight personalization and paid advertising. This may be fine from Google’s point of view because personalization encourages people to log in for life, and ads fill the coffers. But a lot of users don’t like social sharing, and a lot more don’t like ads. Making SERPs harder to understand than quantum physics might be just the thing to drive them into the waiting arms of Bing.

Despite all this, I have great respect for Google and happily use many of their products. They are an extremely intelligent company … but now I’m wondering if perhaps they are too smart for their own good.

Businesses have a tendency to over-complicate products and processes – and the smarter they are, the stronger the tendency is. Could it be that Google is getting wrapped around its own technology axle? Are social media evangelists and cutting-edge marketing theorists overly influencing Google’s strategy?

These questions are important because Google Search needs eyeballs, and non-geeks and non-evangelists constitute a lot of them. If these folks are all as simple-minded as I am, Google could be in for trouble.

Over to You

How do you like Google Search? Do you like it more or less than you did three years ago, and are you concerned with where it’s going?

By Brad Shorr

Brad Shorr is Director of Content & Social Media for Straight North, a Chicago SEO agency. They specialize in middle market B2B, with clients in a wide variety of niche industries, including small business merchant accounts and gloves.

1. Work in spurts

The saying “too much of a good thing is not good at all” applies here. No one is built to work at maximum effort for 8 hours, heck for even 4-5 hours. Some believe that one needs to power through tasks in long marathons of working. This may be the case with a large deadline looming; however, even in those situations you need to take a break. The best way to maximize your production output is to work in spurts. Set aside a few hours where you can focus on the tasks at hand at full energy. Once you start to get fatigued, stop and take a break. Do something that doesn’t relate to the tasks at hand, such as taking a short walk around the office. Set a schedule of what you plan to work on and include distinct stopping points.

2. Get away from the computer/phone/desk

Oftentimes, when you need to clear your head and re-boot, it’s easy to jump from your task to sites such as Facebook, Bleacher Report, Amazon or play games on your phone, etc. I recommend getting away from your desk, phone and the computer all together. Take a long walk outside or in your building, grab a magazine, and change up your scenery. When you have creative block or need to generate a fresh idea, disconnecting from technology is the best way to remove that block. This allows your brain to relax and refocuses your intentions with fresh energy.

3. Look around for inspiration

There are times when you feel as if you are recycling the same design over and over. Such sites as thebestdesigns.com, smashingmagazine.com, thedesignfridge.co.uk are excellent resources for finding inspiration. They offer up ideas on design trends that influence us daily. You can find inspiration in just about anything if you keep an open mind. Not only do sites that focus on design drive inspiration, but resources on other disciplines can push a designer to think in a broader scope. I suggest researching other disciplines for inspiration. Fields such as architecture, interior design, fashion, print design, music and the arts often offer up ways to approach a creative solution that may be completely different than web design. When all else fails, get out and go somewhere inspiring. An art museum, a conference, even a furniture store. All places have the potential to inspire you to come back with a fresh perspective.

4. Talk to people

When working on a concept, designers can get tunnel vision. There are problems around us that we cannot see. Getting your work in front of people is crucial. Sharing concepts with your team and being open to their feedback is a key component to improving your work. Every member of a team can offer up a valuable opinion that can make your work better, take your idea to new heights, or completely crush it. But that is all good. If it is a bad idea or concept, wouldn’t you rather know before trying to sell it to a client? Outside of sharing work with others, take the opportunity, when you meet other design professionals, to pick their brains on how they work, on what types of projects they like, on how their agency operates, etc. Gaining knowledge from others when it comes to approach can highly influence how you do things, offer up new ways to improve, and get you excited to get back to work.

5. Relax.

Relaxation comes in all different forms. Some prefer intense exercise while others meditate. Some play guitar while others read a book. Whatever your fancy, ensure that you make time for it. Relaxation keeps you fresh, energized and, most importantly, happy. Consistently keep time open in your schedule for relaxation. It can be hard to see through the immediate importance of a deadline, but relaxation keeps things in perspective. Your work, co-workers, friends and family will thank you for it.

Some websites for inspiration:

• Notcot.org
• Dribbble.com
• Architecture Inspiration
• The Great Discontent
• Oh Beautiful Beer
• Ideamensch.com

How do you stay inspired?

By Nick Haas.

But all of these benefits require a plan. Effective content marketing isn’t a “throw spaghetti against the wall and see what happens” process. With a strategic plan, you can make content marketing simple to implement, easy to measure and something that can actually be (dare I say it?) fun!

Step One: Understand Your Audience

When you create a connected content plan, you have to start with your audience. They are the people who are seeing your social media updates, reading your blog posts, sharing your content and interacting with your company. It makes sense to give them exactly what they are searching for. Get focused by creating a detailed ideal client profile and then creating content to solve their problems.

Step Two: Plan Your Strategy

Before you can use all of this problem solving content, you need to figure out *how* to use it. You need to map your content marketing to your business goals. For example, if you want to increase website inquiries by 50%, you may want to take your great content ideas and turn them into a downloadable white paper or e-course.

Step Three: Set Your Schedule

At this point, you’ve got a clear idea of who you’re speaking to and a bit about how you’ll be speaking to them. Now it’s time to get a schedule set up for publication. Whatever it is, be consistent. Three posts per week. One white paper per month. A Webinar each quarter. Like clockwork.

Step Four: Create Quality Content

If you want to create interest and grab the attention of your ideal client, you’ve got to offer quality. You can’t just say the same thing that everyone else is about your topic. Each time it seems like we hit critical mass on a particular subject, there’s someone out there publishing something fresh and new online. Be that publisher for your market.

Step Five: Promote Your Content

Content promotion is ESSENTIAL. If your content isn’t promoted somehow it’s unlikely it will get the audience exposure that you want or the results that you’re looking for. If you’re using keywords research to create website content and blog posts, someone will find your content eventually. But why wait for someone to find it at some time? Be sure to incorporate social media and press releases to promote your content and maximize views.

Step Six: Analyze Your Results and Plan Ahead

Without analysis, you won’t know how well your content is performing and what the next steps should be. Make it a point to regularly review your website traffic, your conversion rates and your inquiries. Since you’ve followed step three and have a consistent schedule, you’ll be able to track exactly how your content is affecting your results.

Now that you have these six steps outline for you, content marketing should be easy, effective and (a little) fun. Which of these six steps have you tried? Which ones have you been missing?

Courtney Ramirez is a content marketing consultant and SEO Copywriter. As owner and head copywriter at Six Degrees Content she creates holistic content marketing solutions for forward thinking businesses. In her spare time, she tags along to comic book conventions with her graphic novelist husband. Follow her on Twitter or connectwith SDC on Facebook.

When you write for search engines
your writing might sound strange.
The words you choose, the style you use,
Lots of things may change.

Change your title? How could you?
You’ll compromise the page!
Keywords, linking, headers, tagging
Like writing in a cage.

You might feel like a criminal
committing writing crimes.
Repeat that phrase ‘til it displays
five to seven times!

Don’t go too far for rankings’ sake
by changing all your text.
When keywords cram, you sound like spam
Your visitors, perplexed.

Step once for you, and once for rank.
soon you’ll walk that line.
You’ll rank high and still get by
with writing that sounds fine.

“But I don’t want to compromise.
My writing art is true.”
You keep your art, but I’ll be smart.
I’ll see you on page two.

Every poet surely knows
how good constraints can be.
The rules of rhyme and metered time
force creativity.

Singers sing and poets rhyme
To get the girls to ogle.
I tweak my copy all the time
To win some love from…Google.

Writing in rhyming quatrains with iambic meter isn’t easy. But it forced me to think differently and it (hopefully) made this page more interesting.  This may be the nerdiest thing I’ve ever done.

Writing for search engines?  Much the same.  Harder but more rewarding. And when done well, the writing can still be good. And it’s fun!  So embrace the constraints.

By Andy Crestodina. You can also find Andy on Google+ and Twitter.

So far, I’ve collected 27 complaints about web companies (to see the full list, scroll down).  Although not exactly a PhD thesis, there is enough data to draw a few conclusions. I’ve put the complaints into three groups:

• Planning and Service: includes all complaints about communication issues, such as listening, managing expectations and meeting deadlines.
• Technical and Programming: includes capabilities complaints, technical limitations and hosting issues.
• Design: includes alignment with brand, lookin’ good.

Some of the complaints were wide ranging and added to more than one category. This chart shows the percentage of complaints for each category.

It’s immediately obvious that service is the biggest problem clients have with web design companies.

Why do web design companies suck?

Here are some of the main reasons:

1. Web design firms are project-based, not account-based like traditional ad agencies or IT support companies. They may not have the people and process in place to provide the kinds of ongoing enhancements and support that clients inevitably need like a support team or account managers.
2. This is an industry where almost anything is possible, so clear communication is desperately important. Dozens of options may be discussed, each with pro and cons. This means misunderstandings are common…and sometimes disastrous.
3. Web designers are busy. Clients often need months to get comfortable enough to sign a proposal. That makes it very hard to manage capacity. And it’s a growing industry. A lot of web companies, especially the very cheap and very good ones, are slammed.

So what should clients do?

First, keep this in mind: when choosing a “web design team,” you’re choosing a project management approach, a process, a help desk and ideally, a long-term marketing partner. If something goes wrong, it won’t likely be a design or programming problem. It’s all about service and communication.

I once wrote a post called 5 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Web Design Company, but I’ll save you the click and summarize it here.

1. Check References. Just pick up the phone and call some people! As with job candidates, the best indication of future performance is past performance. Have a genuine conversation with companies the vendor has worked with. Or at the very least…
2. Read Reviews, but don’t stop there. Search around for a few minutes. Go to the Better Business Bureau website and see if there are any complaints.
3. Get a Demo. Of course, you’ll want a demo of the content management system, but also get a demo of the project management tools. Wait, they don’t use project management tools? Bad sign…
4. Are they taking notes? There may be indications of vendor chaos in the first meeting. They should be capturing goals and requirements in an organized way.
5. Meet the Team. Again, just like a job interview, nothing replaces the face-to-face meeting.

Lessons learned…

Many web design companies just aren’t focused on service. A good designer and smart programmer can start a web company and make websites – Barrett and I did. But they may not truly realize what it takes to offer great service – Barrett and I didn’t at first. But we figured it out.

• Vendors: Focus on communication, process, project management and support.
• Clients: Carefully vet companies for service and commitment, listen for direct answers

The 27 web design complaints

Inept, Old Technology, Slow, Non-Responsive
Non-Responsive, Disappears
Too Slow
Doesn’t Listen, Incompetent
Misled, Poor Communication
Technical Limitations
Never Delivered, Overpromised, Missed Deadlines, Offshoring
Non-Responsive, Offshoring
Rude, Short, Doesn’t Exist Anymore
Design Problems, Relaunched Site without Approval
Database Crashed
Company is gone, can’t access the site
Vendor was always slow, one-person shop, now retiring
Slow to respond, Poor Service
Overpromised, Over their heads, Going Out of Business
Out of their Capabilities
Couldn’t execute, Overpromised, Lack of Capabilities
Non-responsive, not committed
Didn’t explain Flash, SEO problems
No control, Developers won’t give access
In over their heads, CMS constraints
Can’t find developer
Had amnesia, Missed Deadlines
Hates their vendor, $20k to add a Flash piece, Bad project management
Delays, Lack of capacity, Over-promised
Communication problems, Designer fell off the earth.

NOTE: Two of the complaints mentioned that the vendor was using offshore resources, but the complaints weren’t about programming or technical capabilities, they were about service

By Andy Crestodina. You can also find Andy on Google+ and Twitter.