May 2002 Newsletter

WHAT A WEB WE WEAVE
by Sheldon Liebman, JBlockInc.com Webmaster

If you are reading this, you already know about the power of the Internet and the World Wide Web to bring timely information to a diverse audience. This special newsletter is being distributed electronically to thousands of people around the United States and all over the world. Does your organization have a web site that can do the same for you?

There are many reasons for a non-profit organization to have a web site and I am pleased to say that I have a lot of experience in this area. Currently, I maintain the web sites for over a dozen non-profits in Albuquerque. Some of them I designed from scratch, others I took over after they were created. All provide similar benefits.

Your Online Brochure
When a new company opens, one of the first things they create is a brochure that explains what they do. Your organization probably did the same thing. A web site is, at the very least, an online brochure. In fact, that’s the way many sites start—by converting the information from a printed brochure into a web page. Of course, this version is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to anyone who wants to see it. Sure beats printing, stuffing and mailing.

Timeliness is Next to Godliness
When you create a printed brochure, how long do you expect it to last? Unfortunately, most printed material is out of date shortly after it is created. With a web site, you can change information in minutes to keep things current. You can update news daily, weekly, or monthly. You can announce programs or program changes. Anyone who visits your site after the changes are posted will view the most up to date information available.

The Gift That Keeps on Giving
One of the biggest benefits to having a web site is the opportunity to accept donations and payments online. Like your online brochure, this capability can be available every minute of every day. This is where the “World” aspect of the World Wide Web really comes through. You might help people locally, but you can receive financial help globally.

You can also use your site to sell tickets to events, books (see below), clothing, or anything else your organization has of value. At United Way of Central New Mexico (www.uwcnm.org), there’s an online RSVP for almost every event that lets attendees pay online using their credit cards. Could you benefit from something similar?

Information, Please
How’s your mailing list? With a web site that provides current information about your group, you can ask your visitors to give you information about themselves. You can then use that information to contact your visitors by mail or by email. Jean Block’s list has almost 2000 names on it (and if you got our email about this newsletter, yours is one of them). With current email information, you can send notices out whenever you have news to share. And, not only is it fast, but it’s also FREE!

Once you decide to build a web site, your work is just beginning. Now, you have to figure out where to put it.

If you have access to the Internet, you already have an Internet Service Provider (ISP) who provides you with that connection. In addition, your ISP probably provides you with at least one email address (yourname@theircompany.com). You may even get some free space for a personal web page (www.theircompany.com/~yourname). What you won’t get, unless you pay extra, is your very own web site with your very own domain name (www.jblockinc.com).

If you really want to save money, you can use the free web space provided by your ISP and just give everyone your long, convoluted web address. You can also use a service called “Domain Forwarding” to get your own domain name and “point it” to your free space. These services typically cost under $50 per year and allow someone to type “www.yourname.org” and end up at “www.theircompany.com/~yourname.” This makes it easy for people to find you, but limits you to the space and features available through your ISP.

To really do it right, you’ll want to take the plunge to arrange web hosting using your own domain name. Thankfully, prices for this have come down dramatically over the past few years. ABQweb offers plans, for example, that start at only $150 per year. For this price, you get 75 Megabytes (MB) of space, 75 Email addresses, counters, forms, web-based email access (like Yahoo!), and much more. This price also includes registering one domain name for the site.

Once you get your space, you can start to think about how to fill it. Will you build a site yourself or hire a professional to build it for you? The answer depends on your people and your budget.

Either way, you need to create a web site that looks good, loads fast, and works well.

Anyone can build a web site. However, not everyone can build a GOOD web site. What makes a good site? As mentioned in the previous story, a good web site looks good, loads fast, and works well.

Hey, Good Looking
To make a site that looks good, stick to the basics. Do you have a logo? A business card? Stationary? A brochure? All of these items give clues as to how to design your web site. If your site shares its design with one or more of these materials, people will probably feel comfortable with it. My favorite phrase for this aspect of a site is “understated elegance.” More is not always better.

Are We There Yet?
Patience is a virtue, but don’t expect your visitors to have it. There’s nothing worse than visiting a site that takes forever to show up on your screen. How do you prevent that? Go easy on the graphics, the sound, and the animation. Create pages that load in under 5 seconds if you can, no more than 10 seconds if you can’t. If your visitor can’t see your information quickly, they’ll just go somewhere else.

Finders Keepers, Losers Weepers
Why does Wal-Mart have greeters at the front door? Because your shopping experience will be more pleasant if you can find what you want as quickly and easily as possible. Web sites are the same way. The structure of your site, the navigation bar, a search box, all of these things help your visitors get to the information they want. If you make it too difficult, they’ll give up. And if they give up, chances are they won’t come back.

Don’t Plan to Fail, or Fail to Plan
Before you actually build your site, lay it out on paper. Decide what goes where and how people will move through the site to get there. The time you spend up front will help you avoid major complications after you get started.

Many web sites are totally redone within the first six months after they are initially created. Yours doesn’t have to be one of them.

Once you know what you want to put on your site, the next step is to actually create the content for each page. There are a lot of tools you can use for this, and you may already have some of them.

If you use Microsoft Word, you have access to a basic web design package. Any document created in Word can be saved as a web page. Is this the best tool you can use? Hardly. But if time is short and budgets are tight, it can get you started.

One step up from there is Microsoft Publisher. This newsletter was originally created in Publisher and then converted into a web page. In fact, Jean Block’s original web site used one of its Web Design Templates. If your site is small and not very complicated, this is an option.

The problem with Word and Publisher comes later, when your site grows. Word doesn’t treat a site as a unit, just as individual pages. And Publisher, while it understands the concept of an entire site, doesn’t have appropriate management tools to deal with a site that contains more than a handful of pages.

For the best results, you need to move up to something like Microsoft FrontPage or Macromedia DreamWeaver. These programs, while more complicated to learn, are capable not only of creating your pages, but also of managing them. If you are concerned about the learning curve and already use Microsoft Office, then FrontPage will probably be a little easier to learn.

Perhaps the best tool available is also the most expensive—hiring a Web Site Designer. Just because you can buy software to create web pages, doesn’t mean you should take on the project yourself.

Ten years ago, when packages like Publisher were introduced, everyone thought they could design their own newsletters. After all, how hard could it be? Eventually, many of those same people decided that their time was better spent doing what they did best, which was NOT creating newsletters. You can take the same approach.

Creating and maintaining a web site isn’t free, but it does offer some very definite ways to save both time and money. The best way to illustrate this is with a couple of examples.

As mentioned previously, Jean Block’s electronic mailing list currently contains almost 2000 names. A few years ago, her list contained over 6000 names and mailing addresses. Four times a year, Jean created a four page, printed newsletter and mailed it to all 6000 people on her list. Between printing and postage, the cost was around $2500 per newsletter or $10,000 per year (and many hours of effort).

When Jean first contacted me about taking over the maintenance of her web site, one of the things she was interested in was moving people away from the printed newsletter to an electronic version. To avoid cutting people off, we mailed a couple of newsletters that “warned” about the upcoming switch to the web. Then, we sent a postcard instead of a newsletter, directing people to visit www.jblockinc.com to read the latest issue and fill out the online form to continue receiving it electronically. Although the list is now smaller, the cost has gone down to under $500 per issue and, as a result, the frequency is increasing. Best of all, if the list grows back to 6000 names, the cost won’t change.

The New Mexico office of the American Heart Association used the web to raise over $25,000 for their 2002 Heart Ball of New Mexico. As part of the event, the organization raffled off a Harley Davidson V-ROD motorcycle. Tickets were $100 each and only 750 were printed. By publicizing the raffle on the Heart Ball web site (www.HeartBall-nm.org), approximately 250 tickets were sold outside of the Albuquerque area. Because of these ticket sales, the raffle was a tremendous success. The additional cost to create and publicize the page was just a few hundred dollars.

Combining email and a web site provides a fast, inexpensive way to get the word out about your organization. It’s one of the few things you can spend money on that has such a measurable return.

By now, you’re probably wondering how much it will cost for you to get your very own web site. Obviously, the costs depend on how large a site you want to create, what type of hosting you decide to use, and whether you want to do it in-house or use an outside web designer.

If you would like a formal quote, I’ll be happy to provide one to you. Just fill out the form below and send it to me. I’ll contact you within a few days of receiving it so that we can discuss the details of what will work for you and your group.

If you want an informal quote, use $100 per page. Some pages cost more, some cost less, but this is a good starting point.

Of course, this doesn’t include hosting or maintenance. But, I do a lot of business with non-profits, so I try to create a “package” that covers the first year, including everything, for under $2000. Some sites are more, some are less. Contact me for more information.

Sheldon Liebman is the webmaster for Jean Block Consulting and the founder and owner of L&S Marketing and ABQweb. He has been designing web sites for almost 10 years.

Sheldon has spent his entire career in the computer industry, first as a programmer, then as a sales and marketing professional. He began designing web sites as one aspect of a complete marketing program for his clients. Over the years, this portion of his business has grown and it now takes up virtually all of his time.

Because of his background in marketing, Sheldon brings a unique perspective to web site design. To him, it’s all about the information, not just about the “bells and whistles.” His expertise allows him to work with his clients to insure that their web sites fit within their overall marketing efforts, not just as a standalone tool.

Sheldon is very active in the non-profit arena and provides services to non-profit agencies and organizations at a substantial discount. He is a member of the board of the Jewish Federation of Greater Albuquerque and co-chaired, along with his wife Lori, the 2001 Heart Ball of New Mexico, which raised over $113,000.

To learn more about Sheldon’s web design and hosting services, visit www.ABQweb.com. A complete list of ABQweb’s non-profit clients is available by following the “Web Gallery” link.

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