Will Marlow

We all know people who hate the Internet, or claim to hate the Internet. But most of those people don't really hate the Internet, they really just hate websites.  Because somewhere along the line they were traumatized by a website that made them feel stupid.

This is why, when you're designing a website, one of your goals should be: avoid making users feel stupid.  Make your site easy to navigate, helpful, and intuitive.  Make links and buttons look "clickable."  Make text scannable.  Watch real people as they navigate your site, and look for areas that cause them to stumble or pause.  

Too often we focus on wowing people, impressing others with our technical abilities, knocking their socks off with bells and whistles on our websites.  A website that is easy to use, helpful and intuitive is a beautiful thing.

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Will Marlow is an online marketing consultant.  He can help you build an awesome website.  He's also the co-founder of  AlumniFidelity, which you should check out if you care about fundraising for schools and nonprofits.  Email him at will@alumnifidelity.com.

"My purpose in reading has ever secretly been not to come and judge but to come and steal." - John Updike

Some of you know that photography is one of my hobbies (any of the photos you see on this blog are ones that I've taken).  I try to be selective about the photos that I share on Flickr, which I use essentially as a photojournal.  But until a few weeks ago, I did not "brand" my Flickr feed in any meaningful way, and this almost cost me a missed opportunity for promoting my business and this blog.

I want to credit Jason Calacanis (who is half entrepreneur, half media powerhouse), for giving me the idea to brand my Flickr feed.  Jason always includes links to his Twitter feed, his business and his weekly podcasts  in the description of his photos on Flickr.

So I copied him to see how much traffic I would get.  Immediately after doing this, a great food blog called Pretty Food & Drink decided to use one of my Flickr photos (above) in one of their posts, and it attracted over 1000 comments, as well as many click-throughs to my original Flickr photo.

If I hadn't put a link to my blog (or business, or school, or charity) in the description of the Flickr photo, all of those new visitors would have hit a brick wall when they saw the photo.  They may have liked it, or hated it, but most of them would not have had any option to get to know me better.  Now, I have some new subscribers who may have found me in a very roundabout way, but I'm glad to have them here.

This illustrates one reason why it's important to periodically audit your website and social media presence to make sure you aren't missing any opportunities to accomplish your goals.  In my case, I care about my subscribers.  In your case, you may care about donors, volunteers, or customers.  Whatever opportunities you're looking for, you need to make sure you aren't missing any easy ones, because once they're gone, they don't come back.   

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Will Marlow is a digital strategist/online marketing consultant.  He's the co-creator of  AlumniFidelity, which is a Web 2.0 fundraising platform for colleges, nonprofits and secondary schools.   He’s working with clients such as UVA, the College of William & Mary, the University of Oklahoma, and Bowling Green State University and he loves nothing better than a thorny marketing challenge.  He would love to help you market your business on the Internet, boost the fundraising numbers for your school or nonprofit, or sellout your next big event.  Email him at will@alumnifidelity.com.

I was just speaking to an executive at a university Annual Fund who told me that she wanted to use social media platforms to drive more traffic to her website. 

If you can relate to this desire, I need to stop you right there.  You need to understand something: you don't want more traffic.  More traffic by itself has zero value.  You want: more donors, more volunteers, more customers, and more satisfied "readers" who visit your site regularly to read your new content.  If you optimize your website so that every year you get more donors, more volunteers, and more happy subscribers, you'll win promotions, raises, praise and other good things.  If you optimize your website simply to generate generic traffic, pretty soon you'll be asking yourself why you wasted your resources to do that.

Did you like reading this blog post?  Sign up to get my new blog posts delivered by email by clicking here.

Will Marlow is a digital strategist/online marketing consultant.  He's the co-creator of  AlumniFidelity, which is a Web 2.0 fundraising platform for colleges, nonprofits and secondary schools.   He’s working with clients such as UVA, the College of William & Mary, the University of Oklahoma, and Bowling Green State University and he loves nothing better than a thorny marketing challenge.  He would love to help you market your business on the Internet, boost the fundraising numbers for your school or nonprofit, or sellout your next big event.  Email him at will@alumnifidelity.com.

I wanted to share the thought process behind the way I customized this blog.  As with any web project that I'm involved with, I began by setting the goals of the blog (what do I want to accomplish?), then choosing the tactics I would focus on (of all the things I could do in order to advance my goals, which few things can I do really well?), and then articulating a theme that will help me make any tough tie-breaking decisions. 

By starting with this outline, it was easy to optimize the blog without wasting time on enhancements that I was likely to change my mind about later.  I created an "anchor" section that stays the same, whether you're viewing the homepage of the blog or any of the blog posts.  This anchor section includes two informational sections - an "About me" page and "My most popular posts," both of which are important for new visitors to the blog.

The "anchor" section also includes three ways for readers to easily subscribe to the blog.  You can subscribe to the blog by email, or through Posterous, or you can follow me on Twitter.  These options are available to readers from the home page or from each individual blog post.