Like any other high-rise growing toward the heavens, a good marketing campaign needs a solid foundation. As you start to implement some basic steps in your very own personal action plan, don’t start at the top only to overlook the bottom.
So let our first key be to “build” one for you:

• Build a great website for your organization. Every marketing campaign, even the most cutting edge, begins with the universal foundation of ALL online marketing efforts – a really great website. To achieve this really great website, you need to first understand the mind of the person using your site. Never forget that the Internet is primarily used for research. When we do buy things or avail ourselves of a service, it is in the interest of research. Reexamine your site to make sure it is research-friendly. Don’t make the site about how great you are or all about you – make it all about the user. How can they use it? What can you offer them? How can you make their lives easier?
• Think in terms of research: While it certainly doesn’t have to look like a textbook, make sure that your website at least has plenty of “quality guts” to recommend it to avid researchers. Even our young skateboarding fans — they of the short-attention spans and faddish trends — want information. It may be the latest news in plastics that make their boards go faster, gossip about their skater heroes, or the top-ten tunes downloaded over the weekend. By carefully tracking and measuring what features of your website are being used most often, you can keep up to date and cutting-edge with what to keep and what to dismantle.
• Follow the PBS Principle: In other words, keep it “Professional, But Simple.” Go easy on the flash; they’ll watch it once and never again. Too many slow-to-load graphics or gizmos can become a nuisance and have the opposite effect of that which was intended. Rather than sticking around to gaze in wonder at your creative process, visitors to your site will simply want to get to the information. Remember my “first principle of flash”: most people aren’t as wowed by it as YOU are.
• Follow the five-second rule: If it doesn’t load quickly, if they can’t figure out what it’s about, if it’s not relevant – your visitors are gone. We’ve all visited websites that ignored the five-second rule at their own peril. Many are littered with the latest pageantry that is meaningless and useless information that is even more so. Very few Internet users are loyal beyond a mere five seconds; thus the five-second rule. There is so much to see and so little time to see it all that if you can’t keep my attention in seconds one through four, well, you’re not going to have it through seconds five and beyond. Ignore the five-second rule, and you do so at your own peril!

Hopefully you can see how important it is to build a website that is as appealing to end-users as it is to your creative team. The goal is to make it as creative as possible without creating art for art’s sake. Make it usable, keep it fresh and frequently updated, and above all, make it suitable for research. Information first, eye-candy second – that’s the key to building a user-friendly website that actually gets used.

TRY THIS …
Visit and analyze your competitors’ websites and rate them according to these rules. How simple is each one? Does it load quickly? How much Flash and how much substance do you see? Can you quickly identify what this site is about?