Sequencing is important. Don’t believe me? Take the steps of a recipe, mix them up, and try to make the dish with the proper steps jumbled. Know what you get? That’s right…a mess!
Or, what would the quality of our scientific research be like if we refused to follow the logical sequence of the scientific process? If you skip important steps like conducting a literature search on your topic, constructing a hypothesis, and carefully designing the experiment and just jump straight to conducting the experiment the first way that comes to mind…well, things could blow up in your face, and I mean that literally!
Or, here’s one of my favorite recent examples. With the release of Avengers: Endgame, the Marvel Comic Universe has now reached 14 movies, not to mention spin-off TV shows, and those people who are so into the franchise that they’d like to binge watch everything have been heavily debating what’s the best order in which to do so.
For example, you might think that the most logical order would be to watch the movies in the order that they supposedly took place, chronologically, and some people believe that would be best. But this would mean watching Captain America first, and doing so would mean that you miss a lot of the connections to the Iron Man and Thor movies that were released before Captain America, so it’s probably best (at least according to some) to watch Captain America right after watching Thor, but before the first Avengers movie.
Wherever you stand on this highly important debate (hope your sarcasm meter is working), the point is that sequencing matters.
And when it comes to your business, sequencing is truly important (much more so than the order in which you watch the Marvel movies). Doing the right things, and doing them in the right order, saves you time, money, and energy in the long run.
When Launching Your Website, Sequencing Matters
If you’re at the beginning of your journey as an educational consultant, one of your first, most important jobs is to get a website up. In the early days of the internet, you could have a successful consulting business without a website if you were a master of pre-internet marketing approaches and good at networking.
But those days are long gone. For one thing, having a website for your business is considered a basic must-have. If you don’t have one, you simply don’t look professional to many people.
Secondly, there’s so much competition in the ed consulting field today that you can’t rely on traditional networking and word of mouth to bring in enough business for you to succeed. You need a web presence that attracts new clients and brings them to you in order to supplement your work flow.
So, you must have a website. But how to go about developing and launching it? Well, like I’ve been saying, sequence matters. If you want to launch a good website, one that acts as a marketer and salesperson, one that not only looks good but works, I strongly suggest that you follow the sequence below.
Step 1: Get Clear on Your Goals
In my last post, I covered the three big questions you needed to answer before launching your website:
- Why are you? What do you offer that’s unique?
- Who is your ideal client? What are his or her problems?
- What is the main goal of your site? List building? Selling products? Getting you hired to speak?
You absolutely need to answer these questions as your first step in putting up a website. You’ve probably heard the old carpenters’ adage, “Measure twice, cut once.” Carpenters know that, if you do things correctly in the prep stages of a job, the actual construction goes much more smoothly.
The same is true here. If you don’t know what sets you apart, how can you write a website that positions you as unique in your field? If you don’t have a very clear idea of who your ideal client is and what keeps him or her up at night, how can you speak to those needs in your website copy? If you don’t have a clear idea of what you need your website to do for you, how can it work for you effectively?
So, step one is to answer these three questions. And, just because you’re anxious to get going, don’t skimp here. Really think about these questions and write out the most clear, detailed answers you can. Because the answers to these three questions will form (to use another construction analogy) the very foundation of your business.
Step 2: Write Your Website Copy (Or Have Someone Write it for You)
The next step in the process is to write (or have written for you) the copy that will go on your website’s pages.
Now that you know how you’re trying to position yourself and the audience to whom you’re writing, and now that you know what kind of action you’re trying to get that audience to take when they’re on your site, you have a much better idea about how to write the copy.
Keep the answers to those first three questions in mind as you decide what pages your site needs in order to achieve the goals you have for it, and keep them in mind as you write the copy. This will allow you to create a site that sends a clear, concise, targeted message to exactly the people you want to attract.
The reason I say “or have someone write it for you” above is that you may not feel super-confident about your writing skills and would prefer that a professional copywriter do this step for you. And, let’s face it, writing web copy intended to achieve a marketing goal is a very different thing than the kind of writing most people do from day to day. It is definitely its own genre.
So, if you would feel better having a professional writer do this part of the job for you, by all means do so. Just tell him or her the answers to those first three questions so they have that framework to work with, and they should be able to do a great job for you.
Step 3: Hire a Web Designer
Now that you have your copy written for all of your pages, it’s time to find a web designer to create a site that looks good and has the functionality you need to achieve your goals.
Now, here’s the most important point I want you to take away from this post: don’t switch steps 2 and 3! Never hire a web designer before your copy is written. Never, ever.
Why? A couple of reasons. First of all, web designers like things to look pretty, or flashy, or “cool.” But “pretty,” “flashy,” and “cool” often don’t work when it comes to marketing. In fact, they often work against your marketing goals.
For example, your web designer may want to put a cool video on your Home page, but when it’s installed, you find out that the video takes so long to load that people are waiting five or ten seconds before they actually can start to consume the material on your site. And you know what happens when site visitors have to wait five or ten seconds for a video to load? That’s right, they leave and never actually get to find out about you. Sure, the one in a hundred visitors who decides to wait out the video may think it’s cool once they see it, but your business can’t afford that.
Another reason to hire your web designer last is that, if he’s building the architecture of a site without knowing what the copy says or what actions you want your visitors to take once they’re on your site, he’s working blind. So, again, he’ll simply design something he thinks looks cool, and once you dump your content into that template, you may very well find that the content and the site design don’t work well together.
So, there you go. The right sequence in which to do things when launching your business website. To recap:
- Answer the three big questions: Who are you? Who is your ideal client? What do you want your site to do for you?
- Write (or have written) your website copy.
- Hire a web designer to create a site that works in tandem with your goals and your copy.
Do the right things in the right order, and you’ll be happy with the results.
