Five Steps to Create a WordPress Website

OK, I'm going to give away a little of the farm on this blog. Why? I thought it would be nice to provide everyone with my Five Steps to creating a WordPress website that I follow when setting up budget friendly websites for my clients. After some experimenting, I have finally devised a process that works efficiently for setting up inexpensive, yet professional and easy to manage, websites for companies. This process involves the use of three well established tools in the industry, GoDaddy for the domain and website hosting, TemplateMonster for the website design and WordPress for the website creation and management.

Step 1: Setup a GoDaddy account, register or transfer the domain name (ex: companyabc.com)that wil be used for your new website, then setup a basic WordPress hosting plan. Here are links to articles on GoDaddy that explain this process in more detail:

• Setup GoDaddy Hosting
• Install and Setup Wordpress

Step 2: Once you have your GoDaddy hosting account setup and have downloaded and installed the free WordPress content management system software, you now have the foundation needed to build your new website. The next step is to get a website design. TemplateMonster.com is the best resource available to find and purchase a pre-built website design that will save you thousands of dollars in custom design fees. Once you are on the TemplateMonster website, there is a tool you can use to search through thousands of website designs, and in this tool, make sure you click on the Products option and then from the drop-down menu, choose "WordPress Themes". This will insure that you are only searching for WordPress compatible designs.

After you have chosen the theme you would like to use for your new website, then purchase and download the files. Most themes will provide you both the original design files (usually PhotoShop files) and then a zipped file of the actual WordPress theme. You will not need to worry about the design files unless you plan to do major customizing to the template.

Step 3: Login to your new WordPress hosting plan. Back in Step 1 when you set this up, it will probably have created an address like this: www.yourdomainname.com/wp-admin. Once you are logged into WordPress, then click on Appearance in the left hand column and then click on Themes. Once on this page, then click on the tab at top of the page called Upload. From here you will simply find and click on the template file you purchased in Step 2 and it will automatically download to your hosting plan and set itself up. At this point you now have the beginnings of your new website.

Step 4: Use your new WordPress CMS to customize as much of the website design as you choose or is available to modify on the particular theme you purchased. For example, these are the common design updates I do for my clients:

• add a custom header, which includes the company's logo and tagline
• modify the color scheme to match the company's corporate colors
• change some or all of the fonts
• setup Widgets (which are free).  Widgets are little bits of content, images or interactive features you can add to different areas of your website, most commonly in the right hand column of the pages.
• install and setup Plugins (most of these are free or fairly inexpensive). Plugins are pieces of functionally that you can add to your site, like a calendar, slideshow or ecommerce system.

Finally, you will begin to build out the website using the Pages and Posts tools of the WordPress CMS. Here is a link with more details on how to use WordPress:

http://codex.wordpress.org/First_Steps_With_WordPress

Step 5: Launch your new website and promote it on the Internet. If you have been pointing your actual domain name to the website during the entire process, then essentially your site is live as soon as you start letting people know about it. If you have been using a temporary domain, you'll now want to point the real domain to the site and update that in the WordPress General Settings section.

When I launch a new website for my clients, I will actually setup both Google and Bing/Yahoo webmaster accounts that allow me to then register the website with these search engines. If you do this as well, you will also have access to many free tools that these search engines provide to help you understand how your website can best be marketed on the Internet (including Google Analytics for understanding how users find and interact with your website). The following are links with additional details on how you go about setting up these accounts:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/
http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster

I mention Google Analytics above; one of the nice things about WordPress, is that it offers several Plugins that allow you to actually have your Google Analytics reports integrate right into the Dashboard for when you login to manage your site. It also offers some plugins, like ShareThis, that allow you to easily integrate social media sharing features on to every page and post of your website.

And so that is basically the process. Below is a link to a website Web Point Oh! just developed for a new client of ours using this same process:

Dine' Creations: ecommerce website for Native American jewelery:
www.dinecreations.com

If you have any questions, please comment on this blog or contact me at Ken@WebptOh.com or use my handy contact form located on my website at www.WebptOh.com.

Fresh off the Press Digital Marketing Stats

So I realize the irony in this article's title, since digital marketing is usually not printed.  But it sounded cool.

Well, the reason for this post is that I have just been reading through the 2011 State of Digital Marketing Report as published recently by Webmarketing123 from a survey of 500 B2B and B2C marketing professionals during August and September of this year. And it's fascinating. Click here to view the summarized infographic of the report, or read on where I will both summarize and provide my insights into these latest findings.

The report focused its survey questions on three main digital marketing areas: Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click (PPC) and Social Media. The very first statistic showed that for B2B companies, their biggest impact from digital marketing has been with SEO, while B2C companies are fairly evenly distributed across all three areas. It goes on to state that most companies are going to be increasing their digital marketing budgets for next year, with the biggest increase happening in Social Media management, where currently a significant majority of the companies surveyed are handling it in house. As the importance of Social Media increases, I believe that marketers like myself will become increasingly more in demand, as long as we keep up with the changes and can prove our value.

Since I'm a big fan of having objectives, the next graphic in the report was of keen interest to me, where it showed that both B2B and B2C companies have almost the same order of priorities for their online marketing:

1. Generate Sales
2. Generate Leads
3. Generate Site Traffic
4. Build Brand Awareness
5. Build Online Community

I myself put generating leads above generating sales, since usually you need leads first to close sales, and so sure enough one of the next items in the report highlighted the percentage of leads generated from each area. Facebook at 47% just edged out LinkedIn at 34.8% and Twitter at 33.8%, which of course leaves 31.6% of respondents stating that they have never generated leads from digital marketing. I'm guessing those 31 percent probably just don't have the right digital marketing plans in place, and hopefully will be revamping their strategies for next year.

The last statistic presented in the report asked the participants which topic they wished to learn more about, and the interesting thing is that although most did want to learn more about SEO, PPC and Social Media, the biggest response was learning overall cross-promotional digital strategies. And that is great news, because that is really what it is all about, understanding that big picture of what your overall Web Presence is and how to most effectively present your story to your target audiences.

If you would like a copy of the full report, please contact me at Ken@WebptOh.com or leave feedback.

Top 5 Pros and Cons to Taking your Office Virtual

It started last August with what I now refer to as the "Great Computer Crash of 2011!". My laptop decided one Tuesday morning that it didn't feel like booting up. I'm a patient guy, and I know sometimes I abuse my laptop, so I decided to relax and to give it a few minutes and then I would try it again. And so I did, and I did it again and again until it became annoyingly apparent that the computer was indeed DOA.

No problem, I had just backed up the computer less than two weeks before with a system that was supposed to let me push one button to put my computer back exactly like it was at the time it was backed up. I grabbed my original restore disks that I had created when I first got the computer and went to town. Within an hour my laptop was working again, but just like it was when I first bought it. So I pushed the magical "restore from backup" button on my third-party backup system, and it didn't really work. It did move all of the files over, but just dumped them into a new folder on my laptop.

For the next two weeks I had to spend time, that should have been spent running my company and taking care of my clients, putting my laptop back like it used to be, with all of the same software, settings, etc.. And interestingly enough, after this happened, certain ads started to catch my attention.

Like this one from Google:

And this one from Microsoft:

 

So began my research into whether the best solution would be to go virtual with my company's office and basically just use hardware, any ol' hardware, as a dummy terminal to access that office. Or if sticking to the tried and true (and sometimes painful) status quo was what I should do.

This is what I have come up with, my list of Top 5 Pros and Cons to Taking Your Office Virtual:

PROS

1. Quick and easy access to your documents (assuming you live/work in an area where wifi connections are as abundant as reality stars). You can basically use anyone's computer, or in the Google Apps scenario, buy a Chromebook for under $500.
2. Backups, who needs them. They have always been a source of stress and pain for most computer users, me included. Now your documents are stored in the "cloud" and are the responsibility of your virtual office provider to keep backed up.
3. Virus protection, who needs it. Same scenario as with backups. Especially with the new Chromebook, which touts itself as the first computer built from the ground up with security and protection as a primary goal.
4. Collaboration is a breeze. Both Google Apps and Microsoft Office Live provide a myriad of collaboration options, from calendar sharing to project management tools. This is a significant advantage for either companies with multiple employees or contractors who work with many different clients, suppliers, etc..  For those completely independent professionals, this is not that great of a benefit for going virtual.
5. Less expensive. With a virtual office, you pay a monthly service charge to the provider, which could be as low or lower than $5 per month per person. Now think about how much money you would save by not having to purchase licenses. Even the cost of the most basic office software license, plus virus protection and more, can run into the hundreds if not thousands of dollars every year. Oh and did I mention how much you will save in IT support costs?

CONS

1. You have to completely rely on Internet access to do your job. If you lose that access, say you find yourself out of range, your service goes down, you forget to pay your bill... then you are just out of luck. A note here, the Chromebook and some tablets have 3G as a backup source for Internet connectivity.
2. There are applications that most professionals need and use on a regular basis that are not yet in the cloud, so you still need them resident on your computer. At least for the near future, there is really no true virtual office, more like a hybrid office instead.
3. Bleeding edge technology with bleeding edge issues. I read several posts from people who are already living in the cloud, and all have had performance and compatibility issues and straight up crashes as they've been working on their documents.
4. The tools are not as full featured as the licensed software. I believe Microsoft Office Live will come the closest to mimicking the same software you run on your computer now, with Google Apps still playing catch-up, but neither will be as robust as the latest office suite on today's computers.
5. Hmm, I can't think of a fifth one, so that means there are more pros than cons... where was that ad again?

If you agree, disagree, or have any questions, please comment on this blog or contact me at Ken@WebptOh.com or use my handy contact form located on my website at www.WebptOh.com.

Google Targets Small Businesses with new AdWords Express

I like it! Since I already setup Google Places pages for most of my clients, especially those who cater to a local market, Google's new AdWords Express is an easy way to allow my clients to try their hand at online advertising.

AdWords Express, although simliar to the regular AdWords (where you create an ad and then pay a per click cost for every person who clicks on your ad from a standard search results page), allows you to target only those users who are doing a location based search. So for example, if I went to google.com or maps.google.com and did a search like this "florist in denver colorado", Google will provide me with a search results page containing a map of local companies that match that criteria, plus, it will serve up ads from the Adwords Express customers. This makes a big difference when you are a smaller business trying to compete with larger companies who have the resources to make sure they show up "organically", because at least your ad will display right below their listings on the same map. You can even choose to have your ad link directly to your website or to your Google Places page.

Here is a animated video Google put out to better explain:



If you are a small business owner and believe that AdWords Express could be the right solution for your online marketing intiatives, please contact me at Ken@WebptOh.com or visit my website at www.WebptOh.com.

Top Five Social Media Sites for Businesses

So I've been eating, living, breathing and experimenting with social media websites for the last several months and have come up with my list of the Top Five Social Media Sites for Businesses. For each of the social media websites listed below, I provide a short summary of what the site is and the reason it's included on this list.

#5: Linked In
(www.linkedin.com) A few years ago Linked In was all of the rage for professional adults; like how MySpace was the hip place to hang out for teenagers. In my opinion both sites are on their last wheeze. However, Linked In is still a valuable resource for certain business needs, such as job postings, inter-company communications and referrals. The site allows a person and/or a business to have a page of content and photos, to keep that page updated with posts, and to interact with other people and businesses by following their posts. As a marketer, my issue with the website is that frankly it's boring and not an attractive place to promote one's wares. But I have included it in this list because it has over 100 million members and because it's "share" button is so prevalent through-out the web.

#4: Twitter
(www.twitter.com) I call Twitter the "Fast and Furious" of the social media world. It really is all about posting quick messages with short life spans. You as a person or business don't have the ability to create your own custom website within Twitter, so you have to rely on the quality and consistency of your "tweets". And that can be rather hard in the beginning, especially since you'll be forced to learn the language of Twitter. You see,it's all about "@"s and "#"s and shortened URLs. Here is a link to nice tutorial on how best to use Twitter. I include Twitter on this list because if you follow the right people, and are in turn followed by the right people, you have an incredibly strong and cheap forum for communicating your messages and promoting your brand. And just like I mention about Linked In above, the "tweet" button is on a huge number of websites, so your website should be included as well.

#3: Groupon/Living Social
(www.groupon.com and www.livingsocial.com) Yes, I know these are actually two websites, but honestly they could be twins. Groupon and Living Social are all about the deals. These sites best serve B2C type businesses, like massage therapists, coffee shops and clothing stores. But if a B2B business were creative enough, I think it could benefit just as well. How about a CPA firm offering a 50% discount on setting up a business's QuickBooks software? So these sites allow users to sign-up to receive "daily deals" and "getaway packages". Then enough people have to purchase that deal or coupon to then make it active. As the business who chooses to offer a deal, be warned, you probably won't make any money from the deal itself, not after the discount you have to offer to be accepted onto the website and then the commission the website will take. Think of it as an advertising cost that gives the potential to convert these first time customers into repeat business.

#2: Facebook
(www.facebook.com) Ah... Facebook, they made a movie about this didn't they? I was too busy hanging out on Facebook to catch the movie, but I'm sure it was great. Well, if you want to have a presence on a website with over 700 million members, Facebook be it. As a professional or a business, you have many options with Facebook, from customizing your own page (and with enough followers, you even get your own custom Facebook domain name), to posting news and links, to running targeted ads; heck Facebook even provides you with detailed stats about your followers. And just like Linked In and Twitter, when is the last time you visited a website and didn't see the "Like" button next to an article? So why didn't I rank Facebook #1 on this list? Because it's not Google.

#1: Google Plus
(plus.google.com) The 1000 lb gorilla just decided to play in the social media sand box. Google Plus is still in beta testing, but will be released to the public soon. Google took it's time and learned what works and what doesn't work about other social media sites. What it learned is the power of social media is actually in the "social" and the "media". Google Plus will have new generation tools making it incredibly easy for you as a professional or a business to connect to your audience and provide them with content they are most interested in receiving; that's the social part. The media part is that Google has already begun to embed this into their search results in the form of a "+1" button. What bigger or more important media can you work with than Google.com? Therefore, even though at this writing, Google Plus is just a newborn waiting to greet the world, I truly believe it will and needs to be a business's #1 social media site.

If you agree, disagree, or have any questions, please comment on this blog or contact me at Ken@WebptOh.com or use my handy contact form located on my website at www.WebptOh.com.

Top Ten Google Analytics Terms

Have you ever opened up your Google Analytics account, or any other website traffic reporting tool for that matter, and just stared at it, wishing you could see through the overwhelming amount of data to what is really important?  Me too in the beginning.

So to that end, I am providing my list of the Top Ten Google Analytics Terms to help you focus on what are generally the more important stats to understand about your website traffic.  All of the below are based on the time-period you choose when you run your report (i.e. daily, weekly, monthly, etc...):

1. Visits: total number of visits to your website. If I visited your website last week and then again a couple of days ago, I'll have increased your Visits by 2.
2. Unique Visitors: total number of Unique Visitors to your website. In the example above, I would have only increased your Unique Visitors by 1 (assuming I use the same computer).  If my wife, using her own laptop, also visits your site during this time-period, then you would have 2 Unique Visitors, me and my wife.
3. New Visitors vs Returning Visitors: Shows the percentage breakdown of people who are visiting your website for the first time and those who are returning visitors. Good statistic to understand if your website mostly attracts new visitors, but doesn't keep them coming back or if it's doing the opposite.
4. Bounce Rate: percentage of visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. So I hit the Home page of your website and then click away to another website; I just increased your Bounce Rate percentage.
5. Pageviews: a Pageview is an instance of a page being loaded by a browser. If I were to visit your website and view both your Home page and your Contact Us page, the Pageviews from my visit would be 2.
6. Average Time on Site: the average amount of time visitors are staying on the website. Depending on the goals of your website, you may want this number to be larger or smaller, but usually larger.
7. Traffic Sources: breaks down the traffic to your website by percentages based on where the users came from before visiting your site
• Search - traffic from search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc..)
• Referral - traffic from other websites (other websites with links back to your site)
• Direct - users who typed in your URL address or who had a page of your website bookmarked
• Campaigns - traffic from any campaigns that you are tracking, like an email blast that contained links back to pages on your website
8. Search Terms: displays the keywords your site visitors used to find your website. This is helpful to determine if you have optimized your website for the correct search terms or not.
9. Top Pages: lists the most visited pages of your website. Usually your Home page is the most visited, but then seeing which of your interior pages are the more popular ones helps you understand what content on your website is of value to your target audience.
10. Social Engagement: Google now ranks on how socially "engaged" your website is. In other words, whether or not pages on your site are being shared via Twitter, Facebook, etc..

OK, so these are the Top 10 items that I look at when reviewing mine or my clients' website traffic reports. There are many other stats and of course the ability to create custom reports, but the above list will provide you with a really good overview of how your website is performing. I invite discussion from those who agree/disagree or who have questions.

Please contact Ken Sabey by phone (303.506.3406), email (ken@webptoh.com) or feel free visit my website at www.WebptOh.com.

Is Google's new +1 a Game Changer?

Google has jumped into the Social Media craze with its new +1 button.  Google claims that this button, which you first need to have a Google Public Profile to use, is it's version of "this is pretty cool, you should check it out". In other words, people that you have connected with could +1 a site and you would see their recommendation, or vice versa. You can also choose to have your recommendations be made public, so that even strangers will know that you like a website when it comes up on their search results page. Below is an example of my Google public profile page with my list of +1s (note that apparently Google is not very good at extracting thumbnail images yet):

The way it works is that now when you do a search on Google, the results page will show the +1 status below each result. In this example you can see that it shows my own website and how I have +1'd several of its pages.

What does this mean and how is it different than other Social Media recommendation features, such as the Facebook "Like" button? Well, first off it's Google, second it's Google and oh, third it's Google. Being the number one search engine and having a heck of a lot of user's defaulting their browser's home page to your website is a bit more powerful than giving users the ability to see a "Liked" page on a friends Facebook wall. However, it will only be as successful as the people who use it, and right now that is not very many. I personally believe that it will continue to grow, and we'll start to see all of our favorite websites adding the +1 button next to their Facebook and Twitter buttons (which reminds me...).

But, there are those who would disagree with this analysis, those who are actually annoyed by having Social Media infringe on what should be neutral ground. What do you think?

Please contact Ken Sabey by phone (303.506.3406), email (ken@webptoh.com) or feel free visit my website at www.WebptOh.com.

Having a few Problems using your Website's CMS Tool?

Most websites these days are built with a Content Management System or CMS to allow the site owner to "easily" manage the content and images of his/her website. You noticed I placed "easily" in quotation marks, because in my experience that is not always the case; unless you know the tricks of the trade.

Here is my list of the Top 10 Tricks for Editing Content with a CMS:

1) Never paste your text directly from a word editor such as and in particular Microsoft Word. Always, always, paste the text into Notepad first (to strip out all formatting) and then cut and paste into your CMS's HTML editor. Yes, you may need to do some formatting again, but it will be much easier to format from scratch than to try to fix formatting issues that came over from your Word document.

2) In most HTML editors the paragraph return (two line spaces) is hitting the Enter/Return key on you computer, a line return (single line space) is holding your Shift key down why pressing the Enter/Return key.

3) Don't do like I was taught in school and add two spaces between sentences. That causes your HTML editor to place a hard space ( ) which can cause major formatting issues, especially when you are editing text in a small area; like a call-out box or thin column.

4) After you input your text, click on the Edit HTML or Source button on your HTML editor's menu to see the actual HTML code. Just look for any odd characters or code that don't seem to belong there. Cut the code out, then go back to your regular view and see if your text layout still looks fine, if so, that was the correct decision. If not, go back to the Edit HTML view and paste the code back in.

5) When inserting images, make sure you size the image first before placing it onto the page. Yes you can "scale" the photo, but let's say you added five photos to the page you are working on, each photo is a huge 1500x1500 pixel image that you scaled to only 200x200. Your site visitor still has to download five huge photos when accessing that page, even though they only appear as smaller photos on the page.

6) Make sure your CMS's HTML editor has a spell check tool built into it, and then use it always.

7) Whenever you add a link for some text or an image, click on the "Target" option if you have the ability, and then click on "New Window". This keeps your current page active for the site visitor while opening up a new browser window for the new link.

8) Use Tables! The tables tool in the HTML editor is your best friend. It is by far the easiest and cleanest way to format your text and imagery on a page when you want to do more than just write a couple of paragraphs. It's very handy for doing pages like Bios and Portfolios, etc..

9) If your CMS allows you to input the Meta and Alt tag data, do it. Don't get lazy. Spend that extra few minutes to create or update these tags so that the search engines will better understand your website for ranking purposes.

10) Make sure your website has been designed with style sheets (CSS), and integrate those into your HTML editor. So when you want to add a paragraph title for example, that font formatting should already be set and just a drop down menu click away for you. This will also keep your website consistent from page to page and from editor to editor.

Please contact Ken Sabey by phone (303.506.3406), email (ken@webptoh.com) or feel free visit my website at www.WebptOh.com.

What should you include on your mobile website?

I recently had to answer this question as Web Point Oh! went through the process of creating a mobile version of its website. What content and imagery did I really want to include on our mobile site?

To answer that question, I first had to decide who the mobile site was going to be for and what technology would I use to build it. Let's start with the "who"; I knew it would be my same core target audience as with my main website, except that those users would have a different agenda. If they were using their phone to access my site, they were looking for either a way to contact my company or directions. Or it could be that the user found the website while browsing on her phone and just wants to read a brief overview of what Web Point Oh! is all about. Therefore, I decided that I didn't need a mirror of my main website, but more of a summary and an easy way to contact my team and an even easier way to get directions to our office.

Now I needed to tackle the technology issue. Web Point Oh! has a content management system called Oh!SoSimple, therefore I knew we would be using our own tool, but how? There were two options that became apparent to us. One would be that as you created a page for your main website, you could also have that same page automatically copied and formatted for the mobile site. The second option, and the one I went with, is that you have a completely different part of the CMS where you create and manage the mobile website. I choose this option because of how I answered the "who" question and decided I wanted more control over these pages to have separate content and images for the mobile site.

The final technology piece was to determine what phones we would optimize the mobile website for and which we wouldn't. Again, going back to our target audience of marketers and business owners, we decided that smartphones would be our baseline; that we weren't concerned with every single cell phone on the market. We also decided to use a "sniffer" to detect the site visitor's operating system, so that we would not have to market the mobile website separately. I.E. instead of telling the world about our main website at WebptOh.com and our mobile website and m.WebptOh.com, we just market the WebptOh.com site and our technology will server up the appropriate version.

Okay, now that I had determined the mobile version would be different from the main website, I had to determine how would it be different. A big decision was that I choose to not use any images, other than our logo in the header of each page. I also choose to have a very simple navigation structure in the header and to include a link that could take the visitor to our main website and would override the "sniffer" to allow her to view that site on her phone. I included just enough pages and content to convey a strong sense of what my company is all about and how it can help the site visitor with her Internet marketing needs. I then made sure to integrate our social media options, such as the Facebook "Like" button into the footer of each page. Finally, I included our contact form on every page as the call to action that I feel is so important to include in all of our communications.

The last step was to include a link on the Contact page that would take the visitor directly to our Google Places page to access an interactive map and directions to our office.

If you would like to see this in action (and please provide feedback on what you think or the experiences you have had on this topic) please visit our website at WebptOh.com.

If you have questions, please contact Ken Sabey by phone (303.506.3406) or email (Ken@WebptOh.com).

Psychology of a Website

I recently hosted a roundtable discussion with members of the Business Marketing Association Colorado Chapter. We discussed how a website can no longer be "one size fits all", that good old marketing 101 tactics need to be employed before you ever start designing and building a website.

I showed an extreme example of a website with way too many things happening just on the Home page and asked the attendees these questions:

Do you feel like your company’s website is evolving into this?
Do you really have that many messages for that many people?
Are the stakeholders within your organization all fighting for real estate instead of prioritizing to serve your target audience?

Here is a link to that site:

I went on to show a site that has, in my opinion, provided a well thought out design geared specifically for its target audience (unfortunately since the writing of this blog, Intuit, who purchased the company a few months ago, has revamped the website into a plain vanilla envelope of a site):

• Y Generation
• Tech savvy, culturally liberal & environmentally conscious

We then discussed a faux case study of a company that wants to provide an online money management website for Mexican American small business owners in the Denver, Colorado market. The company would generate its profit by selling investment and other banking services through the website, while providing its site users a simple to use tool for managing both their business and personal finances.

Our first objective was to identify the Target Audience, research who they are and why they buy, and then translate that data into User Preferences to then create a Blueprint document that could be handed over to the website design and development team to build a website to serve this specific set of users.

We decided that basic demographics, which can be found on the US Census website, along with some key Cultural Differences, are what we needed to better understand our audience. There were several considerations that we discussed for this exercise:

• Cultural Group vs. Minority - cultural group is a more modern and descriptive term
• Mexican American vs. Hispanic - each group has its own identity, if lumped together the differences disappear
• Cultural Differences vs. Stereotypes - for instance individuals within this cultural group might refer to themselves as Latino, Hispanic or Mexican American
• Research vs. Assumption - don’t assume user preferences

We then talked about how to determine the Cultural Differences between the general population and our target audience. We determined that it is a matter of hiring a research company and/or surveying a segment of the target market and/or having a resource within your organization that already posses key knowledge of these differences.

My company has such a resource for this faux case study. Here are the Cultural Differences for our target audience that we needed to consider (for additional details on each of these bullet points, please contact me):

• A Collectivist Culture With Strong Family Values (Familismo)
• A Hierarchical Culture That Values Respecto  
• Hierarchy in Families
• Uncertainty Avoidance/Fatalismo
• Task vs. Relationship/Simpatia and Personalismo

At this point we had defined our target audience, researched some basic demographics to understand who they are and then determined their key Cultural Differences. Now it was time to translate this information into a set of User Preferences for the website.

There is no magic formula for this process; it is a collaborative effort with the key stakeholders of the website. What is important is to have taken this approach to first identify your Audience(s) so that you can think about how they want to interact with your company.

In the final step I showed the attendees a free online tool for building Site Maps (visual representations of the website structure, similar to an organizational chart) and Wireframes (simple two dimensional representation of an actual web page layout) called Cacoo. It is an extremely easy to use tool and has several collaborative tools so that you can work with a team of people located anywhere in the world.

By converting the User Preferences that your marketing team created through this process into a Site Map and Wireframes, you now have a Blueprint to hand off to your web designers and developers to build the best website experience possible for your site's Target Audience.

If you have questions, please contact Ken Sabey by phone (303.506.3406) or email (Ken@WebptOh.com).