Sounds like a reasonable move – every business needs a website these days. If you have the skills and tools to build a complex e-commerce site, how difficult can it be to build a simple website-plus-shopping cart for a single-owner business? Think of all the small home-based businesses out there without websites. Think of all the low-end shopping cart software that costs less than $300, all customizable. This could be fertile ground.

It’s just an exercise in scaling down your project management and technology, right?

Trouble is, unless the business owner is conversant with websites from both the business and technical aspects, you will need to provide a lot of education and guidance. You won’t have an RFP to help you scope the project or to understand the business and its online needs. You will need to learn about the quirks of their business and whether your preferred shopping cart software can handle them. All this before you (yes, you, not the client) can come up with a realistic set of requirements. Not to mention doing it all on a budget that will allow you to deliver something you’d be happy to list on your portfolio. Nope, it’s not about scaling technology, it’s an exercise in front-loading the project with consulting and support services. Because chances are while the customer knows everything there is to know about aromatherapy, fitness training, fine foods or vintage records, he knows nothing about building websites.

So, assuming you’ve decided to go trolling for web development business with small, single-owner businesses, here are some observations:

Offer professional content development as one of your services. This is a useful way to help both you and the client determine the information categories for the website. It helps to move the project along because you won’t be waiting for the client to deliver content. It ensures quality content – no matter how beautiful your design and intuitive the navigation, bad writing sabotages the effectiveness of the site.

For business owners who are not IT professionals, it can be difficult just organizing their ideas. I spent an interesting evening with a couple of very successful consultants from the healthcare industry. They are highly experienced users of Microsoft Office, Project, and Visio — not afraid of using technology. But when it came to structuring information for a professional website, they were overwhelmed. We went through an exercise of categorizing the type of information they wanted to present, which pages would have links to other pages, how much detail to provide, the fact that they could build two different pages to target two types of clients (corporations and individuals), and privacy issues.

Be sure you understand the customer’s online requirements in detail. There is some pretty good shopping cart software available for $300 or less. Most will handle 90% of online product ordering quirks. But every time you have to customize or change code, this extra work costs hard dollars. The problem is the customer is not experienced enough to warn you up front about the quirks. You really, really need to determine requirements in more detail than for web-literate customers.

As an example, I know a team of very smart, customer-focused web developers who took on a project for the owner of a cheque printing business. He wanted a shopping cart for ordering cheques online. I doubt they made money on this project because although there were only three types of cheques (manual, laser, continuous forms), there were a lot of options. It wasn’t like ordering a sweater in S, M, L and blue or pink. There were multiple colour and background options. Customers could order cheques in specified amounts of 200 – 5000. Customers also could attach a company logo to be printed on the cheque. Then there was the numbering on the cheques, not to mention the company’s and bank’s name.

In this situation, they were able to use workarounds and a few bits of custom programming to meet the requirements. But it all added up to more work than they had counted on; some of the tweaks they did partway through the project would have been easier to handle had they realized the issues earlier. Given the requirements, perhaps a different shopping cart would have been a better choice.

Use meaningful placeholder text in pages when you are showing work-in-progress. Rather than leave a page blank, populate it with text that indicates what should be on the page once it’s complete. “Your shipping terms and conditions go here”. Or the client will freak. Do not expect the customer to be able to visualize or understand how close you really are to being finished, or how trivial it is to add missing functionality. The more sample content you provide, the better. In general, I’d say that account management goes more smoothly if you are able to populate the work-in-progress in a way that helps the customer visualize the finished result. Remember that suggestion about a professional content developer.

Really know your system capabilities. When you have a low budget website, the temptation is to use lower-cost components, such as a cheaper shopping cart. Which you may not know as well as the one you normally use. Which could trip you up. In that online cheque store example, the shopping cart took all those colour, quantity, and address fields on a cheque order and turned them into one long text string description that looked terrible on the invoice – and in other places. This is not an issue if you know about this in advance and can (a) discuss with the customer how to format the invoice and (b) build some custom programming into the price.

Build some packaged services. Package A: website with a blog and no e-commerce. Package B: website with blog, shopping cart of up to 10 products with 5 order options each. Package C: website with blog, shopping cart, and up to 5 plug-ins for social networking. You get the idea. This is a low-budget customer, but if you put some parameters around the deliverables and build some templates to reduce actual development effort, you can still turn a profit.

Good documentation reduces support costs (and customer frustration). The “let them use Wordpress” approach just won’t work here when it comes to ongoing content management. If you are serious about building websites for small businesses, it’s worth investing in some “how to” document templates that the project team (and content developer) can fill in along the way. The customer might pay for your time to manage and edit the website, but if not, hand over a manual that shows exactly where every page, every product photo, product description, every price code lives. Also where every line of text that shows up on the screen, an invoice, or an automated email lives — and how to change or delete it. Hopefully, this will be a cut & paste exercise that is repeatable for each customer.

Repeatable really is the key to structuring low-budget projects. Low budget means you need to turn over a lot of these projects to equal the revenues of a large project. The more you can package up your services and delivery method, the lower your cost per project and the faster you can move on to the next. The most challenging part of working with a single-owner business is working with the client at a consultative level to determine requirements. This is also where you can really impress the customer with your willingness to learn about their business, helpful approach, and proactive ideas.

This is what you want because with this type of customer, word-of-mouth referral is your best advertising.

When we first took his company to market several years ago, he had just bought the business. For long-term planning purposes, I asked him about his exit strategy, and he replied that there were two options: build up the business to a point where revenues from a large installed base allowed him to cruise into retirement, or to sell the business one day.

In order to maximize resale value, it was key for the company to build brand awareness – superior technology doesn’t promote itself, I don’t care what engineers say. As a new player, another challenge was credibility. Plus, the company had a small marketing budget. When you run into this situation, the client has to be willing to commit a fixed budget every year so that even if the marketing campaign is low-key, it’s consistent every year. When there are good years, you can bump up the marketing activities, but the baseline remains consistent.

We allocated the major part of the company’s marketing budget to placing ads in the premier publication for his industry. Not full page ads, and not in every issue, but decent size ads running in every other issue to create a consistent, credible presence and to get across the key messages.

Nothing gets a message across as well as quotes from happy customers, so we also ran a case study campaign, pitching ideas for contributed articles to the editor of the publication and building a relationship so that we could have some influence on the timing of the stories; the goal was to have the contributed articles run in issues where the ads didn’t. We didn’t make this happen in every issue, but on the whole, the strategy was successful, nearly every issue contained something about the company, and the market noticed.

Over the next few years, the company got tangible proof these activities were making a difference: from the number of enquiries through the company’s website to the number of attendees at trade shows who came to see the product. The client came back from one show and told me, with a big grin, that one of the major players had been heard to ask “Who ARE these guys?”

Now a competitor has approached them about buying the company. The client is convinced that a consistent approach to marketing has helped establish brand value, making the company a valuable target for acquisition.  Love it when good things happen to good clients.

It’s an uneasy time for the industry, and we know that manufacturers are hurting.  This is an opportunity to show the market that despite the downturn, Dynacore is solid, doing well, and even acquiring major new customers; oh and by the way — if you want to visit a reference site, there’s now one in Hawaii.

Before Dynacore shipped out the hollowcore extruders to Hawaii, we dressed them up in (admittedly tacky) Hawaiian decorations and did a photo shoot.  My favorite design team at Honeycomb Creative made up a post card we are mailing out to conference attendees.  “We can’t send you to Hawaii, but we can send Hawaii to you”.  The offer is: come to the Dynacore booth for a chance to win a Hawaiian gift basket worth more than $100, shipped to your home.  Dynacore has even agreed to ship the tacky Hawaiian decorations with the trade show booth, to continue the theme while we are there.  Fun, but making a point.

In terms of sheer, brain-churning difficulty, these feature stories have been the most challenging assignments in my career.  The preparation work always makes me wish I had paid more attention to Cmpt 405 back at university.  Was that Algorithm Analysis or maybe it was Computational Linguistics? 

Imagine reading through a research paper (or three) written by computing science PhDs for other PhDs, then interviewing the researchers and hoping your questions do not seem too inane.  Then imagine writing a story for a general audience that properly describes the goals of the research, the technical challenges, and the way it might impact existing or future technologies. 

This work has provided exciting glimpses into the future and given me far more appreciation of the “magic” that we take for granted in all the technology that we use.

Here is a list of some stories I wrote for the Microsoft Research website.

This innovative start up had been successful selling to universities, research labs and government facilities by talking technology;  they realized that their sales cycles could be easier if they could talk to lab IT managers about cost savings.  They needed a white paper that addressed the total cost of operations of running a HPC facility and explained how SiCortex and its low-power architecture could reduce lab computing costs by more than 60 percent annually.   

The interesting thing about this assignment was that many of their technical papers and data sheets contained references to business value, but the information had not been consolidated into a single document that built a business case addressing total cost of ownership; the data was there, the optics were not. 

 SiCortex is also actively working with industry groups to define a “green index” for computing and is working with experts to make the Green Computing Performance Index (GCPI) a standard for comparing energy efficiency for HPC.  In addition to price performance, SiCortex hopes to make performance-per-kWatt an essential metric for buyers.  This white paper evangelizes the need for such a performance index and is aimed at manufacturers of computer systems and components.

I took on the role of product manager pro bono.  It’s good to support the arts, and it was also a chance to do something totally different.

Working with a small team of developers and one IT manager, we defined a list of deliverables to have ready before USITT.  They had decisions to make about pricing, licensing policy and product road map.  They needed marketing communications materials to take to the show, a product demo, and a website. And very importantly for a team that felt nervous because they had never worked a trade show before, they needed booth training. 

We did all of this on a shoestring.  The team went to USITT in March 2009 and caused a sensation.  Reports are that the novice booth bunnies did a great job at their first trade show. 

The next challenge: setting up a sales organization!

They emphasized the culture of collaboration at the lab, reflected in everything from building design and décor to flexible office hours.  They also wanted to make it clear that Microsoft Research puts a priority on advancing the state of the art in computing research for the industry overall, not just for Microsoft. 

A few things became clear over the course of the day.  First, that the most compelling words a potential candidate could read about the work environment at Microsoft Research Silicon Valley are words from another researcher. Next, that we would need several photographs of the lab to properly convey how every gathering spot in the building was also equipped to support discussions and brainstorming.  I interviewed a number of researchers and we took some photos.  The result was  a brochure with photos and quotes that conveyed a positive and accurate image of the lab’s working environment.

Working with video clips supplied by Dynacore, I created a script, and with help from the production team at BaseTwo Media, we delivered a 5-minute video (in English and Spanish versions) that highlights Dynacore’s low cost of operations and maintenance. The company has been pushing a total-cost-of-ownership message, because if customers do the math, Dynacore’s low consumables costs beats the competition hands-down. 

How has this video been working for Dynacore? 

More effective trade show presence: some manufacturers in this industry are big enough to ship huge machines to trade shows. This is something Dynacore wants to avoid. With this video, Dynacore can ship just a couple of machine components and still demonstrate the operational features of the hollowcore extrusion system by showing the video.

More effective response to phone and email enquiries: again, this is an engineering-centric industry.  They want to see machines in action. Posting the video on the Dynacore website allows them to send a link to the prospect. 

Better channel support: with agents in Central America, Europe, the Middle East and Far East, sales support can be challenging.  With DVD versions of the product video, agents are able to show the machines in action — and  very importantly, in action at various Dynacore customer sites.  A video proves that the machines are real, installed, and working.

Unexpectedly, this turned out to be a valuable educational tool. Dynacore has been working with an agent in Mexico for a few years now, and one of their managers said to me, “Now I really understand what makes these machines better than all the others”.

Better industry presence: all Dynacore ads now mention that there is a video on their website.  Also, the premier trade publication for the pre-cast concrete industry is CPI; it has set up a promotional video area on their website. Dynacore is one of the few hollowcore machinery manufacturers to submit a quality video to the site.

Of course the video is only one element of an integrated marketing program for Dynacore.  But you know your messaging is making an impact when the competition starts putting out ads about their low operations costs!

< Click here to watch the video!

The small marketing team lacked content development resources.  They needed better sales tools because their target customer was no longer the technical pioneer enthusiast – they were now selling to larger companies who needed business justification, and needed collaterals to help their champions (the network managers) make the business case to line of business managers. 

I wrote two white papers that highlighted how a slow website could impact business, especially for e-tailers.  The first white paper required finding data – reports, statistics and analyses – that could quantify the cost of downtime and poor response time.  To accompany the white paper, I also developed a spreadsheet that could be used as a sales tool to help customers calculate the cost of lost business opportunities and open up business level discussions.  In keeping with Strangeloop’s new strategy of selling to business managers, I also updated their web site content to emphasize business benefits rather than technology.