Fundamental errors your site CAN avoid
Not putting service-to-others first
If your site is about you, it’s a vanity site, and this makes sense only if you’re selling yourself in some way. Up to a point, as a Human Services Professional (HSP), you are – but not beyond that point. People won’t generally be coming to your site because of you. They’re interested in your services. Get your priorities straight.
Operating on blind faith
I see people do this in two areas – they make assumptions about visitor response to the site, and about ease of visitor access to the site.
Assuming visitor response is favorable
Site creators tend to be blind to the flaws of their sites just like mothers are to the flaws of their children. Elicit visitor reaction. Winnow it (it won’t all be useful), and make good use of it. Do NOT assume that because YOU like the site, or your mother does, that it actually works. Solicit reactions from others – most particularly from people who are willing to give you honest feedback. You’ll find it very enlightening.
Assuming visitors will magically find your site
It’s widely agree that in business location matters a lot. But a website exists in “virtual space”. How will people find it?
Forget search engines…probably. Unless you have a book or training or therapy or treatment model you promote in other contexts, the Internet search engines will be essentially useless to you, unless people know and use your name. The Internet is huge. You’re a very small fish. In my own region, with a population of about 90,000 people, there are over 600 psychotherapists. How many will ever make into the first 10 items listed on a search output page? Why do you think you’ll do any better?
Or…make the odds more favorable. You can get into “smaller ponds”, by promoting a specialty. For example, I’m hard to find on the Internet, in my region, if one merely searches for me using “Bellingham Washington counseling” or “Bellingham Washington psychotherapy”. Look for “Bellingham Washington PTSD” and the result is much better. I’m third on the list! Use “Bellingham Washington trauma” and I’m second. In both cases, I’m the very first private practitioner listed. Why the dramatic improvement? Because my site makes it plain that I’m a specialist in trauma and PTSD, and my Google search results reflects this. My site’s evident specialization places me high in this special category.
How to win with the search engines, and still lose. My high search engine ranking still doesn’t help me much. In my area, which is more “small town” mentality than large, people don’t much use the Internet to find therapists. They use personal referrals by friends and family. They won’t be showing up at my website unless I send them there. That’s the plain truth.
Here’s a sobering exercise: using the name of a therapist you know who has a good reputation, a good website, and who lives in an urban area, try to find them on the Internet, without using their name. Assume you are merely looking for therapists (or whatever) in their area. Did you find them? Do you still think your new website is going to cause your schedule to fill up – just by the fact of its existence? That’s simply naive.
So, how will people get to your site? They won’t…unless you send them. This is one reason for the near-constant litany of “learn more about this at our website” messages on television, and in print articles and ads. Companies large and small are doing this – actively working to drive people to their site. If they think this is important and necessary to do, maybe you should also – but you’ll have to use something other than television ads to do it, obviously.
Usually, your site will best serve you as an adjunct to your primary professional networking and engagements, both in terms of services you deliver, and in terms of your referral development efforts.
Exhibiting your ignorance
If you are not reasonably familiar with driving on a freeway, you must do so with great caution. So it is, as well, with constructing a website. If you’re new at it (ignorant and inexperienced), be conservative. Give yourself time to learn more – and actively study the subject, which is large and complex. Consider: Will it really help your professional work if your website looks like it was purchased off-the-shelf at some kind of website garage sale?
This brings me to the matter of employing website-generation services, which are increasingly available with large Internet service providers. Typically, they extol how “easy” they are, and all the choices you’ll be offered, and their library of ready-made site templates. Their great virtue is their low cost. Done very carefully, this option just might work for you, and it’s clearly the cheapest, up front.
Please consider, in this context, just one word: “professional”. Do you really know enough to make the series of decisions you’ll need to make, even with such a purportedly “easy” service? Even more important, will the result convey that you’re a professional? “Cheap” just might mean more than you expect, with such a site.
The reason why I raise this question is that I’ve seen far too many professionals’ websites which plainly are off-the-shelf creations of some “service”. The site design is 10 years out of fashion, the colors are harsh and just plain wrong (a decade ago we had only a few choices, but this is no longer acceptable). The design is flatly amateurish, and the overall effect borders on the disastrous.
What’s most painful about such sites is that the person who produced it, who well may be a fine therapist, is advertising – to an increasingly Internet-informed and experienced public – that they really don’t know the limits of their knowledge. I don’t think this is reassuring, in the context of a decision about whether or not to engage this same person for some serious professional human service such as counseling. I suggest that you opt to display your skill and knowledge, not your ignorance and poor decision making. With what you do not know well, get qualified help, just as you would with any other important part of your life.
Confusion
What is your website about? Is it obvious? How do you know? Have you had others (not your friends or clients) look at it, and then asked them what they thought it was about?
Is it obvious at all times where one is in the website page structure? Many people find all aspects of computer use confusing. Your site should take them in the opposite direction, and not merely add to their distress.
Is it obvious who wrote the content? And when? (If not, it well may appear that you are “borrowing” your content. Ouch!) When you make allusion to some external source or authority, do you give a full citation? Basically, this is, again, about wearing your professionalism where it may be seen. You paid serious time and money to acquire it. Why not show it?
Illicit borrowing (or worse)
Unless expressly licensed in some non-standard way1, original material in any form, published anywhere at any time, is copyrighted – by the content originator. This is true in all cases, whether or not express notice is given. That’s the law, and in one form or another, it’s internationally applicable. If you don’t understand how copyright way works, study up. I did, and I’m quite certain of what I just told you.
If you use content – of ANY kind – which you did not yourself produce, get written permission. No exceptions. Always give correct source attribution. I continue to see professional sites which offer material the site owner plainly did not develop, for which NO credit or source is given. This is simply not acceptable professional practice.
Ineffective communication
Good writing, and good design (structure and visual) simply works. It gets the job done. If it also pleases or amuses, that’s an added benefit. On the other hand, writing and design which bewilders, violates common norms, or offends common sensibilities very likely betrays either ignorance or indifference, and neither is likely to serve any purpose you had in mind when constructing your website.
“Special mention” in this category has to go to spelling errors. Forget to spell check your content, and you tell people any number of things they’d rather not know, and you’d rather not tell them, if you think about it – that you’re careless in your work is right at the top of the list. Ditto for grammatical errors2.
Note
1 The content on my professional website IS expressly licensed so that others may use it. This is part of my “service-to-others” orientation.
2 Confession: You have company. I’ve been guilty of both. I find that one of the hardest things to do is to discipline myself to return to my writing and proof read it yet again. Yet, consider the effect if I don’t. Who do I really want to find my errors? If you dont write good, what will they thimk? (You see? Impressive, yes?)