I have a friend with a fruit tree in his back yard. One time I was walking through the yard and noticed the branches of his tree bent over and touching the ground. Intrigued and almost alarmed, I went over to see what was pulling this tree’s branches down to the earth. As I got closer I noticed that the tree was packed tight with an amazing quantity of bright, ripened fruits. Naturally, I had to ask my friend how he got the tree to produce so much fruit.

“Oh,” he replied, “I have a professional arborist come out every year and prune it, that’s all.”

Owning fruit trees myself, I had always believed that good soil and water and occasional trimming by yours truly should be enough to make a tree happy. But his faithful investment in professional care had produced a truly astonishing result. In the past, I would have considered hiring someone to prune my tree to be a waste. But he was not even interested in trying to do the job himself.

“All I know is that my tree guy really knows what he’s doing, and that’s good enough for me.” Indeed this trust in his arborist paid off many times over.

When you hire an incredibly knowledgable tree care specialist like my good friend Robert Bailey (www.TrimmingDenver.com) to come care for your trees, you always know that you are in good hands. You not only know that your trees will be kept in best of health, but you will have peace of mind knowing that nothing is going uncared for.

The same holds true for your website. You can let it grow wild, and reap a little fruit. Or you can put your site under the continual care and pruning of professionals who know what they’re doing, who will both fertilize and prune your site until you are reaping the abundant harvest that you’ve always wanted.

To your success,

Steve Johnsen

When someone is not feeling well, they typically don’t walk into the pharmacy and ask for “a prescription drug.” Nor do they walk in and ask for some azacitidine. When you are ill, you first need a doctor to diagnose what’s wrong, to look at your symptoms and maybe run some tests. Only then can she prescribe the right medicine.

Building a website is the same way. When you hire someone to simply “build a website” it often does nothing to make your business better. What really makes a website effective is the diagnosis and prescription. (If the FDA regulated the marketing field, you would not be allowed to hire someone to build a website without getting consulting first in order to develop a clear marketing strategy.)

My firm, Cloud Mountain Marketing, is like a medical center with an attached pharmacy. Yes, we do build websites–all different kinds–but the service that is even more valuable is the consulting process I go through with my clients BEFORE the site is built.

Would you like your website to really, really work hard for you to make you money? Then talk to your doctor. Because it’s not just a website.

To your success!

I had a further thought after writing my blog post about the iconic image of a red bicycle in the snow (What’s your red bicycle). A brilliant photographer could turn that isolated incident into a compelling photo. He would select the right lens, the right camera settings, and may even lie on the ground to get the right angle. Then after setting everything up, he would snap the shot.

Once a photograph is taken, it’s very hard to go back after the fact and change it. Once I’ve got a photo of the red bicycle on a snowy day, I can’t go back later and Photoshop in the rider. A great web design is very similar. The art director has considered your content and message from every angle and creates a unique design that presents your story in the best light.

In a sense, you can distinguish a great design from a bland design by how easy it is to edit afterwards. Consider the typical yearbook page. There is a series of boxes, and the editor is dropping pictures and text into the appropriate boxes. It’s very easy to rearrange people on the page, or exchange one person for another. At the same time, there is nothing inherently compelling about the design, and nobody would enjoy looking at yearbook pages unless they know the people involved.

In contrast, consider the photos that go on the cover of National Geographic, or the “Best pictures of the week” web pages that we all enjoy looking at in our down time. The pictures may be of any subject, but they are interesting to look at because they captured the moment in a way that tells a story. At the same time, it would be impossible to go back and change the picture content in any way and still have the same impact.

The next time you are designing your website, consider how this principle affects the design process. A template where all the elements are easily interchangeable is hard to make compelling, and great design can only be accomplished when a thoroughly skilled designer has considered your story and message from many different angles.

Last weekend I was walking down the street with my daughter, and I happened to notice a red bicycle, angled slightly against a tree. It was snowy and icy and frigid outside, and I remember pausing and wondering who, in their right mind, would have been riding that bike on a 20-degree winter day. I also noticed half a dozen other people walk by and take no notice of what was to me a pretty cool visual impression. To me, I saw that bike as being central to a story.

This moment made me think of how powerful the visual element is in conveying any story, regardless of the medium. It also made me consider the brilliance of my art director, Haniel Hann, who is a genius when it comes to capturing something visually, finding the art in it, and turning it into a compelling story.

The reason Haniel is so different from a typical graphic designer is that his real gift is in visual storytelling. In fact, his background is not in graphic arts, it’s as a photographer and cinematographer. For Haniel, the way in which he goes about capturing that story is 99% attributed to what happens before the picture is taken. It’s in the thought process he goes through, the research he does, his gifted eye, and his deep knowledge of design as a means to convey a powerful message.

In our business, it can be very difficult to describe the real value in design. Many people think that if a website looks pretty, it’s been designed well. That couldn’t be further from the truth. The real value in design is in the process, the preparation. Those are the elements that cause people to really respond, engage, and relate to you and your business.

I look at website design the way I might consider a wedding album coming together: capturing a series of images in moments that ultimately deliver a compelling story. I challenge you to ask yourself this week: is your website design achieving that?

To your success!