Please read my review of this excellent book on leadership.

It’s Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy

It’s not absolutely necessary for every page on every website to be entertaining.  Certain websites can succeed simply by providing information—think of online yellow pages, or mapping sites, or traffic information sites.  They’re pretty much no-frills operations, and if you think about it, that’s the way they should be. 

You don’t want a lot of song and dance when you search for something on Google, do you ?  You just want the results, and that’s what they give you.  The same thing applies to your own website.  Certain elements of it shouldn’t do anything other than provide the information your customers are looking for—contact information, frequently asked questions, and product lists, for example.  Anything other than the basic facts would get in the way and annoy your customers.

On the other hand, when you’re writing your blog, the last thing you want to be is plain and utilitarian.  If your blog doesn’t have some life to it, if it doesn’t give your readers something they didn’t expect, it’s not going to attract new readers or keep the few it has.  You need to make a special effort to keep your blog readers interested and engaged, even if it means saying or including things that you wouldn’t say or include elsewhere on your site.

Why are the rules so different for blogs?  Because blogs attract a different type of visitor than other websites.  When someone goes to one of the sites I mentioned earlier—a Yahoo business directory, let’s say, or MapQuest—they have a specific need, and they want to meet that need as quickly as possible.  If the page is clean-looking and the information is easy to find, the users are happy, and they’ll probably come back the next time they need the same kind of answer.

When someone returns to a blog they’ve read before, they’re not looking for one specific piece of information.  They’re just interested in seeing what the blogger has posted recently, whatever it turns out to be.  If someone is reading a blog for the first time, they’re most likely just trying to find out what the blog is about and whether it’s written in a way that they find appealing.  If they like what they see, they’ll read more, and they’ll come back later to see what’s new.

There are lots of things you can do to make your blog more interesting and entertaining.  The best way to get ideas is to read lots of other blogs and pay attention to the things that you find most appealing—if it works for you, it will probably work for your readers, too.  Here are a few basic tricks, if you’re looking for a place to start:

1.  Mix things up.  Don’t limit yourself to simple written text.  Most blog software makes it easy to incorporate audio and video files into your blog, so take advantage of that ability.  If you have something your audience would enjoy, put it on your blog.  If you don’t have anything pre-packaged, take a subject that you were planning to write about, and turn it into a three-minute video or audio recording instead.  You might not want to turn your entire website into a multimedia experience, but adding some variety to your blog can only help.

2.  Loosen your tie.  Blogs, in almost all cases, are less formal in tone than other web content.  If you want an illustration, take a look at the website of your favorite presidential candidate.  The front page will be all business, but if you look at the candidate’s blog (they all have them), you’ll notice a significant difference in style and substance—they’re going for that easygoing, down-home appeal.  You’re not running for office, I know, but you should follow the example.  If your posts too stuffy or businesslike, you’ll turn off readers who are used to something a little lighter.

3.  Link, link, link.  Many blogs become successful not so much because of the blogger’s original material, but because he or she provides so many interesting links.  If you see something on another site or another blog, don’t be afraid to put the link in your own blog.  Your readers might click away for a moment, but if you’re doing it right, they’ll come back.

Once you understand the unique demands of the blog audience, you’ll have an easier time attracting and retaining them.  More than anything else, be sure to follow rule #1: DON’T BE BORING!

If you’re building a website for the first time, or if you’re building a new site after using an old one for several years, you might be suffering from a bit of sticker shock.  That $50,000 web design estimate may have you reaching for Plans B, C, or D, but stop and take a deep breath.  Before you scrap the entire project, lay off a couple of employees, or give up on that new sedan you’ve had your eye on, remember that you have other options.  Chances are, you just haven’t shopped around enough.  Your website does not need to be expensive to be effective, and if you approach the bidding process the right way, you’ll get the right site at the right price.

The first thing you should do is figure out what you actually need from your site.  Some companies really do need a high-end site with user profiles, shopping carts, and sophisticated encryption, but that’s the exception rather than the rule.  Obviously, the more complicated a website function is, the longer it takes to build, and the more your web designers and programmers will charge you for it.  If you’re not going to be engaging in e-commerce —that is, if you’re not going to be selling products directly through the site, your needs are relatively simple, and you definitely shouldn’t be spending tens (or hundreds) of thousands of dollars on your site.  Make sure that you’re not spending money on functions you don’t need.

Once you have a clear vision for your site, make sure your web designers understand it.  One very simple way to do this is to provide examples from other websites.  If you’ve seen sites that have the same functions that you want, or that look the way you want yours to look, show those sites to your designers.  It will get the point across more effectively, and it will save you and your designers a lot of time.  If you find a site that’s very similar to the one you want to have, get in touch with the site’s owner to find out who did the work.  Designers are often more eager to work with customers who find them this way.  You may be able to contact another site’s designer directly, if there’s a “Designed By” link somewhere on the site.

After you’ve narrowed your requirements down to what you actually need, and you’ve made sure that your designers are working toward those requirements, you still may get a price quote that seems too high.  The solution here is to get another estimate, and another.  If your current design team can’t compete with the other bidders, it’s time to send them packing.  You may not like the idea of starting from scratch, especially if you’ve been working with the same team for a number of years, but the pain of starting over is nothing compared to the pain of paying through the nose for a website you don’t want.

If you are starting over, it’s not a bad idea to get five estimates, or even ten.  The web design industry is very large, but it’s also very new, and it’s what economists call an immature market.  There are still a lot of people looking in the wrong places for designers, and a lot of designers bidding on jobs that they shouldn’t be doing.  Things change so quickly in the web design world that it’s difficult to know exactly what a job should cost, so the only real solution is to shop around until you find someone who can do the work you need at the price you want to pay.  It may take a while, but it will be well worth the effort.

So, put that $50,000 estimate in the garbage can and start thinking about what you really need.  When you define your needs and talk to the right people, you’ll get the right website for your business, and you’ll feel a whole lot better when you take that Lexus for a test drive.

Pick up a copy of today’s newspaper.  Take out one page from the sports section, one page from the business section, and one page from the lifestyle section.  Set those three pages down next to each other, and compare the advertisements on each one.  Chances are, you could have guessed which section of the paper you were looking at based on the ads alone.  The ads on the sports page are aimed primarily toward men, the ads on the lifestyle page are aimed more at women, and the ones in the business page are intended specifically for professionals.  It’s not just a question of what the ads are selling– there are obvious differences in the types of images used in the ads, in the language used, and in the way the ads are laid out.  You can see the same basic patterns in magazines, in television ads, on billboards, and in any other type of advertising or marketing material.  If you want to attract your target audience, you have to present yourself in a way that your audience will find appealing.

This isn’t a new idea, but it’s not the first thing most business owners tend to think about when they’re building a website.  Knowing your audience is critically important, so you should do a little research and figure out what is most likely to attract the people you want to attract.  Your web designers should know all of this already, but you should know it too, and you should make sure your designers know that you know it.

Attracting Professionals:  Think about all of those illuminated advertisements you walk past when you’re in an airport concourse.  They’re clean-looking, often with a lot of white space, and they get right to the point—they’ll tell you, for example, that a certain software package is used by 90% of Fortune 500 companies, or that a certain consulting firm has saved its client $50 million in the last six years.  The graphics imply action, progress, and strength.  Those ads aren’t aimed at the family from Cleveland on their way to Disney World.  They’re aimed at business travelers, and the websites of those advertisers will look and feel very similar to their airport ads.  The impression you get from those ads and websites is the same type of impression you want your own website to give, if your site is aimed at professionals.

Attracting Women:  It’s east to see the differences between websites designed to attract women and the sites intended for men.  Sites for women tend to have softer colors, calmer images, and a different vocabulary.  Proceed with caution, though—you don’t want to your efforts to appeal to women to make you appear sexist or condescending.

Attracting Youth:  Are you trying to attract children or teenagers to your site?  If so, you may need to put more emphasis on flashiness and style than I normally recommend for other business owners.  Take a look at some random pages on a site like MySpace to get an idea of what this audience finds appealing.  You’ll see a lot of bold color, animation, and loud music.  While those are just the things that tend to drive adults away from a site, they’ll actually give you more credibility with the youth market.  

Attracting Blue-Collar Workers:  Blue-collar workers, by definition, aren’t using the Internet on the job, but that doesn’t mean they don’t use it at home.  If these are the people you want to sell to, just remember that they may be a little less web-savvy and a little more hesitant to do business over the Internet.  You should avoid using a lot of Internet jargon on your site, and make sure that you provide detailed instructions for using the site.

No matter who you’re trying to attract, spend some time studying the other websites your target audience is looking at.  This will help you decide what your own site should look like, and if you find a site you really like, you may be able to hire the same designers and programmers to do your site.  Look for a “Designed By” link somewhere on the site, and use it to contact the designers.  If you can’t find a link, try a WHOIS search, either on WHOIS.com or on any of the big domain registration site like GoDaddy.  Often, the technical contact listed for a site will be the designer or programmer, or at least someone who can point you in the right direction.

To hear about the emotion this book stirred up in me, read my review of "The Pursuit of Happyness"