As of January 18, 2009, this blog is moving to Heart of the Matter Design.

Join me there for more in the series “Websites that Work: Your Step-by-Step Design Guide to Bring Your Passion to Pages that Move People.” You’ll see the site go from plain to powerful and learn the step-by-step process to do it yourself.

You can reach more people and attract more money. I’ll show you how. Go to Heart of the Matter Design for more information and to take part.

Thanks for reading the Inspired Raw Design blog. I look forward to bringing you even more high impact information on how to get the best web design at my new site.

Best,
Caryn

This is the last entry I’ll cross-post from the new “Websites that Work” series at my new site Heart of the Matter Design. Unfortunately, search engines penalize you for posting identical content in more than one place. So the Inspired Raw Design site will stay in place for awhile, but the blog won’t continue. I hope you’ll check out this series and follow the new Heart of the Matter Design blog.

Who’s Your Heart’s Desire?

No, not your dream date. Rather, the type of person you’d most like to work with. This could be your ideal client, the most important target for your nonprofit program or that dream funder. The purpose of defining your Heart’s Desire is so that your website speaks directly to her or him (I’ll use “her” going forward) and provides appealing information, features and visuals.

That helps you make the connection that starts a relationship. The better you address your Heart’s Desire’s needs, wants and wishes, the more enthusiastic she’ll be about taking action with you.

Not Everyone is Your Type

It can be hard to define your Heart’s Desire if you’re worried your excluding people. Don’t you want everyone to make the positive change you’re advocating, buy from your business or fund your nonprofit?

It isn’t likely to happen anyway. You may have heard the saying that you can’t be all things to all people. Guerilla marketing expert Jay Conrad Levinson says that defining who you’re going to reach out to means you’ll be “saying something to somebody instead of saying nothing to everybody.”

Make it Personal

Write about one person. That will help you understand and empathize with her more. You may need to write several Heart’s Desire profiles and then see what’s common and different across them.

Nonprofit pros, you’ll likely want profiles for the people you’re trying to reach with key programs, for funders and maybe even volunteers. You might need different profiles for a few key services or programs you offer if they serve very different people. Businesses may want more than one as well. If you’re a life coach for teens, for example, you’d have a profile for the teen and one for a parent.

You’ll look at what’s common across the profiles to help develop the shared areas of your website and then use the differences to really hone pages that speak to just one audience. And the good news is that defining your Heart’s Desire will strengthen the impact of all your communications and even your programs and services.

The point is to craft a story about people in a way that brings them to life for you… so you can bring your writing and site design to life for them. You might consider doing visualization, looking at photos, drawing or other creative means. If you’re part of an organization, who else might join you in this activity?

What to Include

Describe your Heart’s Desire across the areas below. Think through all the questions. If you get stuck on any question, come back to it or skip it.

Continue reading For Effective Web Design, Begin with Your Heart’s Desire

The Inspired Raw Design is becoming Heart of the Matter Design.  I’ll cross-post the next entry here, but then you’ll need to read or subscribe at the new site. (Apparently search engines penalize you for posting identical content in multiple places.)

You’ll get the high impact information you expect at Heart of the Matter Design, but with a new focus on the straight scoop on creating effective web sites that help you reach more people and attract more money.

This article is the first in my new free series where you can follow the transition between the two sites and learn how to design your own powerful site.

Welcome to Websites that Work: Your Step-by-Step Design Guide to Bring Your Passion to Pages that Move People. Over the next 6 weeks, you’ll get step-by-step help to (re)design your website for success. And you’ll see Heart of the Matter Design go from a plain Jane to something wonderful.

If you’ve read my free ebook How to Avoid Costly Design Mistakes: 10 Questions You Must Answer BEFORE You Get Creative, you may remember the story of the bank board of directors that wanted a website up right away, even with just the bank’s logo. They didn’t get that it takes a lot more to have a website produce any results. (If you don’t have a site and you’ve just got to put up something… you can check out these “Coming Soon” page design examples.)

So what does it take? It takes a thoughtful process. Here are the steps we’ll cover.

1. Strategy – determine which people you’re trying to reach and why they’ll engage with you
2. Site objectives – identify what people want from your site and what you want it to do
3. Story – define the key message you’re trying to communicate
4. Survey – validate your assumptions before you build
5. System – decide what platform will be used to build the site
6. Search engines – optimize your site so that people are more likely to find it
7. Structure – organize the site so it’s easy to use
8. Substance – create the written and functional content
9. Style – choose layout, images, colors and fonts
10. Screening – test the site

“Style”, which people often think of as web design, is step 9! That’s because it’s only a small part of  a site that gets results. You can end up with a stunning site that doesn’t move people or to bring in money. And that can happen whether you do it yourself, get free or low cost help or even spend thousands of dollars.

Continue reading 10 Steps to Websites that Work

Are you ready to get a website that works?

You’re doing something that really matters in the world. To have more impact, you need to reach more people. And you need more money, both to sustain what you do and to do more of it.

So do you have a website that powerfully supports what matters? Whether you have a site that’s underperforming or you’re looking to build, you can. Your site can help you move people to action to create positive change in their lives and for the world. And it can help move your finances from sparse to solid to super.

Learn Effective Web Design and See a Site Done from Scratch – for FRE*E
Now you can understand and implement a step-by-step web design process that gets results. You’ll follow along from the all-important foundation of strategy through critical considerations such as story, site objectives, structure and more. Then you’ll get into style: the color, fonts and images… where many people – including designers – mistakenly start their efforts.

You’ll see how the process works from beginning to end as you watch the new Heart of the Matter Design site created from (almost) nothing. You’ll get ideas and tips for how to use the process to design your own compelling website. Think of how much easier it will be to put the steps to work when you can look at what someone else has done.

You could pay hundreds or even more than a thousand dollars for this kind of how-to help. And it would be easily worth it because of the impact it can have for you and your business or nonprofit.

But now you can get it for FRE*E with the new online series: Websites that Work: Your Step-by-Step Design Guide to Bring Your Passion to Pages that Move People

Go to http://www.HeartoftheMatterDesign.com now to see the (very boring) starting site and subscribe to the series posts, if you’d like. Get answers to questions you may have in the “About the Series” section there or read on here. Continue reading Websites that Work: Your Step-by-Step Design Guide to Bring Your Passion to Pages that Move People

In 2010, I’ve got some exciting changes coming. You can expect more to-the-point information on how to get your Website to support what you care about. And that begins next week when you can follow my Website transformation process in a FREE blog series to learn how to design a more effective site for yourself.

Join me as I redo / replace the Inspired Raw Design website. I’ve decided to blog on the process, so you can see how it works. Whether you’re doing your own site or planning to work with a designer, you’ll get an introduction to the step-by-step process it takes to create a Website that gets results.

I’ll post an invitation next week with more details. I’ll be using some of the information to create paid products and group programs later in the year, so don’t miss your opportunity to get the scoop for free now. The blog series will start next week and continue for 4-6 weeks.

What could be better than starting 2010 with a Website that does more to support what you care about?