Web Designer

M. Toastmaster, fellow Toastmasters (and honored guests): Anyone present for the Tall Tales Contest knows that I love to climb. I've always been a very physical person. So what is a Climb-aholic doing designing websites?

Designing a web page and getting people to actually visit it is as much of a challenge as climbing the six-foot fence enclosing our backyard was when I was 2 1/2.

I never would have guessed it, but two years ago, my Dad (and boss for the last 13 years) handed me an HTML program and a book on website design and asked me to design a website for his new business.

I started out working for my Dad's Certified Public Accounting partnership when I was 12, addressing and stuffing envelopes. Two years later, I was substituting for their receptionist. When my Dad started his own business in 1996, I became his only administrative assistant. I did everything from ordering supplies to assembling tax returns.

From the moment I started that first website, it was my project. OK, my Dad had some ideas of what he wanted: an archive of his articles, a web edition of his newsletter, and a digital firm brochure. The entire navigational structure, the page format, and most of the pictures were all my idea. The website marketing has been my job from the beginning, as well. My Dad has nothing to do with it.

Of course, I had no idea what I was doing at first. I had some experience on the internet, but mostly with Text-Only browsers at UC Santa Cruz. I had just graduated from there with my degree in Literature. Luckily for me, search engines all recognize text, and we had a lot of it, including some popular, almost unique, phrases. People started finding us, and even contacting us, very quickly.

One of the people who contacted us was a guy from the Journal of Accountancy. He wanted to interview my Dad and me - in that order - about my website. The interview was published in the October 1997 edition of the Journal of Accountancy. Well, it was a good pat on the back for us, but the people who read the article and responded to it were accountants - not potential clients.

One of the accountants who saw our article was a lady in the Mid-West. She just happened to be the mother-in-law of a local news reporter. She pitched our website as a great local-interest piece for tax season. So last year, my Dad was interviewed and we were filmed for a spot on the 6 o'clock news. I've heard they've reused a clip from our interview and included our website address as part of a report on small business websites as well.

Since then, I've learned about marketing on the internet. I've been constantly fiddling with our website and telling people about it. I've managed to increase our traffic to an average of 600 "hits" a day. (Update: As of 8/3/99 we get over 1,000 hits a day from our nearly 200 visitors.)

A "hit" is one visitor loading a page or graphic in their browser. The best visitors make many hits. We probably get one to two hundred unique visitors at our website every day. That's pretty good for an exclusive accountant like my Dad, but I could do better if he would allow me to place paid advertisements.

Despite the fact that I'm the only administrative support for Michael Gray, CPA, and the fact that I design, maintain, and market the website all by myself, I still work only 3-4 days a week during tax season. So, I have plenty of time left over. In that time, I've designed three other websites: one for me, one for a publisher I interned with when I intended to become an editor, and one for a non-profit fundraising company. Great American Fundraising is my first paid consulting job. I plan to have many more.

My website is designed to get me a job doing more website design and marketing. I write a new article on the subject almost every week, enabling me to vent my frustration at the inane marketing articles I read and have fun at the same time.

My website provides short tips, articles, software reviews, and a glossary of internet and marketing terms to people marketing their first personal, hobby, or small business website. I try to include all the information I had trouble finding or understanding when I first started.

My marketing efforts have been so successful that a professional marketing-seminar firm discovered our website: Red Striped Zebra. They asked my Dad to do a seminar with them. My Dad often does seminars to promote his business, so he agreed. He also asked me to do a speech at the seminar on internet marketing!

That's why I'm here. I didn't panic, but it had been so long since I'd made a speech, I decided to check out Toastmasters. Now I'm glad I did. If I shook like a leaf doing a Tall Tales speech, what would have happened in front of 30 - 40 people who expect real knowledge to flow from my lips?

Nobody can be online all the time, and I need to interface with real people as well as bytes and bits. If I get stuck on a stage with businessmen who paid $1500 to see me watching expectantly in the audience, there will be nowhere to run, and nowhere to climb.

M. Toastmaster?

Warning for fellow Toastmasters: This speech went over 1 minute overtime because I kept freezing. For your icebreaker, prepare to add or cut out material depending on how fast you talk--it will be different in front of an audience.

last updated August 2, 1999