Archive for October, 2009

3 wishes for a successful Web site

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

search engines The Web Fairy is hovering over the cradle of your new Web site. She has granted you three wishes. What do you wish for? What does every Web site need?

  1. The Web site has got to be found.
  2. The Web site has got to be attractive.
  3. The Web site has got to deliver.

OK. You look at these wishes, and you think, “How obvious! This is just common sense.”

So how come so many Web sites fail on at least one count—and some on all three? Let’s look at what may not be so obvious.

In the first place, the Web site has got to be found by the people you want to find it. That means designing the whole Web site for those specific people, and calling on SEO and marketing skills to catch their own specific keywords—every time you add text.

In the second place, the Web site has got to be attractive to the same specific people—not to the website owner, not to the website designer, but to the website visitor. You have to deploy the colours and the layout and the design which will engage the visitors you want, and make them want to explore your Web site. If we were all attracted in the same way, we would all be pining for Marilyn Monroe. Personally, I was always more attracted to Jane Russell. (You get the point.)

Finally, the Web site has got to give the people that you want to visit exactly what they are looking for. They came to your Web site because they were looking for something. You can bet every cent you have that they weren’t looking for an advertisement. Advertisements are what people fast forward through when they record TV programmes. So why would they be looking for one on the Web? Just give them what they want—no less, and (this is really important) no more.

So there you have it, and now you know what I mean. Your Web site has got to be found. Your Web site has got to be attractive. Your Web site has got to deliver.

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Web hosting prices: pay more, get more?

Sunday, October 18th, 2009

Web hostingIs Web hosting one of those areas where “you get what you pay for”? When I suggested to someone in the British Expats (Spain) forum that he was paying too much for his Web hosting, this was exactly what he replied. Another contributor to the forum looked at the prices I offer through Web Costa Blanca, after which he pointed out, “Your cheapest package seems to cost less than a loaf of bread per month,” and asked, “How can anyone offer a good service for that price?”

Is Web hosting an area where it is right to assume that money and quality of service are connected? Let’s look at the facts.

There is no real mystery about Web hosting. You rent space on a computer which is permanently connected to the Internet. You also get a bandwidth (traffic) allowance. In general, the bigger the space you rent, and the more visitors to your Web site you get, the more you would expect to pay. Just as if you were renting space in an office building.

This is the case with my Web hosting plans on Web Costa Blanca. And my prices are very low, even for the biggest allocations of space and traffic. So what else are people paying for?

Two things: (1) a range of extras; (2) service.

  1. I offer an extensive range of extras (personal control panel, email accounts, programming languages, site builders, databases, etc., etc.) This blog is not the place to trumpet them all, but anyone who cares can find them in the Web hosting plans section of Web Costa Blanca. I have looked at dozens of other Web hosting sites, and never seen a range of options to beat them.
  2. I offer a one-to-one personal service to all my clients, who can reach me by email or telephone whenever they hit a problem or want to ask a question.

Why do I charge so little, then? It’s probably something to do with prejudices left over from my radical youth. I’m happy to charge for my labour—website design, website development, website maintenance. However, even when my clients have access to so many tools and extras, I’m not happy to make a profit on renting space.

And as for the service, how else do you get job satisfaction?

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What’s wrong with website templates?

Sunday, October 4th, 2009

DesignLots of Web sites are based upon pre-designed templates, with placeholders which a website owner or website designer can fill in: “Company name,” “Your tag line here!” Some Web design companies on the Costa Blanca even publish portfolios of sites based on website templates—at least they look like website templates to me. Is there anything wrong with using such templates, instead of having a bespoke Web site?

Let me admit, to begin with, that many website templates are elegant and professional.

I still don’t like them. And here are 5 reasons why.

  1. Elements of the template—and sometimes the entire template—may be inappropriate. The imagery may not be right for this particular Web site, or the colour scheme, or the layouts, or the navigation. In extreme cases an entire site has to be created following a formula dictated by a given navigation scheme. Or the number of top-level pages is limited by a given set of navigation buttons. Visitors may find it harder to do what they want on the site, because the template isn’t designed for specific visitor tasks.
  2. Even where the look and feel of a template is OK for a particular Web site, and visitor tasks are not hampered, the website template may not express what is most important about a business or organisation—its own character, its unique selling point.
  3. There is no real design input from the client—no chance for her or him to stamp their own wishes or personality on their own Web site. The best they have is a choice between templates.
  4. There is no real call on the website designer’s craft. The client gets a supermarket ready meal instead of a menu of chef-prepared dishes.
  5. Most important: the template Web site will not work for the client as it would if it were the result of serious preliminary analysis. Before design comes analysis: what will count as success for this particular Web site? what visitors does the client expect or want to attract? how are these specific visitors most likely to join in the campaign/sign up/part with their money (whatever)?

No template-based Web site will ever work for a client the way a bespoke Web site can.

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