Freebies

Ok, I'm going to vent here. You may not agree with what I am going to write, but it's my opinion.

Back in 2004, I started the Cereal Festival website, the Taste of Battle Creek, and the International Festival of Lights (IFOL) here in Battle Creek.

I did these websites for free. I spent a lot of my time in the summer doing the Cereal Festival and the Taste of Battle Creek websites. I spent so much time on these two sites in the summer, that I didn't take on any new customers during the summer. Shame on me.

Then along comes this new festival coordinator who was going to work with me and get things going so that these festivals made MONEY, and could eventually afford to pay me.

To make a long story short, she "took over" around October of 2006. At least that's when I started to get some contact from her. I really thought that she understood the power of a website, boy was I wrong. She took a website that I had 'corePHP' design for me and said that it wasn't "fun enough".

Wasn't fun enough? How many websites out there do you know of that your child can sit down and write a letter to santa... AND GET A RESPONSE?! IMMEDIATELY!

I don't know what planet this gal was from but I'm pretty sure it wasn't earth.

She wanted to change the entire layout of the site. I told her that she is way late for that and that the site would not be as good as the one they currently had. She insisted that we change the site. So we did. She spent more time changing the website than she did doing her job, and in the end, the last I heard, the IFOL lost $30,000.00 in 2006. NICE JOB!

In January of 07 I get a call from this gal, she is all excited about her ideas for the Cereal Festival and the Taste of Battle Creek websites. My response to her was "ok, the IFOL has lost money because you were too busy with the website and not busy enough doing other things that needed to be done for this festival. We tried it your way, now we are going to try things my way. You feed me information that needs to go on the websites, and I'll put that information on the websites. We will worry about redesigning the sites when we have more time and can test everything to make sure that it's better than it was."

Now remember, I'm pretty hard to fire here because I'm doing these sites for free. Then along comes Celebrations of Battle Creek. They wanted me to do another free website. We told them that we would not be doing another free website, but if they wanted to pay us for it, we would give them a discounted rate.

They ended up finding another 2 designers for all of those websites. Celebrations of Battle Creek is still the same (that website is being done for free, and I called to warn these web designers that the city would take advantage of them if they didn't put a limit to the freebies. They understood)

The other websites, well, they ended up paying another web design company because the company said that they could take the websites to a "National Level"

My response "If you want to pay to downgrade the site, feel free. These websites are already at an INTERNATIONAL Level. I have the emails (that they never responded to, but I did) to prove it. I still have emails from South America, China, Hong Kong, Italy, France, Austrailia, South Africa, Finland, Norway, Mexico... The list goes on.

My whole point is, if someone isn't paying good money for a website, they don't take it seriously, if they don't take it seriously, they don't do anything with it, even simple things like updating it to keep it current.

I'm in the business to make successful websites, and in order to do that, I have to charge people for the websites that I create. If my customers do not update their website, I will be asking them to find a different web designer, or they can pay me even more money (a lot more money) and I will do the research to make their website successful.

Accessibility

I know a lot about Accessibility for a website, but for me to say that I know everything, is far from the truth.

There is a lot to know about web accessibility, and new things come out everyday for this. The main thing that needs to be understood is that having an accessible website is already a law in a lot of different regions, and if that's not enough to convince you to have an accessible website, how about the fact that not everyone that is disabled is poor, and disabled people spend their money too. How would you like to increase your bottom line in the profit of your company.

Most of the things that you need to do to make your website accessible are not difficult to do, and if you plan on this ahead of time, it doesn't really take any longer to implement.

This is just some "food for thought"

A professional sticks to what they know.

I was talking to someone today, and they definitely get this statement. I have talked to many others that do not understand this statement.

I have had people and companies that say that they want a website, and they have a digital camera and can provide the pictures. My response to them is generally "are these pictures taken by a professional?" Some of these people have a professional photographer in their family, and their answer is "yes" and if it is, great, we can make a professional looking website. Some of these people answer "no, but I have a digital camera" and to these people, I generally respond "no offense, but if you are not a professional photographer, I would suggest hiring one. There is no sense in having someone make a professional layout for your website and then putting in some pictures that you (as a non-professional) took. It will take away from the entire site. It will also look like you just went out and bought a template for your website and then plugged in your own snap shots." This is not to say that it will look bad, but it will be very apparent that you do not have a professional photographer taking the pictures for your professionally created website.

A true professional web developer sticks to developing websites. Some of these people are pretty good a photography, this is not a "jab" at those of you that do this, but, if you are really good at web design/development, there is a lot to keep up on just with that, and there is also a lot to keep up on with photography, I don't believe that any one person can keep up with both and do a super professional job with both of these.

Now if you are part of a company, and one person does the website development, and another does the photography, that's a different story! What I'm talking about is a "one person" company that does professional web development and professional photography. Although it's not impossible, it would be very difficult to be a professional at both.

So basically, if you stick to what you do best in your business, and sub contract the rest out, while you may not make as much money, this is going to have the very best results for your customers.

I know it sounds like I'm blasting some web designers/developers out there, but this is NOT the case. There are a few people out there that do a really professional job at both, but they are few and far between.

Who to create your site for, visitors or search engines...

Whenever Net Magik Pros gets a new customer, one of the first questions that is always asked is "how can we get my site to the top of the search engines?".

For someone who doesn't know, this is a very valid question because they probably only know that if they get into the top of the search engines, the business will come.

Unfortunately, this is not the case.

Generally what we tell our potential clients is this:
Make your site for your potential visitors and getting to the top of the search engines will happen.

There are a few basic things that you can do to make sure you get good search engine placement (good titles for your pages, good keywords, use the keywords in the page you have them listed on, links, the text of the links, to name a few) but then you will eventually have to ask yourself, who do I want more of on my site, visitors or search engine spiders (or robots)?

The simple answer is both!

While a search engine spider will not purchase anything from your site, they will get people who will purchase something from your site. But that's where the search engine spider's job is done, once they get the people to your site, they have completed their mission, the rest is up to what you have put on your site. This will make the difference whether someone stays on your site or leave to go to your competition's website. Good quality links can definitely help you out here. Offering something for free will definitely help out also.

But the main thing that will help you sell your product or service is... are you ready for this...

YOU HAVE TO ASK YOUR VISITOR TO PURCHASE YOUR PRODUCT!

Many people overlook this, and then wonder why they have a boat load of website visitors, and they don't sell anything.

The fact is, if you don't ask, you won't sell, it's that simple! It always helps to put a sense of urgency into your sales pitch also. Don't just ask your website visitors to purchase your product or service, but tell them the advantages of why they should purchase right away.

It sounds pushy, but keep in mind that your website visitors are at your site almost anonymously, so if they think you are too pushy, they can leave and don't have to worry about you showing up at their front door step or follow up calls etc. They can just leave and that's it. But because they are there and most visitors know this, they generally don't mind the "pushy sales pitch" as long as you don't go too overboard with it.

You don't have to be obnoxious with your sales pitch, but don't be afraid to ask the visitor what you want them to do, and give them a reason to do it quickly.

Web 2.0

Lately, I have seen a lot of hype over this Web 2.0, and honestly, I don't understand it. I compare Web 2.0 to a hot tub.

Long ago, someone got the idea of putting a motorthat would move the water around in a hot tub, to the point it was almost like getting a massage while you were in the tub.

The thing is, these motors have existed for longer than the hot tub, as well as hot tubs existed before without these motors to move the water around.

Web 2.0 is basically the same thing. Someone discovered a different way of making a website using the same tools that have existed for years, they just put it together differently. Don't get me wrong, nobody else thought of it, but now that someone has, it seems like everyone is talking about it.

Web 2.0 is a good thing as it will make your website more interactive with your visitors, but the bottom line is, you will still have to do all the work that you need to do with a regular website, there will just be more programming involved.

NMP is not against Web 2.0, we just don't understand all the hype behind it. It is a good step in the right direction towards making the web more interactive, but in the end, everything you need to create a Web 2.0 website is already out there. There isn't anything new about it except the way it is all put together.

Keep your website changing

We recently had a client that called us to cancel his website. They are going to let the name, the space and everything go. Unfortunately, this is very sad to us as we are not in the business to just take someone's money, but this person had that old 1990's attitude "If you build it, they will come" and this just isn't true. It never has been, and it never will be. And this client was confused why he wasn't able to do any business with his website. I asked him "When is the last time you made a change to your website?" he replied "it's been about a year or so" and there lies the problem.

When you build a website, don't look at it as your "whole business". It can be a very large portion of your business, but you should not stop there. Instead of looking at your website like it's your whole business, you should look at it like a tool. Here is an example of what I am talking about... Just because you have a telephone, does that mean you are now a business owner? No, you still need to have a telephone line hooked up to it so the telephone works, and after you get that all taken care of, you should go out and buy some paper and a pencil or pen so that you can take messages when someone calls, that's only if you are advertising your phone number, otherwise, why have a telephone in the first place...

This can go on and on, but to compare this situation with having a website, if you have a website with email, and you never check your email, or never reply to the emails that you get, it's like having a telephone without a pencil and paper to take messages so you can address them later. And if you have a website, and you don't plan on getting into the search engines, it's like having a phone number and not giving it out to anyone. You won't get many phone calls that way, and if you have a website, and you are not in the search engines, you probably won't have as many good quality visitors as you could have.

One way to get into the search engines is to submit your website to several of the main search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask.com just to name a few. After you get into the search engines, you will want to plan for the future by keeping the website changing. The more often you change your website, the better the search engines will like your website, the better they like your website, the higher you will place in a revelant search, and the more people will have a better chance at finding your website, and the more chances you will have to sell your products or services.

If you have a great website, but you never change it, people will not come back to your site. I don't know the actual average number of times people come back to your site before they do business with you, but I'm sure it's not always on the first visit.

Besides, if you never change your site, and people have been to it before, what reason do they have to come back. Net Magik Pros Web Design policy is to change your site at least once per month, or even more often than that.

If it sounds like a lot of work, it can be, or it can be very simple, that will all depend on what you want to change each month, and how much time you will be willing to commit to changing your site.

Another way to keep your site changing is to program the changes to take place automatically, this way, you can spend a good period of time creating all the changes you want throughout the year or month etc, and then have your web designer/developer program the changes to take place at certain times. This is easy to do, and it allows you to get back to what you do best.

There will be another article soon. Thanks for reading