Category: Web Design

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Do You Really Own What You Think You Own When It Comes To Your Website?

If you’ve paid a bundle for your website you think you own it right? Well, what you think you own in reality may not be what you really own. Here’s a very short case study that you can learn from.

This client may or may not want to move their web host. The original web designer provides hosting services as well. The client called the web designer/host to ask what they own. They were told they own their website in entirety.

When the client asked for FTP access for me, they were told by the web designer/host that to do so would void any warranties they had for their website. When the client asked for the Dreamweaver website templates, HTML files, and Flash files including .fla Flash portfolio files, they were told that they could have the HTML files only, no Dreamweaver templates or .fla files – they did not own those items.

This means that the client owns a “picture” or non-editable version of their Flash portfolio, and that any other webmaster will have to defeat the Dreamweaver template code to do website updates taking more time. Any additions to the Flash portfolio will cause the portfolio to have to be redone from scratch or they are black mailed into going back to the original web designer for any future Flash portfolio updates.

So, clearly this client does not own their website. What is worse is that the web designer also registered the client’s domain name in their own business name [web designer’s] and when the client pushed to have the domain changed to their own business, the web designer pushed back saying “you own it, why bother?”. With proof from a domain name review using WhoIs, the web designer then back pedaled and said “Yes, really legally, we own it, but we know it is yours.”

So what do you think you own that you may not own? Now’s the time to find out and correct that. I believe that each website owner should get what they pay for. Before the final deliverables of your website are completed, you should demand a disk of all native files (.psd files, .fla files, .flv files). You should demand that your domain is registered in your own name and that you are given all website and domain name control panel login URLs and passwords. You need to own out right and know how to manage your domain name and your web hosting account for possible future needs.

Situations with webmasters go bad. We have two right now that we are dealing with for clients. Things may be great right now, but if you have control on these important accounts and issues, you are in the driver’s seat and cannot be blackmailed for future business or made to feel that to move your account is simply too much trouble.

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Build It and They Will Come – Well Maybe

Many small business owners ask me “Do I have good website traffic?” “How does my site compare with others?” “How can I get my website to generate more business for me?”.

The reality is that a website with under 10 pages of content that promotes a service or consultant will typically receive anywhere from 10 to 30 unique visits a day. Based on what I have seen, this is about what you can expect in regards to traffic. So how do you get more and how do you get your website to start generating leads?

For small websites, this is my advice:

1. Get blogging now! A site your size, to become competitive, needs to grow, and needs to have a regular content addition program. Blogging is absolutely the easiest way to do this. If you don’t want to blog yourself, you can hire us to blog for you, we are experts at it.

2. Don’t waste your time and money right now on website optimization. Unless you are in a niche market or provide a desired but unique item or service that does not have much web competition, your website can simply not compete and place at that size organically on the search engines. That doesn’t mean that you should not be doing other things for organic placement, but I do not recommend hiring us or another firm for search engine optimization at this point in your growth.

3. Get going with Google AdWords. You can drive qualified targeted traffic to your website and really get good results with AdWords. I recommend a minimum budget of $500 for clicks for the first 30 days. Get a good account manager to set up your account so you hit the ground running. You will most likely also have to invest in account management fees and should most likely plan on purchasing time to create targeted website-matching landing pages for your ad groups for the very best results. We do this too, so make sure to check out our Google AdWords services before you ask anyone else to help you. We’ll take good care of you and be good stewards of your click budget.

4. Start getting links to build organic position and traffic over time with feature articles and white papers. Using article directory syndication sites, you can post a well written article with a link in your author bio back to your website. The more people who choose to pick up your article for their own use from the syndication site, the more links you’ll get back to your website helping your search engine placement. Make sure your articles appeal to a very wide range and do not just speak about your product. What you are really looking for is wide syndication and the link back to you so focus on business, real estate or health issues and articles for the widest distribution. We can write articles for you if you desire. You should review some that we have written recently as examples of how to appeal to a broad audience even if you are not going to use our services.

5. Do a press release once a month and generate links and traffic with your news spin. Another way to build buzz, but particularly how to build more traffic and more one way inbound links is by writing press releases and using PRWeb as your distribution vehicle. You’ll get great exposure and excellent staying power as sites pick up your news and links. I recommend the Search Engine Optimization level. Distribution at this level is $200 (plus you’ll pay about $175 for us to write your press release), but the exposure is excellent and much better than the cheapest level.

Even if you decide to do these items yourself or decide to hire another firm to do them for you, know that these five tips do work to help build your website, create your unique web authority, and help to improve your organic search placement.  The key to remember when it comes to a website is, just because you build it, does not mean that they will come to visit it. You need to be proactive and aggressive to build your authority and web visibility position to put your website to work for you as a lead generating machine.

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Great Web Design Does Not Equal SEO

A super great looking website does not equal a well optimized website!

I have found from experience that many excellent web designers simply do not understand the nuts and bolts of search engine optimization. An excellent, good looking website does not mean that your new site will place well organically.

Here are several things to ask your web designer to make sure that your are getting a good balance of design versus SEO:

1. State that you do not want text to be incorporated into your website as images. In many cases a web designer (due to control of elements) will create text with images. I particularly see this in titles above content. Search engines cannot read images and so you lose opportunities to include your keywords by a designer using images where they should use text.

2. Do not over use Flash. Flash is pretty, but search engines including Google still do not do a good job indexing all Flash websites. I cannot begin to tell you how many calls I have fielded from clients whose Flash website is not performing organically and who want my help to improve. You cannot search engine optimize Flash. One thing to think about is that Microsoft’s new Silverlight which is like Flash is search engine spiderable, but many browsers do not have Silverlight enabled at this point. Contain Flash only in your banner at this time for best organic performance if you must use it at all.

3. Make sure that your web designer understands how important the source code title tag is and the meta description tag is. If they do not understand your concern, your designer does not understand SEO. Sometimes to get the best of both worlds it is best to hire a super designer and then an SEO consultant who makes sure that the site architecture, images, file folders, and even page names are built around keywords. We do provide consulting services in this area if you have already selected a great web designer, consider using our consulting services to assure that your website has the best possible chance of top organic placement when it is launched.

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Top Web Design Mistakes You Won’t Want to Make

Based on over eight years of experience working at providing professional web services to business, here’s my top list of web design mistakes you won’t want to make.

1. Don’t let your web designer register your new domain name under their own company name. Make sure you own your domain out right.

2. Make sure you have all the details AND ownership of your web design project in a contract. It is important that you clearly outline and understand who owns your website. You may find out that you do not that you only own a license to use the site and only if the web designer is hosting and webmastering the web site.

3. Make sure that your website is transportable. If you are using Yahoo Web hosting or even Hostway for hosting, if you have built your website using their proprietary tools including their graphics, it is important to know that sites of this nature are NOT transportable to a new web host if you get disenchanted with services.

4. Do not package your web hosting fees with web design and webmaster services. In all cases where clients have asked us to do a review these co-mingled services always cost more than going ala carte. Make sure that you are not tied to your webmaster for future content updates. You may want to stick with them for a while, but have the option to leave if they become unresponsive to your needs.

5. Don’t move to a new web host unless you really need to. Many clients think that they should shop around for price and get the cheapest web host. You may actually pay more to move your site depending on the technology and scripting used to move than you would have saved from a cheaper web host and webmaster. Every client who we have helped to move has always said at the end “this was much more complicated than I had any idea that it would be”. Our recommendation is to stay where you are especially if you have an e-commerce store or database driven application unless there is a real reason to move. Remember that when you move a site like this EVERYTHING will break. Your contact forms, database application, secure socket layer, credit card processing will all need to be set up and tested all over again.

These are just a few tips to consider before you start a new design or look for a new webmaster for your project.