Computer and Web Articles

You want a free website for your business, right?

Of course you do.

I’ve mentioned a few options in the past, but if those haven’t tickled your fancy, consider heading over to www.Yola.com. Great looking websites. Easy to use tools. Free with optional upgrades. Check it out.

I’ve mentioned this before and I now have reason to mention it again: if you care at all about your company’s blog, do not keep it on another company’s website. Don’t keep your business blog on Blogger. Don’t keep it on the WordPress.com website. Don’t keep it at Blogspot.com or Blog.com or Macpress.org.

First off, this practice is just straight unprofessional. It makes you look cheap. Yes, you were able to set up your blog for free—but everything from the URL that’s different than your main site’s URL site to the blog design that only vaguely resembles your main site’s design—well, it makes it pretty obvious you set it up for free.

Looking cheap, however, is not the main reason you should refrain from using a free blog service to host your blog. The main reason is: as long as the blog doesn’t live on your server, it’s not truly owned by you and you don’t have full control over it.

Last week one of our clients who had previously opted to use one of the free blog services mentioned above  learned this lesson the hard way. One afternoon she sat down to update her blog… only to find it was… gone. Poof. Nowhere to be found. The blog service hadn’t warned her that it was shutting down her blog, and she in fact remains in the dark as to why her site was taken down. The blog service hasn’t returned her communications. Her blog is gone—most likely for good.

Imagine how you’d feel and how your company would be affected if this happened to you. Imagine if all the time you’d spent updating and maintaining your company blog was thrown out with the trash.

If you have a company blog that you truly care about, I strongly recommend that that you house it on your own server. If at all possible, integrate it seamlessly into your company’s site so that it doesn’t feel like an awkward added appendage. Consider hiring an expert if you’re not sure how to do this on your own.

I’m well aware that the vast majority (if not all) of you will ignore my recommendation. Just keep my client’s recent experience in mind. Similar to the act of setting up a backup for your computer’s data, the effort involved with taking preventative steps to protect your blog seems like a waste of time…  And it will seem like a waste of time up until the morning you wake up to find that your blog is gone for good.

I’d wager that a solid 60% of new clients that approach us here at timeforcake (remember: we don’t fix computers; we’re a web design and development company) walk in thinking that they definitely want a blog in their new website. Problem is, when we ask why they’d like a blog, the new client often raises her eyebrows and shrugs or gives a reply along the lines of “Well, that’s what XYZ company is doing,” or “Don’t you need to have one of those in your site these days?”

Integrating a blog into your website without knowing why you’re doing so–without having a plan or strategy detailing how the blog will help your business reach its goals–is a surefire recipe for a whole lotta nothing. There’s a horrifying glut of abandoned blogs around the Internet. Over the past decade, I’d estimate we’ve seen 85% - 90% of these enthusiastic companies drop their blogs. Within the first four months.

Why? Because blogs simply aren’t for everyone. Keeping a truly effective blogs is not easy.

Blogs are not magic. They take time, effort, love, maintenance, and strategy. If your site has a blog, you *must* have a strategy; you must know why your site has a blog, what you’re going to do with the blog, and what you’re hoping to achieve with the blog.  How else will you measure its success (or lack thereof) over time? How will you know if you need to change tactics, keep moving forward, or scrap the blog altogether?

Confused? I’ve got a suggestion that might help: I recommend reading social media expert Mack Collier’s excellent article, Ten Questions Your Company Should Ask Before it Starts Blogging, which can be found right here: http://tinyurl.com/ycy6d9d.

I’ve recently made a dear friend who runs an amazing raw food blog-based website. Each of her creative recipes is entirely unique. Her food photography is absolutely stunning. Her writing is clear and purposeful. The site receives many, MANY thousands of visitors each month, and her posts see a high volume of comments and questions from visitors wanting to interact with and learn from her.

In other words, she’s kicking some serious butt.

There was just one little problem I noticed the first time I visited her site: the design is a bit on the . . . wide side. I myself had no problem viewing it on my laptop, and I knew the majority of her visitors were not experiencing any display problems either. Upon reviewing her site’s analytics, though, I discovered that upon arriving at her website, 1 in 10 of her visitors was seeing a site in which the right-hand portion was essentially chopped off.

The visitors making up this 10% were not abnormal by any stretch. They simply had lower monitor resolutions that didn’t let them see the entire width of the wiiiiiide design of my friend’s site. (Remember that monitor resolution is not the same as monitor size.)

This experience has pushed me to encourage you to review your own site’s analytics with your webmaster and understand what your visitors’ resolutions are. Make sure you understand the difference between monitor resolution and monitor size. Have your webmaster show you what your site looks like to visitors using different monitor resolutions.

In sum, do your best to understand if you’re keeping a substantial percentage of visitors from viewing or using your website.

Have you ever found yourself clicking your browser’s Back button (you know, that left-pointing arrow up in the top left corner of the screen when you’re on the web) . . . but nothing happens? Hmmm. And now that you look at it, the button appears gray—as if it was turned off somehow. Hmmm. And the only way you seem to be able to move away from the webpage you’re looking at is to actually close the page down, right?

When you use the web, you typically bounce from page to page, site to site, by clicking on links. Links are how we jump about and navigate the web. We’ll go to Site X, then Site Y, then Site Z, but then maybe we’ll hit our Back button because we want to go back to site Y.

People find themselves in broken-back-button situations when they click links that, unbeknownst to them, force-open up the next page in a totally new window or tab. This means we’ll click a link on Site Y, but instead of our page quickly changing to Site Z, a totally different window (or tab) opens up with Site Z — with Site Y remaining open in the old window we looking at just a moment before. So we now have two windows (or tabs) open at the same time. Because Site Z is the first site to open up in the fresh new window, the Back button has nowhere to take you, which is why the Back button will look grayed out and won’t respond when clicked. The only way to get back to Site Y now (IF you’ve been able to figure out what happened) is to close down the Site Z window and return to the original site Y window.

Now WHY would a website consciously cause such confusion? Why would a webmaster knowingly “break” his site visitors’ back buttons by having links open up in separate tabs or windows? A variety of reasons exist; many of them are a bit dubious.  After building websites for ten years, though, I can tell you that one of the most frequent client requests I’ve received over and over again is. . . “Can you make it so that when people click links on my website, they open up in new windows? Because if they don’t like that link and they close it, then they’ll be back at my website again. It just keeps people from leaving my website.”

My “actually-if-people-want-to-leave-your-website-they’ll-leave-your-website-and-don’t-forget-that-people-are-accustomed-to-being-able-to-use-their-back-buttons” explanation never meets with much enthusiasm; the request almost always stands: “Make links open in new windows so people stay on my site.”  If this seems a little bit backwards or confusing to you, you’re not alone.

The “people-will-stay-on-my-website-if-I-open-links-in-new-windows” assumption has broken and will continue to “break” the Back button in my browser, your browser, and the browsers of others for a long time to come. And so the next time you arrive on a new page and find you can’t use your Back button, just close the page in order to return to the one you were on previously. And smile because, unlike so many others, you actually know what just happened. . . and possibly even why. 

Clicking on links in websites only to discover they take you to error pages is no fun. And this is exactly why I’m assuming you wouldn’t want to have broken links in your own website. (How did I do there? Was my assumption correct?)

To the inexperienced, the concept of fixing broken links may seem tedious. In fact, I know many people who once assumed that to address the issue, one had to go through a website and manually click every single individual link, one by one, to determine which needed to be fixed. Nonsense.

Head over to the handy-dandy link checker right here: http://validator.w3.org/checklink and pop your website’s address into the field at the top of the page. Check the “hide redirects” box, then click the big Check button below.

If your website is a large one, go grab yourself a cup of coffee and come back in a bit.

Once the link checker has finished up its work, you’ll have yourself a nice little broken link report telling you exactly which (if any) links in your website need fixin’. Easy as cake. (Now go fix your links before you frustrate more of your website’s visitors!)

Make sure your company’s website doesn’t have ‘dead-end’ pages that leave them alone and confused.  Don’t let them wonder, “Where should I go next??”

Dead-end pages in websites fail to give your visitors a sense of where they should be going next or what actions they should consider taking.

Let’s take a look at your website.

Did you provide a useful overview of your company’s history on your site’s About Us page? Great! But don’t stop there. Tell visitors that, now they know more about your fantastic company, they should now check out your list of services and products by clicking this link … or that they should now fill out your convenient online form to schedule an appointment with one of your brilliant associates.

Don’t let your visitors read through a section of your site’s information and then wonder, “Okay, so … now what? Am I supposed to order this product? Do I have to call in for a consultation? Do they even have an office location near me?”

By simply providing a bit of guidance and a gentle helping hand, you can show people around your site and increase their comfort levels while encouraging them to take the action(s) you want them to take.

I can hear the whispers now… “Is she crazy??” “Has she lost her mind?” “Is she shooting herself in the foot by writing about this?”

I have a hunch many people will feel a bit suprised by what I’m sharing today. Why? Because the tool purports to do for free the exact service my company offers to clients (not for free): create awesome websites.

Wix.com enables individuals and companies to build their very own Flash websites. For free. The Wix interface offers drag-and-drop site creation and requires zero knowledge of HTML or programming. To sweeten the pot, Wix sites are even search engine friendly!

Musicians can build beautiful sites to present and promote themselves. Designers can build their very own online portfolios using Wix.  Photographers can build their very own online portfolios without paying a web designer one single penny.  In fact, close to three million websites have already been created using Wix.

What’s the catch, you ask? How can such an amazing tool possibly be free? Well, while there is no actual catch, there are a few rules you have to play by. First, you can’t use your own domain name. Second, Wix ads will appear on your website. And third, you are limited to a set amount of bandwidth, storage, and number of pages.

If you’d prefer to build a website free of these limitations, you can do so by upgrading to one of Wix’s Premium Plans. Depending on what you’re looking for (eCommerce? Stats Tracking? Premium support?), a Wix Premium Plan could run you $4.95, $9.90, $14.90, or $19.90 per month. Pay a year in advance and your pricing becomes even cheaper.

And just in case you’re still tottering on the fence, Wix offers a 100% satisfaction guarantee that lets you to try one of their Premium Plans for two weeks and, if you’re not happy, get all your money back. Simple as that.

Check out the features. Check out the galleries of beautiful sites other Wix users have created. No need to hire your own website designer — just sign up, build your own website, and have fun.

This is definitely one of those “Well DUH” tips that will cause many an eye to roll.  Yet I’ve come across many Summit County websites that have completley overlooked this basic business website concept.

Assuming you have a company logo (and I hope I’m not assuming too much there?), and assuming you use this logo in places like your business cards, newspaper/magazine ads, on the sides of your trucks, etc., then you should by all means make sure that your logo has prominent placement on every page in your website. Why not just the homepage, you ask? Because some of your site’s visitors first arrive on pages other than your homepage–and they need to be able to quickly orient themselves as well.

Regardless of how your visitors arrive at your website, they need to be able to immediately determine if they’ve arrived at the right place; don’t make a missing or tiny logo to cause them wonder and worry if they’ve ended up on the wrong site.

Take a moment and take a glance at your site. Is your logo a prominent, consistent component on all pages in your site?