First a bit of history. The term blog started out to designate a type of website that was a personal journal. Each posting to the website was an entry in that journal.

This was a leap forward for people wishing to have an outlet on the Internet. Blogging sites were easier to setup and add content to, than traditional websites.  Blogging remains very popular today.

What does a blog have to do with a business website? A blog does not have to be named a blog. OK, so this is just double talk, right? Stay with me, this will all makes perfect sense.

A blog creates a system for arranging the post, or entries to the blog. In fact, a blog also uses a system for sorting the entries by the category you assign to each entry.  The category can be used to search for, or list, various entries or posts to the blog.

If we create a website for your business and add a blog, but instead of calling the area that lists the entries to the site a  blog, we call that section “News” or “Tips” or “Testimonials” or any other name you like.  Then, as a news item or a new testimonial is is added to the site, the entries are displayed in order down the page. In addition, we can configure specific pages on your site to hold just one type of entry or post. So you could have a page of news items as well as a page of testimonials on the site.

We can train you, or a staff member, how to add these types of entries to the site. You can then have a website that stay up to date and interesting for visitors and keeps them coming back for more.

Call us today for a FREE Consultation – even the call is FREE – 800-598-4008

I often get calls from clients who would like the ability to make changes to their website themselves. Sounds like a reasonable idea, right? Maybe, but it can lead to some headaches.

Contrary to what everyone thinks, making changes to a site is not as easy as 1-2-3. It takes some time to learn a system, there are rules that must be followed and thousands of options that can be used.

On average,  it takes about two hours of introduction and then several more hours of fine tuning for most people to start changing their own websites.  I am happy to take the time needed to teach a new user how to edit their site and I think my fees are very reasonable to do so.  However, is that really the best use of  a business owner’s time?

Once the novelty of making your own changes fades, the harsh reality of keeping the site updated and fresh becomes a dreaded chore. If a site owner does not make frequent changes, he or she often forgets how to do it.  So, some research will be needed before anything gets done. Or, worse yet, it just gets put off until the site is full of out-dated, stale items. We all have visited sites where the last update was years ago.

Before you jump to the conclusion that you want to maintain your own website, consider the time involved to do so. Your business may be better served hiring us to make the changes as needed.

Call us to discuss this or any other website needs. Of course the consultation is FREE and so is the call at 800-598-4008.

The domain name is how visitors will get to your site. For example, the domain name for this site is www.ontraxweb.com. Each site must have a unique name.  If you permit a web designer or hosting company or any third party to register your domain for you and you have no access to the account, you could be in for big problems. If the third party goes out of business, files for bankruptcy, gets seriously ill or even dies, it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to move your site to another service. Keep reading to learn how this all works.

In order to direct visitors to the site when the domain name is typed into a browser (Internet Explorer, FireFox, Chrome, etc.) the directions to where the site is stored on the Internet is held at Domain Name Servers or DNS. When a user types in a domain name as in http://www.ontraxweb.com the information is passed on to a DNS and the request is sent to your site.

There are several options in purchasing a domain name. Some cost more than others. It is relatively simple to register a domain but can be a bit confusing if you have never done it before. So, many web designers or hosting companies offer to register the domain for you. Wow, that seems nice. No it is not!

The domain registration information is the keys to the castle. If a third party holds the key, you can end up being held hostage to a service you no longer wish to use. Imagine if you decide that you would like to change the hosting service to one that offers more features or any other reason. The first step is to notify the DNS where the new site will be hosted. Where do you do that? It is in n the control panel of the hosting company. If you did not set up the service you most likely do not have access to that control panel. So, you will need to tell the current company that you want to leave them and go elsewhere. How do you think they are going to react? Do you think your request will be at the top of a to-do list? Probably not. I know of some sites that have taken years to get their domain names moved.

The solution: Register your domain name yourself, no matter who is hosting the site. At the very least, if you have someone else register the domain for you; make certain that they give you the user name and the password to access the account. Do not let them talk you out of this.

THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT!

Ontrax Web Design is happy to either set up an account for you or to talk you through setting up your own account to register your domain name. Either way, you will have complete control of you domain.

Call us for a FREE Consultation. Yes, it actually is free. Call 800-598-4008.

The long answer is: you can make your own site using any of those programs but be prepared for some major frustration.  You must realize that no matter how hard you try, you will not be able to do some things on your site.  No matter what the commercials say, the chance of being listed at the top of the search engines overnight is nonexistent.  In fact, getting your site listed at all is a challenge.

I decided to look into these do-it-yourself sites and found some interesting things to think about:

30 Day FREE Trial – but you must give your credit card info and agree to automatic billing in order to try the service.  Can you imagine how difficult it will be to have the billing stopped if you are not happy?

So Easy – but even one of their videos state “if you would like to try adding…” What happens if you are not successful in your try?  Help may be available but at an additional cost.

Bait and Switch – not exactly but if you want more than the bare minimum, be prepared to pay more.  The monthly fee jumps from $9.99 per month to $29.99 if you want the search engine options.

Your Free Domain Name – this is the kicker. Most of the do-it-yourself sites offer you domain registration for less than it actually costs – some at no cost at all. Is this too good to be true? You bet it is.  If the company controls your domain name, it is virtually impossible to leave them. Read this post to learn more.

Call us for a free consultation about your website 800-598-4008

Always keep that in mind when writing or speaking about your products or services. Explain how they will solve your customer’s problems.

No matter how great your product is or how proud of it you are, resist the urge to brag about it. Instead, tell the prospective buyer what it will do for them. Tell them how it will make their life better, easier, make them more money, make them more attractive, etc.

I owned a portrait photography studio for many years. If I would have tried to sell my photographs on the idea of how great they were, I would never have made a living.

Instead, we stressed “You are going to look FANTASTIC” in our photos or “Give someone you love a portrait” or “The best gift you will ever give Mom”. Not one of these headlines said if our photos were good or bad, the message was the benefits the photos would give to the buyer.

Of course, you need to have a good, if not great, product or service to offer and you will have to go into detail about that once you have the buyer’s attention. Even when listing the advantages of your item, slant everything to how it relates to the buyer and how it will solve their problems.

If you would like to discuss how we can make your site “Sizzle” call today for a FREE consultation at 800-598-4008

Just what is a blog? A blog is a term for a web site that has an online log of a person, idea, or anything else that is desired to be shared with the world.  Since so many now are familiar with Facebook, think of a blog as your personal “wall” where you control all of the content.

You add to the blog by creating “post”, just like this one. Photos, videos or sounds can be added to the post. If you wish to have the opinions or thoughts of others appear on your blog that is possible as well. You can have control over which comments get added to the blog, edit any comment or post and approve a comment before it appears on the site.

There are over one  hundred million blogs online today. If you would like to join the blogging community we can help. We can set up your blog, customize it, teach you how to add content and fix any problems or issues you may have with your blog.

Call us today for  FREE information about blogging. Call 800-598-4008

 Keep your titles short.
Titles should be a teaser for your post, not a complete description. Limit them to no more than 25 characters.

 Keep your Categories even shorter
Categories should not be over 25 characters as well, shorter is even better. Why? For one thing, longer category names will not show up completely in the drop down box on the right side. For another, Google is looking for short groups of words for titles, giving them too much, defeats the purpose.

 Tags one or two words max
You can have many tags for a post but it is best to keep each tag to one word.

 Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should
There are many options available when formatting text. There is a temptation to use all of them in your posts. Don’t do it!

 KISS – KISS – KISS…Keep it Simply Simple.
Fill your posts with interesting content, not different font colors and sizes. The whole design of the site was set to maximize ease of reading for the views. Several different colors used on a page are very distracting to your readers. You want to keep people coming back to you, make it easy for them. Keep the color scheme consistent.

 In fact, all of the work you do to add fancy text effects in a post is stripped away for any look ups or archive views.

 Read your post after you write it
Use the spelling checker for every post. Be sure that there are no grammar or punctuation errors. Once the post has been published, view the site and check the Categories and Tags to verify that you have the correct ones applied to the post. Remember, you can change or edit any of the information.

 Check your site
Never assume that the site is still perfect. Check it often. There are tons of things that can cause a website to not function: spam, hackers, errors, little green men, the list is endless. Keep a close eye on your site.

Contrary to what many believe, for a novice, changing even one sentence in a website is not a simple task. Changing a photo or illustration can be a nightmare. A traditional website is built with a language called HTML; in order to edit a sentence, the HTML must be changed. HTML can look very foreign and intimidating to learn. Colors and placement of text and images are controlled by another language called CSS, again something else to learn.

A site can be built using a CMS program, the CMS stands for Content Management System. The idea behind CMS is that a user can change the content of the site at any time. The system works great. However, there is a substantial learning curve before a new user can jump in and start using the system. Even though a user does not need to learn a computer language in order to change the site, a good deal of time is required to become competent with the system.

How much time? That depends on the individual. While the system is straightforward, it does take some time to understand.  At the very minimum, it will take three to four hours of personal instruction. In addition, the new user will spend a good deal of time working through help files or seeking information on the Internet or consulting with an expert.

Since most users do not change a site on a regular basis, a lot of things are forgotten between changes and the user will need to refresh his or her memory. All time exhausting and expensive tasks.

So, is it really practical for you or an employee to learn how to change your site? Are you willing to devote the time to educate yourself or pay an employee to be educated?

Here is a real world scenario. A web designer creates a site with a Content Management System, installs it and starts to train the site owner or an owner’s employee. The first training session usually takes two hours. After a few days of experimentation, the new user has many questions and needs additional consultation time, typically another two hours. That is followed by calls for help over the next few weeks.

Since you or your employee do not change the site on a daily basis, often many things are forgotten when you go to make the changes. A call for help is next. 

All of the above are services, as web designers, we are willing to provide – for a fee. My business philosophy has always been: “we are happy to do whatever a client is willing to pay us to do.”  You have to ask yourself how much time and money are you willing to invest, in order to be able to change your site. Is it a good return on your investment?

If you need to spend an hour or more trying to remember or figure out how to change a photo or a paragraph of text in your site or spend several hours researching how to add a contact form and make it work, is that time well spent? Since web designers work with sites every day and keep up with the ever changing web technology, edits or additions to a site can be made in a timely manner at very reasonable costs.

I have several clients who have become very skilled in using a CMS, they put in the time needed to learn the system. However, even those clients need a helping hand now and then. Other clients spend countless, frustrating hours trying to edit their site, when I could do it for them in minutes and at a nominal fee.

The bottom line – it is often more economical to pay a web professional to make the changes for you.

I am happy to create a site for you that you can edit or I can do the edits for you as needed.

If you have any questions about your current or future website, give us a call for a FREE consultation.
800-598-4008 or 941-408-8859.

Commercials on TV make it seem like you can log on to a service and have a site up in minutes. Not really. You must choose from cookie cutter templates that have restrictions on size and quantity of content. Do you have graphics sized correctly? If not, do you know how to do that? Text must fit the allowable area in the template. If you have more to say, you are out of luck. It is not that easy.

Kids are learning how to program a site in school. Does that mean that the neighbor’s teenager can design a site for you? If you were ever a kid yourself, you know it may not be much of a priority to them. There are so many reasons to put your project aside: dates, school work, computer games, sports and so on.  Your site may never get built, or it might get thrown together at the last minute. Remember those school projects we all put off?

A good website takes planning. A lot of thought needs to be put into a site to make it successful. Many web designers can create beautiful sites with lots of fancy effects, music and auto playing videos. All of that is fine if you are not really interested in selling your product or service.

A good designer will take the time to learn about your business and what you would like the site to do for your company. Each business is unique. A successful website has to be tailored to your customers. Yes that sentence is correct; tailored to your customers, not you. You and your web designer need to determine what will motivate your customers to act on what is presented on the site.

Lets get together to discuss your needs. Call us for a FREE consultation.

Why?

First off, a Flash page increases the file size that has to be loaded for a visitor to view the page and continue into your site. How many times have you clicked off of a site instead of watching the little icon spin round and round? You must keep in mind that a visitor to your site may not be using a super fast internet connection. There are still people who cannot get high speed access to the web.

Second, many Flash pages load with music and sound effects that may not make every viewer happy. I have been surfing the web late at night only to stumble across a site that blared a loud tune as soon as the page loaded. I just about jumped out of the chair. Even if you supply a button to turn off the sound, there is no standard place for it to be located on a page. Visitors are left to search for it. A better solution is to provide an option to turn the sounds on, if a visitor so desires.

And now for THE Biggest Reason: The text and messages in a Flash document are not able to be read by the search engines, they are images. If you worked hard to create an interesting message in regular text and put it in the Flash movie; it still will not be able to be read by Google and other search engines. So the page will not rank very high in the search results based on the text on the page that is in Flash.

So is Flash good for anything? A site that is interested in showing off art or images can use Flash to its advantage. The best examples are sites for photographers, where the images speak for themselves. Often the goal of an artist site is to get the viewer so involved with the visuals that text or copy is not need. My personal opinion is even in that case, a site without Flash would bring more business to the owner.

Technology is constantly moving forward. There are new ways to make Flash sites more readable to the search engines and that should continue in the future. Only you can decide if the advantages Flash offers outweigh the disadvantages for you site.

You can call us Toll Free to discuss this and any other needs you may have for your website. 800-598-4008.