Web Ideas

 Many clients request a website that they or an employee can update or change. Of course that is possible; but is it practical?

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.

There are tons of people making websites, how do you choose the right one for your business? Let’s face it, common conception is that anyone can put up a website.

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.

Flash pages; those fancy pages full of moving graphics or text, that flies in and out of the page can be hazardous to your web health and wealth.

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.

It is very easy to get carried away with all of the options available on a web site. You can change the color of every other word on a page, make text blink, change the size of the text or mix several different type fonts on one page. No matter how tempting this may be, resist it.

Website visitors are typically in a hurry. They want to see what you have to offer in the shortest amount of time possible. If you clutter up the text with lots of different text colors or fonts, it becomes confusing, hard to read and they leave.

Probably the worst thing you can do is have a song or other noise file start when a viewer arrives on a page. A lot of web surfers, me included, view the web late at night. The last thing I want to hear is a site that blasts me with noise as soon as it loads. Noise can be defined as any sound or song. Even if it is a soft sweet love song, every site visitor may not feel the same way about it.

Why risk putting off any of your site visitors? If the purpose of your site is to attract customers or clients, keep it simple. If you insist on playing music on your site, give a clear option to turn off the noise. Better yet, offer the option to turn on the music.