Time for a quick quiz.   Website About pages should be about: The owner The company Both For a small company, one in which the owner is still guiding the ship, the answer should be primarily #1, the owner. The About page SHOULD NOT be another list of sales pitches, cliches, “we are the best because”, another explanation of what your company offers, or otherwise reiterate what’s already on your website. Those things are for your home page and other pages. Tell a Story Everyone loves a story.  Tell your audience a story about: How your product or service was created What gave b

First, How a Website Works A website is a bunch of files filled with the contents of a website and coding called HTML and CSS (and others) that your browser (Internet Explorer, Chrome, etc.) reads to know how to put together a website. That coding includes things like box sizes, placement, types of borders, and font style, size and colors. When you call up a website by either typing the address in your browser’s address field or click on a link to it on another website or an email, that website’s server sends those files to your computer or smart phone and your browser reads the fi

From an excellent article by Hubspot, here are the 8 reasons to redesign your website: You aren’t getting the results you want. The purpose of your site has changed. Your website just doesn’t work. You have an effective web design strategy. Your site isn’t responsive. You want to incorporate a better content strategy. Your competitors changed their site. Your third-party tools are outdated. For more information on any of these reasons visit the article here.

You don’t have to be crazy to be a web designer but I’m sure it helps.  A website front page has to do two things that are at odds with each other: Inform the web surfer in less than two and one half seconds he has found what he wants, and Be interesting enough the surfer will want to spend some time on the site. Front Pages Need To Be “Scanable” When people see a large block of text on a front page their eyes glass over and they start looking for the back button to get them back to their Search Engine Results Page (SERP).  It’s just human nature and therefore web

Last month, Google released a blog post covering common mistakes found on mobile sites and how to fix them. According to the post, they’re getting ready to roll out an update that will most probably de-list sites performing below par on mobile devices. This update could also mean a preference and boost in rankings for businesses that have invested in their mobile presence. The below statement from the blog confirms this. “To improve the search experience for smartphone users and address their pain points, we plan to roll out several ranking changes in the near future that address sites t

Townsquare Interactive Websites are Expensive. For a small two man painting company Townsquare Interactive charges $400 per month for a very basic website. That’s $48,000 in ten years. OUCH! Townsquare Interactive Websites Lock You Into a Contract. They may say their websites are month-to-month, but you can’t just take your website to another hosting company so you do not own it outright.  If you want to change companies, you will have to start from scratch with a new website. There isn’t any tangible difference between that and a contract.  You’re stuck either way. Wit

I’m not talking about some fancy new drag-n-drop website maker that enables you to put together a website yourself without knowing any coding. I’m talking about the folks that put out those beautiful and functional WordPress themes that serve as a great starting point for a website, whether you are inclined to do one yourself or have someone like me build it for you. Either way, these premium themes reduce the cost of producing a quality website tremendously. As a case in point, I was talking to a builder at our local Home Show who spent $18,000 on his website that doesn’t re

Tripwire Magazine regularly puts out lists of the best of. This one showcases 45 gorgeous ecommerce themes that give your website a look you would have to pay a very talented designer thousands of dollars to create for you from scratch. Most of these you can buy for about 50 bucks.  Using one of these themes, you may still need a designer to help you adapt it to your own business but you will still get a quality website for a lot less money than hiring someone to build you a completely custom website. See them here.

Serve up content that provides the best experience for the device requesting it—whether it’s a desktop, tablet, mobile phone, TV or Internet fridge While some retailers struggle to maintain separate websites for tablet, mobile and desktop users, others are taking advantage of responsive design capabilities that enable a single site to flexibly adapt to whatever device is accessing it. Download this report by Forrester Research to understand what responsive design is—and what it isn’t.  This informative white paper outlines how responsive design can: Deliver a consistent and optimized use

Open Source isn’t just another veiled term only understandable by geeks like me.  OK, maybe it is, but you’re more familiar with it than you realize.  Have you ever heard of or used the internet browser Mozilla Firefox?  Firefox is Mozilla’s answer to the corporate dominance of companies like Microsoft with their Internet Explorer which ships with just about every computer made on earth.  Other commonly used open source platforms include the Linux operating system and the  Android operating system for mobile devices. The Idea Behind Open Source The idea behind Open Source is

Potential website owners not familiar with a blog sometimes think it’s just a way for overly loquacious people to get their thoughts out when nobody is within hearing range. Yes, it is that, but much more than that since blogs have evolved into a premier tool for business owners to promote their business. Blogging Is Good For Google Spiders Blogging is good for both your potential customers and for Search Engine Optimization, since the main thing a search engine’s spider is looking for when it crawls your site is content. The more content you have on your site, the more they have t

Mashable.com article written after they converted their website to responsive design. Quoting from their article, “The aim here isn’t merely prettiness or technical trickery, however: Media companies like ours are seeing a major shift in the consumption habits of their audiences. Those organizations that don’t act may find themselves behind the curve. Here’s why.”

Call me a design nut but I love looking at great website designs. This link will take you to Tripwire Magazine’s compendium of premium WordPress themes organized by categories such as blog, ecommerce, photography, or portfolio, to name a few. If you don’t already have a website or your site is due for an overhaul I can build you a website using one of these themes and save you a lot of money compared to getting the same quality design by hiring someone to build you a site from scratch, assuming you can even find someone who is as talented as these designers to design it for you.

What Does Dex Know? I don’t know what all DexKnows but I do know they know how to charge over twice as much as Kirbyworks for their websites in the first year, and then keep on charging $200 per month after that when you wouldn’t have to pay Kirbyworks a single dime. Why the $200 per month or $2400 per year after the first year? So you can get them to make changes to your website. Ouch! DexKnows Locks You In to a Proprietary Platform Nobody Else Will Touch Sure, you can get out of your monthly payment to DexKnows after the first year, and after you have paid them $4900 (compared to

What Is Responsive Web Design? A responsive web design is a website built to adapt with the purpose of giving tablet PC and smartphone users a better surfing experience. A responsive website automatically adapts its layout and formatting to suit the screen size and device being used to view it. This means a website using a responsive layout will display nicely and work properly for all desktop browsers, tablets, smartphones and other mobile devices, both what’s on the market now and what will be invented later. For quite awhile a dedicated mobile website, that is, a secondary website for

I don’t have them on payroll, but I do pay for what they have to offer, and it’s money well spent. They are the ones that produce the most gorgeous, feature rich WordPress themes available. You can see some of them (and imagine having one yourself) at places like: Ten Best WordPress Themes 2012 60 Best Responsive WordPress Themes 50 Best WordPress Themes Showcase The Best Web Designers Are Making Premium Themes Sure, you could hire one of these world-class web designers to build you a website like one of these but you’re going to be paying around $6000 whereas I can build one

Seller’s Bay has reasonably priced websites that are good for small businesses. Here’s a few reasons why Kirbyworks websites are better: Kirbyworks websites use Responsive Design.  That means every part of the website will work on any size viewing device, whether it is a computer, tablet PC, or smart phone.  Seller’s Bay advertises their photo gallery as being iPhone compatible but what about the rest of your website and what about other devices?  If it’s not responsive design your whole website won’t show up correctly and it won’t work on all devices. Kirby

Some companies will build you a website that looks good on a computer monitor but not on a Smart Phone or a Tablet PC such as an iPad then charge you extra to have it work on small devices. Funny thing about that is it takes very little extra effort to “do it right the first time” so I start out with a platform that works on all devices, otherwise known as Responsive Design or Fluid Design. It’s always included in every website I do. Why is that important, you ask? Just recently the number of people using Smart Phones to search for products and services like what you have to

When it comes to building you a website that doesn’t look like a template, even though it is, this is where we start. These gorgeous themes are fully responsive so adapt to any size viewing device, even a smart-phone. The website you are looking at was created from the Modernize theme, the Richland Collision Services website I built was adapted from the Coporlio theme and the G and C Septic website I built was based on the Office theme. See more of these themes here.

$94.95 per month doesn’t seem like a bad price for a website, unless you actually plan to keep it for awhile. After 10 years that turns into $11,394. Now that is a bad price for a website. But what if you just want to have them design the site, which they will do for free, and then after a couple months move it over to another host and pay even less. You then make off like bandits with a professionally done website for a couple hundred dollars. Nothing wrong with that. I’d do it if someone were foolish enough to give me the keys to the website after only two months. Especially when