And for very little money

“The right web site is the like a good spouse; the wrong one will be expensive and tough to live with.”

(Joe Harkins – www.buildinghosting.com)

When I started building web sites in January 1994, there was no Google, no Internet Explorer and no Yahoo.

In the years since then I have watched the net grow from a curiosity, understood by few people, to the huge thing it is today and . . . still understood by few people.

Some call that progress.

More new web sites came on line yesterday, before you finished your dinner, than were built during the entire first year I was acquiring experience. Thanks to free “site building” tools and blogs made from templates anyone, even someone with zero technical and artistic skills, can publish one in a few minutes.

That ease of building also leads to speed of abandonment.

Digital cameras make it easy to take a photograph. Microwaves make it easy to cook dinner. Word Processors make it possible to type out a novel or a poem.

But to do those things well . . . a book that people will actually enjoy reading and share with others . . . a dinner that people will pay for and come back for more . . . a photo that a magazine will put on its cover . . . . a web site that connects people to your enterprise and keeps them involved with your product or service . . . those things require deep understand of the technologies, respect for how people interact with the results and serious experience in the execution.

Most web sites created with “site builders” or “build your site tonight” tools, are abandoned within a year.

There are 3 basic principles and 5 basic rules to help you avoid that fate.

If you apply them you have a shot at success. If you ignore them, you will join those whose web sites didn’t work the way their owners thought they would. They become failed web sites. The time and effort andexpense (even if it is small) are wasted. 

A successful web site for a small business must have three qualities:      

1. Affordable 
2. Attractive 
3. Effective

Affordable – It’s easy to spend $5,000 on a new web site. There are situations where you simply must be ready to pay for that. But it’s also possible, with advice from knowledgeable sources, to spend a lot less than that. We will look at some of those ideas in this report.

Attractive – this can be tricky. Some people think we are talking about animation, bold colors and lots of graphics. Usually those are distractions.  Worse, they are a waste of time and money.

A clean, simple layout where the purpose and message of your site are obvious in the first 3 to 5 seconds is best. Scientific studies consistently show that the decision to stay or leave a web page is made that quickly.

Danger Signs –

• A Flash opening that begins with “page loading %” is like having a pit bull in your doorway.
• If the first page takes 20 seconds to show itself, more than ½ the visitors have already left. Every 5 seconds after that, another 50% of those remaining will leave.
• When you think about how much effort and expense went into getting a visitor to come to that web site, it is mind-numbing that someone would do something that drives them away.
• Mis-Understanding The Web – just because it is on a bright screen does not mean a web site should be entertaining. A web site is not a movie or a game. Most of the time, a business or organization web site is for delivering information, capturing orders and engaging the visitor in the activities of your business or mission. Anything that delays or distracts from connecting visitors to those goals will hurt your business, no matter how much fun it is . . .  or how much money you waste on creating that bouncing, whirling, flipping image.
• Big Logo – that is a big no-no. Take a lesson from the small logo in the upper left corner of the web sites of communication specialists like a major newspaper or television station or online shopping venue (ebay, amazon, overstock, ford, etc). 

• Navigation – Attractive also means straight-forward, intuitive navigation that finds everything on your web site, no matter how deep or complex, in three mouse-clicks or fewer.  That often means putting the same horizontal navigation menu (with drop-down links) near the top of every page PLUS the same menu along the left side of every page and even repeats it along the bottom of every page in the the “footer.”

• Legability and Readability – How easy is the information to see? How easy is it to read?These are two completely different but equally important things.
  • Is it Legible? Light colored text on a dark background is really cool – and a big headache because the eye is strained by more than a few inches of that.
  • Is it Readable? – fully-justified text (even margins on both sides) looks well-organized and professional. But when you have blocks of fully justified text that run more than 5 lines, you are taking away the subtle clues that help a reader’s eye find the start of the next line, making your information harder to read than if it were “left justified, right ragged” like the text on the rest of this page.  The combination of wide lines of text, grouped in big clumps of paragraphs that run 6, 8 or even 10 lines, fully justified like this one, are a big turnoff for most people. It is very likely you did not actually read this paragraph, so I will repeat it in its more readable and legible format.
  • Yes, it’s readable. This is a repeat of the previous paragraph in readable format. Is it Readable? – fully-justified text (even margins on both sides) looks well-organized and professional.But when you have blocks of fully justified text that run more than 5 lines, you are taking away the subtle clues that help a reader’s eye find the start of the next line, making your information harder to read than if it were “left justified, right ragged” like the text on the rest of this page.The combination of wide lines of text, grouped in big clumps of paragraphs that run 6, 8 or even 10 lines, fully justified like this one, are a big turnoff for most people. It is very likely you did not actually read this paragraph, so I will repeat it in its more readable and legible format. 

Summing up  – These issues are really important. They are only a start. But beware of web site projects that ignore them.

Also see “How We Work”

The Internet has become a war zone and by having a web site, you are placing yourself on the front lines. Religious and political fanatics of all stripes and spots, in all parts of the world, are the aggressors. What they cannot achieve by persuasion and the value of their dogmas, they act out by attacking web sites of innocent bystanders, like yourself.

A famous comment says, “War is just another form of politics.”

If you are lucky and diligent about protecting yourself, you probably will not see evidence of that battle. But your web site – all web sites – are under contant attack.

There are men (it’s almost exclusively men, because women are not allowed to attend school in many of those countries) whose delight is hacking into web sites solely for the purpose of changing the home page to an ugly and noisy rant against something they hate. The tools they use are commonly available all over the Internet.

They are able to do this because, contrary to what you may think you know, just about any web site can be either entered and tampered with or even taken over. All that’s needed is time, the right tools and a blind determination that is not limited by time or money.

In the past year alone, successful hacks have happened repeatedly to the web sites and internal computer systems of NASA, the US Department of Defense, Microsoft, – and just about every major business and government in the world.

(Ask Iran what happened in 2011 to the computer network that manages their nuclear bomb-making-materials factory.)

It is scary, but not at all unusual, that our own hosting servers, like everyone else, are attacked repeatedly every hour, every day. Fortunately, we have strong systems in place that are constantly monitored and updated. That diligence is why you pay us to host your web site. That’s where a lot of that money goes.

But we cannot protect you from yourself.  The site owner is the most vulnerable chink in our defenses because we cannot see or control the things a site owner can do. If you leave a door open or a window unlocked, or turn off your home alarm system, the local police department only learns that your prenises have been burglarized after an entry.

The problem with web sites is, you can’t be expected to recognize what an unlocked system looks like or how to relock it.

So, from time to time, we will write here – and post links to other Internet news stories – on how to protect your web site on any hosting company’s server.

Here are two articles we HIGHLY recommend to all web site owners.  Click on a title to read it.

• Facing the Pain of Passwords
• How to Make Strong, Easy-to-Remember Passwords

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All development work is based on a Written Proposal*– We begin your project only after you approve a written, detailed formal proposal and contract that:

• spells out every aspect of the project,
• defines the technology we will use,
• lists the resources we will use,
• spells out who will do what, such as create graphics, install texts, etc.
• establishes objective performance criteria,
• includes links to similar work
• includes links to verifiable references
• spells out a site management training plan
• sets firm deadlines and
• sets a firm price and terms

All web development is collaborative. When we start a project we establish a private, password-accessible web site on our development server, just for you. Designs, suggestions, samples and concepts are posted there for your review and feedback as they are developed. Your approval or change order is  requested at every step before we go to the next one.

We also establish an Online Project Manager (OPM) that monitors every step of the project, every email, every To-Do, every Milestone, every suggestion and every approval until the project is completed in accordance with the formal written proposal. You participate at every step.

This assures both of us that the finished product is exactly what is in the written proposal and contract, not just our opinion of what you should accept.

We are professional. We will finish what we start for the price we agreed upon. No hidden extras or surprises or charge-backs, ever

Until you put your final approval in writing, the job is not done.

*IMPORTANT NOTE: we do not charge for informal analysis or research or suggestions or estimates. You are under no obligation and will never be billed for discussions or informal estimates.

However, a formal written proposal is something we do not write without certain expectations. A formal written proposal is the functional equivalent of a set of architect’s blueprints for a building or an engineer’s specifications of a bridge. It is professional work that takes hours of knowledge and experience. When our written prposal is completed, any well-qualified web developer could follow it to a good result.

We create a formal written proposal only on your assurance that you are ready to go ahead with the project that has been defined in the informal discussions. It is the written version of a verbal agreement already established. If you do not proceed promptly with the project after we do the specification work, in good faith, of writing the formal proposal, you will be charged a price equal to 50% of the total value of the project it describes.

If you want a formal written proposal, but without making a commitment to award the project and finance it, with the freedom to use it as a biddable document or for inviting RFQs from suppliers, please tell us beforehand and we may create it for a price and terms to be negotiated.

Regarding payments, we accept payments by major debit or credit card.