Finding them and/or finding you
Filed Under: Customers
You cannot just build a web site and expect customers to find you. You do have to advertise. If you are only targeting local customers advertise in the local newspaper(s), join the Chamber of Commerce, send out a press release and use SEO to target geographical searches.
If you are seeking global customers then you need to spend the time and money on good SEO. If your products or service is fairly generic then using Google AdWord, PPC or other paid services may be necessary.
Having good incoming links also help. Remember not all links are created equal. Avoid link farms like the plague.
What’s In : What’s Out
Filed Under: CSS
What’s Out
Font tags, complicated nested tables, marquees, blinky things.
Okay, what is it with web designers still using tags???
A friend that is also a web designer/developer is in the process of updating a web site. On one page alone there were over 626 font tags. Aaaccckkk!
Using any uncessary code aka bloated code causes search engine spiders to slow down while roaming a site, adds weight to the page, and let’s not talk about how long it would take just to update all of them.
What’s In
CSS!!! By using an external stylesheet it is possible to completely change the font (not by using font tags) throughout the site by just changing one line of code.
CSS is also a method of presentation. You can do things with it that you just cannot do using font tags.
A few of my favorite CSS sources
Filed Under: CSS
http://www.csszengarden.com/
http://cssvault.com/
http://www.cssbeauty.com/
http://www.alistapart.com/
Contracts: Why you should have one
Filed Under: Contracts
You should have a contract and detailed site specification done and signed by both the client and the designer/developer before any work is done.
You need to know what you are paying for and what is going to be done. There should be no hidden surprises.
A contract will protect you as you can enforce it. It also protects the designer/developer also from scope creep. Scope creep is when you plan for something at X price and pretty soon the client wants more and more.
An example would be a client I have. It was planned to be a 2 page web site. Soon the client was asking to have a page for each item. I went and figured out the additional cost, and the client decided against it.
Another example was a small 5 page site. The client had just a few items for sale. Not a problem. Well those items were actually categories. The project should have been scoped at $3,000 versus $500.
Maintenance Contracts
Filed Under: Contracts
A maintenace contract are used to provide maintenance on your web site. Not to create a new web site. A maintenance contract is used for after the launch of your web site, and most designers/developers state a specific time that you have to completely review your web site for errors. The time frame is generally a week.
If you think you can just send tons of changes to your developer and expect them to not charge you for the work then you are mistaken. I only mkae minor changes within that week period. If you want to completely change the content you are going to be charged for my time.
Tip1: Save your changes and send them all at once. It will cost you more money to send items piece meal.
Tip 2: If you have a signed maintenance contract you are somewhat protected from price increases. All designers change their rates from time to time.
Collection of Funds
Filed Under: Comments
I almost had a cow this morning. Well a small one. On the front page of one of the local newspapers was a headline about a local vendor demanding payment from a local government agency. The company that sent out the press release (according to the St. Croix Avis) was Vast Imaging and the principal of the company is Ivan Minarik. The government agency in question is DLCA.
Now having someone owe you for work performed is not a pleasant thing, but Vast Imaging certainly should have handled it better. Now to be honest would you want to do business with a company that would do that to a client? I sure as hell wouldn’t. They should have hired an attorney and filed a claim/suit in court.
I may have further comments about this. What where they thinking??? Duh!
Now I know what I charge per hour and how long it takes me to accomplish tasks. But $80,000 for less than a year’s work, and I’m sorry but it would have been prudent not to continue to perform work when you’re not being paid.
Clean Code
Filed Under: Code
I really, really hate badly written code. There are some “web designers”, and I’m using that term very loosely, that should have their fingers broken and never, ever permitted near a keyboard again.
An example is a web site that I recently created a nice and cleanly coded template for. The previous designer (again that term is very loosely used) had written such horrible and convoluted code. It was a mixture of poorly nested tags that was so horrible that other designers found it a nightmare to update.
What many people do not understand is that badly written code causes loading problems, and search engine spiders to give up (and we don’t want that to happen now do we) while crawling your web site. And depending on the browser make your nice new web site look horrible.
It actually makes me wonder if they don’t pay attention to the code what else aren’t they paying attention to?
Learn to code instead of just using a WYSIWYG. If you learn to code then you can look at it be be able to identify the problem. Using a WYSIWYG can leave behind tiny bits of code (empty or missing tags) that can cause problems with the web site.
Shopping Carts
Filed Under: e-Commerce
Right now I am sitting here waiting for files to download to transfer to another location. Which got me to thinking about the various shopping carts that I have worked with.
Shopping carts are available in various different languages (PHP, ASP, ColdFusion, etc.), some are free and others are not. Well I’ve been working with one of the free ones, and the time I’m spending on customizing it to fit the design of a site (under a subcontract)….well it would have been less expensive to purchase a certain cart and add it to the site. There are just 5 little include files to drop into any design and voila!!!
Remember free is not less expensive.
