Note: The following blog post, while being serious, is meant to be read with a sense of humour and is not intended to be arrogant in any way, shape or form. So, put on your Serious Hat and your Humour Pants and start reading.

Your Website Might Be Outdated

It’s true and chances are that it probably is, well, not entirely at least… but probably parts of it. The web is a constantly changing environment and what was relevant and current six months, a year, two years ago, just don’t make the grade today. If you want your site to be current, you need to not only look to the future but also be prepared for change. A good web designer and developer not only has a rough idea of the upcoming forecast but they also plan for future changes. They can see shifting trends in designs and technologies and plan to utilize them properly for you.

When Was the Last Time You Got a Redesign?

Better yet, when was the last time that your competitor got a redesign? Is their site design more recent than yours? Are they taking advantage of current trends in technology? Why aren’t you?

Has it been over a year or two since you’ve had a new design for your site? If not, chances are that you aren’t taking advantage of a lot of the great new technologies out there that have been released in the past few years. jQuery, Mootools, HTML5, and CSS3 (to name a few) have taken the web by storm in the past couple of years and are major players in where the web will be going.

Was your site designed 4 or 5 years ago? You’re in dire need of a site design. Look at your competitors, chances are that they’ve had theirs done in the last little while. Now think about the two sites from a consumer’s point of view, which one are you going to gravitate towards? Exactly, the more modern, stylish design. Why isn’t that you?

You’re Using Social Media, Right?

“Social what?!” you say? Social Media sites like Twitter and Facebook, for example, are great ways for you and your business to interact with clients in real time. Prompting users to “Like” your Facebook Fan Page on your website will give them instant access to your Page and keep up to date with you and your business even if they aren’t looking on your website itself. The same goes for Twitter. Having a Twitter feed appear on your site or at least prompting users to follow you on Twitter will give you another means to connect with that user. Keep them up to date by Tweeting updates and prompting them to visit your site.

Look around my site. There are a million and one ways for you to get ahold of me and to interact with me. Why don’t you take advantage of that for yourself and use Social Media tools on your site?

Is Your Site Build Using Tables?

HTML Tables are a thing of the past. It’s not 1995 any more… and hasn’t been for about 15 years so why is your site coded using Tables? They don’t allow for easy changes done to the site. They’re clunky and messy and severely outdated. Your site should have been coded using a combination of HMTL and CSS that will allow for easier changes to be made to the layout and format of your site. View the source of your site (View > View Source [or similar] in your browser), if you see “table” “td” “th” and/or “thead”, you’re in trouble. Time to get an update!

Do You Have to Get Your Web Guy To Update Your Content?

If so, why? Why are you paying your web designer/developer each time you want to add a new news item to your site or change your contact information? Why wasn’t your website coded using a content management system which would let you update the website at your leisure without paying extra to do it? Content management systems like WordPress (for example) are becoming easier and easier to use and install. It shouldn’t have to cost you extra each time you need to change something on your site, which brings me to the next point.

How Often Are You Updating Your Website?

If you’re paying your web guy their hourly rate each time you need to update your site then chances are the answer to that is “not very often.” Taking advantage of a content management system will let you make changes whenever you want, on your own time and without having to pay an arm and a leg to do it too! Using a content management system will even let you easily install a blog onto your website where you can keep users up to date with new product arrivals, business changes, pretty much anything that you want. Hell, they can even subscribe to an RSS (really simple syndication) feed and be notified instantly of new news items or blog posts made on your site.

Flash Sucks

Not everyone is going to agree that Flash sucks, and really, it doesn’t. It’s extremely powerful and used in the right way, it’s absolutely perfect but its days of being the leading way that websites are built are in the past. As a web building tool its dying. Search engines can’t read content in a Flash file so if your website’s navigation is built in Flash then they have no way of visiting the pages on your website and therefore don’t know that they exist and therefore can’t index them which then means that they aren’t searchable to users using the search engines. See how that’s a bad thing for you? I’m not going to use any names for the following anecdote but rest assured that it’s true.

Recently we were approached because a website wasn’t showing up in search results, even when you searched the domain name itself. This was absolutely horrible for the site. What’s the point in having a website if it can’t be found, right? The problem was that the whole navigation was coded in Flash and like I said earlier, this means that the search engines can’t read it and therefore couldn’t find any of the other pages on the website. The content itself was also coded in Flash, again not readable. It was no wonder that this site wasn’t showing up anywhere. Combined with a number of glaring search engine optimization errors, the site was a disaster. After a couple hours rebuilding the framework and recoding the site it was good to go and was relaunched. Within a few days it was indexed by search engines and quickly skyrocketed to the top of search results. Its been holding steady at or near the top of the results ever since.

I ask again, why was your site coded in Flash? To do some fancy rollovers and your navigation that can be done using CSS and HTML and maybe a little Javascript? Combine that with the fact that Flash isn’t viewable on iPhones or iPads and you’ve got yourself one hell of a problem. That’s right, if I go to your website on my iPhone (which happens A LOT) and your navigation is in Flash then I hit a dead end and I can’t go any further and immediately start looking at competitors’ sites. I’m not the only one. How many people do you know that have an iPhone? Ask them to go to your site.

Maybe it’s time to re-examine why your site was built using Flash, eh?

I Can Help

I can. It’s true. I wouldn’t lie. What’s stopping you from sending me an email to get the ball rolling? Is it the lack of a contact form? I can help with that too. VOILA!

What does that $30 get you?

• One domain name.
• Installed WordPress content management system (letting you update and modify your website at your own leisure).
• 40+ themes for you to choose from to style your website, these themes are changeable at any time!
• The ability to upload your own themes and plugins to further customize your site!

Want to save even more money? Pay for a year up front and save $60 on the annual cost. That’s right, for only $300 a year you can get a domain name and a website up and running!

* A custom designed and built website is not included in this special.

Interested? Fire off an email now!

I’ve decided to re-work my website (again!) so while I’m cleaning it up, please excuse any errors or empty pages that you might come across.

Between working and teaching and being newly married there isn’t much free time to work on this but rest assured that I’ll be doing it every chance that I get.

Thanks,
Robb