I have been working in the World Wide Web World since it began in the nineties but despite vast changes in technology over that time, common sense and careful planning are still required (more so now than ever) if you are going to launch a successful website. Indeed, the following applies just as much to "Website Refurbs" too so don't click away!
Here is my quick "Top 10" - see how you measure up
1. Know Thyself
You will never be able to sell yourself and your services if you don't know yourself and your business extremely well. This may sound obvious but often, websites launch without any clear direction because the message is not clear to the visitor. I hope it's obvious to the reader what I am selling on this website at least? Learn all about your products, sure, but don't forget: pricing, postage / carriage costs, Distance Selling Regulations if they apply, VAT, returns policies, email etiquette... the list is long.
2. Know Your Audience
Who are you selling to? You don't have to talk fancy marketing "demographics" here to know that your audience for your website and business wants a quality product or service, set at the right price, with the backing of polite and fair support from you, and all delivered in a timely and professional manner. In other words, your "market" is "people" (most often) and so get to know them: ask them questions, listen carefully, thank them regularly for their business, offer discounts, make them laugh even! A happy customer will buy from you so make them happy :)
3. Know Your Market
It is actually not very surprising that very few website owners know the size of their marketplace - I mean it's all done on the web and email, there is no physical marketplace - right? Yes... to an extent. But, the web also gives you huge amounts of information from many different sources to help you figure out how many potential customers are out there for you from reports to statistics to analysing your competitors without them even knowing. The Information Age is called as such because that is where every business is placed now in the middle of a massive flow of information. So, with our help, you CAN know your market better and then be better placed to serve that market.
4. Design Appropriately
Almost anyone can knock up a website these days and in some cases you can even get it done for free or do it yourself for free although I strongly advise against either approach for the serious business person (more on that later). The website design has to do many things:
- prove that you are a professional business within seconds of the site being viewed by potential customers or they will go elsewhere in the blink of an eye;
- provide a clear message from the outset - what does the site do, what are you selling, how much is everything, where are your contact details etc.
- clearly display your brands, from your logo to your product or service names - often a website visitor is looking for these for instant recognition that they have found what they are looking for (this holds true for all these points by the way)
- represent you and your company fairly and accurately; there is no point 'lying' about anything here as it may bring you in some revenue but ultimately, it will be your downfall
- enable your visitor to quickly navigate to where they want to be and to do the task they came to do in the first place and if you get the opportunity to cross-sell or up-sell whilst they navigate then great! (as long as it doesn't distract them from their initial goal)
- keep up with the times - the web moves quickly and so your website design must reflect the times to a degree. If I showed you a web design I was proud of 5 years ago I'd still not want to recommend it today - there are not many 'classics' in terms of website designs
- be fast - sometimes a site design can actually slow down the whole website making it very difficult for your visitor to interact with it and therefore you. Flash is a technology that we do not support any more for this very reason (among others)
There are many more points I could add to that list but the main point is this: web design is not just a matter of cobbling together something that looks nice on the screen - it has a function and a purpose too so always leave it to a professional.
5. Avoid Excessive Spend
This applies to all corners of your business and your website project is no exception. A classic example of how to overspend on an e-commerce project, for example, is to get your web company to create for you a new, specially made shopping basket and checkout system because you know exactly how you want it to behave. The issue is that this takes time and therefore will cost you money that you could easily have saved by using existing software. Any good web company will be able to recommend a product you can buy into, at a fraction of the cost of the bespoke software, depending on your requirements. I recommend a solid, affordable product from a group of about 5 that I have used and tested over the years and always keep my eyes open for the latest and greatest products on behalf of my clients too.
6. Stay on the Right Side of the Law
Well of course you do because you are an upstanding citizen! What I mean here is that there are legal and other industry procedures that you MUST follow if you are to avoid headaches, hefty fines and even jail - seriously! The Internet is a wild frontier still and the global corporations and governments are doing their best to keep it reigned-in (sometimes too much), protect web users - especially online buyers and merchants, and set standards that we can all follow for a more unified web experience. Mostly these procedures, guidelines and standards are helpful and other times, not so much. The hot topic right now is to do with PCI DSS which I will not go into here as I have another blog post on the topic but it is a biggie for small businesses, in particular. Your professional web company will be keeping tabs on all these industry changes and advising you accordingly and if they aren't, switch to us today because we take it very seriously.
7. Use the Tools & Techniques Available
We live in exciting times for global commerce and whatever your size of business, you can be involved in the global economy or better still, the social economy! What I mean is that your customers may not necessarily buy from you from all over the world but that does not stop you building relationships with like-minded people in different continents from suppliers who can provide you with cheaper goods to "fans" who just like what you have to say and help you spread your message even if they don't buy from you. The best two examples here are Facebook and Twitter: each work for your business to help build networks of people with whom you can forge relationships which in turn helps to build your brand(s) and drive traffic to your website and then sales. These great tools are a start but you can quickly get swamped by the sheer numbers of people you need to deal with and so other tools and techniques are available to help alleviate the stress and free up some of your time. Just ask me about it and I'll help you on the path!
8. Search Engine Optimisation and Other Essentials
Some people think that Google is going to change the whole way it operates soon and SEO, as it is known, will go out of the window but in my opinion, this is impossible. SEO today takes into account a whole host of concepts and practical considerations that go beyond how Google indexes your website - some of them belong to the Best Practices and Usability categories of web design whilst others concern themselves with Performance, Content Delivery and Maintainability of systems. All you need to know is that SEO activities are still a vital part of a website design project and will be for the foreseeable future. Some of the work here is long-winded, even tedious at times, and some of it is just a natural part of developing a professional website but all of it is essential and requires a lot of specialist knowledge on the part of the web company involved so grill them on it!
9. Don't Stop Advertising
It's tempting to think that all the work put in to creating a fine looking and operating website will start bringing you in custom on the day of its launch and sometimes I have clients ask me: "how will I cope with the demand once it launches" but to be honest, it is rare that people beat a path to your door as soon as you open your site / online shop for trading. SEO will get you so far but it takes time for your site to establish itself and a lot of ongoing updating and new content (like this blog - this post alone has taken me 45 minutes to write so far but it is a service to my clients, hopefully you, and helps my website get recognised online). So as this is all happening, you have to keep advertising to get your web address in front of the people that need to see it. This means offline, print advertising as well as online AdWords / Pay-Per-Click (PPC) type advertising: both cost money but then you have to build that in to your business if it is going to thrive.
10. Keep Plugging Away
Launching your website is a great achievement and I love doing my job to help you get there, but it is not a one-off thing - you MUST keep going with it and always plan the next stage of work and how you are going to improve the site or start a blog or build your social network some more or get listed in Google's and Bing's shopping sites or write some new press releases showing off your latest widget or service or get an iPhone app designed for your online service or... once you enter the online world with your business you should never look back as it is a commitment that is challenging but very rewarding and we are here to help you every step so call me today and let's get going! 01803 897 - 509
there's hope for the rest of us web designers and developers! here's a screenshot of the Previous / Next links at the bottom of google uk's search results page today - OOOPS! now it's ok that i'm not perfect all the time :)
If you are like me and you couldn't wait to see the new iOS4 in action you may have downloaded and installed iTunes 9.2 (beta) but the past few days you have seen a message that says something like: "this verison of iTunes will expire in X hours" ... well fear not, simple fix, just download the latest iTunes - still 9.2 but not beta anymore - and install it as you would any other Mac app. The message will disappear next time you run iTunes. Easy. The only thing is, I still get the following error:
It appears that this is a common problem and it will probably get sorted with an iOS4 / iTunes update soon but if you can't wait, some folk are restoring their phones to factory settings then starting all over again + deleting any previous backups + lots of other time wasting activities... my advice is to wait until a solution comes out from Apple. If you performed a backup before you upgraded to iOS4 you should have a nice and recent backup anyway so if all else fails, you can always go back a step.
It's Monday 7th June 2010 at the Apple WWDC and hundreds of thousands of people globally are 'listening' in to Steve Jobs keynote address (via live blogs mainly - being updated by the attendees in pseudo real time) and they are all expecting to hear about the new iPhone 4 and Mr Jobs doesn't disappoint! For anyone who saw the prototype photos of the new iPhone on the web over the past month or so the design is no surprise and for those who saw the OS4 keynote address recently (see my other blog entry below) there were no big surprises here either apart from a name change to " iOS " for this version so perhaps there isn't as much buzz around for this device as there should have been? Who cares?! The device is another beauty, it has a great new screen with lots of technically superior bits to it (Steve Jobs loves it so much I think he got carried away in his keynote to be honest), a forward facing camera and new software to video chat (called FaceTime), a 5MP camera with LED flash which is also an HD video camera with iMovie editing capability built right in (except you have to buy that on the App Store), better battery life (claimed), and the thing we have all been waiting for... a gyroscope! Whacky games will be the best use of this new gizmo but who knows what us developers may do with it next? Well you can't have one yet but here are some key dates: * Pre-orders for iPhone 4 start on 15th on June 2010 * iPhone 4 available to buy on 24th June 2010 * iOS4 will be free to download via iTunes(1) on 21st June 2010 * iOS4 GM Seed is available to Apple App developers NOW(2) (1) make sure you upgrade your iTunes to v9.2 for iPhone 4 syncing (2) you DON'T need to register your iPhone's serial number to use this version - I've done it and it works fine TOP TIP: If you are able to perform an early update to your iPhone 3G / 3GS using the iOS4 GM Seed version you do NOT have to do a restore on your device in iTunes; rather, simply open iTunes with your device connected, hold down the "alt" key on your Mac's keyboard, and mouse click the "Check for Update" button on the Summary tab - this will allow you to select the ".ipsw" file you downloaded on your Mac and it will update your device's OS in around 10-15 minutes. Also, I STRONGLY recommend doing these things too before you update: * backup all your device's photos onto your Mac with iPhoto * perform a manual backup of your device in iTunes (right mouse click on your device name under the DEVICES option on the left in iTunes and select "Back Up" * run your Time Machine backup just to be safe Have fun, enjoy the upgrade, see you soon...
I think every client I have had in the past 2 years has asked the same question (more or less): "why should I bother blogging if I am a business?". What they and you, probably, are worried about is that: *You are not an individual and so how does a 'business' run a blog? * What would you say if you had to write a post every day? * You don't have a lot of time for "this sort of thing" * What benefit is it for your business anyway? * People's comments may be harmful to your image Right. I shall take each of these in turn and put some fears to rest here and then youWILL want to contact us for your new website and blog combined... You are not an individual and so how does a 'business' run a blog?A good idea is to include the running of the blog in someone's job description so it is not seen as superfluous and less important than all the other roles that person has assigned to him or her. Even the biggest companies usually have one or maybe a few dedicated staff only posting their business's blog entries which keeps a consistent voice throughout the posts, puts a human face and often a name to the posts in this great communication channel, and lastly it gives that person the opportunity to build on what they have posted previously and to give the customers what they want to hear because they have been part of the process from the beginning. What would you say if you had to write a post every day?It is amazing how much you take your industry knowledge for granted and in this day and age you need to recognise it, and capitalise on it by getting it out there and drawing your customers in by the very fact that you are an authority in your field (hopefully!). A blog entry does not have to be an essay - it can be like a small news article if you like - as long as it makes for interesting reading and it is related to your business. If you manage this, your customers will probably want to read it... especially if you inject special offers into the mix thereby giving your audience an even better reason to follow your blog. You don't have a lot of time for "this sort of thing"Why not? Blogging should be part of your marketing strategy as it helps to get your message 'out there' and draw people in. Don't compare writing a blog to chatting with friends on Facebook as they are nowhere near the same thing! If you have a staff member who is keen and capable, empower them and let them be the daily voice of your company. A few of my clients worry about what kind of posts their staff might create if they are left to do it alone, which is fair enough, so if this is the case I encourage my client to introduce a very short and simple workflow process: * The staff member writes the post and emails is to the head of department or the boss
* The head of department or boss approves it and replies with a YES or NO and more comments if they have time to explain why they are rejecting it * The staff member then publishes it to the blog * Could it be simpler? The point is that this does not have to be rocket science and should not scare the more traditional 'offline' companies away from doing it: blogging can take just a few minutes out of a staff member's day and you'll probably find that they enjoy it too! What benefit is it for your business anyway?As well as the aforementioned "blog as a voice" marketing tool, your blog has some more subtle advantages for your business. Firstly, it helps to focus your message, your brand(s), and your thoughts when communicating with your customer base. In other words, when you force yourself to sit down and write a blog post for 10 minutes about the new service which you offer your customers you have to choose which parts of the service are important, convey them succinctly and think like the customer: all this makes you a better business representative overall. Secondly, if you keep your finger on the pulse of your industry you can create posts which include links out from your website/blog to other great sources of reference for your customers. You can give your opinion on these industry topics if you like (you should) or you can simply forward your customers on to the resource directly. Either way, you will become an authority within your industry and this is powerful: it means people will start to visit your blog or website just to hear what you have to say (WOW, but it's true) and just as importantly, Google and the other search engines will start to rank you higher and your search results placement will start to improve with the ultimate hope that you get to page 1 (organically) for your most prominent keywords... not bad for simply posting some good content to your blog regularly hey? Especially since it is a free way to get there! (Note: this will take time though so the sooner you start the sooner your website ranking can start to improve). Blogging also proves that you are active on the web and that you are adding content to your website all the time. This is another great aspect to running a blog for your business because websites which are kept up-to-date and have regular new content are also seen more favourably by the search engines. Blogs achieve this admirably not least of which by the fact that they create a new 'page' on your blog/website with every post so your overall page count increases all the time. This is good, trust me. It is also good because it gives you a great chance to have even more optimised pages - pages which are specific to a topic, like this one which is all about blogs, where you can have titles, URLs, and other meta tags working on your behalf to boost your website. Beginning to the picture and the light? Last point, I promise: People's comments may be harmful to your imageSimply, do NOT worry about this issue! First off, you can opt to moderate a user's comments on your blog so that they do not automatically display on your blog post but rather wait for you to approve them and if you don't, they never show and no-one knows they were ever submitted. Next, business studies show that a company is far more trustworthy, in the eye of the customer, if it first publicly acknowledges an issue with its service or product then answers that issue with an honest response, even if it is just to say, "sorry, we made a mistake". So, why shy away from a customer's comments when you can get them to work in your favour? Lastly, a user's comments contribute to your website's overall, "user generated content" (UGC). UGC is great because your customers are willingly, without pay or coercion, adding content to your blog/website - a task that you know (from earlier) is a good thing all round and you haven't had to do it yourself. You will also find that although a lot of the comments will not be very informative, there will be the odd gold nugget in there which you may find useful but more importantly, your customers will find useful and thus, the beginnings of a community are forged - all because you bother to blog and allow your customers to comment. To be clear, YOU GET A BLOG INCLUDED IN YOUR "SIMPLE" DEAL! Sorry to use capitals but it is such a powerful tool, and we include it for free here, that I thought it worth shouting about. The website we create for you for £295 not only allows you to edit all your content / text / images / video on your website but also allows you to create a blog, post unlimited entries (without any cost), moderate your customers' comments, and automatically tell Google when your website has a new post / web page so that it can update its index. Now contact us today and we'll get you hooked up with your new website and blog within a couple of days!
Most of the time I am working on medium to longer term projects that are more or less full-time but for a web designer / developer there are always gaps in the weekly work schedule when we could be earning money. Thus, I created "Simple": a service which caters for the individual start-up or small business looking to own a professionally created website but for a fraction of the usual cost (in the UK the minimum a professional web designer will charge is typically around £1,000 and that's on a good day!). I use a system which enables me to assemble 1-3 page websites very quickly for a customer, including a lifetime of free hosting (conditions apply), and so I can offer a great looking site with many features - including Photo Galleries, Blogs, Events Calendars, Bespoke Forms, Video Embedding, Simple E-commerce and RSS to name just a few - for only £295. If the project takes longer, I offer an hourly rate to my customers and can help with setting up their domains, email, AdWords account and campaigns or anything else they need. It's kind of like a "pick-n-mix" for the small business owner! If you are interested or may know anyone else who may need an affordable yet professionally made website, please visit the dedicated site i.e. this site does not cover the whole gamut of what I offer, only the "affordable" end of the spectrum:
Clients ask me about where to get Apple hardware like MacBooks or Mac Minis for less than full price. The best I can say is to try the following sites and try and buy refurbished where a customer has just returned a Mac and Apple has checked it all out, tested it, fixed anything if there was an error (in most cases there wasn't one in the first place) and re-packaged it. They can't sell it as "new" legally but chances are it is pretty close to new! http://www.cancomuk.com/clearance http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/specialdeals/mac http://www.2ndchancepc.co.uk http://www.computerwarehouse.co.uk Or there is always eBay! Either way I recommend trying to get the newer models with Intel chips because the older PPC based processors won't run Snow Leopard and whatever is around the corner next I'm sure. This is an issue because software developers are writing for the Intel processors now and you wouldn't want to be restricted by what software you can run on your new bargain after all would you?
As I heard someone say the other day, "Apple is on fire right now!". Two big things happened this past week or so:
* Apple unveiled its new iPhone / iPod Touch operating system called v4.0 and it's a BIG one
* The iPad starts selling in the USA and is due for sale here in the UK by the end of this month we're told
Why is this news so important? First off, whatever the new OS v4.0 is capable of will be available by Autumn this year on the iPad too since the iPad runs the same OS - just a little behind the iPhone. I will mention the 7 "tentpole" features as Steve Jobs called them in his keynote speech recently below and it is obvious that the new features are aimed just as squarely at the iPad as a device as the iPhone, maybe even more so, and so OS 4.0 is a big deal for all the "handheld" Apple devices over the next year.
Secondly, the iPad is being touted as a game changer i.e. it is not a laptop or a simple handheld device for fun, it is carving a new niche in the personal computing world, your world. You may not drag your laptop to your lap in the living room whilst watching TV but you'll let this beautiful device replace the cat for sure. Thus, a plethora of new apps will be appearing on the new iPad App Store to fill that void for you and they'll come extremely thick and fast since developers are used to creating apps for the iPhone now and this transition is very easy for them.
*** The 7 Tentpole Features of OS 4.0 ***
* Multitasking (NEW)
* App Folders (NEW)
* Enhanced Mail Client
* iBooks (NEW)
* Enhanced Enterprise Features
* Social Gamer Network Preview (NEW)
* iAd (NEW)
There are lots of features within each of the above categories which we should all be aware of but here are the biggies:
1. Background running of apps and fast app switching - no more need to close Skype just to quickly check your email
2. Organise your iPhone / Touch apps on screen using Folders - all drag and drop based, easy to rename, more apps can be downloaded now!
3. Unified Inbox - view all your email accounts inboxes together and switch to a single account easily
4. Just like the iPad, now there is a Bookstore for buying / downloading ebooks - very slick looking but far more readable on the iPad
5. Multiple Exchange email accounts capable, device management, app distribution via corporate network rather than App Store - all great enterprise enhancements
6. With 10 times the number of games in the App Store than on any competitor's database (DSi, PSP etc) now a gaming hub controls friend/stranger invites, scores and more
7. iAd is the biggest news yet - developers get 60% of ad revenue sharing, can build the ads, integrate them into an iPhone / iPad app very quickly, and they can all be very advanced, HTML5 (not flash) based (for video), fully interactive experiences... think "an app within an app" and best of all, no jumping off to the web browser, the user stays inside the app so when the ad closes, he or she is back to where they left off
OS 4.0 will be available to iPhone / Touch owners in the Summer.
*** Warning to iPhone Developers ***
I downloaded OS 4.0 beta and installed it on my iPhone 3GS without thinking / reading further and crash... the update failed but refused to rollback to 3.1.3 too so it was stuck in the middle. The ONLY way I could downgrade from OS 4.0 to 3.1.3 was to use a Jailbreak app (I won't say how here or even advise you to do it as you should do so entirely at your own risk). Basically, make sure you have registered your device with your online developer account before attempting to upgrade to this beta AND make sure you have an up-to-date backup of your current iPhone files etc just in case!
MORE TO COME ON THESE NEW APPLE PRODUCTS OVER THE WEEKS...
It was time for me to perform a test and do something useful at the same time: create and launch my own personal website in just 2 days (originally I said 1 day but to be honest, it is often good to leave what you have written until the following day to re-read it before you publish it anyway). The fruits of my labour are here: I wanted to use the same heavy hitting technology as I use for client projects on my own project to prove that it doesn't matter how big a web project is when you choose the Agile approach to web development. Secondly, I wanted to make my new website very personal because more and more, it is about who you work with on your web project and not just price or proximity to your offices! Thus, "glenn2" is born. Welcome to all and I hope I can give you some of what you need...
One of my preoccupations is to do with the curious euphoria accompanying the big switch from PC to Mac computing. I didn't realise how much I detested MS software until I got away from it completely. For Anyone thinking about the defection today, if you can afford it do it NOW because I can't find a downside after 2 years of joyful computing with my trusty MacBook Pro. Many of my posts to the web are written on an iPhone and my wife is lusting for an iPad next... gullible? We don't think so - the products and software are just plain and simply better! If you need a better reason than that then I suggest asking yourself why you're holding on to your PC so strongly. With Apple's Leopard release and now Snow Leopard in the wild and tried & tested, they just keep getting more and more sophisticated with their interfaces, ideas and ability to make their users love their equipment. Who else does that? I may not be on commission but I would like to see more people enjoying their experience of computing in general and it's incredible how much more I get out of work now that I code and manage projects via Apple products.
Try and resist buying one of these :)
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