Kyle Ritter

Before you go decide on a designer based on price or fancy graphics alone, this is a must read.

I wrote this primarily because I deal with clients who are dissatisfied with the results they are getting from their existing site. Many times, they hired an art school student or some kid armed with a cracked version of Photoshop. Often, their sites are pretty to look at, but fail miserably in the context of operating as a business tool.

Step1
Take a look at your business and ask yourself the following questions.

• What am I trying to achieve with my business, and how will a website help this?
• Which is more important? A website that is designed for my customers, or a website that is designed to suit me to congratulate myself on?
• Am I prepared to invest time into creating content, and am I willing to listen to the designer’s advice?

Once you have answered these questions go on to Step 2.

Step 2
Look at a prospective designer’s website and ask your self these questions.

• Does the website load quickly?
• Does the first page you see contain quality information?
• Is the navigation clearly labeled and easy to use?
• Is contact information readily available on each and every page?
• Is the content informative and professional at first glance?
• Does their page NOT crash my browser?
• Is the website free of background sounds and large animated objects? (If it is not, run…FAST!)

If you can answer YES to every single one of these questions, proceed to Step 3. Otherwise, go back and start looking at other companies.
Step 3
Look at their portfolio. Visit each of the sites in the portfolio and ask yourself the same questions as above. Additionally, also ask yourself the following questions.

• Is the website geographically specific (ie, is it for a restaurant in Bangor, Maine)
• If the website is geocentric, is this fact mentioned on every page?
• Are you able to find it in Google/Yahoo/MSN, using various combinations of both the business name, location, niche, etc?

Again, if all the answers are YES, chances are, this is a professional, business oriented web designer who can create a website to be a business asset. If not, go back to Step 1.

Step 4
I call this, the courtship process. Too much information is far better than too little. Prepare as much of your text based content as possible. Gather up photos, logos, and everything else. Make sure you have a legal right to use all of this material. Then, contact the designer.

The designer should look over all of your material, and prepare you an accurate estimate, or may choose to decline at the moment if their isn’t enough material to work with. Usually, a contractual agreement is drafted that states both yours and their responsibilities. Also, limitations should also be set. For instance, a certain amount of mockup changes will be allowed, but perpetual wishi-washiness will not. It will also state a completion date.

Once you have agreed to the terms, be prepared to pay the designer a downpayment of up to 50%. We do this to protect ourselves. It serves many purposes. With money on the line, a client will often be more dilligent about delivering the material requested of them, and more motivated to finish the project. Otherwise, it can go on forever with no real resolution in site.

With both parties understanding that a website’s purpose is to assist your business, then you are already halfway there. Good luck!

Keeping fresh content on your website is vital to both search engine optimization as well as keeping your visitors coming back. Sometimes, the creative juices just aren’t flowing, and sometimes you don’t have the extra cash to pay a writer. This is were free, republishable content comes into play.

Though it might be tempting to simply copy and paste content you find on other websites, I’ll issue you this warning: DON’T! It’s both illegal and unethical to reprint content you find on the internet without permission from the copyright holder, and word travels fast in the tight knit webmaster community.

Do not despair, there are excellent sources of free article type content that you can use. I am quite fond of GoArticles, which has an immense and timely database of articles ranging across a wide variety of topics. Almost daily, I can find an interesting new piece to post on my POS System website.

The key is, make sure you follow their republishing guidelines, never change any of the verbage, and always make sure you post the proper copyright information. Also, it is in good form to link back to both the author’s website and GoArticles as well.

Depending on the goal of your website, using web design templates can be an affordable and efficient way to build up a professional website for your traffic projects. I’m not crazy about using them for professional site identity projects, but for creating a more generic content site, templates can suit you nicely.

Some are rather unweildy in both code structure and graphical elements. You’ll find many that overkill the flash a bit as well. However, if you are in need of something quick and dirty, and have some rudimentary html skills, you’ll be able to build yourself a decent site in a relatively small amount of time.

My friend sells several design templates if you are interested in going this route.

I’ve been reading an interesting discussion on WebmasterWorld about how click-throughs significantly decrease when your links are “below the fold”.

In my own experience, I’ve watched page views on my content oriented sites significantly increase when I placed my links on I use a horizontal, 4 column navigation bar at the very top of the page. However, I noticed that people also stayed on each page for less amount of time, which meant they were clicking more and reading less. As a publisher who makes money off ads, this is a good thing, but if the content is being ignored due to not having enough scanable substance above the fold it gives me a shaky feeling that the content is not good enough to be fully considered.

One poster called the linked article “VooDoo Science” and made a comment to the effect of “people who dig deeper into the 2 or 3rd page of the results are more likely to buy”. While I disagree with the writing it off as Voodoo Science, I do subscribe to this same notion on a logical level: Someone is looking for something very specific. If it’s not on the first page, that means they are more desperate to find exactly what they are looking for, and if it’s a product or service, they must really want it, and are therefore more easily sold when it comes time to nail them for a purchase.