Tom Doyle

TALK

Posts Tagged Web design

Need a web designer? Things you should look out for…

Jan 20

Posted by Tom Doyle in Online Marketing, Web Design, Web Development

In the past, when fax machines were in mass use… if your business didn’t a fax number, no-one took you seriously. Nowadays, the same can be said about a company without a website. If any company is serious about succeeding, they must have a website. Unfortunately, web design is a lot more complex than plugging in a fax machine and waiting on it to ring.

It is essential that your business website conveys the correct message that will help with the promotion of your business. Whether that is just a simple brochure website that details your services, phone number and opening hours or if you require something a little more advanced like a fully blown eCommerce system, at the very least, it should add value to your business. And the best way to make sure you are getting the best from your web presence is to find the right web designer.

I think it’s fair to say, Web Designers are a strange breed. Everyone seems to know one and has had OR heard of a bad experience with a web designer. Web designers are notorious for falling off the face of the earth, never to be heard from again. Many leave businesses stranded with websites that they can’t even make the simplest of changes. Others are left with designers who charge the sun, moon and stars for the tiniest of changes to a web page. Well unfortunately it is a very common situation. But there is a common reason for this.

In many cases web designers are highly under valued in terms of the work they do. The reality is that most people don’t actually understand how long it takes to make changes to a website. Although many changes are a simple task (to someone who knows) – most of the time, they are still quite time consuming tasks.

If you ask an electrician for an hour of his time to get your electricity back on, you’d probably be happy to spend €90 for this privilege. But with a web designer, someone who sits at a computer screen all day and “presses a few buttons”, paying them €90 for this seems quite outrageous. Especially when as far as you can see, you just want them to move an image to the other side of the screen.

The reality is that many web designers have plenty of work and can’t be bothered working for someone who refuse to value the work involved in getting your “small change” done. A lot of these cheap web designers come straight out of college or initially started working for you as a nixer. Getting that extra bit of cash is great in the early days. But as soon as they try and make a living out of it, they quickly realise that it’s really not worth it. It doen’t take long to realise that the time spent on your project, would be better spent working for McDonalds, because quite simply, they’d earn a lot more money and get more respect from people enjoying that Big Mac meal than having to listen to constantly justify the bill for the work they have done on your website.

If you are only starting out on the road to web success, you should really read this article to get an idea of the typical situation a web designer endures on a near daily basis : http://www.27bslash6.com/p2p.html – if you think you will easily be able to find the best web designer for your website for next to nothing, think again. The good ones simply don’t come cheap!

Here’s another few tips on choosing the right web designer for your business.

  1. Don’t judge the book by its cover
    The first thing most people do when searching for a web designer is look at the company’s portfolio. Although this will give you a good idea of what kind of work they produce, a lot of a web designers work is client driven. Web designers tend to work on the edge of the latest design fashions. They create websites every day and are therefore ahead of most clients taste in terms of design. Generally speaking the clients drive the style they want and most web design companies will give the clients exactly what they want (to a certain extent!).

    However, good web designers will work with the client and help them understand how best to interact with your website visitors. If you find navigating websites on their portfolio to be poor, chances are that they are too.

  2. Clear Communication
    We come across a lot of disgruntled customers who were unhappy with their last web designer. Not because they were bad at their job, but because they didn’t listen to the client and understand their requirements. A lot of web designers have a clear idea of how a website works and believe one size fits all, which it clearly doesn’t. If your web designer doesn’t share the same vision as you, it’s unlikely to be a good working relationship – so don’t waste your time trying to convince them to your way of thinking. Get someone on the same level.
    There is also a major we like to call “feature creep”. This is where the initial brief for the project changes as the project progresses. In most cases they are minor and a lot of the time the web designer will take the hit without any complaints. However, if these requirements grow or change on a number of occasions, that can seriously dent the web designers motivation to complete the project and therefore the the relationship can become soured. To avoid this, make sure you are 90% clear from the outset as to what you’d like to achieve and let the web designer advice you on the best possible way to approach the rest.
  3. Listen & Learn from their experience
    There’s nothing worse from a web designers perspective than to hear “I read that… so we should really do this”. If the web designer is worth their weight in gold, they would have been around the block and heard this numerous times from their clients.

    This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t question your designer – in fact, it’s the quite opposite. You should constantly ask your web designer for their advice. They will be glad to give it as they will feel happier that they can put their ideas into action and use your website as a great portfolio example.  They work everyday in this business and they have seen what does and doesn’t work.

    Always remember that a lot of what you read is already out of date in terms of web design and web marketing. A good web designer will be ahead of the curve and so detailed in his approach to design that he wouldn’t bore you with the details. But he would get great enjoyment out of explain the reason he used a particular font in a particular part of your site! So my adivce to you is to USE your web designers knowledge as much as possible – but make sure you are prepared to listen and change your mind.

At the end of the day, there’s nothing more a web designer really wants from you other than repeat business and a recommendation to potential clients. It is very much in their interest to make your website a success. It’s the successful clients that recommend them on for more work, which in turn puts food on their table.

The right designer will be passionate about every project they are involved in, to ensure its success. If you don’t feel the passion, don’t use that web designer. Find someone who is – but be very careful, like every industry, there are a lot of fly-by-nights. These web designers just want to make a quick buck from you and they never want to hear from you again. They don’t care if the site succeeds, they are making enough quick cash not to care about repeat business.

At this stage, it’s probably best to wish you all the success with your web project and don’t forget that our company offer web design and web development services – so get in touch if you’d like to discuss your web project with us!

Related articles by Zemanta

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

2 Comments

Web design search volume in decline

Jan 7

Posted by Tom Doyle in Online Marketing, Web Design, Web Development


As the recession hit, most web design companies were busier than they had ever been before. There seemed to be a sudden rush of businesses trying to get online. In the majority of cases it was a knee-jerk reaction to prop up their falling incomes. During the latter half of 2009, this sudden rush seemed to have abated. There are many stories flying around that some of the major web design companies in Ireland are hanging on by the skin of their teeth and offering well below cost websites in order to generate some sort of cash flow.

Although they say that 99% of all statistics are made up, it’s still worth looking at some… :)

Google Trends is a great tool for researching keyphrase search popularity over a number of years of traffic on Google. So I used this tool to run a few searches on terms relating to web design to see if it could paint any sort of picture of what the state of the web design is in.

Web Design Search Stats - Google Trends

As you can see from above graph, the search term “web design” has been on a massive decline since the recording of the statistics began. Interestingly, if you take a close look at the latter quarter of 2009, you can also see a steady decline in searches for “web design”.

December is generally a slow time for new business in web design terms, so there are no surprises when you see the massive dips in searches across all years. Also quite interesting, is the steady performance of the term “website design”. In fact, there’s possibly a slight growth in searches for this term throughout 2009.

Does this mean that the web design industry has finally entered the recession with everyone else?

Only time will tell I guess…

Looking at the other side of our business; online marketing, it appears to be performing quite well. There is an obvious increase in searches for “SEO” – everyone seems to know what it is now or at least know someone that fancies themselves as one. There is a decline in searches for “Internet Marketing” though, maybe a phrase that has been lost to the popularity of “SEO”.

Although it’s hard to see from this graph, there has been a surge in searches for “Social Media Marketing“, which started showing up on the radar in 2007. No surprises there, since it’s the latest and greatest buzz word on the planet!

Online Marketing Search Trends

We’ll never get a true picture of the web design or online marketing industry from statistics like this. For example, the searches for “SEO” are being diluted by people trying to figure out how to market their own websites rather than actually looking for those services. None-the-less it’s interesting reading for anyone in or trying to get into this industry.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

5 Comments

Athlone Web Design

Dec 11

Posted by Tom Doyle in Internet & Computers, Web Design

SIERRA MADRE, CA - MAY 29: Spam, the often-ma...
Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Regardless of what business you are in, there’s always someone willing to go the extra mile to lower the tone, quality and image of the industry.  None more so than the web industry.  Spamming the Internet is easier than any other form of marketing – it’s free, easy and only takes a short amount of time.

Fortunately, most professional web design companies, don’t lower themselves to these tactics because they either don’t need to or prefer to distance themselves from such tactics to avoid damaging their brand. None-the-less, there is always one shady company hanging around the corner waiting for an opportunity to pounce. It really irks me to see companies pass themselves off as being “professional web design companies”, when they resort to these spamming tactics.

Let’s face it, using the word “Professional” is probably one of the oldest marketing tricks in the book. It says it as it is. Just because these companies offer a lower quality of work does not mean they are not professional in other ways, therefore, it’s hardly false advertising. The bit that gets me is when they try to pass themselves off as being as good as the next or largest web development company in the country. The simple fact is that those regarded as the best among their peers have never resorted to such tactics to get where they are today.

BenDunne.com has been flooded with spam since it went free (until the 18th of December) and in every category, there is a web design company offering cheap and nasty web solutions. Why Athlone Web Design think that posting adverts with pictures of kittens, puppies motorbikes and even wads of cash will help make anyone decide to use them is beyond me. But to think that they call themselves professional when they need to resort to tactics like this is just well beyond belief.

Tags: , ,

4 Comments

I need a website – how much will it cost?

May 27

Posted by Tom Doyle in Internet & Computers, Web Design, Web Development

In this day and age, every business should have a website. It doesn’t matter if you are a one man operation or a multi-national plc, your website could be one of the most cost effective sales leads generation tool you have ever had for your business. Of course, you need to take some important steps to ensure your website is generating the proper level of interest in order to get a maximum return.

Most of my working life is spent preparing quotes or speaking with people about getting a website. I constantly here the phrase “I need a website, how much will it cost? I hear it some many times that my structured brain would love to have a process in place where it could just spit out a one liner that will answer that question in an instant. Unfortunately for me, it’s not that simple.

There are so many things you can do with a website, that it’s impossible to gauge how much work is involved in a project without going into detail. Out old cliched response is obviously “how long is a piece of string”. This isn’t about us looking to sound smart, but more about it being the easiest way for us to get out point across.

Of course there are many projects that can be very straight forward, you know the ones, a 5 page website with a reply form. We could usually give you a ballpark figure on this type of website pretty quickly. Generally speaking, those people that want a website of this nature tend not to want to make much of an investment in their website and are looking for a cheap and nasty solution because they believe they “have to” have a website. They tend not to be that interested in trying to achieve a return on this investment and really just want a “presence”.

Do I think this is the right approach?
In some cases it’s fine – like how much information can you really say about a one man electrician company? The lack of competition in the search engines for something this specific could make it a worthwhile investment for this business. But what happens when all the other electricians come on board and also get themselves a simple website? Very quickly there will be a lot of businesses in that space all fighting for the top positions on Google.

In most cases a properly thought out website is the only way to go. Do you need to have a CMS? Do you need to interact with visitors to your website? What do you want to achieve with your website? How will it handle sales for your business? These are all questions that you should really be asking yourself when planning the development of your new website.

Cut to chase Tom, how much will it actually cost me to build a website?
Well again there are many variations. A typical brochure site with 5-10 pages will cost you anywhere from €300 (from a cheap and nasty web design business) to over €3k (from a professional web design company). Once you start getting into bespoke application development, the cost can increase quite quickly into the 10s of thousands.

Working with the right web design company will help you get the most from your website. They will be able to guide you as to where you should put your money and effort for the best return.

If you’re looking for a quote on your web project – why not contact us on www.2bscene.ie

Related articles by Zemanta

Tags: , , , ,

1 Comment

Making your website work for you during the recession

Apr 1

Posted by Tom Doyle in Internet & Computers

I have seen a huge upturn in businesses looking to improve their online presence since the recession has taken hold. However, most people approaching us just want their website to be on the top of the Google results. It’s as if they have swallowed a handful of books on SEO and all of sudden think this is all they have to do to generate business online.

I agree, being on top of Google for products or services that your business provides is definitely a key part of any online presence, however it doesn’t just stop there. It takes a lot more to make your website work for your business.

Since the recession took hold, I have seen that more and more people are increasingly beginning to shop around and they seem to be taking a lot longer to make their purchasing decision. The time has come for you to take a serious look at your website and see where you can improve it, to make money online through this recession.


 

  1. Design
    I am a believer that design is subjective, let that not be confused with “good design” which is more of a usability issue. I like blue, you like green, we’re all different, so our tastes will be different. However, keeping your website design clean, neat and concise is of the utmost importance.Think of it like this, who would you buy from, the shop with the messy shop front and interior or the one that is clean and presents itself well? So if your website looks like it’s “dirty”, talk to your web designer to see if there is anything they can do for you.
  2. Usability
    If the visitors to your high-street store can’t open the door or can’t find that beautiful pair of jeans in the window, you’ve quite simply lost the sale.It’s the very same on your website.If visitors can’t get to the areas that interest them quickly and easily, they will leave your website in an instant. So If you have an important message to get across – make it as clear as possible and provide plenty of call-to-actions so that they can interact with you as easily as possible.

    Access to key areas within one click (where possible) is extremely important. Avoid creating a situation where the user has to go all the way back to the homepage to get to another area of your site. Think of it like going into a shopping centre, can you imagine visiting each shop and then having to return to the entrance to find another store?

  3. Online Marketing / SEO / SEM
    There is so much you can do to promote your business online. Although I do believe that targeting the organic search results in the major search engines is one of the most important elements of online marketing, it is also one of the slowest and most time consuming. Fingers crossed we will begin to see the recession fade very soon, have you really got six months to wait until you appear on top of the organic search results?So in the meantime don’t be afraid to dabble in different areas of online marketing. Pay Per Click campaigns don’t have to be expensive if done strategically. Creating a simple Twitter special offer campaign can be thought up in a few minutes of brainstorming. Writing an article on your blog with inside information that will make people turn their heads and get exposure for your business. All of these are done quite simply and shouldn’t take more than a day to get it done.

So if you are sitting on your thumbs waiting on the next customer to come in the door, now is the time to reassess your web presence and see what you can do to improve things.

Related articles

Tags: , , , ,

3 Comments

Content Management Systems – should your business pay for one?

Oct 28

Posted by Tom Doyle in Web Design, Web Development

It seems everyone wants a content management system nowadays. Every time someone contacts us for a new website design, one of the basic requirements is a content management system. Most people don’t know exactly what they want in a content management system, but they know that they want to be able to update their website without having to contact their web developers.

So with so many options and a seemingly unlimited supply of content management systems available out there, should you bother paying for one?

Well for me the answer is absolutely not - if you can get a free open source CMS to do everything you require, why pay for a bespoke or licensed option?

I spent years with a company who thought the way of the future was building a CMS to sell on. At the time it was a great idea, but that was before there were any decent free or open source ones available.

Right now you would be hard pressed to find a commercial CMS that has the capabilities of a free open source option. Most of the popular open source solutions are maintained by a network of enthusiasts that update the software for fun. Not only do they update the software, they also build many different modules that allow developers to easily plug in new features for your website. Whether it’s a mailing list or video management tool, in general a click of a button is all it takes to give your website this functionality.

The biggest problem nowadays is choosing the right CMS for your business.

For a large website, I wouldn’t look much further than Typo3, Drupal, Mambo or Joomla as the CMS of choice for your business. Both have huge communities of contributors making it easy to find a module to suit your requirements.

At the lower end of the scale, for say a small brochure type website you’ve got WordPress, CushyCMS and many more to choose from.

In this day and age, paying a license fee for a CMS is a total waste of money. In saying that though, there are many cases where an off-the-shelf CMS just won’t suit the plans you have for your website. In this case, your only option is to have one built specifically for your requirements. If you have requirements for a CMS, why not talk to me first and I can point you in the right direction!

Related articles

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

4 Comments

Where do I stand on web coding standards?

Oct 7

Posted by Tom Doyle in Internet & Computers

In my business, I’m constantly involved in debates on a regular basis discussing how important developing websites to the latest coding standards actually is.

In most cases, people expect me to be a huge fan of the latest W3C web coding standards. A lot of these people believe that all professional web design agencies should do nothing less than provide my clients with websites coded to the latest web standards.

However the reality is, that although I completely believe in the concept of having web coding standards and that it is for the common good and the future of the Internet, I’m not convinced that every website has to be developed to the latest coding standards right now.

Those that think it is the only way to do websites now are generally egotistical snobs who like to brag about being able to produce standards compliant websites.

I think it’s time to cut out the b*llshit.

Let’s look at the arguments most pro-standards compliant supporters use to justify their cause.

  1. Sites coded to the latest coding standards perform better in the Search Engines
    This statement is simply untrue. A site can perform just as well developed in the old fashioned way as it can in the new way.

    But with all statements related to this topic, it was taken completely out of context and made a fact by those that didn’t really understand what it meant.

    The truth is simple, a properly coded CSS based, compliant standard website should have less code than your old table based website. In theory a search engine should be able to pick up the important content of your website more easily, since there is less code. However, a clean coded website in the old fashioned way can do just the same too.

  2. Quicker and more flexible
    In some cases you can agree with this, but in others you can’t. There are a few things that can be done quickly in HTML that take an age in CSS, but this goes both ways. So I don’t think it’s fair to use this as an argument for the cause.

    Another argument is that CSS based sites download quicker… that too is highly debatable and comes down to how well a site is coded. Here’s a recent study : http://www.decloak.com/Dev/CSSTables/CSS_Tables_02.aspx

    The fact is that in theory a CSS based site will have less code, so it should be a smaller file size. In turn this should relate to a faster download. I completely agree with that.

    However, if the site is badly coded and uses unnesseccary code, it will be the same amount of code as the old way.

  3. Accessibility & Cross Browser Compatibility
    This is one that really gets to me. Most people that use this as an argument don’t really understand what accessibility actually means. So just for you, here’s WikiPedia definition of accessibility:

    “Accessibility is a general term used to describe the degree to which a product (e.g., device, service, environment) is accessible by as many people as possible. Accessibility can be viewed as the “ability to access” the functionality, and possible benefit, of some system or entity.”

    My only issue with wikipedias definition is the highlighted part. Accessibility is about access for all (http://www.sustainable-design.ie/arch/adapthouse.htm) not just a few people.

    So unless your site is nearly completely text based, your website will not work in old browsers. Have a look at a browser compatibility chart : http://vzone.virgin.net/sizzling.jalfrezi/stylebml.htm

    For me, it is more impressive for a web developer to have his website work well in all browsers than someone who can just code for the latest browsers.

    To date, most webmasters base their website accessibility test on W3C’s WCAG 1.0, which are just that, guidelines. How many web designers that claim to be 100% accessible have actually sat down with someone who has activity limitations? I would imagine very very little.

    Instead, they use a program to test how well their site is coded. Webmasters being webmasters, have spent years hacking their code to work in different browsers, so you can imagine how easy it is to trick a piece of software that just looks for dodgy code. In theory you could have an inaccessible website, that will pass this test, yet it could be claimed to be accessible. Thankfully WCAG 2.0 will focus more on the actual accessibility rather than the websites code.

    On and just to add more to this argument, you can create an accessible website no matter which route you take in terms of coding standards.

With our clients, we’ll continue to give them the pro’s and con’s of each different techniques. It must be noted that a lot more people care more now about the latest coding standards than working in older browsers.

The change is coming, so make sure you evaluate all issues before deciding on which route to take your website. Both ways have equal pro’s and con’s associated with them.

Related articles by Zemanta

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

4 Comments

Moderation at AskAboutMoney.com

Oct 2

Posted by Tom Doyle in Rantings

I frequent the AskAboutMoney.com web forum, offering my advice on many topics from web design, web development, online marketing and even business management.

I don’t know about you, but my idea of a forum is a place where people from any walk of life can come on offer their advice, opinion or ask a question on any topic that the forum discusses. A good forum for me is where you can voice your opinion freely and unless you are completely rude, ignorant or offensive you should have no issues voicing your opinion.

I’ve only ever had one issue with AskAboutMoney.com in the past, where a question I asked was near instantly closed. After much deliberation with the moderator involved, I completely understood his position. My post was a legal question and they simply didn’t want to be seen as giving inaccurate information on a legal scenario. I didn’t agree with it, since it was a forum, but I completely understood the position he took.

Yesterday though, just showed me how ridiculous it gets when you have people with an ounce of power (moderators) for the first time in their lives, let it quickly go to their heads.

The title of the thread in question yesterday was “www.blacknight.com & www.letshost.ie” (Thread in full – click here) and the rest of the post went like this:

Any suggestions as who to use in hosting a new website?
Pros/Cons? Narrowed it down to these two -

www.blacknight.com

www.letshost.ie

Thanks

There were a few responses, most of them avoided the original question, which was “who to use in hosting a new website” and went on to recommend hosting companies which the original poster hadn’t asked about.

Since I’ve basically used all of certainly the main hosting companies over the years I’ve been doing this and having used both Blacknight and Letshost – I voiced my opinion with a simple yet accurate quote:

“Blacknight – without a shadow of a doubt. Premium quality service.”

I completely addressed the original poster’s question; who to use; and for what reason.

ClubMan, a moderator at AskAboutMoney.com sent me a private message and removed my post.

Let’s make it clear, above my posts there were people recommending Hosting365 who did not have any relation to this post other than that they are a hosting company in Ireland. Clubman removed my post and replaced it with:

“I am closing this thread because it is being exploited by people recommending service providers in which they have some vested interest.”

OK fair enough, we have done work for Blacknight in the past, but in reality, we are a bigger client of Blacknight’s than they are of ours. So I don’t see how I had a vested interest in this post. it was an honest opinion based on the years and many hosting companies I’ve used over the years.

But the big question remains… why didn’t he remove those posts that recommended Hosting365? At the end of the day, they had nothing to do with the original thread.

So was it because AskAboutMoney.com have a vested interest in Hosting365? Like, that’s where there website is hosted at the end of the day.

Bottom line is – I have no problem with posts being removed if there are people with a vested interest upping their business, but I believe if they stop one person, they should block them all. Maybe ClubMan didn’t have the b*lls to do this?

EDIT:

I just got a response from ClubMan….

Your company’s relationship(s) with Blacknight means that you have a vested interest which you did not divulge. This is a breach of the posting guidelines. End of story.

Ok so what he’s saying is that I can’t post a comment on any topic relating to anything to do with hosting unless I divulge in all cases that I have worked with Hosting365, Host Ireland, LetsHost, WebWorld, Blacknight…. etc etc ……

I don’t have a vested interest in any of these companies… I wish I did.

What a ridiculous response.

Related articles by Zemanta

Tags: , , , ,

12 Comments