Hollaback

Are You Overpaying for Web Hosting?

2007-01-28T07:54:00.000-08:00

A lot of web designers will offer to handle your web hosting as a convenience to you (or themselves). This is fine but beware: some of them will attempt to fatten their pockets here at your expense. Do you have a simple brochure website with no streaming audio/video, databases, e-commerce or other advanced applications? Then, you shouldn’t be paying over $25/month for web hosting – and that’s even throwing in an extra $10-15/month for your web designer's trouble! Be careful not to go too cheap on web hosting, though – price isn’t everything when it comes to web hosting - reliability, support and options are most important. But even with a solid, reputable hosting company, a 300-page brochure website complete with Flash, dynamic menus, PDF downloads, and web-to-email forms costs next to nothing to host – usually under $10.

Find out more about what to look for in a web hosting company.

What You Need to Know About Your Own Website

2007-01-27T11:19:00.000-08:00

Make sure you're well-informed about EVERYTHING related to the creation and maintenance of your website. That way, you'll be prepared if you need to modify your website and your web designer seems to have dropped off the face of the earth. With the right information, you or another web designer will be able to pick up where your old designer left off.

Immediately following completion of your website, be sure to request:

Copies of all website graphics including LAYERED (that’s important!) graphics files (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.) and any stock photos the designer purchased on your behalf.
All access information (username, password, website, phone number, etc.) for your:
- domain name registrar
- hosting company
- email
- stats
- shopping cart
- any special applications needed to maintain elements of your site (like your menu or search application).

When your business needs to make an urgent change to the website, you will NOT want to be wasting days, weeks or months trying to track down the above information from a web designer who might be Missing in Action. And when you do get the information, remember to keep it in a safe place!

Web Design Contracts

2007-01-26T09:25:00.000-08:00

I’ve heard enough web designer horror stories to emphatically tell you to ALWAYS sign a web design contract. Verbal agreements are for sucker wanna-bes, whether you're the client or designer.

What Should Be In Your Web Design Contract

I’m not a lawyer, so do NOT take this as legal advice. But, based on my professional experience, a good web design contract should at least specify:

Estimated project cost (in terms of hours or dollars)
Payment terms
Estimated project completion date (or something related to timely progress towards project completion)
Cancellation policy
Who owns the completed design and related graphics (logo, stock photos, etc)
Who owns the domain name (make sure it's YOU, not the designer!)
Non-disclosure terms (so your competitor down the block doesn’t see the final site before you do!)

Even if the web designer or client is a close friend or relative, you'd be wise to have a signed web design contract. That way everyone is starting on the same page -- literally!

Protect Your Domain Name

2007-01-25T14:00:00.002-08:00

I can't blog about it enough. There are still web designers out there who will steal your domain name and try to sell it back to you. Basically, what they do is register the domain name for you but put themselves as the owner, not you. I personally know several small business owners that this has happened to, right here in the Inland Empire, and they can’t afford the legal costs of a resolution.

Make sure you are the “Owner” and/or “Registrant” of your domain name. The best way to ensure this is to go to a domain registrar website and register it yourself -- even if you’ve been promised a “free” domain name from your web designer. You can get a “.com”, “.net” or “.org” name for less than $10 these days. If you do register the name yourself, don’t get seduced into buying additional domain-related products that you may not want or need (email accounts, hosting, SSL, privacy, etc.) and make SURE the registrar website allows easy access to a control panel that lets you modify your nameservers – sounds a little techie but that is crucial to the ability to host your website anywhere you choose.

I've been registering domain names through Christian Web Site for years with no problems and I've also been registering at iPower for the last year or so. Both sites offer domain names for under $10 and give control panel access to modify your nameservers. You can also try Yahoo and GoDaddy.

And, don’t forget the name of the website where you registered the name! Save your confirmation email in a safe place -- you'll need it later!

Cheap Web Hosting Companies

2006-05-26T19:24:00.000-07:00

Cheap web hosting companies offer you the moon and stars for less than $6/month. Are they worth it for your business?

More of What You DON'T Need and Less of What You DO Need
With cheap web hosting companies, what you gain in email addresses and disk space that you'll never use, you often lose in flexibility, support and your own valuable time. Beware: they know most people are impressed by the word "unlimited" and will try to exploit the value seeker in you.

Support? Well...
At the cheap hosting companies, their support teams seem to be good for reading straight out of their handbook or referring customers to their online doc. Sometimes that solves the problem. When it doesn’t, I can hear their mouths hanging open and I never get a callback. I once spent a lot of time trying to get a cheap web hosting company's "free" poll application to work. Their support team only had a dumb answer for the problem and never fixed it. A complete waste of my time!

Learn More
Read my full article to learn:

what else to look out for with cheap web hosting
what you should look for in a web hosting company
why Alentus is the web hosting company I recommend
a few cases where a cheap web hosting company might be a good choice

Full article on cheap web hosting companies >

Say Buh-Bye to Boring Email Addresses

2006-04-20T19:55:00.000-07:00

One of the great things about owning the domain name for your small business website is that you have the freedom to create any email address you want.

Tired of boring, old "info" or "sales" or "customerservice" or "joesmith" @yourcompany.com? Come up with something creative and memorable that also delivers a marketing message:

Didn't get the domain name you were coveting? Make up for it with your business email address. Let's say you own a restaurant and want the domain name "greatfood.com". Well, you can try to battle 1-800-Flowers for it, but you'd do better to find a domain name that is available—hopefully one with more brand appeal than "greatfood.com"—and then create the email address greatfood@yourrestaurant.com.

I know what you're thinking: your email address won't get as much exposure as your website address. Maybe not, but your business email address does get a LOT of exposure. And it should be displayed almost everywhere your website address and business phone number are displayed.

Stop Promoting Your Free Email Proivder

2006-04-16T11:48:00.000-07:00

I run into many Inland Empire business people still using their Yahoo!, Verizon, SBC, Google, Earthlink, or other free-account email address on their business cards and in other business communication. Instead, start calling attention to your own business.

1) Using your business email address (i.e., info@yourbusiness.com) builds recognition for your own company name and website address every time you use it.

2) It just looks more professional. Period. These days, a free-account email address on your business card or (yikes!) listed on your website is like an office with only file cabinets and no computers - it gives the impression you're either very small-time or technically out-of-date.

How to make the transition? Read my full article for common concerns and solutions.

About Your Website...It's Not Personal

2006-01-07T23:16:00.000-08:00

Are you treating your small business website like it's your personal website? If you're seriously looking to grow your small business, your site shouldn't be filled with cute, personal things that only you, the business owner, understand and enjoy. That's what personal websites are for.

There's nothing wrong with adding "personality" to your website. But if you're like most small business owners, your website has a job to do -- grow your business. How does your website grow your business? By solving your customers' problems and getting them to trust you enough to give you their time or money.

A professional image lends credibility to everything you proclaim on your website. It's all strangers have to go by.

To learn more about this and how users detect an unprofessional website, read my full article here.

Freelance vs. Big Firm -- The Truth According to Me

2005-12-31T15:35:00.000-08:00

Myth: Big web design companies are stable.
Truth: Some big web design firms change names, owners, locations and employees so fast it'd make your head spin even by today's standards.

Myth: Spending tens of thousands of dollars with a big firm will get you a great web site.
Truth: There are many things that factor into a great web site and money can't buy them all.

Myth: Web design firms always produce great web sites.
Truth: Sigh. Do you think every website featured on Web Pages That Suck was done by a freelancer?

Myth: Web design companies are outrageously over-priced.
Truth: Some are reasonably-priced and well worth every penny.

Myth: Freelancers are inexpensive.
Truth: Some can be over-priced--you still have to shop and compare.

Read my full article on the subject here.

News Websites: A Little Privacy Please?

2005-10-16T12:11:00.000-07:00

News web sites want too much of my personal information in return for access to their online news. I'm specifically talking about the online versions of The Press-Enterprise (http://www.pe.com/) and The Los Angeles Times (http://www.latimes.com/). The one that seems to do it right is The Orange County Register (www.ocregister.com).

Do you really need my first name, last name, street address and phone number just to show me some news?

The Press-Enterprise

They state on their Why Register page:

By having you register, we are able to better target our advertisers' messages, thus improving the effectiveness of their ads.

So, go ahead and ask my gender, year of birth, city, zip code, and interests. But why do they require my first name, last name, street address (instead of just city, zip code), and phone number?

Equally annoying, I have to opt-out of (by un-checking an already-checked option box) email notification of special discounts and offers.

The L.A. Times

In order to register, they, too, required my first name, last name, street address, and phone number. They have an interesting explanation for this on the registration form:

Your address and phone number are required below so we can identify whether or
not your account will receive additional newspaper subscriber benefits in
the future.

Huh?

L.A. Times Gets Worse

It appears as though they've done the user-friendly thing by allowing you to opt-in for all the email stuff: all the boxes are unchecked, which typically means "no, thank you". But, on the last box, you actually need to check the box to NOT receive unaffiliated advertiser emails!!! It works opposite of the other boxes on their form! Was that unintentional or do you think they were counting on users to not read the form carefully? I was able to correctly indicate my preference by modifying my profile and that's when I found an additional option box allowing me to opt-out of all commercial email. That's a nice option to have but it's suspiciously missing on the original registration form.

The Orange County Register

Ahh. Some privacy at last. On their registration form, my name and phone number are optional and they don't even ask for my address! The other nice thing: they say at the very top of their registration form that they won't share my information. The Press-Enterprise and The L.A. Times (to a lesser degree) sent me off to wade through their privacy policies to discover the fate of my personal info.

Lesson

Perhaps the L.A. Times and the Press-Enterprise are big enough to lose my respect without missing a wink of sleep. Your small business can't afford to thumb your nose at customers:
don't require users to provide information that you don't really need just because you have the opportunity to collect it

don't give vague reasons for wanting specific information
don't use your privacy policy as a way to hide information, assuming people won't bother to read it
don't automatically sign users up for additional stuff and make them have to opt-out
don't ever use shady tactics on people you want business from--it's not worth it

Whose Web Site Is It, Anyway?

2005-10-04T20:31:00.000-07:00

You're not a "bad" business owner if you put the needs of your company as high as (or higher than) the needs of your customers when designing your web site.

I've probably heard it a thousand times: build your website with your customer in mind. In fact, I preach this concept myself because you really do need to know what your customers are thinking, feeling, and wanting so you can give them (or sell them) a solution.

Keeping your customer "in mind" doesn't mean indulging all their web site wants.

Don't start rearranging your navigation and changing your content just because your customers say they would like your site better this way or that way. You could spend a significant amount of time and money creating your customers' dream site, get lots of industry nods, web traffic, high rankings and the like but not see a worthwhile increase in business. It does happen.

Of course, your customers should have a good experience when visiting your site. But it's your site. The layout, content and design of your web site should support your business and web strategy. Don't have a web strategy? Stay blogged in right here for strategy planning advice. If that's not fast enough for you, schedule an appointment with a web site professional who's experienced in web site planning.

Web Site Watch: City of Colton

2005-09-24T17:26:00.000-07:00

Back on May 12, 2005, The Press-Enterprise published an article about the City of Colton undertaking a web site overhaul. I thought it'd be fun to poke around on the City of Colton website now, discuss some of their issues here and then check back at the end of the year to see how they're doing.

Why do I care? Well, have you seen some of these city web sites? I won't use this platform to call anybody out, but good grief!

2 major goals of the City of Colton seem to be 1) making the web site more interactive and 2) making it easier to navigate. I sincerely applaud that. A brochure web site is nice for an accountant but on a city web site I wanna do stuff! Remember, web site users come to your site with decisions to make and problems to solve.

Here's a feature they're considering: the ability for residents to identify potholes in their neighborhood that need repair. Hmm, does the City of Corona web site have anything like that? I'll go check right now. Hey, they sure do! (And it took me only seconds to find - kudos Corona!). As a frequent driver, that's a feature I can appreciate. The key question is do they actually have the internal processes in place to support these features in a responsive manner? As I say in my post on web site feature-itis, good people and practices behind all the well-intended web site features are a must.

Just in my casual tour around the City of Colton web site I can already see some design issues I'd like to address in some future posts as I think it would be beneficial to other web site owners. Am I picking on the City of Colton? Certainly not. Their web site woes are perfectly normal and they should be supported in their quest for user-friendliness. Besides, they did agree to the Press-Enterprise article so I'd say they're looking for at least a little attention in regards to their overhaul project.

So stay tuned for the next episode of Web Site Watch: City of Colton.

Obsessive Optimization Disorder

2005-09-14T21:49:00.000-07:00

I recently became afflicted with Obsessive Optimization Disorder: the obsessive need to get higher visibility in the search engines.

How the Disorder Begins
For me, it began the first time I actually did something that influenced my search engine ranking. Adjusted a title here, rearranged some body text there and voila, I moved from relative obscurity to a #1 ranking. Oh, the power!

How the Disorder Takes Over
Well, that #1 ranking is for a phrase that doesn't get searched on often: "Corona small business web site design". For the more competitive "Corona web site design" I'm not #1 but still on page 1. But for the even more competitive "Riverside web site design", I'm not so high at all. Try #56 on Yahoo, below an assisted living retirement community web site and a fly fishing motel web site. And Google doesn't even know I'm alive. (actually they do, they just don't care yet). So, I then became obsessed with getting the engines to notice me in all the ways I wanted to be noticed. After all, I wielded power once, right? And with that innocent question, I was sucked under.

Symptoms of Obsessive Optimization Disorder

checking your web site rankings several times a day
checking your link popularity several times a day
checking your web site stats several times a day (especially if they're only updated once a day)
wasting good money on a Google AdWords campaign when your site isn't ready for it
checking your AdWords campaign traffic several times a day
spending waaayyy too much time in Search Engine Optimization forums
changing your company name or URL to one that's full of keywords
believing search engines are conspiring against you
spending a portion of every day trying to get someone, anyone, to link to you

The Cure
Content Diversion. For 1 month, every time the urge hits to indulge in one of the above symptoms, stop and channel that energy into creating a new piece of useful content for your site or updating some old content. After 1 month: Stop. Analyze. Optimize. Repeat Content Diversion. After 6-12 months, you should have decent rankings and a site that will actually turn those search engine referrals into loyal paying customers.

Paralyzed by Feature-itis?

2005-09-11T13:36:00.000-07:00

I've seen feature-itis strike, and sometimes paralyze, quite a few web site owners.

Symptoms

you hear about a new web site feature and you must investigate it before moving any further with your web site
whenever you see a feature on a competitor's web site you feel you must have it on yours too
you spend more time investigating new things to do with your web site than you actually spend doing anything with your web site
you often waste time or money on web site features that get little use
you'd rather endlessly tweak a feature to get more use out of it than just abandon it

The Cure
I don't know if there is a cure--I think certain personality types are just prone to it. But, rejoice! Symptoms can be relieved by realizing:

Feature-itis is usually just rank procrastination dressed up in business attire
Web site features alone will not increase your sales. You'll need good content, good people and good practices on the other side of those features--things you won't have time to develop if you're off to the next feature.
Your competitor's site may look snazzy to you but you don't really know how well its perfoming compared to what they've put into it.

If you don't get hit with feature-itis, be on the lookout for related diseases: design-itis and Obsessive Optimization Disorder. I'll discuss those in upcoming posts.

Web Site Taggers - Part 2

2005-09-11T13:05:00.000-07:00

I went to one of my online forum hangouts and posted my web site tagging dilemma and got some interesting perspectives that led to more thinking on my part:

Putting a link to your own web site at the bottom of a client's web page seems to be something freelance web site designers do more than full-fledged web design firms. That made me think it was an 'amateur' practice. But if you think about it, full-fledged web design firms that charge thousands can afford expensive advertising so they don't need to put a link on your site. Freelancers are another story.

I also thought it was a 'phony' way of getting link popularity points with the search engines. But, on second thought, if a client allows me to put a link to my own site on their home page, that is indeed a vote of confidence in me and my services.

My new policy is to put a link only on one page of the client's site, only if the client is o.k. with it and only if it doesn't detract from the look or purpose of the site.

Web Content Monster Devours 6 Clients

2005-08-18T06:33:00.000-07:00

FAIR WARNING TO SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS: you will actually have to put real stuff like words and pictures on your site to go along with all the nice web design. Sounds simple, right?

Tell that to 6 of my clients who have gone 'missing' since being asked to provide said content. And I don't mean missing for a few days or weeks. Missing for MONTHS.

Solving the Mystery

What happened to them? They've been swallowed whole by the Web Content Monster -- a beast that begins stalking you when you realize your logo, list of services and contact info doesn't quite make the showstopping web site you were hoping (and maybe paid) for.

Why does it happen? Small business owners have the expert skills to run their small businesses. That skillset may not include copywriting or product photography. Others simply don't have the time. The great idea of an all-informative web site complete with staff bios, photo galleries, monthly articles, polls, resources, etc., now sends them running blindly right into the arms of the beast.

Tips to Avoid the Web Content Monster

Be realistic about what you have time and skills for. Don't commit to more of a web site than you have time or budget to handle.
Delegate to a staff member who has more time or contract out the copywriting and photography to a 3rd party.
Check your existing materials. Brochures, flyers, ads, company manuals, client handouts, press releases, business plans, PowerPoint presentations, even e-mails, can be great sources of content.
Be fair to your web designer. Don't assume these time-consuming tasks are included in the cost of your web design and then request the services a week before you want to go live with your site.

If you really want an informative site that adds value to consumers and brings you more business, that's great! Just realize it will take time and effort on someone's part to achieve that. Decide who that someone will be, develop a plan of action and stick to it!

Web Site Taggers

2005-08-12T22:20:00.000-07:00

Must I resort to becoming a tagger to get ahead of my competition?

Of course, I don't mean tagging walls, freeway signs and such. I mean tagging my client's web sites. You know, the fine print down at the very bottom of the page that says "web site designed by..." In other words, "Crafty Pixel was here!"

I recently compared my web site against 3 of my local competitors and they killed me in link popularity because they seem to have tagged just about every page of every web site they've ever designed and I have only tagged two (very reluctantly).

Whenever I see those little web designer links at the bottom of a web site, it whispers 'amateur.' Am I the only one who hears that? Even though some of my clients' web sites rank very well in the search engines and I could share in that search engine love with a link back to my site, I don't feel right about it. Paying for or 'discounting' for the privilege only slightly lowers the arrogance factor and doesn't lower the amateur factor at all.

Well! Just blogging this out has helped me decide. I think I'll pass on web site tagging for now and find other ways to make a name for myself. I feel so much better now.

'.com' Name Theft in the Inland Empire

2005-08-05T22:30:00.000-07:00

Has this happened to you? A web designer pops into your place of biz, says she's designed a web site for you and wants you to check it out. You do and for whatever reason, you decide you don't want it. She goes on her merry way. Sounds like an innocent interaction, right?

What she may NOT have told you is that she also registered a '.com' name for your business. And she sure as hell didn't tell you that if you don't buy the web site she designed for you, you're not getting your '.com' name back until you fork over hundreds or thousands of dollars to buy it from her.

Can she do this to you? Can she cop a big fat cyber-squat on your '.com' name?

Technically, yes. Afterall, anyone can register any available '.com', '.org', or '.net' name for as little as $8 a year. But legally? Maybe not. You can check out the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act for all the legalese but basically it says you can't register domain names ('.com', '.org', etc.) in bad faith--like when you know it's already someone else's trademark and you plan to sell it to them or divert their potential web traffic to your own web site.

I've met 2 business owners (one in Corona, one in Norco) who've been scammed by the same web designer. The audacity! I know swindlers and con people come in all forms. But in web designer form? What's wrong with people? It's hard enough trying to run a small business and make a little pocket change without this kind of crap going on. We should be supporting each other.

Moral of the story: if you haven't already, go register your '.com' name, please. It's really easy and really cheap. Check out my Resource Center page for links. And, if you've been a victim, please look up your local Better Business Bureau and report it (you can register a complaint online). Also, read this one page article on a new dispute procedure you can use to fight the cybersquatter.