Almost everyone has had the TV on, or been to an Internet news site has heard about the Casey Anthony case. Instead of weighing in on the case like everyone else, finding where legal arguments were done right and wrong, I instead want to look at a glaring business error that should be viewed, so that we may learn from Jose Baez’s website.

Right now, Jose Baez’s name is popular. People are searching for him, and in many ways, he could “write is own ticket”. This is the time when you need a well done website, to help people learn more about you, from you. However, if you go to his site, almost all of the links are broken!

You can’t find anything about the Baez, other than what other people are talking about, and not all of that is good. Instead, the links that could tell you more about the types of law he practices, attorney profiles for the other attorneys in his office, etc. all go no where.

There are only two links that will take you some where. First is the link to the “English” version of his site, which is the default language of his site. However, the link goes to a file which does not exist. The second link is to the “Attorney Zone”. Unfortunately, if you click on that link most modern browsers will give you a warning about a bad SSL Certificate, and that the site maybe masquerading as another site. This warning is designed to get you away from the sites to reduce the chances of on-line maliciousness.

So here is a quick check list of things to do if you find yourself getting a lot of web traffic:

1. Make sure your hosting can handle the increase in traffic. This may mean increasing your bandwidth for a month or two if possible, or paying overage. You may also want to use a CDN to take most of the load off of your servers.
2. Verify that all of your links work.
3. Make sure you don’t like to any malicious sites. Older browsers did not check for this, so make sure you check in a more recent version of your web browser.
4. Make sure your site works in different browsers. Internet Explorer (The Big Blue E) isn’t the only web browser. So make sure your site loads and displays properly in Chrome, and Firefox. Also check for how it looks in mobile browsers as well.
5. Make sure your site loads fast! Hold the SHIFT key while you reload your page – so you get a fresh copy. Most people will not wait more than 5 to 8 seconds before they leave your site if it isn’t loading.

Follow these simple steps and you will get a better return on your investment from your website.

Related posts:

1. The design of your website doesn’t matter!?
2. The three things that make up a website
3. What does your website do!?

I recently put the finishing touches on another client’s blog. Any Occasion Photography, a wedding photography company in Central Florida, has been a client of mine since 2004 when it opened. Over the years I’ve done a redesign on their website and numerous gallery updates.

However they were wanting something different a few weeks ago. They wanted a quick and easy way to post updates about their clients, the work they do, and tips and hints for brides (and grooms) when choosing a wedding photographer.

Using WordPress, I was able to build a template theme that matched the design on their site, allows them to post when ever they want, and post they way they want.

I worked with the owner to develop a good strategy for internal linking to other areas of the site she wants to highlight, created relevant categories for her to use, and talked about posting timetables. We also worked together to get the first few blog posts out and ready before the “official” launch.

All that was left was to post the actual link on the main menu, and that is now done.

Related posts:

1. Updating the Any Occasion Photography website
2. Promotional Video for Any Occasion Photography
3. Why use a blog on your website?

This is a new section I’m adding, called, “Questions from clients”. I hope that in answering some of the pressing questions from my clients, that I might answer some of your questions as well.

“Should we remove this image and it’s link?”

Earlier this week, I had a client ask me about a updating their homepage, and if we should remove a link to another page. The link (a large image) was certainly noticeable, however, it detracted from the look of the page. I started a discussion about removing the image to bring the page into better visual alignment.

However, I also know that the look of the page should be secondary to effectiveness of the page. The client wasn’t sure he wanted to remove the image feeling that this page had to be one of his most popular pages.

Is the page really that popular?

This specific page was a lead generation page. However, based upon my experience, I believed that the client was not getting a good return from that page. This was my belief based upon the design of the page, and my work with other lead generation pages that I’ve been able to track. But that was my “gut feeling”, and I don’t want to pull a page that is leading to revenue generation for a client.

As always, I feel like I should let the client make decisions, but it is my job to properly inform them so they can make good decisions based upon facts that will help their business.

So instead of relying on a gut feeling for how popular a page is (or how popular we hope it is), I decided to look at the Google Analytics report. While on the phone, I found that this page was:

• the thirtieth most popular page, out of 60+ pages on the site,
• it averaged less than a visitor per day, and
• ~20% of the users who view the page, left the site immediately after viewing the page.

Making a decision

I was still missing one important piece of information however. “How many leads, which convert to sales, are you getting from this page?” So I showed the client the information, and asked him the question. My two suggestions were to either:

• rework the page to focus on better lead generation, or
• pull this page, and let the leads come from other pages.

As I said, I like to let the client have the final say, and we discussed this, and came up with some plans for the future of this page. But in the end, we made well informed decisions for updating the site, so that we would have the best result for the website and the client’s business.

Related posts:

1. Preparing your customers for change
2. On Page vs. Off Page SEO
3. Google Using Page Speed as a Ranking Factor in Search Results

In years past there were companies who would contact website owners about the need to renew their domain name. There were generally several “problems” with this.

1. The accounts were not nearing the renewal period,
2. The said companies did not register the site, and
3. The said companies wanted to charge exorbitant fees for the renewal.

The tone of the sales letters (or reminder letters if you wanted to be kind), tended to be forceful in nature, pressuring you to immediately sign up with them. I’m sure some people would go with them because of the scary things they state in their letters. However, the site owner did not need to go with these companies, and should stay with their original company.

While nothing these companies did were “illegal” they definitely fell under the unethical. I had not heard from them in a while, until recently.  They contacted me when I was about six months away, and they wanted $100. If you are paying more than $20 for your .com, .org, or .net domain name, you are paying too much. There are plenty of places on line you can get them for about $10.

So don’t be pressured, save your money. You and your wallet will be happier.

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A bunch of Reddit users have decided to declare March 31 as World Backup Day, using the clever tagline “Don’t be an April Fool.”

I know if I lost my work, it would be bad. How bad, like I don’t even want to think about it… of course I don’t want to think about it, because I have lost work before. However, I work to not repeat that mistake, and to help others not have to learn like I did.

There are numerous ways to back up data. I do periodic backups over time to external drives, which I keep in my fire and water resistant safe. These include things I would need right away if there was a disaster – things that would give me access to my client, tax, and insurance files.

I also continuously back up data to an external host – using Back Blaze. For $45/year, I can’t beat it, and it is stored far away – so if there was a local disaster, and only my family and I could escape, I could still get to my files.

Think that is too expensive think of it this way. If you lost your computer (think theft, fire, flood, or Godzilla attack) – how long would it take to:

• Recreate your list of clients? (with phone numbers, emails, and mailing addresses)
• Know who still owes you money, and who has paid?
• Recreate that project file which you’ve been working on for the last three months?

Now think of how much money your time is worth – if the hours * the hourly worth is more than $250, you ought to get a complete backup system. (If not – are you really in business, or is it just for fun?)

How did I come to the $250 number. Easy! It is not uncommon for a hard drive to fail within the first 5 years. $45 * 5 is approximately $250 ( I added a bit for inflation – and I like simple numbers) . So if you have a 50% chance of a failure, and can prevent data loss for <$50 a year – then it’s worth the little bit of cost.

Something to think about if you use a computer – especially if you use it for your business.

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People continue to ask why I look to WordPress to build even non blog websites. For various reasons of course, including ease of creating content, ease of changing layouts, and ease of adding modules (plug-ins). All of those factors and more led WordPress to win the “Hall of Fame CMS” from Pakt Publishing.

Pakt Publishing sponsored the Open Source CMS contest, and WordPress won against other strong contenders like Drupal and Joomla.

While it’s nice to use “award winning” software, the more important reason to look to reviews, contests, and the like, is that is shows recognition within the community. And recognition tends to both make it easier to get recognized, increases use, but more importantly decreases the chances of a software project being mothballed.

Related posts:

1. Updates to WordPress
2. New Website Live
3. Any Occasion Photography Blog

I use WordPress, and have been using it for a couple of years now. Some clients have been asking, why I recommend using WordPress, even if they are not going to have a blog (i.e. using it as a Content Management System or CMS).

One of the things I like about WordPress is they are very responsive to fixing bugs, but more importantly to fixing security problems. Some wonder how software, which is offered for free, could offer maintenance in a timely fashion.

The answer is in the volunteers who constantly work on it. A perfect example was in one of the most recent updates( 3.0.2) which came out. A sever security problem was found, and a patch was offered in less than four hours to fix the issue. You would be hard pressed to find any other programs, regardless of how much you paid for it, to be able to provide a fix that quickly.

What is even better, is there is a built in tool for updating WordPress. All it takes is a click on a link from an admin user, and WordPress will automatically download the needed files, and auto patch it for you. You could not make it simpler.

So when people ask why I use WordPress, one reason is because of how they make their updates

Related posts:

1. WordPress Wins CMS Awards
2. More Browser Updates – Google’s Chrome
3. New Website Live

I started working with Showcases To Go almost 10 years ago, helping develop the second version of their website. The first version didn’t offer any type of on-line purchasing. However, in April of 2001, we released their new website, and I’ve been doing updates and revisions for them ever since, and not more than 70% of their business comes from their website.

Showcases To Go is the second company I want to introduce to you in this two part process of how to gain fans on Facebook.

Earlier this year, they started talking about how to get on Facebook, and what could they do to get likes for their page, as cheaply as possible. Unlike T-Shirt Joe, Showcases To Go doesn’t have a public store front. Instead, almost all of their sales are either through the Internet, by phone, or by mail.

With over 9 years of customer information, they decided to email the customers who had recently purchased from them. So after filtering ou

t the lists, they created a simple e-mail campaign with a discount on their next purchase (if placed within a months time of the initial email)  if  they came from their Facebook page. Within a couple weeks they had over 300 likes, and soon they toped 600 new likes for the month.

New likes don’t come as quickly as they had in the past, however, they still come in via links from their website to the Facebook page.

Let’s look at why this worked so well for them.

Showcases To Go normally sends out email discounts, so it wasn’t foreign to their customers. But to ensure that they ta

rgeted the right customers, they went back to make sure it was only the most recent customers, not just one-off buyers from years past.

Second, they offered the discount as part of the promotion. This would have normally been offered straight from the email, but by incorporating Facebook into the promotion, they got a chance to view the Facebook page through the email. This encouraged people to “like” the page, even though they didn’t have to.

Now they will continue to have fans who have liked their page, and they will continue to slowly grow the site through reminders in email and on their webpa

ge.

Related posts:

1. How to Gain Facebook Fans – T-Shirt Joe
2. Increasing your Facebook Fans
3. Showcases To Go

I know Joe. Actually, Joe knows a lot of people, and he meets hundreds more each week.  You see, Joe is an artist that makes air brushed t-shirts. And hundreds of people walk by his stand each and every day out at a popular theme park near where we live.

Joe is the first person I want to introduce to you in this two part process of how to gain fans on Facebook.

When Joe wanted to start his Facebook Page, he wanted to know how to gain lots of users. Easy I told him. Because of the type of business he has, he can just ask. But he does one better. After getting an Original T-Shirt from T-Shirt Joe, he asks to take your picture, and put it on his Facebook page. Then he hands them a flyer inviting them to see their picture, with his TShirt, or Hat, or any other thing he can air brush (which is just about everything).

I wasn’t sure if people would want their photo taken. But many do. Each night he downloads the photos of people posed for him holding up their new TShirt or Hat, and he posts them to his Facebook page. Takes him only a few minutes to do each day, but it gains him 35 to 40 new “likes” each week. A nice slow gradual, sustainable increase. The total cost, a few minutes each day, and a few bucks for the paper he hands them with his Facebook page on it.

The beauty of it, is that anyone who meets their customers, and creates a great experience for them like Joe does, can replicate this process. You’re limited only by the number of people you come in contact with, and how many you ask.

Currently we are working on developing is web site. When it is done, he will have thousands of fans who will be able to get the link to his site.

Related posts:

1. How to Gain Facebook Fans – Showcases To Go
2. Increasing your Facebook Fans
3. Interview Published in Education Portal

Recently I’ve helped two clients of mine increase traffic to their Facebook pages, and thus increase the number of likes they receive.

The reason for showcasing the two, is that the two companies approached the process in two completely different ways. I will share the two different methods, and why it worked for each of them in the next two posts. I wanted to share both because so many times you will read there is “the” way to make something work, but that is not always the case.

Of course the reasons for increasing your “likes” is that it increases the amount of time you can spend in front of your customers, reminds them of who you are, and helps build both loyalty and repeat business.

Related posts:

1. How to Gain Facebook Fans – Showcases To Go
2. How to Gain Facebook Fans – T-Shirt Joe
3. Interview Published in Education Portal

I can’t believe how often I see people using a free email address for their business on-line. Imagine if you would, going to buy a new car, maybe a Jaguar. You meet with the owner of the dealership, and on his business card is “expensive_cars@yahoo.com”. What is your perception?

When people get “my_biz@gmail.com”, or any other similar type account, it will tend to lessen the perceived value of your business. While it may not be a deal breaker, it cannot help you sell yourself, your product, or your business.

Since people cannot see you face to face, you want to put forth a professional image when on-line. Professional emails, are just one way of doing that.

So now that facebook is handing out free email addresses, feel free to use it for your personal account. Just don’t use it for business.

Here’s a hint: Email addresses are cheap (free with many hosting accounts), and you should have one for you, and each of your employees. If you don’t get that for free, contact me. My hosting comes with free email accounts.

Related posts:

1. Small Business don’t Utilize the Web 2.0?
2. Utilizing Web 2.0 in your Business
3. Protect your website (and on-line business)

My wife and I were at a red light when we saw the nice Jaguar covered in ads for a Realtor. “Who could do that to a Jag?” Yes who. No one would make that comment about a truck with a sign on it for a construction company, or a van with a sign for a lock-smith. So why the problem with the Jaguar?

Obviously, the owner of the car was a Realtor, and they were just wanting to get their name out, however in doing so they lessened the perceived value of their (expensive) car. As individuals, we often place perceived values onto items, and associate actions with certain monetary values. When they two conflict we try to sort it out, and determine what value we should place on what we see.

Likewise, we have certain expectations when shopping at different stores. Just as you don’t expect to see a personal shopper helping you at Wal-Mart, you  have expectations of smelling oil and grease when entering a auto parts store, and carpet in a luxury goods store. If those expectations are not met, you begin to question the legitimacy of the store you are in.

Whether you know it or not, we perceive websites in a similar manner. While we can’t use all of our senses as we like when we walk through  a store, we have certain expectations based upon the type of site we visit. Within seconds of viewing  the first page, we start making judgments upon the site. If we know the site is going to sell us something expensive, we don’t want to see disrupting banners and flashing signs pointing out other great deals. Likewise, when buying a expensive item, we are on the lookout for a deal that is too good of a deal. We can’t trust the site, if it doesn’t meet our expectations.

The price, product, and delivery of that product through the web page must all match the expectations that our shoppers expect. When we fail to meet those expectations our users may leave, never to return.

So figure out what your user’s expectations are, meet them, and your sales will increase.

No related posts.

As a follow up to my last post on moving a host, I thought I would post a link to an article where I was recently interviewed for on what small businesses should look for in a web hosting company.

SMB Guide: How to Choose a Good Web Host Provider

If you need help in choosing a web host or building a web site for your small business, feel free to contact me so that I can assist you.

Related posts:

1. Does your website look good? Does it Matter?
2. How important is a good designer?
3. Moving Web Hosts – What you need to know!

As I’ve mentioned before, I teach web technologies at a local college part time. Recently I was interviewed for an article on the use of Social Media in the classroom. Specifically I spoke about using Facebook for my classes, and why I do it. The reason was simple, it is where my class already was (I only had one student who wasn’t on Facebook at the time.) I went to where they where.

This should be something all small businesses should do; know where their customer’s are, and meet them there.

The full article can be found here.

Related posts:

1. Increasing your Facebook Fans
2. How to Gain Facebook Fans – Showcases To Go
3. How to Gain Facebook Fans – T-Shirt Joe

Recently I was helping a client move from one host to another. After going through this experience a couple of times with various clients, I thought I would write down my experiences so one might know the steps to move a site from one hosting company to another.

1. You will need to get copies of your existing files. This is best done my getting them from your existing host. This may be done via FTP. In some cases you can download the files from the site, but more modern sites will run Content Management Systems, or Blogging software, which does not exist as simple files on your site.
2. Secure a new hosting server.
3. Transfer your files to the new host. I generally do this for my clients if they request it.
4. Test the new server to make sure everything is working correctly. In the last conversion, the old site used a couple of files specific to that server. We had to make changes so the contact forms would still work.
5. Update the Name Server entries for your Domain Name. This is generally done through where you register your domain name, such as Go Daddy, Network Solutions, etc. Your new host will give you this information.

What you might expect

Most of the time, moving a website from one server to another is straight forward, and there is no issues. However, from time to time there are issues, and they will fall into one of two categories: Technical or Business.

Technical Issues

Well developed sites will run into few technical issues. Sometimes a configuration file will need to be updated so resources are correctly pointed to, sometimes in rare cases, you may have to reinstall a web application for it to work properly. However, in more recent times, this is becoming less and less of an issue.

Business Issues

Business Issues are things that I see periodically. In some cases, it is how the original hosting company has their servers configured (like a mail script which will not work if its not on their server).  Other times, they don’t want to lose the business, so they will try to scare you into staying. This is what happened with the last move I helped perform.

The old host claimed the client would lose search engine ranking, and had little chance of getting it back. The Search Engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing!, etc.) know that people move websites every day. They won’t penalize you if you move from one host to another.

The original hosting company claimed to have links on over 10,000 pages for the client that would all disappear. If your host is saying that you will lose a bunch of links, it means they are managing those links, and they are most likely considered low quality by Google and other Search Engines, so they are doing little if anything for your search ranking. If your host gives you information like this, ask to see some of the pages which have these links. Working with the client, we asked the hosting provider, and never got an answer. This leads us to believe that the links were automatically generated, and therefore of low quality.

What Did Happened

What did happen was nothing to write home about. We followed the five steps from above, and after dealing with the hosting company, we got the site successfully transferred. It took about 2 days to move and test the server, and it took another day in dealing with the old host, but otherwise – it went as most transfers do: that is with out incident.

Related posts:

1. Choosing a Good Web Host
2. The three things that make up a website – Part II
3. Your Business Email Address

Google announced this week that the speed of a page is now being considered as part of how they rank pages on a web site.  This has some people happy, others scrambling.

There are a couple of things which need to be considered with this news.

• Google uses over 200 factors to “grade” a site, determining where it should be placed in the search engine rankings. Adding 1 additional factor, unless it is a large factor should have little effect on the search results.
• “All things being equal I would prefer to visit a fast loading site versus a slow one when I search for something” – the question is, what are the odds that all things are equal. They aren’t – so good, relevant content and links are still more important.
• Google launched the update a couple of weeks before the announcement. – And no one really noticed! This means that either, A) It’s not that big of a factor, or B) users had already identified the preferred site, and took the speed into effect, and helped Google rank the page by links, and content.

Does this mean you shouldn’t worry about a site speed – of course not, but it does mean you shouldn’t worry about it. It also means it’s something to consider, as Google, as well as many other companies, have seen that “that when a site responds slowly, visitors spend less time there”. (source)

Related posts:

1. Google fills out your search forms
2. How important is search ranking?
3. On Page vs. Off Page SEO

Firefox turns five today. For some, they remember what the Web was like in 2004 – Internet Explorer 6 was the dominant browser, and had not been updates in 3 years, web technology was stagnating because of it.

Now, browsers are faster, and doing more – new standards are coming out (HTML5, CSS3, AJAX libraries, and more) – and while the techno-babble means little to many, it also means everything.  It means websites that can do more, and do it faster.

It has also heralded other browsers becoming more popular.  Five years ago, there was no Chrome or Safari, now web surfers have options to surf the web – and the web is getting better because of it.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Firefox keeps Microsoft ‘honest’ on 5th birthday (theregister.co.uk)
• Happy 5th Birthday, Firefox (mashable.com)
• Firefox: new version planned for December as browser celebrates fifth birthday (telegraph.co.uk)
• Happy Birthday: A Look Back at Five Years of Firefox [Mozilla Firefox] (lifehacker.com)
• With Firefox 3.6, Mozilla Aims to Speed up Web Browsing (readwriteweb.com)

Related posts:

1. It’s my birthday…
2. Firefox Download Day
3. Firefox Blocks Attack Site

I’ve seen numerous posts where people have claimed that good clean HTML leads to better SEO rankings. I’ve even talked about the lie that of the link between SEO and valid HTML.

I’ve yet to see any studies done which verify this claim and in fact I’ve even seen evidence to the opposite effect being true. I pointed out how in some competitive markets, the higher the ranking for the site the worse the validation recently in another post. This does not mean that poor code relates to higher rankings – just that valid HTML code doesn’t correlate to better rankings as some people would like to say, just like good clean code doesn’t mean the site will look better to visitors.

Matt Cutts recently did a short video on why Google’s own code doesn’t validate. (video opens new window – not allowed to embed)

Now does this mean that you should only have your web designers write invalid code – not, but it does mean you shouldn’t waste unnecessary time on it either.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Google Says Pages That Validate Do Not Get Ranking Boost (seroundtable.com)

Related posts:

1. Valid HTML Helps Search Engine Rankings – NOT!
2. Search Engine Optimization
3. Search Engines and Flash Files

About a year ago, Google release their own browser, Chrome.  They been hard at work updating it, wanting to take more of the browser market share.

They built a good browser for power users, if you didn’t mind not having the extensions you’ve come to love and expect in Firefox.

Well now they are adding some of those extensions as well as other improvements. Read the official release here.

Related posts:

1. Why you shouldn’t bother with Chrome
2. Why you should use Chrome
3. Updates to WordPress

What would you do if you found out one of your best sales people was randomly turning away 1 out of every 5 people?  People who might have bought from you, but the salesperson  turned them away because of their own prejudices.

Recently I was on a conference call with a client, and one of the services he was using. We were trying to work through some issues  and during the discussion one of the issues that came up was that the services site was designed to run in Internet Explorer only.

I can understand if you are running an Intranet, inside a company where the browser is dictated by IT, but for a public website, you are essentially turning away 1 out of every 4 or 5 customers.

So I ask again could you imagine your  bank, grocery store, or gas station or your store randomly turning away 1 out of every 5 customers because they drove a mini-van instead of a car to get to the store? Of course not! That salesperson should and probably would be fired for such foolishness!

Web browsers are like cars in many ways. They are the vehicle which your customer uses to get to your website. Just because Internet Explorer holds 80% of the market share, doesn’t mean that it should be the only browser you allow your customers to use. Your site should be designed to work with all modern browsers – and if it doesn’t you should fire your web designer.

(Note: names withheld to protect the guilty.)

Related posts:

1. Are you out of touch with your customers
2. Preparing your customers for change
3. Treat your past customers carefully

This summer I’ve been working on several projects with two of them being very large.  Well I just finished the first large project, Our Wedding Circle. Built using an existing framework, so it should be easier to maintain, there is also large sections of custom code and several key updates.

The updates, allow for, as all websites should:

• easier administration to add/update/and disable users,
• faster searching for users than before,
• more optimized database structure, and
• improved findability for search engines, so it should rank higher than it’s predecessor.

The client brought me their ideas, and I worked with them and showed them some others things which could be done to make managing a site of their size more manageable.

The site is huge already with many wedding vendors from all over the US, indexed by location and category and is growing daily. Sites have to designed with growth in mind, or they will fail, and this site is a perfect example of one which is growing as it should.

No related posts.