WARNING: Make sure you avoid the mistakes below. In fact, pay close attention to these before you EVEN THINK of getting a new website or redesigning your current website.

 

1. Not knowing who your domain name is registered to.

   I have had to re-write this report and make this no.1. You have no idea how many people fall for this one at a time when everyone is so well versed with the Internet and all new technologies. UNDERSTAND that your (incorporated) business name is registered to you but the domain name is not automatically registered to you even if it’s exactly the same name or word.

   DO NOT ASSUME THAT YOUR DOMAIN IS IN YOUR NAME SIMPLY BECAUSE IT IS THE NAME OF YOUR BUSINESS. MAKE SURE YOUR DOMAIN NAME IS REGISTERED TO YOU AND NOT YOUR WEBSITE DESIGNER OR ANYONE ELSE FOR THAT MATTER.

   Some unscrupulous designers out there do this so they can literally hold you to ransom should you wish to switch providers. BE WARNED.

2. Not knowing who owns the files and all other graphics that go into your website design. They must be copyrighted to you. At the very least you must have access to your files at all times. I have seen people stop their website hosting with certain companies and fail to retrieve their files. In most cases this means re-doing all the design work over again and usually this is very expensive and time consuming. www.Jaxinternet.co.uk always give you back-ups and total control over your material.
3. Lack of focus on your customers’ perspective. This can also be described as making sure your SEO matches your SEM. It’s all well and good to be search engine friendly and achieve no. 1 for your keywords but after you reach no. 1 you still need to sell to your customers. Your customers are the ones that pay you not Google, so make sure you talk to them in their language and sell to them. Do not write your sales copy based on what your directors want but on what your customers want.
4. Pages that take ages to load. Your prospects are busy and do not have all day to wait for your fancy graphics and other unusual items to load. Make sure your website provides the information required quickly without too much fanfare or other delays. Google, Twitter, eBay and Amazon are very successful websites because they provide the information you require exactly as you require it. You are met with a search box on Google and in a few seconds you get your search results –simple and very effective. Apply the same principles to your own website.
5. Too much flash (or flash only) on your website. Please do not put too much in your flash intros or other such pages and subject your prospects or visitors to the pain of waiting ages to get the info they REALLY require. Flash gives the search engines a hard time and can cost you that no.1 search position simply because search engines cannot index the flash part. Use flash moderately or avoid it altogether if you can.
6. Not capturing your visitors’ details. You have worked so hard to get traffic to your website and they have visited. The thing is not everyone is ready to buy today so capture their names and email addresses and keep them informed of your new specials, products etc so when they are ready to buy, they buy from you. Also use stats programs that track your visitors and show you who is visiting and help you with better targeting for your campaigns. You already do this in your brick and mortar business so why not do it online?
7. Poor use of colours. Please make sure your colours do not clash and scare off potential customers. Make sure your website is eye-friendly so at least your visitors can read what’s in your pages or sales copy.
8. Non-standard navigation or bad linking system. Make sure your website navigation is easy to understand and if something is not on the homepage make sure visitors can easily find it. Try to keep everything less than 3 clicks away from your homepage.
9. WebPages that are never updated. Always keep your websites fresh and interesting. Use an easy to use CMS and keep your visitors coming back because they know there is something else to see on your website. I recommend only using website designers that will arrange for an easy-to-use CMS so you can change and update your website yourself at anytime saving you time and money. I know you may be busy but you need this control on your website and it is not necessarily an everyday thing anyway. Most CMS systems are so easy to use that if you can write an email or use Microsoft Word, you can easily operate these.
10. Lack of traffic. It surprises me how, in this day and age, very sound businesspeople still believe in the old “once you build it they will come” myth. Unfortunately this does not work anymore. You need to attract visitors to your website. It’s a full time job for some people. There are a lot of methods you can use for this and it is very important that you get traffic. Without traffic you do not get visitors and without visitors you do not get sales. Without sales … well… you get the picture. You can use search engines, articles, email marketing, offline methods and lots more to get traffic to your website. Contact us for more details on this.

If you feel the above has been helpful please drop me an email to my email address so I know that my efforts have helped someone out there. OR if you would like a quick website health check fill out our online form here so one of our experts can have a quick look to see what you are doing right.

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If you’re an on the web businessman, you must already know the significance of your website and how important the web design is. Nonetheless, it really is not constantly achievable for the site owner to give the needed attention to the web design details. But this does not mean that you need to make do with any web design in haste, as it is possible to surely hire a competent web design business which will do the needful.

Your website basically introduces you and your enterprise to the web community and consequently your image is heavily dependent on the appearance of your web site. This is the reason why you need to hire a competent web site designer or a firm which will come up with a professional yet friendly website so as to create the correct impression in the minds of your buyers and investors. These businesses will in fact create the web site from scratch and they can suggest diverse approaches to develop and strengthen your web site and take your permission to do the exact same. Also, a competent firm will be able to supply you with web site management and monitoring services which will definitely be beneficial for your business administration.

You will find specific points which you have to take into account while hiring a web designer as you’ll be entrusting the individual with the essential task of designing your site which will play a main role in deciding the fate of your enterprise. So, how exactly to identify a individual who is knowledgeable in their field and innovative and will provide you with the best feasible results? Well, firstly you’ll be able to browse through the internet for different web designers and have the take a look at their profile. It is possible to then shortlist some of them which you feel are the best suited to your wants and spending budget. After you have carried out this, you’ll want to analysis about their history and work experience.

All competent web designers will certainly provide you the list of web sites they’ve designed in their career so as to convince you of their expertise. You can definitely reject the ones who do not provide names of any websites designed by them. You may also refer to the customer testimonial and customer feedbacks so as to get an thought about the service and quality of work provided by a specific web designer. If feasible attempt to personally contact any past customer of the web designer you might be interested in as that individual will probably be able to give you his first-hand opinion about the services of that designer. Last but not the least, just before signing on the dotted line, be positive that you might have checked all the details about payment and other such policies, so that you know what precisely to expect.

I am sure that you’ll have an appealing and productive web design which will certainly contributed growing your sales margin after you’ve got given the needed consideration to hiring a competent web designer.

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You must have a Facebook fanpage, no doubt about it. Watch the video for more

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We do web design in Glasgow and we are always happy to help you with your web development and social media presence. Call 07412 126643 for a FREE web consultation now.

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Did I tell you how Mr X from part 4 picked me for his website design project in the first place? Listen up because he actually had a good way to do this;

Here it is:

First of all you must be absolutely clear about why you want a website and what exactly you want to achieve with it. This way you will be able to get what you want without being swayed or manipulated by a smart-talking salesman with a cheesy tie!

After you have really figured out what you want then you can set about looking for it and picking website designer to do this with.

Ask for a few quotes or tenders (not more than 5 but 3 is ideal) from a few developers or website designers.

Take a very good look and study each entry carefully and ask questions against the wishlist you made in the first point above. Here you are looking for the best fit for your intended outcome which is your business website that looks and does exactly what you want it to.

Ask for references and portfolio from the website designers tendering and make sure they allow you to have a quick chat with their referrences or portfolio customers.

When you talk to the references you want to know how the website designers handle the design process, their terms and how you agree to sign off each stage of develoment. What guarantees do they have and very important; how long their support goes for. They must have an interest in making sure the website does what you set out to do. If this will involve search engine optimization you must make sure you understand how this helps and also should that be left out, you want to know how to measure the website effectiveness versus your intended outcomes.

Once you pick your website designer you want to think about the website hosting and what comes with it or features of the website hosting.

Make sure you are clear who the domain name you choose is registered to. Some unscrupulous website designers have been know to register their clients’ domain names in the designer’s name and asking for ridiculous amounts of money to let it go. Make sure you do not run into this one.

Can you afford the service? Is it bespoke or ‘off-the-shelf’ ? Just make sure you know what you are getting upfront.

Can you change and update your own website or will you have to pay management fees on a monthly basis? These days most website designers supply CMS or content management systems so you can change and update your own website later to keep it in line with your business at all times.

When all the above are sorted out the rest is customer service. How do they treat you and other customers? Are they helpful? Friendly? Honest?

Do they explain everything to you or bamboozle you with techno language? Always be clear about what’s going on with your website at all times. After all you are very good at managing your brick and mortar store, you should be taking full control of the website as well.

If there is any talk of contracts make sure you know how long for and how to get out of it if you decide to do this.

You have been in business for a while and know what you do in general, I suggest you take the same rules as before to the website as well.

Hope this helps. You can direct any questions here.

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In this video we show you what some common website terms actually mean.

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Once the Internet “was born" we all pushed out to buy the catchiest domain names. I tell you Glasgow web design businesses , where I’m from, were very busy those days. Quite a few even started a commercial enterprise to buy and sell them for a profit. You see with your domain the loads and loads of free traffic online gets to meet you and you could make quite a bundle depending on what service you provide. So once the online business is running, the more successful you get, the more valuable your online name becomes and so on.

Online predators know it out there. They want to “cash in” where they can. So make sure you follow this one rule at all times: Always make sure your domain is registered to you or your internet business at all times.

In the UK I have personally had to approach Nominet 5 or 6 times to try and get clients’ domain names back to them because some unscrupulous developers had registered in their own name. It is not an easy process. Try to avoid this at all costs. I know you run a successful business registered to you in Your Business Name Limited but your domain name is something else it also needs to be registered to you as well for you to own it and control it. If you let your developer do it then they may hold you to ransom when you need to change for any reason. Remember the predators mentioned above? Look, what if the Facebook developer suddenly demanded money for the domain name today? How much would they ask for? Better yet can the owners of Facebook afford to go without it? You do the Math.

This reminds me of the Microsoft situation. Back in '99 the story was that some kid had gotten hold of the name and was asking some ridiculous amounts for it back, hence they went by MSN for a while. Whitehouse.com was rumoured to point to a website of an adult and embarrassing nature. My point is; always take full control of your domain name. Heck buy it in all extensions if you can;.com /.co.uk /.eu /.info and so on. Don’t get caught out by this one. Your livelihood or enterprise depends on it.

REMEMBER: To get top notch Glasgow web design visit http://www.quicksitemaker.co.uk

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An email opt-in list can be quite crucial to any web site or internet based company. Even for a small venture such as a niche profit homepage an opt-in list can make a world of difference and also add some extra income for your pocket. Rarely would you see an e-commerce web-site, big or small, that is without an opt-in list.

An opt-in list allows for a company to market their wares and homepage via an e-mail. With an opt-in list, a web site and a subscriber consents to sending and receiving a newsletter from your company. Through this, you can keep your subscribers abreast of what is currently available in your web-log as well as whatever is coming out.

And because there is mutual consent between the two parties, any mail sent to the list is not considered as spam mail. There is a great number of successfully read promotional materials such as catalogs, newsletters and such that are sent because the subscribers themselves have signed up for them, meaning, they do want to be sent those items.

Building a list is crucial, only a small percentage actually subscribes for an opt-in list. Many people find promotional mails annoying but of you provide a good newsletter or promotional material, you will see your list build up and grow. You can also achieve this by having good content on your web-log. If people like what they see and read on your web-log, then they surely would want more. Newsletters would be a way to attract them back to your home-page. A little teaser or appetizer if you will.
But other than marketing your wares and your services, an opt-in list can also be used to earn extra profit. Not all lists can be used though. It would be good to first build a successful list with a huge number of subscribers. The more subscribers you have, the more money you can get. Here are seven ways to make money using nothing more than your list.
1) Place advertisements. There are many corporations who will be willing to pay to put their banners and ads on a list with many subscribers. Selling or renting out lists is not a good idea so rather than doing that, many companies would just rather place ads with lists that have a huge subscriber base. Your newsletter could be placed with many ads and each one spells money.

2) Have affiliations with other companies that have at least a semblance or relation to what your webpage is about. Here other companies will provide links and brief descriptions of what they offer, products and services. With every click made on the link that directs or leads a subscriber from your list to their website, the company will pay you. This P4P or pay for performance.
3) Make deals with other companies by asking for a small percentage of sales done through your list. With every sale done by customers that have come from your list and have gone there because of your newsletter, the other company will pay you a small percentage of your sales. The more people who buys from them, the more earnings you get.
4) You may also get products from other web-logs on a consignment basis and sell them to your list via your newsletter. Place descriptions, articles and photos of the product in your newsletter. There will be those who will buy from you and when that happens, you can order the product from the other homepage and sell it to your buyer.

5) Sell e-books or a compilation of your articles on your list. Manuals and how-to articles are in great demand. Many people will be willing to shell out money to gain knowledge about a certain topic and subject. With your existing list trusting your expertise in that area, an e-book could be offered and sold or used as an incentive.

6) Create a network out of your list. Get people to invite more people to view your homepage and subscribe to your list. The larger your list is, the more people will be able to click on your links and affiliate links as well as make your advertisement rates higher.

7) Subscribers are willing to pay for information if they know that it can be trusted and relied upon. Use your list to get more and more people to subscribe to you as well as browse your web-page. Lastly, you can use your list to earn money by making them your partners. Your list will be the bloodline of your growth and increase. REMEMBER: To get top notch Glasgow website design and
web hosting in Glasgow by experts who have done it and know what really works visit http://www.quicksitemaker.co.uk or http://www.thebestwebsitehost.info

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