Marketing & SEO Discussion List - LED Digest

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From: Veronica Yuill

Subject: Web design

> Why should someone pay $14.95 for quality hosting service...?

> Why should someone pay a web designer $100 per page when

> they can use a "template" program for free?

        - Catherine Parvensky, LED 1964

There are tons of answers to these -- I'll offer a couple of simple

ones.

1) Because they rely on their website for their business, and they

want to be sure that it is available at least 99% of the time, and

that the host has adequate round-the-clock support to fix things

when they go wrong. This should be a given for any business website.

Cheapo so-called "unlimited" hosting is for personal websites where

you don't mind if it goes offline for a few hours / days / weeks ...

2) Because web design and development is about much more than simply

what the site looks like in a browser. A professional developer will

take time to understand the business's goals and will develop a

website that supports those goals. I'm not interested in clients who

just want a template site for free -- I'd just cheerfully wave

goodbye to the cheapskate client you mention, and look for clients

who have more understanding of what a successful business website

involves.

Note: we are a tiny company (2 people) with some very large clients

(including government departments). It can be done, if you have a

professional approach and don't undervalue yourself. Don't compete

on price: compete on value.

I'm sure others will come up with more answers, but that's my 2

centimes!

Veronica Yuill

Archetype Information Technology Ltd

Dynamic websites for fast-moving businesses

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From: Mark Rogers

Subject: Stupid Biz Owner Reply

> Why business owners suddenly go stupid

> when it comes to the cost of a quality web

> site is beyond me.

        - Kathryn Martyn, LED 1960

I was not totally stupid. I hand coded my first site myself and I

started with a yahoo merchant account. It did not take me long to

realize there is a lot more going on behind the scenes of a full

ecommerce site with real time shipping, billing, and inventory. I

was still a little surprised at having to spend nearly $1K for a

website but I realized my monthly hosting would drop from about $100

to $20 and so I could recoup the cost over time…so I thought. Turns

out the $1K was not everything I needed, it took a couple months,

and I had to spend closer to $1500.

Although I was still a little surprised at the cost initially, after

it was all done I think I got a good deal. My problem is that I want

more but I have a lot of time and money invested in my current site.

Some of the problems I realize I will probably have to pay more than

my company can currently afford to have solved:

Product database has import / export but not on product options.

This means I have to manually go into every product on the data base

to add an option. I already have several hundred and will have a few

thousand as soon as I have time to add them which is also very time

consuming. The site is a little slow. It appears to be on a good

host but it is a dynamic site and so I am not sure if it host access

speed or server speed. I was thinking this might be why I may

eventually want to pay the money for dedicated servers.

I need to be able to export invoices to QB, I need to be able to

export registered customers emails (that approved newsletters), and

emails of people who just registered for the newsletter to my ACT. I

need to add support for international shipping, and I need to be

able to program in volume pricing discounts by product family. I

need a product overview page so customers can compare my products in

one place. I need to be able to add more content to my website with

sub pages which the current site does not support. I need to add the

ability for my customers to be able to order custom products where

they specify the dimensions. I would like the site to automatically

send shipment notification email and pull in the tracking numbers.

Those are just some of the needs on the top of my head. It is my

biggest nightmare for my business. How do determine before it is too

late if a company can do all of this? How do I know before I have

spent thousands of dollars and months of time that the new server is

going to be faster and more secure? How do I know my customers will

welcome round three of the changes? How do I know I will get a

decent ROI?

Should I just buy shopping cart software and hire my own people?

Should I just keeping paying the current company more and more money

for these incremental changes? Should I do a complete switch to a

newer or larger company? Should I hire a consultant to answer these

questions? If so, how do I pick a consultant that isn't just

steering me to the company giving him the biggest referral fee?

Cheers,

Mark Rogers

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From: Susie Redfern

Subject: web design

In regard to Catherine Parvensky's post about the fellow wanting to

use the free template for his website rather than her web design

services: I would suggest that such a person will never be her

customer until, or unless, he runs into problems with the freebie

that only a competent web designer can fix.

I personally have a fairly large informational website that is very

basic design-wise. I make the pages in Word, convert them to

webpages, and upload. I know how to do links and use FTP, and for

now, that's all I need.

So my advice to her about this fellow (and others like him) is to

tell them to go ahead and use the free and cheap services, and if

those don't work for them, they've got her number (or email address,

as the case may be). Then go on to others who are more receptive to

her service.

Susie Redfern

familyguides, yahoo.com

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From: Kerry Branham

Subject: Web design

Catherine,

I read your post with interest, and thought I would add in my $.02

worth.

My response is that with templates, you will not get the flexibility

to arrange a site exactly the way you want.  I have tried several of

those services, and got very frustrated with them all.  The other

part of the equation is in the use of images.  Most of those

template sites (and I include places like register.com with them) do

not give you much flexibility at all when uploading images.  Can you

make them transparent?  Can you blend with a background?  Can you

place the images anywhere you wish, or only where the template

allows you to place them?

Template site also do not give you much control over use of meta

tags or for creating link pages.

In reality, you custom design a site for each client so it goes with

the look and feel of the business.  Everything is catered to them.

They pay for the service - meaning they pay you, the designer, to do

all that for them.  The old addage of, "you get what you pay for"

really does come into play here.  So, if they want to get by cheap,

let them do so and see what they have down the road.  I guarantee

you that if they put much emphasis on their website, sooner or later

they will come back to have one custom designed.

Keep smiling!

Kerry Branham

Premier Technologies

kbranham, premier-technologies.com

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From: Baruch Avraham

Subject: Blogs Referring URL

Recently I started receiving referrals from blogs to my website [URL

below]. It seems that they are from Germany, they increase in

numbers almost daily. They fill up my statistics and block good

referral from showing in my stats, by their numbers.

Here is a sample that send about 20 referrals a day, the total is

about 1000 a day. [URL removed]

All this referrals do not bring any trade, most clients I have are

from the USA & UK. They seem to be a robots visiting the site. Can

these referrals damage my position with the major search engines ?

And if so , is there a way to block them.

I will be happy for any insight or help.

Best regards

Baruch Avraham

Aris Jewelry

aris, barak-online.net

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