Archive for the ‘Website Design’ Category
When a Website Designer’s Good Intentions Go Bad
Today I am meeting with a client to review the design and build of his new website. Quite frankly I’m not looking forward to this meeting. I am the barrier of bad news.
When I originally accepted this project, I could see Google had indexed about 1,000 pages within his domain. While it would take some time to migrate and optimize this many pages, I was up for the challenge. The goal is to give him a more SEO friendly site that he can maintain himself in WordPress. If that meant throwing in some plugins and optimizing 1,000 pages, so be it.
Last week I reviewed his Google Analytics reports, dug deeper into his content pages, and investigated his existing website’s structure. Through Google Analytics I could see he didn’t have 1,000 pages, he had about 10,000 pages. Why were they not showing up in Google’s index? Well I figured this out a bit later as I reviewed page by page content on his existing website. Of these 10,000 pages, about 3,000 or so are the exact same pages. Okay, three different pages, but applied to 1,000 different products. You may be asking yourself so what and thinking I am a drama queen. To me, the drama queen, all I saw was a big red flag waving with a large Google logo hovering overheard. This was trouble with a capital T.
These 3,000 plus pages represent duplicate content to Google. Why would Google cloud their index with 3,000 pages of the exact same content? Google won’t do it. It would simply corrode the overall search results, which would frustrate Google users, so Google is not going to do it. Google will also most likely penalize the overall site for this mass amount of duplicated content.
I have already told my client I will not migrate this duplicate content. The SEO consultant in me cannot do it, because I know it is wrong. The website designer in me won’t do it, because I know it will degrade the user experience as well. So I get to now explain this to my client and hope he understands that my intentions are good.
Now I will return to his website, his Google Analytics reports, and to the broken sitemaps to see what else lurks beneath the covers of this existing website. I believe my 3,000 pages of duplicate content is only the tip of the iceberg and I am afraid the Titanic is getting ready to go down.
WordPress is the Liberator of Growing Businesses Everywhere
I have always been a fan of WordPress. Okay, let me rephrase that. Since I discovered WordPress, I have always been a great fan. Similar to other people, I was hesitant at first. I thought it was simply a blogging application with limited capabilities. I equated it to Google’s Blogger and thought it was solely used for bloggers and it was much to limited for a real corporate website.
Thankfully, I was wrong. WordPress liberated me and it has liberated many website designers and business owners around the world. It is liberating because it is free and it is easy enough for normal – non website designers – people to use. WordPress is robust enough to create elaborate websites, while simple enough an in-house marketing person or business owner to add content and update.
A case in point is a client that just launched a WordPress website. The client is an ERP consulting company based out of Denver, Colorado. More importantly, the client had a limited website needed to upgrade because the company is rapidly growing. I proposed WordPress and the client agreed, then they jumped fully into design mode with me as we added plug-in upon plug-in to do such things as automated imports of news feeds, polls, quizzes, videos, events, live chat, and on and on. As a web designer I love this enthusiasm. It is great to offer a suggestion that your client not only likes, but that they build upon with their own ideas.
At the end of this project my client has a website that is robust, functional, and has solid growth potential. They can maintain it internally or hire a million different WordPress experts around the world to jump in at anytime. They are liberated and a little open source package called WordPress made this liberation possible.
The client and their transformation reminds me of a saying my Grandmother always said.
Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime.
A normal website is a fish, but WordPress is the lesson of fishing.
Pimping my Website with Plugin’s
Virtually everyone has heard of MTV’s Pimp my Ride. The world of web development has been blessed by a little friend called a plugin that allows webmaster’s to pimp their websites. A plugin is the webmasters best friend when designing personalized websites via open source (aka free) CMS (content management systems) like WordPress or Joomla. They are many times free or available for low subscriptions or onetime fees.
WordPress and Joomla are common open source or free software packages that are available for download and usage via the Internet. These two CMS packages represent a easy to use software program that allows provides the backbone or a website. Both come with fairly basic functionality that can be expanded by searching for and adding any number of plugins. These plugins are mini-applications that perform a specific action or task for a given website. While many times free and easy to install, they do pack a powerful punch for building a tripped out website and pimping this website to meet a company’s or webmaster’s specific requirements.
Plugins come in a variety of shapes and sizes. They can create a social network, help provide SEO or search engine optimization, or they can provide quick contact form for website visitors. There are many and they are readily available for open source CMS’s packages regardless of the webmaster’s knowledge level.
In fact, in all honestly, WordPress plugins require little effort to install. The webmaster simply needs to find the plugin, click install, and review the available setting options. The plugin does all the heavy lifting and work.
So before you second guess the power of a CMS package, you might want to review the available list of plugins. These little guys can take your website from ho-hum to outstanding in just a few clicks.
Gomez Launches Cool Gizmo for Website Developers
Gomez just released a cool gizmo that reviews a website and displays how it looks across various browsers. Why does this matter some may ask? A single website page can look differently across different browsers such as Internet Explorer, Safari, or Firefox. In fact, different versions of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer can make the same website look different if it is not written to manage IE’s quirks. Yes, the fact that web developers have to worry about this amazes me as much as it probably surprises you.
This “quirkiness” of Internet Explorer may given companies with older websites something to think about and presents a need to reconsider a website refresh. How do your prospective customers view your website and what type of perception does it give to visitors? It depends on which version of IE they use, as well as your website’s CSS file. Unfortunately the results may surprise you. Remember that your website is one of the first things prospects see in regards to your company. This image can quickly lead to dead prospects if this image is distorted by poorly written CSS code or a lack of understanding for browsers and more importantly different versions of IE.
To do a quick health check of your website, visit www.gomez.com and check out the gizmo.
When it Come to Website Design, Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder
When it comes designing websites, small businesses are many times victim to the old saying that states “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Unlike large corporations with large in-house website design and Internet marketing departments, small businesses are left to their own ill-equipped devices or left in the hands of an outsourced website design firm.
It generally takes a third party to point out a website’s physical and esthetic flaws. Sometimes it takes a few hundred of your dearest friends and colleagues to convince you that your website is ugly. An ugly website can come in many shapes and sizes. It may have a horrendous color scheme, a nasty logo, outdated architecture, inappropriate images, spelling errors, or it just might be difficult to navigate and locate information. Regardless, these ugly ducklings exist and they seem to be growing and living well past their intended lifecycle.
As a small business owner or C-level executive, listen to those around you and seek outsiders’ opinions. If someone you know and trust or even a prospective customer tells you your website has “issues”, it probably does need a refresh or a complete overhaul. Seek outside help and seek it quickly, before you are labeled one of the ugly ones. This isn’t the playground and you won’t hear your girlfriends whispering behind your back. All you’ll know is you are receiving little traffic, few conversions, or virtually zero website leads or sales.
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