November 2010

OfficeSmarts is committed to helping you eliminate barriers in your business.  We believe we can help you achieve your business goals by providing you with valuable information about the Internet and the computer.

E-newsletters from OfficeSmarts are designed to provide you with important tools and tips, plus interesting information to keep you "smart" about your office.

While Hamlet lamented over life and death with the famous line, ”To be, or not to be, that is the question.”, many of us today have lamented, “Should I, or should I not, build my own website?”.  And as Hamlet ponders this question over the next 34 lines, you’ll be pondering just as much, or more if you decide to do a do-it-yourself website.

There’s a lot that goes into building a website.  That’s not to say you can’t do it yourself, but will the site be what you want it to be, and function the way you want it to? “Ay, there’s the rub.”

With the availability of do-it-yourself (DIY) templates and web building software these days, making a website may seem easy; making a good website, however, is not.

What can OfficeSmarts
do for you?

	Create dynamic email campaigns customized for your business.
	Keep you informed with our Be Smart Internet Tips.
	Host your website on a secure sever.

A good business website today represents the first contact point for many prospective clients.  It is, in a nutshell, showing how professional a company is, and what kind of attitude they have in selling themselves.  Will your DIY website reflect that position?  In addition, what considerations will you take to ensure that customers return to the site; that the site function properly with no errors, and that the user will navigate the site and easily find the information they are looking for?  A professional web developer will take all of these factors into consideration and more when developing your site.

Attracting clients and keeping them there
While the phrase “Location, Location, Location” may be the mantra of the real estate world, “Content, Content, Content”, may very well be the mantra of the website industry.  Why?

According to many web marketers, content determines the value of your website.  Simply having a good looking website, devoid of good content, will fail to do what you ultimately want your website to do:  produce repeat visitors.

Content is huge!  Be sure your site is packed with loads of useful information, articles of interest, plus links to resources.  If your site is not full of good information, your visitor will not see your site as valuable, and will not return.

Professional look
Even if your site is attractive, is it professional looking?  Not necessarily.  Over-personalizing content or images, or inappropriate links can be problematic.  Experienced, professional web specialists know that these sorts of glitches are bad for their clients and as a consequence, bad for their own business.  Web specialists can offer good, objective advice to maintain the professional look of your site.

There are lots of DIY website templates for sale on the Internet.  Essentially, you plug in the images and develop the site according to their layout and design.  But, unless you have good stock images; unless you can properly coordinate colours, your site may look nothing like their beautiful samples (which, of course, were developed by web specialists).  And since your site will be based on a publicly offered template from the Internet, it may look exactly like thousands of other sites.  Sites that don’t look good often won’t attract more than a one-time glance and will not hold potential client’s interest.  Non-professionally made sites are very obvious.

Website Performance
A website that does not perform well is the kiss of death.  If a site does not perform properly due to freezing, poor navigation, poor or no display, and links that don’t work, you won’t go back to it.  Performance boils down to one fundamental issue – coding.  How will you know if the template you just purchased is best suited for what you want?  Even if the template indicates what software and coding it uses, will you understand?  Web specialists know coding and know coding specialists to help them.

Browser and Other Compatibility Issues
Did you know that not everyone uses Netscape as a browser; not everyone has access to broadband and not everyone uses PC’s?  Of course you did, but did you know these factors all affect the way your site needs to be developed?  Badly coded pages can result in your website not displaying correctly across all web browsers and being unreadable to search engines such as Google and Yahoo.

It’s not unreasonable to consider developing your own website to try and save money.  But do you really save any?  And did you really achieve a good website?

Ultimately, it is your choice.  You may be willing to try web design on your own, but our web specialist knows how to make websites work and can help you avoid “the slings and arrows of outrageous” web design.

Got questions?   Send us an email at besmartaboutit@officesmarts.ca and we’ll be happy to help you out or visit our website at www.officesmarts.ca.

Are you satisfied with your website?  Want to jazz it up, add some new features, or simply want to generate more traffic?

Click here to learn more. 

The Principles of Beautiful Web Design
by Jason Beaird

Any suggestions for our next e-newsletter?
Send us your ideas to besmartaboutit@officesmarts.ca.

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