Web Development

One of the most frequently asked questions we get from new clients is: Why are you estimating/billing so many hours? The client will then go on to say that it's a "quick project" that should only take a few hours. This is a perfectly reasonable question for a new client to ask, and each client deserves a clear answer.

Since my focus is copywriting, I'll give you a writer's perspective on the process I go through when writing copy for a client. Writing copy, even for a simple website, is not as easy as sitting down and starting to write (although I wish it was that easy).

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be a can mean good business for your website by pulling in a lot of visitors without paid advertising. SEO is optimizing your website so that it ranks higher on Google, Yahoo!, etc. This increases the chance of visitors to finding your site via a search engine because your website will show up in the top search results.

More and more people are becoming a "hobbypreneurs" - taking their hobby (product and idea based) and making it into their career. This can be done with crafts, blogging, cooking and just about any other hobby people pursue. An advantage for hobbypreneurs is making money doing something you love, and not working at some corporate job you hate just to bring home a paycheck.

I'm always the first to admit when I make a mistake. And hoo boy, did I ever make one here. I recently created a website for a friend using Drupal. This friend didn't use the site for a few weeks, and when she went to make a blog posting, we discovered that the site had been overrun with comments advertising Viagra, Paxil, Tamiful, "h5n1" masks, and kamagra jelly gel (whatever that is). Overrun to the tune of 48,495 comments in the span of 1 month, to be exact. Yikes!

No, you didn't read that wrong. Apparently even bad products reviews can help increase online sales.

Its inevitable - your website will experience downtime. All hosts, regardless of price, technology, or quality, will experience downtime. Site downtime is a bad thing because if your customers can't get to your site, they can't send you their money. No monies = sad business.

For many small business owners, a website can be a double-edged sword. On one hand, a website provides a business with a great way to market their products/services to people far beyond the company's geographical location.

On the other hand, a website either means paying a lot of money for someone to maintain it and make even small content updates, or the owner must learn HTML, graphic design, coding and a lot of other skills to keep the website going. And there's still no guarantee that the site will draw in visitors and convert them into customers.

Say you owned a small retail shop (some of you may already do that!). You wouldn't dare think of doing business without asking your customers how they found your store, what they are looking for, or why they were there, would you? No, you wouldn't. But many companies do this exact thing with their online stores.

The easiest way to track what your customers want is to watch what they do online. But since you can't look over every customer's shoulder as they use your website, the next best thing is to watch them virtually through web analytics.

In this day and age of DSL, Cable, and FIOS internet access, customers are zipping around the web faster than ever before. Despite the increase in features of web 2.0 sites and rich media, customers are demanding speedier page load times and better performance.

According to Gomez, the leader in website performance testing and availability, poor-performing websites have a definite impact on a business's bottom line: