When having a website designed and programmed it is easy to lose sight of what’s important. Some business owners get carried away with installing gadgets and pretty banners, forgetting what the main purpose of the sight is. Other businesses may become obsessed with the cost of the website and therefore end up cutting the budget down so much that they end up with a sight that is not really functional or that cannot be found on the search engines. Before going ahead with a website project, be sure to make a list of items that you feel are important to your customers and potential customers. It may be such things as online calculators or easy ways to contact you such as forms or live chat areas. Then add a list of “nice to haves”. These are additions that you can speak to the programmer about and get an idea of cost. Once you have the cost you can work out if you think it will... Read More »

When it comes to managing your website you need to ensure that your domains are always renewed on time.  Most domain name providers give you ample notice of when your domain is due to be renewed and are often also offer you the option to automatically renew your domain. Even if you do forget and your domain name expires you would normally get a grace as period of about 60 days to allow you in which to renew the domain before anybody else can purchase it.  If you do forget to renew your name and the 60 days passes then the domain will become available to the public again which may mean you may lose it. If you domain name is purchased by somebody else then you have no right to claim it back.  Once your domain has expired your website will go offline.  If this happens then you will have to purchase a new domain name and change your website a point across to... Read More »

Too many companies or individuals have a website and do not update it often enough, if at all. Many business owners believe that they only need to update their website when information needs to be added or removed but this is simply not the case. When the search engines such as Goole and Bing are choosing how and where to rank websites in the results pages, one of the things they look at is how often the website is updated and how fresh the content is. A website that has not changed for years may be outdated and will probably not offer the viewer the best experience and most up to date information, therefore the search engines will not want to recommend it and will push it down in the listings. If as a business owner you are struggling to find ways to add new information to your website then you could consider adding a blog or news section. This will allow you to add... Read More »

Many people use their mobile phones to browse the internet and search for products and services that they require. Many business now have a website but not all are mobile compatible. Having a website that does not look and function correctly on mobile devices can not only be frustrating to your customers / potential customers and cause them to leave but can also have a negative effect on your website rankings. Google offer a tool where by you can check if your site is mobile compatible, which is very easy to use. If your site is not mobile compatible, you will need to get your programmer to re-rite the code to ensure it is or to create a mobile version of the site that will automatically redirect through if a viewer is browsing through a mobile device. Making sure that certain elements resize and that all the tabs / boxes etc. are clickable is essential on a mobile site along with ensuring that the text... Read More »

When you have a website created, you may not feel you need to do much with it for a matter of months or sometimes even years, but not staying in touch with your web developer can be fatal. So many clients approach us saying that there web developer is no longer taking their calls or they simply have not got any active contact details for them and this makes any future changes and updates hard. Often a web developer will need FTP access to your site in order for them to make changes to it and the only person that will be able to give them this is the developer who is hosting the site. The hosting company may be reluctant to speak to you if the account is not in your name and therefore you may have to start again by building a new site and possibly even buying a new domain name.