Website Development

Before You Build Your Website Or Tackle A Redesign, Read This: How To Do It Right The First Time

dartboard

Whether you don’t have a website at all, are ready for a makeover or upgrade, or went down the “my son’s friend’s father’s nephew knows a guy who knows web design” route only to regret it later, I’m about to share with you some practical insight into the reality of building a website. Find out how to do it right – the first time – before you spend your valuable time and money.

When websites attack

bee swarm

Has this happened to you? You go to a website and it refuses to give you what you want. It is trying so hard to steer your thought processes, that it won’t let you decide for yourself that you want to buy. I was looking for information the other day on a specific home electronic system when I was attacked, I was assaulted, I was swarmed.

Should you use a captcha? (Spoiler: No.)

frustrated man at computer

You know those annoying widgets at the end of many web forms that make you fill in a code of numbers and letters before you can submit the form?I hate those things. And if you don’t; by the end of this blog you will. Captcha stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”.

Custom website design vs. templates: which should you choose for your business?

tug-o-war

You’ve made the decision to move forward with creating a website. But now you have to decide how you want the website developed – with a custom design that will be completely unique and personalized to your needs and wants or with a prefabricated template that you choose to fill in with your content.

5 (more) things to ask before you hire a web developer: the wrapup edition

question marks

Before writing this post I did a quick scan online to see what questions other people were suggesting. What I found interesting was that the questions leaned toward the technical and practical aspects of development, but my questions lean toward the professional and “service side” of development.

Is your website over the hill? How to know when it’s time for a makeover.

house being remodeled

Your website may not be sprouting gray hair but it could very well be showing its age in other obvious and not-so-obvious ways. It’s common for businesses to immerse themselves in building a website then “finish” the project and move onto other things.

Want to hire a web developer? Find out who’s responsible when things go wrong!

see no evil monkeys

This is not the same thing as “who’s in charge” or “who’s the boss”. And I mean this in a very literal sense, not as in, “is my web developer a responsible person who can get the job done?” I mean, very specifically, when something goes wrong, when there’s a problem, a delay, an issue, a bug or some other unforeseen event, ask yourself this: who you gonna call?

Want to hire a web developer? Find out who answers the phones!

phone dial

You’re ready to take your web presence to a new level and you’re looking to hire a company – the right company – to help you do it. But it can be challenging to navigate through the differing opinions, ideas, processes and price points of competing web development companies and almost impossible to make an apples-to-apples comparison when there are so many widely diverse options available.

Want to hire a web developer? Find out who you’ll (really) be working with first!

shell game

Choosing a web developer isn’t easy, whether you’re just starting out and need a website to begin marketing your business online, or you’ve been through the ringer before and the thought of muddling through again, even in the name of a much-needed redesign, is enough to make you wish the internet had never been invented.

Want a good website? 5 planning steps that will help you build for success. Step 5: Build it

puzzle pieces moving into place

Hooooold on a second… weren’t there supposed to be five steps to planning? How did “building” make it into the planning steps when it should come after? Ha! Bet you know that building could be part of planning, too. Of course, this is building in a different way than you might expect.