“I can build a website on my web host for free. I saw an ad for websites for $500. My (brother-in-law, sister-in-law, cousin, father, friend, daughter, son) knows html and will build me a website for nothing.”

True but.

These are the options you have if you truly have little to no budget, or you hope it is merely an interim site. If you spend money on print advertising chances are you can set aside money for a decent website which:

• Is working to advertise your business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• If done correctly your site is converting prospective clients or customers to actual clients or customers  – perhaps while you are asleep.
• It can take messages, much like a receptionist and should be professional (much as you would expect an actual receptionist to be).

So what goes into making a great website (and why is it so darned expensive*)?

First a good designer will research your target audience, goals for the site, (education, convert, involve, etc).

Decisions about navigation, areas of functionality (forms, share buttons, blog) will be based on a combination of client requests and designer recommendations. The designer may look at your web statistics (if redesigning an existing site) to determine what browsers the bulk of your traffic are using – valuable information when making decisions about layout and the coding behind it.

At  this point a wireframe might be built – really a means of determining where content areas will live on the page and how much prominence each will receive in the final design and then the real fun begins.

A palette that will fit your business or consider existing branding guidelines (if any) is important. I can’t tell you how often I check colourlovers.com for inspiration. I remember taking digital photos of my apple tv menu once when working on a website for an AV Custom installer so I could try to echo the look and feel for what would clearly be an electronics savvy audience. See the final result below:

And as design is also function after all the way in which the site is built and the usability of the functional areas are key to the success of the site. The way in which the site is built and the content that is added will affect how quickly and how high search engines rank the site.

At the end of the day the free site built using templates or via  “site builder” software on your web host can’t compete.

*expensive means different things to different people. The average site I build for small business costs less than a full page color ad in a local magazine.

Initially a blog software more and more sites (even large enterprise sites) are choosing it as their Web site CMS of choice.

Unfortunately there is a downside to this that is just now becoming apparent. WordPress is free, easy to install, and there are thousands of available free and low cost templates. For the most part just about anyone can get a WordPress site or blog up and running on their own. That’s the good news.

The problem actually comes when estimating the cost of customized design, customizing plugins etc. – In short, the very client who just saved a lot of money on functionality that would have run into the tens of thousands (or more) back when the functionality had to be custom built is loath to spend much at all on customization. The customer assumes that the software that does so much for nothing must only need a few tweaks to get it to look and behave exactly the way they envision. Sometimes that’s true – more frequently its not.

This issue is not restricted to clients using WordPress – customizations are even more complicated with Joomla. I recently developed a Joomla site that had so many tweaks and customizations that in the end it might have been wiser to have built a completely custom site.

(As an aside) Many of these customizations will also affect the ability to easily upgrade the main software as well as plugins and components.

Flash is Bad for SEO and Accessibility)
A lot of people adopted it to give their sites “a little bit of edge and movement” but in the process hid their most important content entirely from search engines and site readers in much the same way that putting phone numbers and addresses in images completely buried their content.  People have been cautioned to take their critical content out of Flash for years.

Not visible on iPhones and iPads
Apple decided not to support the technology on its products based on the fact that it is a proprietary technology. As some one who depends upon both quite a bit, I think site designers and owners should take this seriously. Imagine this scenario. A couple is searching for a home and while driving around is looking up listings using their iphone or ipad. If the local Realtor’s® website is built in Flash the listings won’t be seen. A lot of local Realtor® sites are in Flash – luckily larger companies know better.

Social Media
Today’s post was prompted by my attempt to put a facebook link to a Museum of Bird Carving in Maine. The carvings are spectacular and I wanted to share them with my friends. As you are no doubt aware facebook allows you to embed a thumbnail with your post based on the images that are coded into the page you are linking to. One is chosen automatically but you can select another if more than one exists.

The thumbnail image is really what attracts people to check out the link. Its visual.

My first attempt was to link to the home page. Unfortunately my only thumbnail choice was the image of wood shavings. I decided to select the Collection page instead. This gave me the option of selecting the image of the bird with the fish in its mouth (a vast improvement over the wood shavings) yet I was sorry that the spectacular work in the Flash banner wasn’t available.

I’m not pointing a finger as this particular website. Considering the impact on social media when creating Flash banners is a very new issue.

The lack of a compelling, or at least pertinent, image will could a direct impact on the number of clicks your shared link may receive.

It is an issue though and I’m often surprised at websites which don’t even have a logo

That said its important to set up the test properly.

Lets start with email newsletters. I could set up my A/B split to test the subject line. Subject lines are really important in email and do a lot of heavy lifting. Your subject line can make or break the open rate. For instance I was in the habit of sending out my newsletter using a subject line like “rr.interactive October 2010 newsletter”. It helped me keep things categorized but that subject line didn’t do anything for the recipients. For all they knew they were opening pandora’s box.

So in order to see what works best I could try “rr.interactive October 2010 newsletter” for the A test and “What is A/B Split Testing and How Can it Help You? for the B test.

In the case of mailchimp I can select what subset of my total list should get the test and the period of time for testing. Once there is a clear winner that is the one that gets sent out to the rest of the list. Awesome!

Google Adwords allows to to specify two different landing pages for people who click on your PPC ad. This is a wonderful way to test the performance of a beta website against the existing one.

In carpentry they have a saying “Measure Twice, Cut Once”. Interactive Media is a constantly moving target which you have to continually measure and monitor because what works one day might not work the next.

First let me say that good hosting for a small business whose site won’t receive a lot of traffic really doesn’t need to be expensive. In fact you would be surprised how little server space you might need and how little that will cost you – depending of course on how mission critical your website is and how secure the information needs to be. If you can’t afford to be without your site or portions of your site it pays to spend more money. Just a few years ago basic small business web hosting cost an average of $30 a month. If you are paying that now and your hosting isn’t anything special start looking elsewhere.

That said the typical small business owner won’t want, or be able, to spend the sort of money a dedicated server will charge so how do you evaluate shared hosting?

In 15 years of designing and developing websites I have a few ideas I’d like to share.

Choose a host that is primarily a host. Believe me where hosting is the primary service and not an upsell from, say, the purchase of a domain name (GoDaddy, Network Solutions) you are apt to have a much smoother experience.

Do a search on the web to see what others have to say about it. Pay special attention to blog and forum posts. Ask people if they have had experience with them.

As a web designer I always check out a new host with a small site of my own (such as this one) to see how things go before recommending anyone.

It is becoming more frequent for hosts to offer fairly good support documentation but to charge for any actual support request requiring a personal reply via email or phone. Check the pricing on this. Its often justified when the hosting provider is charging very little for server space but has the overhead of 24/7 support personnel.

Last. Sign up for the hosting account in your name (not the web designer or developer). This will enable you to retain control of your site if there is a problem. I call this  “If your designer were hit by a bus what would you do”. Save all of the user name and password information (including database access if any). This goes for access to your domain name as well.