Summer is a time of starting fresh. A few years ago when I thought of moving, I purged the house for months of decades of acquired treasure. When you live in one place for a long time, you tend to get everything pretty much the way it works for you easily on a day to day basis. The problem is, you tend to put aside a lot of things and store things you no longer need. I found that the biggest impediment to getting rid of old clutter was recalling how much money I had spent on it. Today those…

In my last post, I talked about what it takes to be a good client. These guidelines apply whether hiring a web designer to create your business website or a painter to recolor your living space. You know how you want for the desired end result and you know what you can afford to spend. Good communication with a contractor means letting them in on those expectations.

I write about this as much to remind myself as I hire contractors as it is to share my insights for you when you hire one.
Define the desired end result
“We can hit the target,…

I love my clients and it is my primary goal to have them thrilled when their website is complete. That isn’t possible without identifying expectations and meeting them. I start with terrific clients (most of the time) who have a good understanding of what they want. The biggest challenge in any relationship based on delivery of a product or service is expectation management.
Contractors Have Expectations Too
Good contractors clearly state their expectations of what the client needs to do or provide, when and how. My clients receive a proposal with pages of information intended to manage and clarify expectations. I ask hundreds of questions of…

A website is very much like an iceberg in that what you see is only a (small) part of the whole, and it’s the part you don’t see that can really hurt you.

A Professional Web Designer spends hundreds of hours to learn

With all the modern technologies, anyone can throw up a website, but that is like saying anyone can paint. Just because you can put paint on a canvas, doesn’t mean you will create a great painting. Creating a great painting (or a great website) will mean hundreds of hours of time and learning.  And that doesn’t address whether you…

Accessibility. What does that mean in terms of a website and why do you care?  Accessibility means that visually or physically challenged individuals can access the content on your website.  Do you know the visually impaired (yes even totally blind) can surf the web? You may not have thought about it, but it’s pretty cool when if you do.  But visual challenges are not limited to blindness.  As people age it becomes harder to read small text font and text with less contrast. Accessibility is not limited to visual challenges. Some individuals have trouble with mouse control, so the placement…

Security is a huge deal these days. If Amazon and Google can be hacked, anyone can. Hackers can always get at you. But there is no reason to make it easy for them.

Quite often, clients will ask me why we put a contact form on a website rather than an email address. I also often get asked if a Captcha code is necessary. This post answers those questions.
Why no email addresses or links on the site?
There are two main reasons you don’t want your email address openly visible on your website: First is SPAM.

In HTML, your email looks like this…