Networking Now

OK, so those of you that seen my little game on Twitter last night (Only Sean guessed the correct answer) may have had a giggle, may have not, but it actually bought in two jobs and maybe a third, one is a web site build, and some considerable chap in the States tried poaching my client and offering me a website aswell! :lol:

As this kids pitch was simply, "I will make you one for cheap!"

So what I need to find out, is what people look for in a new site build please?

I work with a Web Designer and we constantly ask this question. However, there is no simple answer, different people want different things, and more importantly want goes out of the window when it comes down to cost!

What I wanted and what I could afford are two different things. So I went for middle ground. I got the best I could with the budget that I had, and in a few months or a year I will upgrade.

I know enough about websites and the internet to want to be able to update my own site. I find it frustrating that any changes I want have to be requested and programmed in. However, I couldn't afford CRM yet. I can't complain, because I work with him my web designer is really flexible for me, but still, having done all my own hosting and websites in the past I do find it frustrating still.

However, I can use my blog for updates I suppose, though it has been commented that it isnt integrated into my site yet.

When I buy a website I want to see what else they have done. It may not be what I am wanting but I like to look and see what sort of quality I am going to get. I want to see clear pricing or at least an indication. To my cynical and twisted mind if I have to email you for a price it probably (and this is from experience) means it is going to be way out of my budget.

I also think looking at this from both sides, that sometimes what the client wants isnt actually whats best for them. I would like to think I chose a designer that was capable enough to tell me when he thought I was wrong (although he would get a better response if he didnt actually say I was wrong, merely suggesting an alternative for me to consider works better with me :roll: )

I am interested to see what others think on this topic.

Hmmm, the content management issue keeps coming up, there are many solutions out there now that do the job but cost a few of our great English pounds.

I had this recently with Steve's corporate site, he needed a news page that he could update himself, this was easily achievable, I simply created a very long page called content (or something like that) with no links to it, then created an iFrame that linked to this on the news page, so now anytime there are updates or news articles that he needs to include, he can simply add them as text and they appear on the news page.

Lowi Group News Page

Hope this simple solution will help somebody out, a very affordable way to include updates without needing to pay extra to your web dude/dudette, as I built this in as part of the package price. Although I am sure Steve knows that if something did need updating, I would do it for him at no cost, unless it was a long winded job.

When customers need the ability to update sections of a site, but on a tight budget, we tend to set up pages which are driven by data files (XML) - these can be pretty straightforward to edit, uploaded by FTP - and voila!

Our own news/article/blog pages are driven by this method. Although it requires a bit of care to be taken when updating, it's simpler than editing HTML itself and is a good step towards a fuller CMS.

Quite often we encourage people to enter into a deal where we can offer them a good rate on updates including content editing, though - as someone sitting down to tweak and adjust your content can often achieve better results in terms of both search engine indexing AND human readability / impact - a bit like editing a book in a way. Neutral eyes can often enhance copy!

I am shocked to see that out of 18 votes so far no body has chosen Testimonials as a top 3 priority, including me. WOW!

Certainly is no: 4 though

I am very shocked at that Steve, as it is my testimonials page that takes almost all the traffic, and a great bounce rate, but it looks like Ability is king! Which should let people know that Their portfolio and sites built should be in plain site!