I’d like to clarify a bit on my post about getting your website done right. I came off as way, way too cynical and not very helpful.

My intention was not to skewer the people who are well-meaning or beginners. I -did- want to point out, there are unscrupulous individuals out there who will take advantage of people not in the know, willing to charge you thousands of dollars for work that’s not up to par: these are people whose intentions are skewed.

When I first started, my websites sucked. For real. I’ve drawn a quick visual aid to help me illustrate my point:

For those of you who are visually impaired, imagine walking through a hallway filled with roses which leads into a manure factory and someone’s propped the door open. Lots of potential, horrible execution. Now… you can make of that what you will. It’s taken me 13 years and I think I show some marginal improvement.

My point is this: as a small business owner, you’re going to make the best business decisions that you can, when you make them. There’s no reason to think you could have known better when you’re looking back. My first website… it was awesome (for me) – at the time. If I’d stopped there, though… The lesson is, If you get hosed, you get hosed. There’s people who can help – that’s the reason I teach the Digital Gunslingers. It’s why I offer ridiculously low-cost hosting. It’s why… well, you’ll get to see something new from me in a few weeks.

And, it’s why two of the people who comment on this post requesting some help will get a free, thirty-minute phone consultation from me in how to jazz up your website behind the scenes, no matter what the source code looks like. We’ll cover analytics, SEO, and usability. They’ll also get a free copy of Head First HTML and CSS.

This is a story most web people never tell small business owners and unfortunately, it’s the one that can bite them the hardest. It’s important to get your website done right and some people have no business building websites.

Second only to the “website right now” all-in-one cookie-cutter websites you get for a monthly fee from your hosting provider are the website designers who use Dreamweaver to build your site.

A few weeks ago, someone asked for my help to market their new website. I went to the site, and – as usual – took a peek under the hood. I discovered something horrifying. The entire site had been designed in tables. There were no ALT tags. In fact, there were no standard tags used for SEO at all.

I asked how much the site cost, and the answer was pretty damn shocking. So, here’s a quick and simple list to figure out if your web person is worth their salt (please note: this list is NOT all-inclusive… here’s another list of questions you may want to ask):

1. Will you (the client) be able to edit the website’s content when your web guy is done?
2. Is SEO included in the price of the site? (here’s a hint: this should not be a separate line item)
3. Does your web designer know what an ALT tag is? What a META tag is? Will they use TABLES or DIVs to create the structure of the site?
4. Is the hosting included in the price of the site? If not, is it less than $10 a month?

I’m going to get some flak from my fellow web folk, but here’s the deal: there is no reason to build a business website without doing the SEO for it. None. There is no reason to build a website in tables anymore. There’s no reason to build a website without the end-user being able to edit the content.

I’m not in the business of badmouthing businesses, but it makes my blood boil to see small businesses get taken advantage of when trying to build a website. It’s like storytelling with laryngitis.

Don’t let yourself get hosed. Get a second opinion. Get a third. Hell, get mine – it’s free and I won’t make a play for your business; it would be unethical for me to try to sell you after looking at another business’s bid.

Knowledge is the best defense to jerk-asses who want to take your money and dumb-asses who don’t know their trade as well as they should.

(Header photo: The Geico Caveman)

Here’s how the old one looked:

The old one was super-wide… 1200px wide. This one is under 1000px and uses the space more efficiently, I feel. Much less clutter.

Update to the page content is coming soon, but you can look forward to (at least) weekly blog posts on:

• Freelancing and Employment
• Community and Fort Collins
• My Projects and Events
• Digital Gunslinging, Marketing, and Business
• Sci-Fi and Star Trek

The wonderful picture of me (and many others) courtesy of the hideously talented Tamara Lakeman and the brick is a creative commons photo from Flickr.

Also, if you haven’t seen it yet, check out my new Twitter background on @ImNickArmstrong!

The previous design: Aspire.

Turning this:

Freshy 2 by Jide

Into this:

Eat Cake Denver

The culmination of ONE amp energy drink, 2 hours of continuous work, a 30 minute break and then another 8 hours of continuous work… I’m pretty proud of this one.  I think it turned out very well.  We’ll see how Deloris likes it tomorrow, but I have a feeling she’ll like this a lot better than the old version… which I would have taken a picture of, but since I designed THAT too, I’ll let it die in obscurity.  Bwahaha.

It’s definitely been a fun project and it’s only about 90% completed, but the heavy lifting in the design work is almost completely done.  Barring any bugs that may crop up, I’m satisfied that this design will last for a good long while.