I Do Web Marketing

As a web development firm, we are often approached by clients with things that they are wanting on their website. They want a large image in the middle, with music playing in the background with a yellow, red, and pink color scheme. They want pop up advertising on every page to “catch customer’s attention.” If customer’s are dead set on this, then we will kindly turn them away. Quite frankly, we don’t want our name being associated with a website that is looked upon as an annoyance.

There are a handful of issues to avoid when developing your website, and we are going to cover some of them here:

Background Music
Believe it or not, not everyone likes your choice of music. This also can contribute to slow load times. This is a big no-no, especially if there is no stop or pause ability.

Pop-ups
No, they don’t grab your customer’s attention. In fact, web surfers can’t close them soon enough and will just immediately leave your site. They may even worry that your site has infected them with spyware. Besides, many pop-up ads are now blocked automatically via their browser or pop up blocking software.

Large Graphics/Images
These image files usually take up a lot of space, and cause slow load times. It is suggested that you break up this image into several smaller images. If you have Photoshop, try the slicing feature.

Frames
There is not a bigger sign of an old web page than one that utilizes frames. These are no longer an acceptable format for your site. Bookmarking/Printing becomes impossible. Not only that, but pages found on the web containing frames, will not contain any navigational features as those are apart of another frame.

Horizontally/Vertically Scrolling Pages
Research has shown that visitors that need to scroll to see your page’s information typically will not view more than what is on display. Avoid long scrolling pages, and break them up into different links if need be.

Unruly Backgrounds
Nice backgrounds may make you stand out, but for all the wrong reasons. You do not want your background overtaking your actual web page.

Poor Navigation
If visitors cannot find the information they are looking for, they will go to another web site to find this information. Make everything clearly defined and easy to find.

Appropriate Color Scheme
I know red, yello, and purple are colors of the rainbow, but that doesn’t mean they will look good on your web page. You need to stick to a color scheme. There are plenty of web sites out there to get ideas from and even tools available to help you choose color schemes.

An important thing to consider for your web site, is the hosting provider you will be using. There are literally hundreds of thousands of web hosting providers. So, how in the world do you figure out which is best for you?

Free Isn’t Always Better
Lets start off this discussion by discussing free hosting solutions. There are several free hosting providers, but I do not suggest them. I don’t suggest them because they are usually limited in the amount of services they offer. Meaning, they may not allow for .php files, or allow you to set up databases. They also will restrict the disk space you can utilize, and they will also limit the amount of visitors that can view your page (bandwidth). Most often, they also require large banner ads to be displayed on your web site. These appear very unprofessional and not something I suggest.

Please Press 1 For English
Most hosting providers nowadays are in the $4 to $10 a month range. There are several factors you should consider. Number one, do they have a contact phone number? Believe it or not, there are several hosts that don’t even have a number listed. Should you have issues, you need to know someone will be there to take care of them. If they do provide a number, are you speaking with somebody or are you leaving a voicemail. If you leave a voicemail, how long does it take them to respond?

What do they offer?
Another thing to consider are the services they are offering. How much bandwidth are you allowed? What kind of disk space are you given? If you have not registered a domain as of yet, is this something you can do through their site? How many email accounts are you allowed, if any? Do they support common file extensions such as php, asp, or mysql databases? Obviously, the more services they offer the better.

Father Knows Best, and HostGator Delivers
Now having said that, you may be wondering the host I personally recommend. I can say with confidence that HostGator is who I recommend to all of my clients. They have superior customer service, their uptime is nearly 100%, they offer UNLIMITED bandwidth and diskspace! All of this for as low as $5.95 should you go with their three year hosting plan. 

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Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.