Creating a WordPress website for Great Results
WordPress is quickly becoming one of the best tools for creating and managing a search engine friendly website. This open source package allows you to create and manage a website without any extensive knowledge of HTML, database programming, or advanced technical knowledge.
Many powerful plug-ins are available to help increase your exposure on Google, Yahoo, MSN and ASK.com – all are tools that the novice web developer can use immediately.
If you don’t have the time to build your own website, Integrity Technology Group provides a reasonable WordPress setup program, complete with the first year of hosting your site.
Contact us for details on how you can get your business the internet exposure it really needs.
Integrity Technology Group LLC
1.800.621.4299
Successful Web Development in 2009
Let me start by saying something that will set the tone for this entire article.
I have a strong faith in people. There are so many good people in my chosen industry, that it’s hard to write what has to be written to the many that are so bad at their chosen profession, website development.
As I write this, the economy is still a mess, but many smart business people have chosen to ignore the naysayers and trek on to success regardless of what the economic experts say.
One of the areas where gains can be made is through an effective internet presence. Unfortunately, most web designers don’t know what to do to get their clients positive results from the websites they overcharge to create. The static, never changing dinosaur websites are dead technology, and a weight around the necks of the businesses stuck with them.
I hear and participate in stories every day, ranging from a web developer charging a customer to setup an FTP account, to sites that can’t and won’t ever be found in Google and other search engines because the original developer didn’t have a clue how to get them the results they needed.
Add to that the website developers that purchase domain names for their clients in their own name, and then hold them hostage when the client decides it’s time to move on to a web developer that knows the business. It’s dishonest, it’s wrong, and it has to stop.
It’s May 2009. Why are so many website developers still stuck in 1999? Why are so many supposed website designers creating static websites that will never be found? Why are so many website developers failing to stay in tune with current trends and technologies when customers are suffering from their lack of knowledge.
I meet people every day who say “the internet doesn’t work for me” while their competitors are thriving with effective internet campaigns. Is it possible that these companies don’t “get it” because their web development consultant doesn’t “get it” either? Simply put, yes!
In the past, I’ve thrown down a challenge to web developers in the North Port and Venice Florida area to step up and get with current technology – nobody has accepted the challenge yet.
If you own a business and have a website that hasn’t changed in over one year, now is the time to act on bringing your business into the 21st Century. After all, we are almost 10 year into it… and your websites are still stuck in a place where they will never benefit your business, in a time that the internet is being used by more people for searching local businesses than the yellow pages.
As much as we would like to work with every potential client, it’s humanly and physically impossible. However, we do have a solution that will help you succeed with an internet campaign.
Some consultants offer initial assessments or diagnostics for no fee because they think that paves the way for the client to say yes to an eventual project. After all, the reasoning goes, how can a client refuse such a generous offer? Besides, the consultant will easily recoup the marketing investment with future work…right?
Even if I set aside my objections to unpaid consulting, no-fee assessments are often a complete waste of time. Not only do most clients fail to engage thoroughly in a freebie project, but the perceived value of the outcome is about as high as the fee – zero.
A client once hired me to redo a no-fee website assessment project that another development firm had completed. The original project report suffered from a complete lack of depth, but the findings were insightful. Unfortunately, the client sent the report straight to the round file.
In the do-over (paid) project, our findings weren’t radically different, but this time the client participated in a meaningful way, and that helped win the client’s approval for our recommendations.
There’s some truth to the saying that you get what you pay for. If you ever think a no-fee assessment is a good idea, think again.
If your business is suffering from poor website performance, we need to talk. If your website looks like a high school student developed it, we need to talk.
Integrity Technology Group offers a complete website analysis and assessment, starting at $495. The advice we dispense in the end product will make a huge difference in the results you get from your internet campaign. If you choose to use another firm to develop your site based on our advice, we won’t be upset.
Let us show you some of our work and the results our customers have seen.
As always, please don’t hesitate to ask questions!
Best Regards,
John Delaney
President/CEO
Integrity Technology Group LLC
Why We Love Web Design Competition!
Some people think cornering the market for a particular product is a good thing – I disagree. Having a better product than the competition is the real key – that’s why we love competition – it makes us better at what we do.
In the web development industry, competition is everywhere. Reality says that we can’t design every website local businesses need. In fact, we really wouldn’t want to design all of them because we wouldn’t have the opportunity to compare our work to anything if we owned the market.
There are many excellent web development firms in southwest Florida – however, for every good one, there are ten bad ones that deliver terrible designs, bad copywriting, and equally bad results for their paying customers. In fact, these web developers make it easy to pick them apart because their own websites are train wrecks of epic proportions. Bad graphics, poor writing, frequent misspellings, and much more litter the local web developer marketplace.
In today’s economic climate, it’s important to get value for your money and the internet offers that value. Unfortunately, most web developers fail to provide their potential clients the education they need to get that value they so desperately need. It’s easy to pick out their work because it lacks professionalism and is so antiquated, it can’t help but create a sense of disappointment on the part of the client – and an attitude that “the internet doesn’t work for my business.”
So your probably asking, “what’s the point?” The point is short and sweet. When choosing a web development firm, use the following guidelines:
- Look at the developers own website first. How does it look? Is the text readable? Is it all hype – as in “we’re the best,” etc.? Are their frequently misspelled words?
- Look at samples of the web developers work. Ask for the samples and the keywords affiliated with each site. Google the keywords to see the results.
- Meet with the web developer one-on-one and get a feel for their knowledge of the market, their product, and the industry as a whole. Most web developers are sadly stuck in the last century and cannot offer the skills needed to succeed in today’s marketplace.
- Get the developer to outline the entire project for you, including a completion date and what steps they will take to make your website succeed. If they promise “guaranteed top placement” in Google or any other search engine, and their own website doesn’t get that type of placement, that should speak volumes about their abilities and their integrity.
This discussion could go on for pages and pages – but I think you get the big picture.
Choosing a web developer can be confusing. Everyone and their brother-in-law can design websites, right? So why do I need to pay someone?
We come across this all of the time. With all of the software out there and free website builders, who even needs a web design firm? The answer is simple: unless you are a professional web designer, YOU do!
Of course, this mostly applies to business websites. If you have a personal or informational website, a website builder or a friend is just fine. However, if you are starting a business or are creating an online presence for your existing business, professionalism is key.
That’s why we love the competition.
John Delaney
Integrity Technology Group
North Port Florida Web Development
www.integritytechgroup.com
The Death of the Clueless Web Designer
As I sit and write this story, I can’t help but be reminded of the words of one of my local competitors. I won’t dare paraphrase her statement… I’ll just post it in its entirety. The company name has been removed to protect the innocent guilty. Here it is:
“If you have a business, you need a custom website! Your web site needs to reflect your own company identity. Beware of templated sites produced by so-called designers using these templates. All websites at *** are custom designed, hard coded and convey your business style. Having your website designed by *** will help you meet your goals of success and service. Stand out amongst the competition with a crisply designed site that portrays your company in its best light.”
Let me start by saying that I completely disagree with this assessment. Designers like this, stuck in the 20th century, do their customers a huge disservice by not keeping up with technological advances in web development. They make their clients slaves to them when it comes to site modifications and additions. It doesn’t surprise me that a review of this designers work shows many web sites that haven’t been updated in as little as 8-months and as much as 2+ years. Is it possible that these clients are benefiting from their web presence? While it is possible, it’s highly unlikely.
In the early days of the web, most sites consisted of a few HTML pages. As the web has grown, HTML hand coding has become antiquated technology. While knowledge of HTML is valuable, using it as primary web development technology is too complex, tedious, and gives web site owners little or no control of their website content. Even worse, the process of search engine optimization using HTML is a painstaking task.
What I could only define as “the blind leading the blind,” too many business owners are spending hard earned money on sub-par websites designed by clueless web designers. In the case of the aforementioned competing designer, let me address the statements.
- “If you have a business, you need a custom website! Your web site needs to reflect your own company identity.” – As opposed to reflecting another company’s identity? But, what about using WordPress? A small, local business owner could have a website up and running in about 2-3 days – optimized for search, tagged for the cloud and fully operational – all without a single stitch of hand coding.
- “Beware of template sites produced by so-called designers using these templates.” – Ouch! How about beware of the web site that you can’t update yourself? Content management systems like Joomla, TYPO3 and Drupal; as well as blogging programs like WordPress deliver clients a web site structure that allows them to concentrate on the most important part of the site – its content.
- “Stand out amongst the competition with a crisply designed site that portrays your company in its best light.” – Nothing makes your web site stand out like not changing it for eight months, or two years. It doesn’t have to be that way. Content management systems give web site owners complete control of their sites and the ease-of-use removes the wait time and complexities that typically bog down the site update process.
As 2009 begins, I am laying down a challenge to the many clueless web designers stuck in the 20th century. Get a clue people! You are doing your customers a huge disservice by developing bad web sites. I suggest reading the following book:
If you don’t get a clue and learn the inner workings of new web development techniques, you won’t know what hit you when your customers start going elsewhere.
