Archive for the ‘Musings’ Category

Do you reckon that no-one gets business from social networking? Do you think it doesn’t matter if your website isn’t iPhone friendly? Do you believe that the look of a website is more important than its usability?

Then read on…..

I’ve just got back from a week away in Somerset, where we stayed in a converted barn in the middle of nowhere. Thanks to the thick walls of the former barn, we had no mobile signal at all inside the building, which was great for getting a bit of peace and quiet.

Outside, we just about managed to get a signal if we stood in the right place. As for data – well, if the wind was blowing the right way we could sometimes get a 3G signal but most of the time the only option was a painfully slow 2G connection.

But modern habits die hard, so when @MrsJaneMiles and I decided we wanted to find a nice pub for dinner one night, I did the obvious thing and put a message out on Twitter asking for a recommendation. One of my Bristol based followers picked up on this and got the word out to a number of his Twitter contacts in the Glastonbury area and within a few hours I had received recommendations for three local pubs.

Excellent! One lucky landlord was going to get a bit of extra business thanks to the power of social media.

Because @MrsJaneMiles is allergic to dairy products, I wanted to check the pubs’ food menus to see where she had the best chance of being able to eat something.

I went to the website of the first pub – The King’s Head in Wells – and was confronted with a screen that simply said “Loading: 0%”. After a not inconsiderable wait (I’m on a mobile phone with a 2G connection here, don’t forget) it crept up to 5%. Then another long wait and it was up to 10%. After about five minutes it had struggled up to about 20% – at which point I gave up.

I’ve since seen the site on a laptop with a 3G connection and it’s a very nice looking site and the pub looks great. But they didn’t get our business because they didn’t make any allowance for the fact that some potential customers might not have been able to handle the highly graphical nature of the website.

Lesson 1: As I discovered when doing the research for ‘Fusion’, the use of mobile phones for accessing web sites is growing at a phenomenal rate. So if you are going to have a very visual, graphic heavy website (especially if it uses Flash), then you really should ensure you’ve also got a mobile-friendly version of the site which loads automatically if it detects that someone is accessing it from an iPhone or other mobile device.

The next pub I looked at was The Apple Tree Inn. Their website is much more basic, but I was able to navigate around it easily on my phone (even with a slow connection) and check out the restaurant menu. We would have gone there but, despite trying them at various times of the day over a 24 hour period, I couldn’t get through on the phone. It just rang and rang with no answer.

Lesson 2: Just because someone finds you via the web, it doesn’t mean they won’t want to talk to you. Buy an answering machine or, better still, use a call answering service so as your calls get answered by a real person even when you’re not around.

And so it was that we ended up going to The Who’d A Thought It in Glastonbury – an excellent pub with a range of beers, quality food, helpful and friendly staff, and a website that works!

What do you think? Should businesses be making more effort to ensure that their websites can be accessed quickly and easily by people on the move? Do pubs/restaurants really need to bother about this kind of thing, or would most people have checked them out from home on a wi-fi connection before going on holiday? Feel free to comment below!

Before deciding on the right web designer for you, you firstly need to establish what you want out of a website designer. Do you want someone to just build a website, or do you want to someone that is going to help drive your website forward, and help boost your online presence?

If you decide on the latter, then you need to make sure that you choose a designer that is willing to be in it for the long haul. By choosing a designer who isn’t experienced in, or willing to, drive your website forward, then it could mean a lot of wasted money.

It is entirely possible that, by choosing a web designer from an online marketing background, your website will benefit from achieving a higher online presence and better visitor usability. This kind of designer will also often have experience in working with on-going clients, so you know that, should changes need to be made after the website is completed, they can fit these into their busy schedule.

If you’re not quite sure whether or not a website designer has the right attention span you desire, try and gauge from your first meeting how they interact with you. Some website designers have notoriously short attention spans, so if this becomes apparent in your first meeting, this could prove detrimental later on. If they ask a lot of questions about design and future care, then straight away you can tell they are considering the future maintenance of your website.

Even if you are not planning on your website to need regular updates or changes, it is worth checking with your web designer whether or not they would be able to make these amendments. If you are planning on these changes, such as the addition of regular blogs, extra product listings etc, then it may be worth trying to work these into your pricing plan to ensure they can fit these into their schedule.

Never be afraid to ask your potential web designer questions, lots of questions. Web design consultancy is a very important part of creating the perfect website for you, and if this includes future maintenance, then it is important to establish as soon as possible whether your web designer is in it for the long haul.

At Divadani Design, we develop relationships with our clients that last long beyond the website design – we not only maintain and update websites frequently, we help with SEO, promotion, Social media and more to ensure that your website is something that works for you, not something you’re just left with.

Is YOUR web designer in it for the long haul?