millerpages web design trivia

Most of us at some point in our lives have had a go at DIY and I’m certainly no exception. However there are limits to how far I will go to “save a few bob”. We may feel confident in plastering round a light switch with some Polyfilla, but try plastering that wall. It will finish up having more lumps and bumps than a relief model of the Alps. A skilled plasterer will make that wall look and feel like silk. He’s a professional and has had years of practice.

I’m sure you get the message so let’s apply this thinking to website design.

Maybe you don’t have a website and you’re worried about getting left behind by the competion who do have one. So you’ve done a bit of research and you’re considering building your own. The TV ads suggest that it’s easy and you’re tempted to have a go yourself and avoid the costs of a professional web designer. I mean, how difficult can it be? In just a few clicks I can have a professional website that will attract hundreds of visitors and generate tons of business. Sounds good to me.

…STOP!  Do yourself a huge favour.  DON’T BELIEVE IT! and DON’T DO IT!

These DIY template sites promise much and deliver very little. Ninety nine people out of a hundred will finish up spending money and huge amounts of time producing something that makes their business look shabby, doesn’t work well and certainly doesn’t rank well in search engines.

As a professional web designer I receive many calls from people who have mistakenly gone down this road and are limping back hoping that we can improve/update/edit their site. We don’t ever consider renovating these sites. We confine them to the rubbish bin where they belong and design a professional site which will look good, work well and be an asset to the business.

Let me outline just a few reasons why these DIY sites don’t deliver:

Appearance
DIY websites look like… well DIY websites! Your business deserves a professional look and feel, not something that’s homemade and looks like every other DIY website. The home page of your website gives an impression of you and your business to visitors in a matter of seconds. If your site looks cheap, any potential customer will probably have clicked off it before you can say “White Transit Van”.   (I know I do!)

Limitations
Most DIY template websites are severely restricted in the amount of storage space and bandwidth available. You are usually also limited in the number of pages you can have which means you have to cram your content and images into too small an area. This results in cluttered, unstructured content and long pages which are a turn-off to most visitors. Also, you won’t have your own domain. You will have a subdomain of another site e.g. mysite.diyripoffs.com.

Bugs
All websites have bugs during the design stage. A web designer will iron out these bugs and make sure that the site is fully functional, cross browser checked, conforms to W3C standards and works on all devices (PCs, Macs, Phones, Tablets etc.) Can you do the same?

Slow loading
A DIY website will invariably be held on a slow server crammed with other DIY websites. Any images you put on will be optimised for physical size but probably not for file size. Consequently this will make the page even slower to load. Another turn off for visitors. (research suggests that the average visitor will not wait more than 7 seconds for a page to load before clicking off)

SEO (search engine optimisation)
This is the area where the whole thing really falls flat. SEO is massively important and the average person has no idea how complicated it is. There are so many important elements to it, both on page and off. Well written code compliant to W3C standards. Optimised content. Researched keywords. Optimised title and alt tags. Metadata and optimised H1 and H2 tags. Submission to Google places and local business directories. I could go on but you get the picture. Even if you can magically make your site look good, it’s not much use if it’s confined to the back streets of the Internet where no one will find it. Remember, Google is God!

In conclusion I would say that if you feel you must give the DIY website a go, then good luck to you. I hope you can make it work for you. I personally feel that your time is better spent building your business and leave building your website to the professionals. And for anyone who thinks professional web design is easy, they cannot appreciate how many hours of hard work and painstaking research goes into building a website with much of the work behind the scenes and invisible to the client.

If you are considering a website or would like to refresh a site or bin a DIY site why not talk to us and let us give you a quote. We are very friendly and don’t bite. Explore our site and feel free to contact any of our clients for a reference. Our site is millerpages.co.uk.

I’ve been shopping for clothes today and I’m fed up.  Nearly all tops these days have ¾ length sleeves as it saves on fabric but it makes the tops look like they’re too small for me, plus as I’m fairly tall the end of the sleeve ends up on the elbow which is really irritating.

The other cutback is that very little clothing has darts any more as it saves time in the making.  This means that tops are square and have no shape – which means that neither do you.

I’d rather pay more for one top than buy two cheap ones so pleeease – make clothing that fits a woman’s shape with long sleeves.

Time and time again I see umbrellas cast away at the side of the pavement or road because they’ve blown inside out.  It really irritates me that people are so thoughtless.  As well as littering the place, broken umbrellas have sharp spokes and are dangerous if blown into the road.

PUT IT IN THE BIN!

Exhibit ‘A’  by Alison Miller

I’ve just take a new kitchen roll out of the cupboard and unbelievably it has shrunk again.  The empty cardboard roll on the left is the old height, the middle roll shows the new height and the new roll on the kitchen roll holder, shows how much of my wooden holder now pokes over the top.

Remember this is not the first time this product has shrunk, so the reduction showing in the photograph is not the whole story.

Just how far will they go before it becomes utterly ridiculous?

Another moan by Alison Miller

Today I came across what I can only describe as an example of sharp practice.

Firstly let me put my tale of woe into context.  I’ve been looking for ages for a pair of casual trousers for my holiday.  I’ve looked in various places during days out or weekends away and as the holiday is getting awfully close, have again combed just about every shop in my home town during my precious lunch breaks.

The last shop I went in today, was a more expensive shop but they had a rail of trousers with 30% off and they looked really nice.  In my desperation I figured I could stretch to £45.  I tried them on and they fit like a glove.  Perfect colour, perfect round the waist, perfect length and even with lycra so a bit stretchy.  So I went to the till to buy them.

“Oh this colour isn’t included in the sale, they’re full price, £65”, said the shop assistant.

I couldn‘t believe it.

“But they’re mixed with the others on the same rail”, I said.

“Sorry that’s the price”.

Well I just couldn’t bring myself to pay £65 for a pair of trousers that I might only wear on holiday so I left the shop.  I’ve felt quite upset about it for the rest of the day as I was misled by the bogus price tag on the rail and wasted part of my lunch break trying them on.  What really hurts is that they were so perfect.

While I’m on the subject of sale prices, don’t be fooled.  Shops sell products at extortionate prices for an allotted time in order to comply with the Trade Descriptions Act, so that when they’re reduced to their normal price, they can legitimately say it’s been reduced or it’s in the sale.

Why can’t businesses be more honest?  All they do is upset the customer.

Today’s Moan – posted by Alison Miller

Ok – I’m annoyed again.  Just been making sandwiches for my lunch tomorrow and was frustrated again by the thicker than usual slices of cold meat, which are not as easy to tear up for my butties.  Then it hit me…they (the supermarkets) have deliberately started cutting the slices thicker as most people place their order at the counter by the number of slices, not by weight.  I know I always ask for, “three slices of this and four slices of that please”.  Well not any more.  I won’t be conned into buying more and for that matter, eating more than I want.  Plus I like thin slices.

So make sure you ask them to slice it how you want or buy it by the gram!

Today’s Moan – posted by Alison Miller

For ages I’ve been venting my frustration to my husband, friends and colleagues about this, that and the other so I’ve finally decided to start a new blog topic in a vain attempt to give them a break and try and purge my outrage.

First off is how everything is shrinking – like kitchen towel.  The top of my holder now sticks out ridiculously above the top of the roll.  And talking of rolls – how about toilet paper?  I found an old roll in a cupboard which was half a centimetre wider than they are now.  That means they now get another roll out of every 20.  And we are of course being charged more for less.  It’s sneaky and sometimes hard to spot.

Let’s move on to confectionery.  It began with the polo – the mint with the hole.  Yes…you are actually paying for air.  But there are more subtle ways of making you pay more for less.  Take galaxy chocolate.  They reshaped their bars so that each cube is sculpted into a pretty shape.  In other words, there’s a big chunk been taken out of it, so it weighs less than it used to but still looks as big wrapped up. Oxo cubes are another thing.  They’ve gouged out 4 grooves to make it look like an X and yet it still looks like a cube when wrapped.  Bottom line…less cube for your money.

Which brings me on to today and another pet gripe of mine.  Two for one prices.  I wanted one Easter egg but the price was £6.49 for one, or two for £8.  BUT I ONLY WANT ONE.  Why should I have to pay an inflated price for a single egg just to make buying two seem like a bargain.  They should just sell them for £4 each so that you can buy one or three or five and not be penalised.

Well I think that’s enough to get the ball rolling.  Can’t decide if my blood pressure has gone up or down writing this but at least it’s out there.  Thanks for reading today’s moan.

Feel free to leave a comment with your own moan.  After all, we are a nation of moaners.  Maybe someone will listen!

Are we becoming so obsessed with driving traffic to our sites that we are neglecting to realise that clicks aren’t customers.  Customers dictate the success or failure of our business, not clicks.

OK.  I’ll be the first to admit that unless we get visitors to the site, we have no chance of filling the coffers, but how many of these visitors have we failed to convert because they leave the site disillusioned; overfaced by cluttered, unstructured content and unable to find what they were seeking quickly enough.  I do a fair amount of surfing to research products or services and like most people I’m busy and haven’t the time to wade through a page stuffed with rubbish in order to find what I’m looking for.  I may look at 20 or more sites until I’m satisfied and that takes time.  The sites that draw me in are those with simple attractive designs with the information I’m seeking in easy navigable forms.

I believe the home page, which is the most common landing page, should be simple and well designed with subtle complimentary colours.  The page shouldn’t be over-coloured and gaudy.  Two or three colours are all that’s necessary.  White space can be used effectively to contribute to an eye-catching effect.  I know the look and feel of a page is subjective and realise that some sites are based on the bold and brassy, so I’ll concede that there are exceptions.

The content should be minimal with only “content tasters” shown, with “Read more…” links to open flyouts, accordions  or new pages.  This gives the visitor the choice of what to read and when to read it.  Visitors are more likely to feel in control during their visit and are far more likely to stay on the site and explore further.

A simple home page designed in this way will also load faster.  A slow loading page, packed with images, sidebars and cluttered content will deter a visitor and will also rank less favourably in search engines.

Now I know that content is king to Google and co. and I’m certainly not suggesting that we should abandon it in favour of aesthetics.  Your visitor shouldn’t be deprived of information but it should be their decision to seek it with the aid of good navigation.

Give the user what they want.  The bottom line for most of us is invariably the price.  There is a tendency for some businesses to make this as inaccessible as possible in the hope of keeping you on the site as long as possible.  I believe this is wrong.  We need to be more open about the price.  Don’t we all respect honesty and openness?  If your price is fair and competitive, what have you got to hide.  If it isn’t then you’re unlikely to make the sale anyway.  If it’s an ecommerce site make sure you tell the visitor whether the price is inclusive of VAT and delivery.  Don’t make them go through the checkout procedure to find out.

Let’s not forget that your website homepage represents you and your business.  A shabby, cluttered store on the high street will not compete with a modern well designed one so why should your website be any different.  It’s your online store front after all and you should make sure it looks good enough to show it off to the world.

So, lets not obsess too much about page ranking at the expense of sales.  It’s equally important to convert those clicks to customers and your home page plays a big part in this.

Most of us are aware of the value of a website presence on the Internet. Whether we like it or not, in our modern online world, for a business to bury its head in the sand and ignore this trend can mean commercial suicide. In these days of austerity our businesses need all the help they can get to keep pace with more frugal consumer shopping and the insidious supermarket leviathans.

The area that seems to be least affected by the current economic climate is the service industry. By this I mean tradesmen and professionals like physiotherapists, chiropractors, dentists and chiropodists. We all need the service of these people at some point and yet there are still very few websites associated with them. This is something I am at a loss to understand.

Let me recount a personal incident. Some months ago I had a painful verruca on the sole of my foot. After many months of hacking and slicing and applying every Internet known remedy, I finally gave up and resolved to try a chainsaw or a chiropodist. I opted for the latter and googled chiropodists in my area. I found numerous listings with addresses and telephone numbers but only one website. Addresses and phone numbers don’t tell me anything.

I browsed this website and found out everything I needed to know. All the usual things I would expect to find:
Clinic opening times
Google map location
Range of treatment and prices. Etc. etc.

Which was great. However, what really drew me in and got me hooked was the personal profiles of the two chiropodists. It almost didn’t register at the time, but learning about the actual people involved; their experience, their goals and aspirations, their qualifications, areas of expertise etc. made me feel I knew them slightly. Made me feel I could trust them somehow. They had faces I could see and identify.

Now I like to think that I’m a careful shopper and as shrewd a surfer as the next guy, so I shouldn’t be taken in by a couple of pictures and profiles of two lady chiropodists. They could be axe murderers for all I know. But I found this “meet the team” approach still made a big difference to me.

This is what I mean by the added value of personal profiles in a website. It’s simple psychology and if it’s done well, it can build a visitor’s trust in you, your team and your business. This is important. Trust doesn’t come easily in this age of online scams, where it seems everyone is out to part you from your hard-earned. To many people, the Internet is a scary place. They’re suspicious of anyone who asks them for personal information, no matter how necessary it may be or how highly recommended the site is. Make them feel safe and you’ve gone a long way to turning a visitor into a customer. Treat them well and justify the faith they showed in you and you may have a customer for life.

So for all those businesses out there in the service industry who don’t have websites. Wake up! Get a website. It costs much less than you think. Make sure you have your pictures and profiles on it. It will be the best investment you’ll ever make. In fact, why not browse my website http://millerpages.co.uk. Maybe you’ll trust me enough to design it for you.

To anyone wanting to know how my verruca turned out. I saw one of the aforementioned chiropodists. Sarah Turner. I told her if she got rid of the verruca I’d drink her bathwater and she accepted the challenge. She treated it with a strong acid that you can’t buy over the counter. Three treatments over six weeks and it was gone. I would thoroughly recommend this practice to anyone living in the Lancashire area. The Foot Room, Longridge near Preston.

I’ve reneged on the bathwater. Feel a bit guilty but what can you do? She hasn’t pressed me!

I am now on week 6 of my journey and things are getting a little easier.  My cast has been removed and the consultant says I can walk on it without crutches.  It’s still swollen and I’m told to keep it elevated.  So I’m torn between keeping it elevated and trying to walk on it.  You can’t do both if you live on planet Earth.  Anyway, I’m not suited to the upside down life, especially in bed.  I can’t sleep on my back without choking to death and trying to keep it elevated whilst lying on your side is difficult to say the least.

Here’s a picture of my foot.  It looks like an inflated marigold glove or some weird hobbit foot.  I’ve started calling it Bilbo.

Bilbo, my hobbit foot

Can’t complain.  It’s much better than it was.  Walking is proving difficult.  My left leg is withered from lack of use and my foot is swollen and stiff.  I think the ligaments have turned to stone.  Baby steps!

My knee is a bit unstable too.  I had a knee operation about 6 years ago and it’s never been the same.  Got a verucca on my left foot as well.  I have the unluckiest left leg.  Nothing ever happens to my right leg.  It’s my lucky leg.  Maybe I should put a pen between my right toes and fill out a lottery ticket!

To anyone wondering why my daughter is in the same boat as me.  It’s quite bizarre.  We both broke our left foot at the same time.  (the unlucky left leg runs in the family).  This was also the leg she broke as a youngster.  She broke her foot on a trampoline only days before I broke mine.  I mean, what are the odds?  No doubt some smart-arse mathematician would tell me it’s 670,000 to 1 or something.  Here’s a picture if you don’t believe me.

A pair of idiots

Better close now, I’ve probably depressed you enough and the laptop’s burning my left leg.  Always the left leg!