TAG | Press
Make some noise online by giving your sites a well-considered refresh. Craig Grannell finds out how to clear away the cobwebs
As the global economy continues to stutter its way through 2009, companies are increasingly fighting to be heard. In recent months, investment has shifted abruptly from traditional media and ‘real world’ environments to the internet, which provides the means to reach the largest possible audience in a relatively cost-effective manner.
In theory, this is great news, but in practice the picture isn’t entirely rosy. As Clearleft’s managing director Andy Budd explains: “Many people view a website as a one-off project, rather than an ongoing concern. Organisations often go through a big redesign and then let a website fall into disrepair.” Instead, he recommends training yourself and your clients to think of a website as a staged process, which should be updated every three to six months: “That way, it’ll always be up to date and will last longer, rather than spending the majority of its life underperforming.”
Instead of tearing a site down and rebuilding it from scratch, figure out ways to make the existing site work harder. “Breathing new life into a site through a design refresh is one such option,” suggests Budd. “Smart companies also explore usability improvements to help conversion rates – small tweaks to registration and checkout processes can see conversions skyrocket and pay for themselves in no time.” The trick is in knowing the difference between an expense and an investment. While some sites are too outdated to make do with subtle tweaks and need a radical revamp, you can often do a lot with a little, thereby finding yourself in tune with companies cutting back on large capital expenditures.
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Press Release: Answering the Call of Small Businesses
0 Comments | Posted by Total Hosting in Articles
Owners of small and medium sized businesses have long been encumbered by the shared website hosting products offered by many mainstream hosting providers.
Such providers often host thousands, hundreds of thousands and for some of the larger ones, millions of privately owned sites, many of which are often run by children.
Today, for most small and medium sized businesses a website is a must and for many of them setting up and running their own server is not an option. It is either too costly or time consuming, or they may lack the required skill and experience to run a web server with all of the server hardening, security policies and disaster recovery processes in check.
For these reasons, many businesses outsource the running of their websites to hosting providers. The mainstream hosting providers, the likes of Fasthosts.co.uk and UK2.net, have tens, maybe hundreds of staff, including helpdesk operators, server administrators, systems developers…. the list is nearly endless.