WD and DIY
June 16th, 2009
That’s short for Web Design and Do It Yourself
Recently, I lost a prospective web client. Bummer. Doesn’t want to spend the money or thinks he cannot afford to spend the money for a custom site.
OK. That’s cool.
But, stop and think for a minute. Imagine you’re highly skilled & educated in your field. You’ve got stuff. THE STUFF. Widgets. Dog Walking. Palm Reading. Whatever. Stuff to sell. You know your stuff and you need to sell your stuff to pay the mortgage. To put braces on your kids’ teeth. You need a web presence to bring in customers, to grow…to stay in business. To pay the mortgage. To send those kiddies to college…
You get the idea.
BUT–you’ve decided that really, after all, you did manage to put together that Ikea computer desk all on your own–why not a website? There are free templates everywhere. There’s iWeb and MS Expression and all sorts of online tutorials. Have at it and save hundreds–maybe even thousands–of dollars. Besides, it’s Saturday, it’s raining, and building a website beats cleaning the gutters…
You get the idea.
You have decided to save money by trimming your marketing budget…
You have chosen to engage in DIY Marketing.
And it shows.
Here’s why:
#1) Non-Selectable Text
Placing a .jpg of your business card, company brochure, or other printed text material is not good.
Really. Not. Good. How do you expect your prospective client to put your contact info into their contacts list? At the very least, make your contact info selectable for copy/paste. And add Google maps if you’re looking for local customers.*
*A professional WD (that’s web designer) ought to code your contact info as a v-card. One click into your address book. Ta dum.
#2) Centered Text
Please, please, please save center alignment for formal engraved wedding invitations. It’s a bitch to read. It’s a real bitch to read when the line-height is narrow. It’s damn-near impossible to read when you use ALL CAPS…
#3) ALL CAPS
STOP. SHOUTING. NOW! All caps set a tone. A very loud and aggressive tone. Now, if that’s your intended style–have at it. There are some people who might actually contact you and pay you money after you’ve bullied them with shouting.
Maybe.
#4) Empty Title Tags
Google won’t find you. Neither will your customers. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then you should hire a WD.
#5) Alignment
This is related to #2 above. Let’s assume you’ve set your copy to p {text-align:left;}. (But you didn’t really do that, ‘cause you’re in WYSIWYG.) OK. Now stick with it! Don’t start indenting some copy or headers and not others. Use the left margin as your bowling bumper–nothing escapes! I know, you want to shake it up. Don’t. Leave it to the WD! Don’t even get me started about aligning across columns and with rules, etc.
WD. Period.
#6) Fonts & Special Characters
Yeah. You see an ampersand in the above title. Why? Because I coded it. Go ahead, view source and see what the character entities are. What? View source?
WD.
#7) Templates
There are many, many cool templates out there–especially for WordPress. They’re free. Some are simply awesome. But…they are not unique. And, go figure…I came across two unrelated sites this week and both were using the exact same WordPress template! It was hip, cool, colorful, and–memorable. Very much so. Two business blogs. Unrelated. Same dress. Ouch!
So Now What?
That’s entirely up to you. Take some advice–there’s plenty out there!
Research. Learn. Dabble in your code. Whatever you do, don’t spend precious time building other aspects of your business–the aspects in which YOU ARE THE EXPERT.
Save marketing money. DIY.
I’m good. Busy, even! With another client–your competitor.
