This week, once again, I did not get the Spring issue of Computor Companion online. It’s sunny and the last dregs of snow are receding from around the north side of the house, so it’s definitely time. I need to at least get it done by summer anyway. So my apologies to you writers out there; it’s just going to have to be a weekend project! The delay is really frustrating for me because I’ve got some great articles sitting here that really need to see the light of day.
CC didn’t happen because this was the week of web site crises. (None of ours, fortunately!) I got calls from, not one, but two people who really needed a web site right now. One person sort of accidentally killed her site and the other person is moving her business to a new location and needs to get the word out about it ASAP so their clients don’t think they’ve disappeared.
So I spent some serious quality time in Photoshop getting layouts done. This week, I’ve done layouts for four web sites. In conjunction with the 6 or 7 other sites we have in progress, it’s sort of insane. We launched a database site that’s been in the works for a couple of months, and updated two other client sites.
The interesting thing to me is that most of the Web design clients we’re getting these days are for "second generation" web sites. We are re-doing web sites that have been utter failures for one reason or another. People have realized that "search engine optimization" isn’t just a buzzword. Search engines are way smarter than they used to be and the old tricks don’t work any more.
We’re getting a lot of new clients where the site owners are extremely interested getting a site that people can actually find by searching online. They discover that the "cool neat-o" site they were talked into is totally search engine hostile, so they have us re-do it. On the database site, we were the *third* web development company to work on it in the last year. The site was so ugly and hard for them to maintain, it sort of made me sick. To say that the client is happy now is a radical understatement. Here’s a recent quote:
"I can’t even explain how MUCH easier it is to get the listings in….HOORAY! HOORAH!"
Unfortunately, in most cases, we need to throw away virtually everything but the content text and pictures because the underlying site code is garbage. But our clients have been thrilled with the results. After all, a web site no one can find is an expensive waste of time. And having a web site that works is worth every penny you paid for it.