None at all? No address, phone number, map, fax or even mobile number?

I think not.

One argument may be that many websites are 100% online businesses where the office is a study located at their own home. Many online businesses do not want any Tom, Dick or Harry cold calling at their own home any time of the day or night.

Google Maps and Google Places makes it easy for the user to find a business location.

I get that.

However, a post office box with a suburb, or a phone number, or something to indicate where the company is, would help build trust with users. I have been to well known websites and on the contact us form is simply text fields and a submit button. Gone are the days of a business wanting to actually speak to anyone.

I always feel skeptical of the website where there is no location or phone numbers listed. I want to know that there are people on the other end of this website who care about their product or service.

To me, no contact details = SCAM.

I could waffle on about many things to consider when launching a new online business, but in practical terms, you need three things:

1. A website. Professionally developed to suit your business. Essentially this is a group of files and images.
2. A domain name. This will be your web address and should be reflective of your business name.
3. Web hosting. This is space on a server where your website will be stored. Your domain name will point to the location.

If you were starting up a new shop or business then you would need to rent office or shop space through a real estate agent. Similarly, you can rent server space for your website through a third party. Renting space on another server is the best option as you don’t need to worry about anything technical. All maintenance of the server, including UPS in case of power outages, security and hopefully backups, are taken care of.

There are a ton of suppliers offering web hosting services. Some are extremely economical, even less than $50 per year. I have tried out two of these very cheap suppliers with a friend’s website to test out their offering and service in comparison to the supplier we have been using.

Web Hosting Supplier 1

As they offered support for databases on these cheap packages, we decided to use WordPress with a theme for this website. My friend is a dog breeder so she liked the thought of being able to edit her own content and add articles. The install and configuration went well. I installed three basic plug-ins. One was a lightbox for photographs as my friend has a lot of beautiful photos of her dogs. I spent hours adding content, photos and tweaking the site.

The next day I went to login to the website to complete the work. ‘This account has been closed.’ Huh?

I had trouble finding the method of getting support from this supplier but finally I sent off a query asking why this was happening. Another day passed and I got a response that I was using up too much memory so they closed the account.

email to let me know. No phone call. Nothing.

Just close the account. What great customer service that is … NOT!

I told them that it was a simple WordPress installation and I had done a lot of work with the site. Perhaps the lightbox plug-in was faulty and using up memory. Would they turn on the site long enough for me to disable the plugin?

Eventually they agreed. They tell me they turned it back on and then had to immediately close it due to this memory issue.

All I know is that I never got the chance to disable the plug-in or retrieve my work. This was simple WordPress with nothing fancy. The plug-ins were all well known and established plug-ins which had been downloaded by thousands of people without issue.

Web Hosting Supplier 2

As my friend really liked the WordPress site with theme that we had for a whole 24 hours with Supplier 1, we decided to try another cheap web hosting company with the same theme but not install the lightbox plug-in just in case.

Installation, configuration, theme, adding content and photos was all going well. Maybe we had a winner this time.

Then all of a sudden we cannot upload photos and get an out of memory error. A check of the disk space revealed there was plenty of space left. The photos were a small size, all around 30 – 40 Kb.

All the FAQs regarding this error from the WordPress gurus say that you need to ask the supplier to increase the php memory limit. I sent off my request and received a NO back. They don’t do this, but you could always buy a more expensive package and then they would increase it. Ahh … the catch!

Conclusion

My conclusion after the above experiences are that you get what you pay for. If you have a very basic static website then you may be fine with one of these cheap packages. If something does go wrong, don’t expect great customer service, if any at all.

The supplier we generally use for web hosting is certainly not the cheapest around, but we have never had any major issues with the hosting of any sites, and have always had reliable customer service.

When we build websites for customers, we always give them the option of what type of web hosting they would like. However, we will not support a site that is located on another server other than our preferred supplier. If the customer has any problems, then they have to deal directly with the cheaper supplier to have the problem rectified.

There are always people who will find ways to exploit Google and rankings. The latest to gain publicity internationally is the case of a website – DecorMyEyes.com – whose owner realised that bad feedback and negative comments were leading to his site being ranked higher than when it had good feedback.

Let’s look at why that is.

If you are happy with a company or service, you may post a complimentary comment on a blog or share the experience with your friends. However, if you have had a terrible customer experience, you will post a negative comment, tell your friends, try to warn others, go to Consumer Affairs and so on. More links, comments and posts will result from a bad experience than a good one. In Google speak, this amounts to a higher ranking.

The germ who owns DecorMyEyes.com made a career from diddling customers out of their goods, overcharging them, abusing them, and harassing them. This behaviour was good for business as people posted their bad experience everywhere, resulting in the site ranking in the top spots for many top brand names.

The full story can be found on The New York Times and is titled A Bully finds a Pulpit on the Web (free registration required).

Interestingly, the New York Times article appeared on the 26th November, and four days later, Google has posted a response on their official blog. Being bad to your customers is bad for business where they state how horrified they were to hear of this story. Google has released an algorithmic solution to this issue and claim that Google users are now getting a better experience as a result. In typical Google fashion, it is a little vague exactly what the solution is.

Presumably there are a number of attributes examined to determine a user’s ‘good experience’ from a ‘bad experience’. I hope that one bad review or comment will not decrease a site’s ranking. The best of companies can have a bad review or comment and it is not necessarily of their making.

Time will tell. No doubt there will further exploitation once the algorithm change is more apparent.

I caught up this week on some blogs of my favourite writers and SEO gurus, and came across this one from Ian Lurie that just says it all. It is titled Sleazy SEO sales tactics (and how to avoid them).

Not only is Ian Lurie an incredibly knowledgeable and intelligent marketer, but his posts are hilarious, tongue in cheek, and a damn good read.

Blax Online created this website based on the business requirements and colour theme of the logo. A user-friendly content management system was configured and a tutorial supplied on its use.

View the Advocate Medical Centre site >

I know I have written a post on this topic before – The annoying click here habit, but as I mentioned, it is my pet hate. It drives me crazy and I have to keep griping about it.

Whenever I see a Click here link these days I feel like e-mailing the company and saying ‘NO, I don’t want to Click here’. Don’t tell me what to do, or treat me like an idiot. You didn’t even say ‘Please’.

When you walk into a restaurant, each chair does not have a sign on it that says Sit here. Newspapers do not have a headline on each column that says Read here.

Why?

Because we know what a chair is and what it is for. Likewise we know what a newspaper is and where to read.

WE ALSO KNOW WHAT A LINK IS AND WHAT TO DO WITH IT!

Let’s look back to the origins of the infamous ‘Click here’ link. When the Internet was very new to the world, websites were not a common channel as they are today, Google was yet to be born, and there was no such thing as Web standards, websites were built in any old colour and layout. Usability, accessibility, information architecture and an aesthetic user interface had never seen the light of day. Back then it was not always clear what a link was or what it looked like. It could look the same as the rest of the copy on a page or it may have blinked, animated, almost chased you across a page, or been in 36 point font and red. It was easier for the developer/designer to say Click here so there was no doubt as to which were the links.

Those days are over.

We now have Web standards, best practice, usability, accessibility, information architecture and a knowledge that did not exist then. We KNOW what a link looks like as it is usually a different colour to the rest of the text or it has an underline. We know that when we hold the mouse over it, the pointer turns into a hand and often the link will change colour or underline. We also know that a well designed site is uniform and that links on all pages will have the same attributes and behave in the same manner. This gives us a feeling of confidence and familiarity when navigating around a site.

We also know that if the site is designed and written correctly, that the copy has made it clear where the link is going to take us to, and can see the destination page URL in the status bar. (I did say on a correctly designed site)

If the site is well built, then the navigation is very clear, and the information architecture has left scope for an evolving and growing website within its framework instead of having to pop in Click here everywhere when something doesn’t quite fit.

The link text should be contextual and mean something. Instead of Click here, we can have Read the annual report. Now, doesn’t that read better? A blind person using a reader to read the website out to them will know exactly what that link is about instead of having a leap of faith in where we are trying to take them with a Click here link.

It is amazing how many business websites and even corporate sites have Click here for many of their links. Look for it when you are surfing around the Internet and you will be surprised.

My other pet hate is finger prints on the fridge, but that is another story …

It was felt that WordPress would be the best option to use as a content management system. The theme was selected and the site set up to suit the needs of the business.

View the Authors Australia Inc. website at www.authorsaustralia.org.

Today, I will tell you about the most important person for an author, an artist and other creators of beautiful things. It is the expert who helps to let the world know about it. In the digital world, it is the promoter of the internet website, a search engine optimiser, an internet website designer!
There seems to be a glut of them on the net, with their enticing websites that contain powerful words and phrases. However, in the past, I have found them all wanting – until I came across my current website designer and SEO expert, who made my author’s dream come true! Therefore I would like to mention it here in gratitude, unashamedly recommending and promoting their business activities, their talent and creativity.
Whilst I am not sure that I am helping this excellent company with my little outpourings of praise, I am totally satisfied with their expert assistance and am therefore sure of showing my gratitude the correct way!
PETER FREDERICK

View Peter’s websites – www.peterfrederick.org, www.life-on-the-road.com, peterfrederick.blogspot.com.

I am nothing short of overwhelmed by the phenomenal service I have received from blax. Lisa and Matt have teamed up to help me build a Web site that is tailored precisely to the needs of my company, and Lisa has gone on to offer expert SEO advice as well. When my company was just starting out, Lisa worked to keep our costs low, always ensuring that we got the most benefit out of every Web development dollar. She also pointed out elements of the Web development process that I would certainly have overlooked, and helped me to prioritize the components of our long-range development plan. It is wonderful to be able to work with a team that finds its success in my success. I know that I can trust them to recommend what is truly best for my business at every step of the way. – Albert, President & CEO, EditsMadeEasy

View the Edits Made Easy site – www.editsmadeeasy.com.

A classic case of why ‘online reputation management’ is so important is the recent YouTube success of Dave Carroll’s song, United Breaks Guitars.

Band members watched in horror from a United plane as baggage handlers played catch with their guitars. From this rough handling, a Taylor guitar was broken. After 12 months of frustration in trying to get United to reimburse them for the guitar, the band got together and wrote a ‘catchy’ tune (pun intended) called United Breaks Guitars.

This video clip has now been viewed millions of times and the tale has been retold in newspapers all over the world.

According to Social media lessons: United Airlines breaks guitars, John Dodge reports that United have since offered compensation for the guitar. It is a case of too little, too late, or closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.

This PR disaster for United could have been avoided had they offered better customer service in the 12 months prior to the song being released.

I love the homepage of Taylor Guitars at the moment. Quick to jump on the PR bandwagon, the main image is a guitar with a Fragile sticker and an airline claim ticket, and the heading ‘Bumpy flight?’ Brilliant!