Making business web sites
Most of my work is about either making or maintaining web sites for businesses or training in-house designers to do the same thing.
When I take a brief for a new site the very thing I ask the client is “what business are you in?” I start by understanding what the business does, who its clients or customers are and where they are located. I need to know this before we start talking about the web site.
A business web site is a way of taking a business to the outside world - to market. Whilst many businesses want to use their web site as a sales tool, some see its role as servicing existing customers. Occasionally you will be told that the site does not need to be found in search engines and it will not play a role in sales and marketing.
For the majority of sites, getting found on the web is mission critical. So all our work has search engine optimization built into it. This means knowing how to make a site that stands the best chance of getting into the top 10 organic results.
Often this means that certain things that a company would like to see on its web site will have to be dropped. I often get asked to do things which are mutually exclusive!
If I get asked to make a web site that uses frames I just say “no”.
If I get asked to make a web site that starts with a cover page made entirely of Flash, I explain why this is a bad idea. I often get asked to remove a Flash cover page from a web site.
People see things on teh web and think “mmmm that’s really cool”. How they managed to find some sites is a mystery - maybe they got there from a link on an equally bad site, but hey the web always has been like the ocean - some sites float on the top but a lot of stuff sinks to the bottom where it disappears into the sediment.
I ask myself this question: what is all the web sites on the Internet were totally optimized for search engines? Would we see the emergence of super optimisation?
Only a smallish proportion of the world’s web sites are actually in any search engines. Google provides a list of 10 for the standard search, though users can re-set this figure - I set my google search results to 50.
Business web sites need to do what the business wants from the Internet. Business processes come first and everything should flow down from commercial goals.