Poor Webmaster Personal Sites

[Charles Sweeney]

Charles Sweeney wrote

With more people blocking pop-ups and banners

I have noticed more advertisers using Flash for banners. Is this to get
around the banner blockers?

 

[Norman L. DeForest]

Some people who design/maintain websites for a living want to make a site ^^^^^^^^^^^^
where the aim is not to sell anything at all and will deliberately do
things that will prevent that such as not updating the layout for years.

Or their attitude may be similar to that of my barracks roommate when I
was stationed it RCAF 3 Fighter Wing in Zweibrücken, Germany. He was a
meteorlogical observer working in the weather office there. One day, I
came into barracks and greeted him with, "Good morning. It's a nice day,
isn't it?" His response was, "Shut up. I don't feel like talking shop."

Norman "definitely not a ``web designer''" De Forest

 

[Stephen Horrillo]

I don't think my personal site is ugly, but I've made no attempt to make
it appeal visually to anyone other than myself, and its primary purpose is

to load damn fast.

Potential customers will judge you by any and all websites you attribute to
yourself. Most won't ask why it's that way for obvious reasons.

--
Warmest regards,

Stephen Horrillo, Realtor / C.Ht.
For MLS & Computer Training: http://www.BrokerAgentTraining.com
Realtors Earn Over 100% at EXIT: http://www.over100percent.com

 

[Stephen Horrillo]

Sorry, but Sales & Marketing people are pretty much idiots about
everything
except Sales & Marketing. Kinda like the commercial where the 2
consultants
tell the boss that they don't actually implement the suggestions they are
making.

I've been in sales all my life so when I look at a website those are the
eyes I'm looking from. Where do you think your paycheck comes from? If the
site doesn't financially pull it's weight it's useless. Web Designers get
away with murder in this respect. A website probably has the lowest return
on investment than anything on Earth!

--
Warmest regards,

Stephen Horrillo, Realtor / C.Ht.
For MLS & Computer Training: http://www.BrokerAgentTraining.com
Realtors Earn Over 100% at EXIT: http://www.over100percent.com

 

[Charles Sweeney]

Stephen Horrillo wrote

Potential customers will judge you by any and all websites you
attribute to yourself.

Then don't put your personal site in your portfolio. The potential
customer won't see it, and won't judge you on it.

 

[Steve Sobol]

Yeah, like I'm really worried about missing a job opportunity working for
someone who would take a sentence out of context and/or support a dumbass
like Steve Sobol's position.

Whatever. Have a nice life.

--
JustThe.net - Apple Valley, CA - http://JustThe.net/ - 888.480.4NET (4638)
Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / (e-mail address removed) / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED

"The wisdom of a fool won't set you free"
--New Order, "Bizarre Love Triangle"

 

[Steve Sobol]

I would comment on your site but I can't see it. I block flash.

http://justthe.net/welcome/ (the main site has no flash)

Hm. Do you not have the flash player installed, or are you just blocking
downloads of .swf files? Actually, either way, the site should automatically
forward you to /welcome - if it's not, let me know so I can fix it. I would
never *require* Flash on a website unless a client wanted their site to require
Flash, and even then I'd try to persuade the client to not require it.



--
JustThe.net - Apple Valley, CA - http://JustThe.net/ - 888.480.4NET (4638)
Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / (e-mail address removed) / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED

"The wisdom of a fool won't set you free"
--New Order, "Bizarre Love Triangle"

 

[Steve Sobol]

I've been in sales all my life so when I look at a website those are the
eyes I'm looking from. Where do you think your paycheck comes from? If the
site doesn't financially pull it's weight it's useless. Web Designers get
away with murder in this respect. A website probably has the lowest return
on investment than anything on Earth!

You REALLY can't make a blanket statement like that. It IS true for some sites,
but obviously is not true for others. And I'm not talking about pure dotcoms,
either, I'm talking about brick and mortar companies that happen to have
websites. Some of them are very effective in bringing in revenue.

--
JustThe.net - Apple Valley, CA - http://JustThe.net/ - 888.480.4NET (4638)
Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / (e-mail address removed) / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED

"The wisdom of a fool won't set you free"
--New Order, "Bizarre Love Triangle"

 

[Tom Gahagan]

Won't everyone be watching?

Depends on what you look like! lol

Tom Gahagan

 

[William Tasso]

...
He was a
meteorlogical observer working in the weather office there. One day, I
came into barracks and greeted him with, "Good morning. It's a nice day,
isn't it?" His response was, "Shut up. I don't feel like talking shop."

He heh - wonder how long he'd been practicing?

 

[Charles Sweeney]

William Tasso wrote

He heh - wonder how long he'd been practicing?

I wonder what two meteorologists standing at a bus stop, talk about?

 

[William Tasso]

...
most adverts are now in Flash.

really? that's not my experience.

 

[Eric Jarvis]

The great depression, for me, however is that while the site was
originally created to provide information for journalists, with
cross-references and in-depth research facilities, the vast majority
of readers are only interested in celebrity pictures. It saddens me.

I'm inclined to think that means that you need a second focus for the site
that fits well with the primary purpose. You might also look at ways of
"selling" the site to bloggers as a useful resource.

 

[Eric Jarvis]

Stephen Horrillo wrote


Then don't put your personal site in your portfolio. The potential
customer won't see it, and won't judge you on it.

Precisely. I've got enough out there not to worry, but I'm not going back
to selling myself as a designer anyway. There are plenty of people who can
make a better looking site than I can. On the other hand there aren't many
people around who have as much experience as I have of working
multilingually, especially in Arabic and Chinese.

 

[William Tasso]

...
On the other hand there aren't many
people around who have as much experience as I have of working
multilingually, especially in Arabic and Chinese.

When do you expect to be available?

 

[Eric Jarvis]

When do you expect to be available?

The doctors signed me off until July, and it looks like I'm pretty much on
schedule.

 

[Kevin Spencer]

A meteorologist walked into a bar...

OUCH!

--
HTH,

Kevin Spencer
Microsoft MVP
..Net Developer
What You Seek Is What You Get.

 

[Charles Sweeney]

William Tasso wrote

really? that's not my experience.

Nor mine, but judging by the amount I've seen lately, it might not be too
long before they are!

 

[Augustus]

I've been in sales all my life so when I look at a website those are the
eyes I'm looking from. Where do you think your paycheck comes from? If the
site doesn't financially pull it's weight it's useless.

This is pretty much true for anything, be it a website, a new store in a
retail chain or 'the new guy' joining the sales team.

But... when it comes to a new store location and a sales person the value it
brings to the whole is pretty black and white by just looking at the
numbers. With a website, however, you have to not only look at the sales it
can make on its own... but also in what it brings to the company and any
customers it brings in to the physical locations.

A website probably has the lowest return
on investment than anything on Earth!

I think this is too all encompassing... that websites have the lowest ROI
than anything...

First is the obvious case of the dot com companies... companies who can
measure ROI in terms of thousands of percent.
I don't subscribe to the belief that "the dot com bubble has burst"... I
think it is more a case where people's greed and stupidity caught up with
them and alot of people were suckered because they were blinded by the
thought of becoming an overnight millionaire. There are still plenty of
"dot com" companies out there that are doing very well, but gone are the
days where you could register a domain name and come up with some idea and
then IPO yourself for $100,000,000... in the mid 1990s investors were
afraid they were going to "miss the boat" if they didn't buy something and
it took off - they didn't want to miss out on the next "big thing" that
would make them an instant millionaire and so in only a short time everybody
threw every rule out the window as far as playing the stock market wisely
and just bought whatever they could and hoped it was going to take off.

Secondly, I think you can sell just about anything on the internet... but
that doesn't mean a website is the best way to sell something.
A website can be a great way to open your goods/services up to a wider
market... especially if you are selling the rare and obscure items or goods
everybody wants at a lower rate than they can get locally. But if you are
just selling junk or things that people can get at the same price on pretty
much any street corner of their home town then I wouldn't expect to see much
in the way of sales.
Likewise, some things can just be better sold by somebody activly
selling the item rather than a website passivly selling them something (IE:
cars and houses - where the customer can take a test drive or can tour the
house and imagine what it would look and feel like to live there). But that
again doesn't mean you can't sell these over the net... in the case of
houses, the internet can open your houses to people in other cities or
countries who are planning to move... or customers who want to sit at home
and view a few hundred different possibilities to pick that "dream home"
instead of just limiting themselves to seeing just a few houses a day and
settling on one.

Next, I think you can sell just about anything on the internet... but that
doesn't mean that just having a website = sales.
I'm sure quite a few people here have had this happen: You build an
ecommerce website for a client and put it up on the internet for him/her and
then about a week later they call you back with a "Hey, my website has been
up for a week and I haven't made any sales yet... whats wrong with my site?
Is it working?"
The problem here is often that many businesses put up a website and then
don't think about how they are going to market and promote the website -
they seem to think that just having a website is good enough and that the
sales will just start magically rolling in with little to no work on their
part.

 

[Toby Inkster]

really? that's not my experience.

Nor is it mine, but IME the inverse is true -- most Flash is now adverts.