Geoffrey Multimedia » Business Practices

Why Geoffrey Multimedia?

Edwin Lynch — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 09:05:25 +0000

Geoffrey celebrates 15 years of web design.

I encourage clients to do a major upgrade of their website every 2 years, so I was surprised to see my first commercial website design still being employed after 15 years. It was built in 1997 and now has a back-end CMS developed by Aussie Homes. The (very old) code, graphics and artwork were hand written by me.

Go to Lansbury Real Estate.

I really can’t believe it’s still there. I remember hand drawing this on graph paper so that all the animated areas would line up correctly.

5 reasons to choose us

Great design isn’t everything. Here is a list of other things that you won’t find your average web design company doing.

1.FREE home page mock-up. I will design a mock-up of your web site home page so you can get an idea what you are about to spend your money on. If you don’t like the design, you are free to shop it around to other development agencies. I can do another for you if you ask. No obligation. Not many companies can afford that service as a mock-up can take almost a day (and half a day for the second one).

We won’t hold your site to ransom

2.Your existing server. I’m 95% sure I can work on your existing server so there’ll be no disruption to your email service or day to day running of the business. If your site is sitting on a regularly serviced, professional server (like HostGator, GoDaddy or an Australian equivalent) I can build your site there. I may not be able to if your website is sitting on a computer in a room on your premises. Professional servers offer support and I need that support. It’s the pointy end of web design that clients never see.

If you don’t have a professional server, I buy US server space wholesale (on your behalf) and pass the savings on to you. Big savings.

The bottom line is that – if we part ways further down the track – the server is in your name, not mine.

3.Half Price. Pay a fraction of the cost for exactly the same web site as built by a larger company. It will be (roughly) the same design with all the same functionality. In most cases, Perth website design companies are literally using the same software as I do, but I can do a better job of it. I talk about this at length in my article How Much is a Website?

One client paid $15,000 for her (not mine) website which I gutted (the code was ancient) and rebuilt for $3,000. She started crying. No joke.

4.Access. Everything is yours if you decide to develop in-house or use the services of another web company further down the track. You have full FTP access, codes, everything without paying a cent extra. After all – I’m working for you, it’s not the other way around. Most large web companies are like banks. They don’t want you give you access to “their” server (you might get someone like me to update your site, but it’s often a security issue also). Since I’ll be working on your server, it’s not an issue.

5.Award-winning CMS. I use Open Source (OS) code to build the back-end of your site, so nothing is proprietorial or “owned” by third parties. There are no license fees to pay. Companies tend to charge for software licenses and fees – often for a same service you can get for nothing. Where there’s money, there’s profit to be made. Besides annual hosting and domain fee, there are no licenses to pay. Plus your site will be right up to date because I (manually) keep it that way.

In short, you’ll have nothing of “mine” if you decide to leave me or use an in-house developer.

I can do a better job than a big company for at least half the price because I have no overheads.

Perhaps the best reason is obvious . . .

I sometimes work behind the scenes for big companies and I can let you in on a little secret. I do a better job when I’m working for myself. Companies tend to appeal to client vanity. I don’t care about your vanity, I care about your site and how it will function in two years’ time. I design sites as if they were for me. I’m open to comment, but when I’m doing a site, I do the best job possible : the best code, the best security, the best layout. New clients don’t actually know this as they’ve nothing to compare. Clients who have been with larger companies know exactly what I’m talking about.

I’ve also taught best practice web design principles part-time at Universities since 1995.

I see it as my job to bring all that knowledge and technological know-how to your non-ivory-tower real world web site.

You’re lucky to find Geoffrey Multimedia as I rarely advertise. I don’t really have to drum up work (I take on only what I can) and if I run into a coding issue, I enjoy the challenge of solving the problem all by myself. Sometimes, if there’s urgency, I may call a programmer friend but because I choose not to profit from the work of others, I pay him exactly what the client pays for programming.

I’m all about fairness and transparency (read our philosophy), but I do keep some secrets.

Keep Your Website Up to Date

Edwin Lynch — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 13:00:26 +0000

Keep your website up to date without touching the code.

Below is an assessment I sent to Ross at Canning Bridge Cycles. He’s become both a friend and associate over the years, but even he admits there’s a lot more he can do with the virtualside of his business. Naturally, he doesn’t know how to write website code but there are many things he can do to his site. The following is re-printed here with his permission.

How to make your website work harder for you

Dear Ross, You recently asked me to give your website a critical once over. Here is a list of simple changes you could do to improve your existing site and ranking in search without too much effort (and without touching the code).

1.The pen is your sword. People don’t like to write, but search engines love to read. The Canning Bridge Cycles web site has about three blog posts written over a 4 year span. I don’t need to tell Ross that this suggests major on-line inactivity but more importantly, it could give some people a sense that the site is “old” or the business a bit “outdated.” One page invites (more experienced) riders to join a weekly group peloton around the river. I know that Ross still organises these rides because only a few weeks ago, he nearly knocked me off my own bike when riding to work.

. . . Keep up the blog. Old posts make your site seem old and irrelevant. Why not spend 20 minutes writing once a week after a morning ride? 300 words is probably enough. More words means more “conversation” and a higher search engine ranking, more custom etc. etc. Search Engines read. It’s mostly what they do. If you are constantly feeding their robot scouts with relevant and up to date “chat” about cycling, it’s only going to help . . .

A few years ago I built a site for the Bicycle Transport Authority. I’m pleased to say they now have a thriving and very active community of cyclists with up to 5,000 unique vistors every month (thanks to Google’s Panda update). They have a lot of two-way (customer / client) interaction.

Which brings me to my next point . . .

2.Don’t be Harvey Norman. Harvey Norman got into a bit of hot water early in 2011 when he (and a consortium of like-minded retailers) placed a full paged ad in the West Australian asking the government to charge GST to his overseas competitors. By doing this, it was perceived that Harvey was experiencing sour grapes because his sales were low. He was blaming online, cheaper retailers.

Harvey needed to engage customers and potential customers in a conversation, rather than using his might in the form of a shouty newspaper ad. Shouting at potential clients using an expensive newspaper ad is not “conversation” and will probably lead to (as it did in the Middle East) a little “civil unrest”. Most of us can’t afford $100,000 ads.

. . . You’re using WordPress which allows people to respond to your posts. Why don’t you switch on the comments facility? I see you have it switched off. Presently people can’t leave comments on your posts (even the few you have up there). When clients (or potential clients) comment, try to respond to feedback in a meaningful way (and within about 48hrs).

Gone are the days of one-way advertising. The Harvey Norman strategy didn’t play out too well for him. Rather than writing in the newspaper margins, people responded to Gerry’s ad in an embarrassingly public way using Twitter, Facebook and online customer satisfaction forums such as Iinet’s Whirlpool.

There’s a moral to the Harvey Norman story. Business need to listen to their customers and not talk so much (ie. “sell”). The latest (annoying) term for doing business is “conversation marketing” but starting that conversation is really more about customer loyalty than it is about old ideas about “marketing” . . .

Allowing people to comment on your website gives them a bit of power. Plus, it’s kind of like seeing your name in print. Who doesn’t like being published? In short, clients and potential clients are more likely to talk directly to you instead of talking behind your back.

3.Main Navigation. Some buttons on the main Canning Bridge Cycles navigation sidebar take users to another site. As a general rule, main navigation should always link to on-site pages.

Presently your main nav takes us anywhere on the web. Why not include a Useful Links page with brand decals linking off to company sites.

It’s also a good to not open outbound links in a new browser tab or window. It’s a bit like saying good-bye to a customer in your shop, but when they turn to leave, they find your hand in their back pocket. So it was great NOT to see this common practice.

. . . Rather than having a Brands button – call that page Links or Useful Links. Visitors assume that all links on your site will take them to on-site pages unless you tell them otherwise. When I clicked Brands I was expecting reviews, pics or a bit of research into the brands you supply. Linking to a company web page is fine if you politely let your visitor know what you are doing. Linking to other sites is fine, but try to be clear when you do it. If you need to link to other sites from within main page text, perhaps you could indicate this by drawing a small image with upward pointing arrow just to the right of the link . . .

Linking brand decals to their respective sites is similar linking your main logo back to the home page. Nobody really questions it.

In the web design industry, it’s generally considered bad netiquette to open a new window, the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) hasn’t even included the ability in the strict xHTML 1.0 mark-up specification.

In other words, soon you won’t be able to open new windows. Having said that – the W3C do change their minds a lot and pop-up links might come back.

4.Got an off-site shop? create a special graphic for it.It’s not unusual to link to another (separate) site where credit card payments can be made securely. In fact, setting up a secure server with real-time bank transacting is an expensive business and – y’know what? It’s probably not worth it. Google and PayPal have really simple to use payment systems, some of which can be built into your site.

Let’s face it. Your Bikes link is really a link to your shop. Sometimes people have a button called “Shop” – which will takes us to some kind of shopping cart with Paypal gateway, but it’s a good idea to provide a separate link, and as with point 3, let them know they are going off-site. Your shop is on a different server – which is common practice – but you should really have a shop button that is not a main site navigation button.

What I mean by a shop “button” – is a graphic, in a prominent place somewhere in the margin or on the main page of the site that links to the off-site shop. Clearly linking to an online shop re-enforces trust.

5.Onsite Community. If you’ve managed to create an onsite (or offsite) community, then you’re winning. The web is all about community. It was originally designed for people to communicate. Because we monkeys love to trade, we’ve all stuck our businesses up there and it all seems to be about commerce. But that’s just an illusion. It’s really about connecting people. People will only trade with people that they can trust.

Your “Rides” page is great. It could use a few more images, but it’s a great idea to have such a page. Good also to tell your customers how fast and how far they will be expected to go on their bicycles. I know I’m not too happy going more than 30kmh on my bike, so I can see that these rides aren’t for me. I wanted to see guys (and gals) having coffee and fun at the Cottesloe cafe you talk about. Shots of long macs with bike helmets, rows of bikes, clippy shoes etc. Gimme the fantasy and maybe I’ll pick-up my pace.

The web is and always worked best as a connector, a community creator. I remember stumbling across a community of used teabag collectors. They were spread out all over the world. In any one city there probably wasn’t enough people to fill a small scout hall, but across the world, I found a virtual scout hall meeting in full swing.

6.Have a FAQ.One valid way to use your website is to “field” phone calls. It’s a repository of all those repeat questions one gets asked on a daily basis. An FAQ is the sign on the door which says, “Must read before entry”.

Ross. It’s good that you have Frequently Asked Questions. Well done there. People need to know this stuff. Go crazy and tell them more. Collect questions while you’re in shop and them upload to your website during that one hour per week when you update your blog!

7.Pics, Vids, Audio.. I’m sorry if this sounds offensive, but we are all really a bunch of perverts. That’s right. What other animal has devised a system where it can watch repeatedly, the days of lives of other animals in a public forum? I’m talking about TV. And if you take just the evening news into consideration, you’ll get a sense of just how obsessive we are. People love images. We are more likely to look at images than read. So give them images. Just make sure to tag them correctly for search engines.

I mentioned pics before, but you really should have really good, big images (as wide as your content area at least) throughout your site. PLUS a gallery! Some companies pay me to add this sort of stuff for them for them. For example, I recently created these pages for an Air-conditioning company.

Pics, images, bike music. Anything that you feel could help bring your virtual presence out of the screen a little and into the viewer’s world. I know your industry is pretty physical, but you might consider making it less physical and more “virtual” as time goes on. I don’t see why you can’t make your business work for you more – instead of you working “for it” like I suspect you’re doing.

All the best.
Edwin

That’s pretty much a summary of the message I sent Ross and it’s certainly going to give him something to talk about over the Christmas break. I normally charge about $250 dollars for a full, 20 point website report. But if you are reading this, for January only, I can do a proper report for your existing website for $175. But only if you’re reading this. Knowing how these things go, you’ll probably get me to update a few pages on your own website.

Hopefully you got something out of this. I know Ross did.