5 red flags that can signify a bad client
Many of us have experienced bad clients while working as designers or developers; deadbeat clients that won’t pay up, clients that seem to vanish completely, and clients that are just flat out rude.
I’ve written a list of 5 red flags to keep an eye out for before taking on potential clients. Any of these red flags could signify a bad client, which could lead to the project being a complete nightmare, and you may not even ever get paid for it. I’m also going to describe some measures you can take to help prevent that from happening.
Payment in equity
This kind of offer has been made to me so many times. A company comes along needing a website, and offers you equity instead of a standard payment. Your first thought might be that it’s a pretty cool idea because that can mean a lot of income for you, right? Well, no. It’s obvious that this offer is made only by clients with no money. If they’re unable to raise capital for their own company, they’re not making the necessary investments for success, which means you may never make a penny from them. So unless a potential client provides proof that they’re making real money (which is pretty rare), you should forget about these offers.
The vanishing act
When you’re discussing things with a potential client about their needs, be sure to keep an eye on their communication. Are they fast to respond emails? Do they answer their phones regularly? Are they willing to meet face to face? Are they handing over their full contact details? If the answer is more often no than yes, then taking on such a client can be risky. Sometimes, clients can vanish all together. If their communication is bad in the first place, it can be because they’re in talk with other designers/developers, or because they’re simply not sure about the project yet. When a client does a vanishing act, it can be a huge waste of your time.
Insane deadlines
Many potential clients will have unrealistic explanations of deadlines. I happen to write content as well as design websites, and there was a time where someone wanted me to write a hundred articles for them in just a few days. It was beyond unrealistic. Some people don’t stop to think about how long certain jobs really take. When a client comes to you with an unrealistic deadline, tell them how long the job will realistically take to complete, and don’t be afraid to inform them that you have current work to finish if that’s the case. You shouldn’t have to put other projects aside just because someone is rushing you. If a potential client won’t compromise, you should highly consider rejecting them.
Unclear needs
You’d be surprised how many potential clients simply aren’t sure about what they even want. Sometimes it’s as if they’re leaving their own business decisions in your hands, despite the fact you’re just there to build them a website for their business. Basically, if someone is not entirely sure about what their own needs are, you should not take them on as a client. The high amount of changes they are likely to request as the project goes on will mean constant revision of what they owe, and deadline extensions, yet the client may still expect only the original price and original deadline. Inform such potential clients that they should first have concrete knowledge of what their needs are.
Designing for services
It’s not uncommon for a business to offer their services as a form of payment. But how valuable is their service, and more importantly, is it something you even need? In most cases, I’m betting not. Personally I don’t feel I need to spend time creating a website for a business that is just going to give me a 12 month subscription for their online accounting software, or a set of free eBooks on how I can apparently double my business profits. Such businesses are trying to get something for nothing. When I was a teenager, I made simple websites in return for things like web hosting with domains. But when you grow up and have rent to pay, making money is way cooler.
As a means of your own security…
Keep an eye open for any of the above red flags when you’re in the process of taking on new clients. You could end up saving yourself a lot of hassle. Anyhow, there are some measures you can and should take in order to prevent clients from pretty much screwing you over.
First of all, a legal contract should be put in place if possible. This does involve talking to a lawyer and it can be costly, and I understand that it might not be suitable for lower budget projects.
In any case, especially if there is no contract in place, take some form of upfront payment from your client, otherwise they can vanish half way through or even take your work and not pay. Taking 30-50% upfront is often acceptable.
Also, make sure you have your client’s full contact details, including e-mail, contact numbers, and address. With such details, in the worst-case scenario, you’ll be able to go banging on your client’s door.
Tips to improve website usability
Usability is an intensive topic in the web development community. As web developers, we must look toward making the user experience better for everyone and apply these tips as what we hope will become standards, one day adopted by most.
In this article, I outline some of the basic ways to improve usability within your website.
1. Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs have always been a way to improve website usability.
It gives readers the option to access content related to the article and shows them which section of the website they are viewing. Normally, breadcrumbs are structured to give hypertext links to the homepage and category of the article.
2. Larger Font
I recently may changes to my website, these changes include a larger font on content pages. I believe it gives the page a better look and helps visitors’ easily read content. You have to think about your audience when you make design changes.
A font-size of 9px will not cut it.
3. Search Functions
Allowing readers to search content is a must. You may not find much use for it in the beginning of your website, but as you build hundreds of web pages it will be a pain for users to find content without archives or search abilities.
4. Load Times
Optimize, Optimize, Optimize…! You must take the time to optimize your images, CSS, HTML, and JavaScript. By optimizing it helps users access content faster and reduces your bandwidth usage monthly.
Smush.it, by Yahoo – Optimizes your images.
Autoptimize – Optimizes your WordPress blog.
5. Browser Compatibility
Always make sure your website is compatibility in all the major browsers, if you do not, then you will lose a large percent of your audience.
6. Be Consistent
Keep design, writing style, and anything else consistent throughout the website. When users first reach a website they tend to scan the page to determine how to achieve the action they desire, by changing elements throughout it can easily confuse them.
7. Include Obvious Contact Information
Your visitors will have numerous reasons for contacting you, which is why it’s important to include obvious contact information on your website. Currently, I include mine on the top of the page within the summary.
8. Be Brief
When writing for the Internet, you should always keep it simple. Studies have shown users only scan content, not reading it thoroughly (word-by-word). Knowing that, you must break content up, make use of hooks to gain attention, and write content in list form when appropriate.
9. Straight Forward Navigation
Keep your navigate structure as simple as possible. Place links in your footer that don’t involve content or required actions from users.
10. Call to Action
If you intent to push products, then you should have some kind of call to action. This has been a technique used by marketers for years.
11. Eliminate doorway and splash pages
Not only are these things a huge design mistake, they’re just plain annoying. If users want to gain access content, show them it, not a splash page.
12. Keep it Simple
I planned for this website to drive home that point, design doesn’t matter, content does. Giving readers consistent pages with rich content is more important than if you created the best looking website in the world.
How to Write Effective Content for Search Engine Traffic
Search engines drive most traffic today.
Users search keywords that are relative to the topic they seek and search results provide them with the best selection. Once a user click on a result, they seek information based on their search. If they do not find the information within seconds, they leave, off to click the next relative result.
In order to keep readers for longer periods, lay out content properly, show the basic idea of the webpage, and use hooks that catch their eye quickly.
Attempt to stop them from using the back button.
1. Using Hooks to Gain Attention
Hooks are the best way to catch the eye of the reader. They are the most sufficient way of quickly defining the purpose of a webpage and retaining the reader for longer than a few seconds.
A hook starts as the title of an article, then important statements, section titles, bulletin lists, and images.
Hooks are the key to getting the readers to start reading.
2. Proper Placement
I have always advocated that for informational-based website, appearance does not matter, but placement does. That statement is even truer with traffic coming from search results. They want information and want it now.
It is important to show users the correct elements upon loading the page before having them scroll down. You have to place hooks as the foremost element in the design. Users coming from search results, do not care about the outer glow on your logo or if you have a texture background. They want information.
In the past years, multiple studies have been done that show Internet users have a tendency to do what is known as the F-lens. This lens shows that readers focus on the title of the page and the first two paragraphs the most out of any other elements on the website.
It is critical to use hooks and well-written content within the top portion of the lens to keep users reading.
3. Organizing Your Thoughts
Readers tend to scan text. Organizing your thought help get the main point across. By doing this, your hooks and placement becomes more effective.
• Break up thoughts into paragraphs.
• Use headings to define new sections.
• Organize content into list form, when appropriate. Readers love list.
• Bold valuable statements within paragraphs (do not overuse).
• Keep it short. Be brief.
Writing for the internet is completely different from writing a book. Readers do not read text thoroughly, and have almost infinite amounts of information readily available. We have a need to spark the interest of readers quickly, if you wish for them to actually read.
19 Important Factors Before Launching Your Website
When launching a website many developers often forget some factors that should be consider before making everything public.
This article reviews some of the important factors many forget during the web development process. Forgetting these can add up to huge problems in the future. Considering these items will help user experiences and may save a few headaches down the road.
1. Favicon
A favicon is a form of branding. It allows user to recognize your site from others when bookmarking a page or having your site opened in a tab. All sites should have these icons.
Place this code in your <head> tag to enable a favicon:
2. Title & Meta Data
Search Engines rely on these tags to provide title and description information for search results. Title tags are the most element for SEO and tells visitors the idea of that webpage.
The description and keyword tag are not as important for SEO but still a good idea to include.
3. Turn off Index Browsing
This often is forgotten during the process of launching a website. Index browsing allows the viewing of files within your directory. They can see everything. It’s important to remember to turn this off for better security and for protecting your files.
• For cPanel users, there is an option in the Index Manager
• How to disable directory browsing using .htaccess
4. Cross Browser Compatibility
This can become a huge headache but it is essential that your website appear correctly in major browsers. You do not want a percent of your audience unable to view your website.
The days of placing buttons in your footer stating “Best Viewed in Firefox” are long gone.
Instead of downloading multiple browsers, try Browsershots or Browserlabs.
5. Validation
Aim for 100% validation, but realize it may not happen.
Validating your website will point out errors that may have missed while coding and help with overall cross-browser compatibility. W3C Markup Validation Service will check your HTML, CSS, RSS, and even broken links.
6. Sitemap
These consist of links to all the content placed within your website. Search engines can use sitemaps to crawl your website efficiently. They normally come in .XML form but you may write them in HTML as well.
• Creating an XML Sitemap Manually
• If you are a WordPress user, try Google Sitemap XML for WordPress
7. Optimize Everything
You should always optimize your CSS, HTML, JavaScript and images. Optimizing your files will reduce load times and bandwidth consumed by your audience.
CleanCSS can fix errors, optimize, and properly format CSS. Smush.it by Yahoo, will optimize all the images on a web page without losing the quality.
8. Custom 404/Error Pages
The default 404 page is useless for your audience. You should customize your 404 page with a link back to your homepage or even a search function for better usability.
9. Back-up Plan
Always have a recent backup of your website because one day you may lose it all. I’ve had my web host experience issues before and backing up saved my life.
You should always have a backup plan.
• How to Perform Full Backup to Backup Website in CPanel Hosting
• 8 MySQL Backup Strategies for WordPress Bloggers
10. Check Functionality
After you build your website, it’s perfect for you, but not others.
A good idea is to have complete strangers navigate the website. By picking people you do not know, you can be sure they will be upfront about criticism.
11. Track Your Traffic
As you site grows having useful traffic information is important.
Installing an analytics tool helps measure statistics on how your site is performing. They track daily hits, browser statistics, user by country, and more. The number one free analytics tool is Google Analytics.
12. Print Style Sheet
If you have a lot of content on your site, users may want to print some of it off for various reasons. To help usability it is important to create a print style sheet so those users only print off the content and not the rest of the website.
13. Outline Site Policies
All sites should have some sort of policy on copyright, reprint, and if you advertise products, you need a full disclosure with your readers. These rules help protect you and your visitors.
• Creative Commons, anything concerning a copyright
• Federal Trade Commission Regulations on Affiliate Marketing for December 2009
14. Provide Contact Information
Readers often want to be involved. They will email you about mistakes, bugs, questions, and suggestions. But more importantly it helps build trust with readers, allowing them to email you if ever required.
15. Subscribe via RSS or Email
To help keep your audience entwined, offer ways for them to find out about new updates without having to visit your website.
Internet users are contently browsing and having a hard time visiting them all. Allowing readers to subscribe will remind them about any updates that occur.
• How to Create an RSS 2.0 Feed
• Track your subscribers with Feedburner.
16. Social Marketing
After launching your website the work does not end there. You need not only to continue updating it, but you need to promote your site across the Internet.
Before your website even launches make sure you secure the name of your website on some of the major social networks. Start with Twitter & Feedburner since the username you chose will show up in the URL.
17. Prepare Content
I suggest that you have at least 15 pages of unique content before launching a website and be prepared to release more of it as the website improves.
Start by writing down the topic of the pages then move on to writing the content.
• How to Write for the Web, by Jakob Nielsen.
18. Proofread
Read everything you write, multiple times. There will be mistakes you miss the first time reading through or someone else may notice. We are all guilty of making mistakes. I would not worry about the minor stuff too much.
When writing for the Internet remember to break up your thoughts. Try adding elements such as headers and bulletins as most users just browse content instead of reading it all.
And always, keep it short be brief.
Tips & Tricks on How to Build Links and Traffic
Good quality inbound links are one of the most important factors to creating a successful site. Inbound links will ultimately cause your website to display higher in search results which will result in you generating more traffic and income. Link-building while at times very difficult and frustrating is truly the ace in the hole for higher page rankings.
1. Content is king – It’s important to well-written and original content that focuses on both your primary keyword and keyword phrase.
2. Add new content often – Sites that post new content on a regular basis keep readers entwined as well as it helps you increase the amount of relevant content you have for your sites niche, which in all will improve your rankings.
3. Getting indexed – Submit your website to search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. This will help ensure that your website is indexed and will start the foundation for your web pages to show up in during search results.
4. Build relationships with other webmasters in your niche, it becomes a great way to build inbound links for your website. However, be wary that link exchanging maybe seen as spam, so be careful about trading links or buying links from other sites.
5. Common problems exist with Flash, Frames and AJAX – you cannot link to certain web pages. Try not to use Frames at all and use Flash and AJAX sparingly for better SEO results.
6. Syndicate an article at GoArticle, EzineArticles, ArticleDashboard, etc… Many of these article sites are ranked well and can drive good traffic at times.
7. Write relative keywords within your title tag so that search engine spiders will know what the web page contains. Using a keyword or keyword phrases will help your chances of showing up in related search results and being more traffic to your site.
8. Start a blog and post regularly with dynamite content.
9. Give away free website design templates for content management systems like WordPress. Be sure to add a link back in the footer of the design to give your site some love in return.
10. Become Social with Bookmarking – While many people suggest you to submit content to huge social bookmarking sites like Digg, Delicious, and others – I suggest for you to submit your content to smaller community within your niche for better traffic results like Designfloat, and Dzone. You will have better chances of landing on the front page and receiving targeted traffic.
11. Write about controversial topics to drive debate within your blogs comments.
12. Putting Power with the Readers – Give readers the ability to subscribe to your site via RSS to which helps them easily access new site on the content without having to return daily to check for updates.
13. Join community forums in your niche and when posting make sure you place a link back to your site in your signature.
14. Make your content accessible by writing it so a wide range of readers will understand the article and being about to spread your message correctly. This also means that you should put effort in minimizing grammatical or spelling errors on the website, but be aware we all mess up from time to time.
15. Try to submit your site to free directories like DMOZ – Google suggests this tip. Be aware that being approved on DMOZ is rather difficult since the editors are mainly volunteers and many of them, do not check for pending submissions for months if not years.
16. Building inbounds links from other webmasters requires trust and communication, which means you, should write an about and contact page.
17. Trade articles with other webmasters in return for a link back to your own website.
18. Emphasize keywords and titles – by making use of elements like bold and headers. Text in these elements stand out to search spiders as key information and will improve that pages rankings depending on the chosen text found in those elements.
19. Give Readers Social Bookmarking Tools – Allow your readers to post easily on social bookmarking sites will increase the rate your content is distributed on the internet in multiple different places.
20. Write List based articles, readers love them!
How to Select the Correct Web Host for You
Whether you’re a guru or complete beginner to webmastering, you don’t want to make the mistake of choosing the wrong web host. Being brand new means, it may be hard to choose between all of the options or technical terminology may become intimidating. Experienced developers may find that their current host does not live up to your expectations.
A perfect web host for everyone is not possible. We all have different requirements and exceptions. Nevertheless, I have been through my fair share and here are suggestions that will increase the change of finding that perfect web host.
Not familiar with web terminology or just don’t want the hassle? I’ll make it easy for you, get Bluehost. For the past five years, I’ve trusted Bluehost to not only host my blog, but my company and clients. And they haven’t disappointed.
Unlimited bandwidth & space, 24/7 phone support, plus a free domain.
It doesn’t get any better. Bluehost rocks.
What do you need from a Web Host?
You first need to identify what features are important to you.
A large share of host have an inflated feature list and never truly expect you to make use of the entire package. You need to define what you need in a web host so that you get everything and more. How many FTP or email accounts do you need? What are the minimum amount of domains and databases required? Do you need pre-installed items like WordPress or stat counters?
Here are multiple things to consider:
Bandwidth – Normally bandwidth would not be the most important part of selecting a web host for the average webmaster, but it is essential to mention due to some host look to inflate this number by claiming to offer unlimited or unrealistic amounts of bandwidth (Refer to TOS to guarantee your limitations). Most webmasters will never take advantage of no more than a few gigabytes a month. Nevertheless, some web hosts do offer ridiculously low amounts of bandwidth – ensure that you have enough bandwidth for your site to grow.
Terms of Service (TOS) – Before signing up at any host, you need to dig through the TOS. Terms of Service are the legal documents that outline the limitations that are present on your hosting plan (stuff they do not mention in the pitch page). These documents also include information involving cancellation, automatic renewals, acceptable account activity, service availability, refunds, and so forth. Make sure you take the time to read this document.
Number of Domains – How many domains will you need? Many bargain-hosting companies limit webmasters to only one domain. If you plan to host multiple sites ensure that you have the options for multiple domains. I would never sign-up with a web host that required me to buy a new plan for every domain that I own.
Number of Databases – If you use any Content Management System (WordPress, Joomla, etc…) you will need a database to support that CMS. It is important to establish that you have enough databases for your needs.
Control Panel – When I select a web host the type of control panel that the host uses is one of the most important factors for me. Currently most web host use a control panel called cPanel, instead of developing a custom one. Web host like Globat, GoDaddy, DreamHost, and many others have created a custom control panel, which in my opinion can be difficult and awkward to use. I suggest only choosing a web host that uses the standard cPanel (like Bluehost).
Customer Service & Support – Having the ability to pick up the phone and call your web host if you experience issues or have questions is another necessary feature that I look for when choosing a host. It’s very frustration attempting to explain your dilemma in an email that may take days or even weeks to receive a reply. I believe it also speaks volumes about a web host that is able to offer a free phone support service to their customers.
