I see this all the time.  The thing is, these business owners are sometimes “so busy” that they decide they dont have to double check their work and if it’s wrong they can deal with it later.

Unfortunately, when you have something sent out to thousands of people, you can’t just “Get it back” to fix it.  Check out what Sean Mahoney wrote on his blog about bad links.

Email Marketing Failures

The thing is, it can be easily fixed after you realize there’s a problem by adding a 301 redirect!  A quick 301 redirect in your .htaccess will move the link from where it says it is to where it’s supposed to be.  Alternatively, you can actually post your content correctly!

If you are in business for yourself, you undoubtedly understand the concept of sticking to what you know.  Businesses perform best when they fill a particular niche or set of niches.  Odds are you have done hundreds of value analysis trying to understand whether you should make something or buy something.  If your business was to sell cars, would you make the headlights, too?  Odds are the amount of research and QA cycles that goes into reflection angles, brightness, and performing according to certain state laws are above your company and it would be best to purchase headlights from companies that understand these factors best.  Are you a web firm?  Why build your own website in-house when there are others that can do it so much more efficiently?  This post will go into some reasons why you should outsource your website solution.

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I can’t tell you how many times I see business cards without a website address on them.  This is the *most* important part of your business card!  Businesses these days are all on the internet.  People enjoy the ease of accessing information quickly on the internet and trust companies that have established presences on the world wide web.  This post will go into some detail as to why I believe you should always have your website address on your business card.

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Linking to sites which offer similar content or can add value to your words is one of the most important things you can do when establishing yourself on the internet. Understanding when to link and when not to link is one thing, but when you have a page *full* of useful content and no links, Google may think you are just some crazy guy with a bunch of opinions! Would you go to a college that had only one professor? Well, Google is likely to under-value your web page without appropriate links to like content.

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CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets, but what does it do for me in terms driving revenue and keeping customers on your site? I will hope to touch lightly on the fact that even though you may not ever write a line of CSS in your life, it is important that your web person is intimately familiar with its workings, and installs this technology on your website.

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AJAX is extremely useful and helps alleviate the load on servers for large-scale application websites. What about for smaller, more concise web applications, though? This post is going to go into some of the great things that I learned regarding AJAX application support for websites, regardless of their size.

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Small business owners often do not maximize the potential of a full-time sales tool such as a website. Often, small business owners think that their website is just an online representation of a brochure or static marketing content. I am seeing more and more buzz on the internet with small business owners discussing how their websites are dynamic and what it is doing for their revenue. Having dynamic content on your website allows you to qualify leads, build credibility with potential customers, and always display appropriate information to the correct audience.

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When I first started working with AndPlus Design, my second or third client that I brought to the company asked what the maximum amount of clicks were while looking for information before a user “gave up.” At the time I didn’t know, but, from my own experience, I stated that it was 4 clicks. Well, people whose opinion “matters” wrote books and did some research on their own, and it turns out that I was close. The average amount of clicks that a user will perform while looking for content turns out to be three!

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There are plenty of hosts out there offering $10 / mo or less for web hosting. This is fine if you are knowledgeable and understand exactly what you want, and see that what you are getting is what you need. If there is a problem, though, do you know their support number? Is there someone in the USA with whom you can speak if you needed to? How about a billing department? Is it all the same person somewhere in some small town who just sits and charges credit cards all day? This blog posting looks into some of the most important aspects of choosing a web host.

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