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!

CSS Sprites: How Yahoo.com and AOL.com Improve Web Performance.

This is a fantastic idea.  AOL and Yahoo! pay engineers to optimize their sites.  This is their only job!  The best part about the internet is that almost everything is open!  So, we can study what the larger corporations are doing and mimic them.

The problem: Google and others think your website has too many images, and makes too many requests to your webserver when you have visitors.  The solution: Have one image that has many smaller parts to it, and move the image around using CSS in the viewing port of the div so that the same image will show multiple different icons.

This is a fantastic principle and we are using it currently in our websites.  Sometimes you can save 20 requests from your webserver and put it into 1.  This makes your website more efficient, more streamlined, and better suited for a larger subset of browsers.  If you can minimize requests, you are more effiently serving your visitors, and efficiency is always welcome in the business world.

Your website is what your customers see.  If your website is improperly structured, there’s no telling how major browsers will render your website to your customer’s sites.  Let me explain.

Websites are created by creating HTML code.  This proper HTML code tells browsers what your website is supposed to look like.  If it is not valid code, how can you expect browsers to show your website correctly to the world?  Sure, it may look ok on your computer’s firefox, or internet explorer, but are your customers seeing the same thing you are?

Further, Google returns results for relevant webpages. If you are attending a seminar for a new technology or a salesman comes to sell you on using a particular service, and the person presenting speaks very ill-formed English, or even sounds ignorant, how likely are you to believe or take what that person said for relevancy? Google says the same thing about websites, but the language ends up being HTML.

This is why it is important that any web company that you hire needs to validate your website across the 4 major web browsers.  These 4 include Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Opera.  So, what does this all mean?  It means that no matter how you do your site, there’s always going to be someone who doesn’t see the site like you see it.  This is particularly true due to mobile browsing so widespread these days!

This is exactly why AndPlus Design always validates all websites that we create.  If a website is properly structured, its output can be predicted much easier than if there are unclosed tags or improper or outdated HTML code.

We use the w3c Validator.  Try out your website today.  Enter your website’s URL in the form below and see what the result is.  If you see red, contact AndPlus Design today.

Enter your website in the form below!

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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How often do your web people analyze your website for particular keywords? AndPlus Design does a monthly check on all of its customers using FREE webtools that any website owner can use! There are people who stay on top of the search engine spider logic, but, business owners shouldn’t have to.

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Are you having a problem with companies marking your email as being SPAM? Are you finding it hard to get in people’s inboxes if you have any links at all, or include a picture in your email? You may have an SPF problem.

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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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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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