Tag Archives: web development

What exactly is a bad website & how do you fix it?

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On my way into work this morning, I passed a local computer repair shop and they have one of those messaging signs. This one said “we fix bad websites”.  Obviously that got my attention, but I am always on the lookout for such things as a marketing executive.  It did however get me to thinking, “what exactly is a ‘bad’ website?”

Is a bad website something that looks like it was built in 2001?  Is a bad website something that is so overwhelming with content that you “click off” the moment you get there because you don’t know where to start?  Is a bad website something that drives you no traffic on its own?  Is a bad website something that nobody can find unless they search for your company name?  Is a bad website something that makes you click 4 times before you get to what you want?  Is it when you go to visit examples of their work and they look old or in some cases you can’t FIND the references they give as “testimonials or case studies”?  Just what does a “bad website” mean and look like?

I would have to say all of the above.  You website is your only resource working 24/7/365 for your company.  It is also a lot of times your only chance to make that all important “first impression”.  You have 7 seconds for them to determine if they will “click off”.  You have to make sure you provide enough and the right content on your business site so they feel comfortable in one of three things – buying something (if you sell), filling out your form to talk to someone – or picking up the phone and calling you.  If you don’t give them what they need to do any of those three (refer to your sales process for what information is needed to get them to make a buying decision) – then you have a “bad website”.  PERIOD.

In a day and age where everybody says they can build your website, search optimize it, handle your social media, and drive you traffic – execution of those strategies makes all the difference.  Just because they “know more than you” doesn’t make them an expert in web strategy – talking the talk is much different than walking the walk.  Make sure you check out their site and the references they give you.  If their site does not have the work done that they are proposing to you and/or you find references to work that you don’t like – run.  If you don’t like their website (and just because it’s better than your current one, doesn’t mean you have to like it) keep looking.  When they are willing to tell you how they will do the things that will drive your website’s return-on-investment (ROI) to new levels (which is beyond just traffic) with specific steps and tasks and give you a list of people to call – follow up with references and ask how much VALUE they received – value being ROI, data, sales, leads, qualified traffic and understanding to move their entire business forward – then you have found someone worth talking to when it comes to “fixing bad websites”.

To www or not to www

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When you go to a website, say Bevelwise for instance, do you type www.bevelwise.com or bevelwise.com in the address bar? If you care at all about SEO what your users type into their address bar should concern you.

Personally, I type the www because technically bevelwise.com is the main domain, the house that all of the services live under. By typing the www I am telling bevelwise.com that I would like to see the website of bevelwise.com. If I were to be transferring a file I would be using the File Transfer Protocol, and I would expect the bevelwise.com house to be looking for this type of access request at ftp.bevelwise.com.

I understand that www, ftp, cdn, rss, etc, are all just sub-domains on the main domain of bevelwise.com and that what really matters is what protocol / port is being used to make the request.

To take this to a more relatable direction, let’s take a street address: 1313 Mockingbird Ln. We can analyze this address in much the same way as we do a domain. Consider if we think of the domain “bevelwise.com” being the equivalent of the street “Mockingbird Ln.” Now, if we wanted to go to the Munsters house (1313 Mockingbird Ln. is their address on the TV show), we could technically find the house by going to Mockingbird Ln and looking around. I assure you we would eventually find it and get what we came looking for. But, if we add the house number (1313) to that address, we have the complete street address of what we are looking for, much the same as when we put the www in front of a domain when we want to go to a website.

I know there are a lot of people out there in the technology industry that are of the belief that the www is irrelevant and unneeded and is only added as a DNS record to help those people out there who don’t know any better. However true this may be from a purely technical standpoint, we need to think about the users of the internet who, as a majority, are not technically savvy.

So, from my understanding, Google will see www.bevelwise.com and bevelwise.com as two different and separate sites regardless of the fact that one is a sub-domain and one is a primary domain. It will be seen as 2 sites with the same content and will get a negative mark.

Now to help with this issue, we basically have 2 choices in this scenario. Forcibly add the www via 301 redirect when someone goes to bevelwise.com, or forcibly remove the www when someone goes to www.bevelwise.com. I personally lean towards adding the www in any case where the address requested is not already a sub-domain request (i.e. bevelwise.com will be changed to www.bevelwise.com, but ftp.bevelwise.com will not be changed to www.ftp.bevelwise.com because ftp.bevelwise.com is already qualified with the ftp prefix).

Just for fun, take a look at your browsers address bar right now, when coming to this site, did you put the www in there or no, any reason why you did one way or another? Call it a personal and professional curiosity.