Website Articles

I've been receiving reports from some of my clients regarding business directory websites phoning them up to get then to pay several hundred pounds to get a priority listing in their directory. Some of these phone calls have been quite pushy and some have even tried to suggest that registering with them is some kind of legal requirement for a website.

Let me just say that spending money to advertise in any of these websites is the biggest waste of money that can be spent on internet advertising. Please don't waste your money, no matter what they tell you on the phone, their service is not worth the money. No matter how many hits they try to tell you they get every day. It just doesn't matter.

1) This site is designed for use with Internet Explorer 6.

2) If you don't have Internet Explorer 6, get lost, we don't want your custom.

If you use the first sentence on your website, your visitors read the second one.

There are many companies around, several of whom are blatant spammers, who will "guarantee" you a top ten listing on search engines in return for charging a wide range of fees. The claims of these companies varies and some are considerably better than others. But what secrets do they know that us mere mortals don't know? What tools are they using and what contacts do they have? Can you do what these companies can do? How can you be sure you are not being conned if you use one of these companies.

I am so glad that you are taking the time to read this article. People, especially programmers and webmasters, often underestimate the importance of standards and usability. But, by implementing good standards and usability techniques, you can increase your sales by orders of magnitude.

Until recently, I hated javascript. It wouldn't work the same on two different browsers and too many webmasters were crap at making it work well on any browser. It was the internet's biggest embarrassment.

Then Google showed how it should be done with it's Google Maps and other javascript tools, that "just work". To "Just Work" is a term that is becoming more and more common to describe good software and good websites. The quality of software produced these days is plummetting and the quality of websites is very variable. When people go to a website that "just works", ie. it doesn't break with loads of errors, brash your browser, or have things in stupid places, it gives an enormous amount of satisfaction. People are so used to visiting sites that don't work and are annoying that when they visit a site that "just works", it really stands out. It's a great term because good software is easy to write and so are good websites. It shouldn't be difficult to write a website that "just works" and isn't annoying, but the incompetence of the human race suggests otherwise.

Your task is to create javascript that "just works" and is completely seamless to the user.