I’d like to clarify a bit on my post about getting your website done right. I came off as way, way too cynical and not very helpful.
My intention was not to skewer the people who are well-meaning or beginners. I -did- want to point out, there are unscrupulous individuals out there who will take advantage of people not in the know, willing to charge you thousands of dollars for work that’s not up to par: these are people whose intentions are skewed.
When I first started, my websites sucked. For real. I’ve drawn a quick visual aid to help me illustrate my point:
For those of you who are visually impaired, imagine walking through a hallway filled with roses which leads into a manure factory and someone’s propped the door open. Lots of potential, horrible execution. Now… you can make of that what you will. It’s taken me 13 years and I think I show some marginal improvement.
My point is this: as a small business owner, you’re going to make the best business decisions that you can, when you make them. There’s no reason to think you could have known better when you’re looking back. My first website… it was awesome (for me) – at the time. If I’d stopped there, though… The lesson is, If you get hosed, you get hosed. There’s people who can help – that’s the reason I teach the Digital Gunslingers. It’s why I offer ridiculously low-cost hosting. It’s why… well, you’ll get to see something new from me in a few weeks.
And, it’s why two of the people who comment on this post requesting some help will get a free, thirty-minute phone consultation from me in how to jazz up your website behind the scenes, no matter what the source code looks like. We’ll cover analytics, SEO, and usability. They’ll also get a free copy of Head First HTML and CSS.
