Who knew the Soap Network could possibly provide important kernels of information? As I sat on the couch on a lazy (and I mean lazy) Saturday morning, aimlessly flipping channels, I landed on a relatively new, old-school episode of Beverly Hills 90201. Always a sucker for bad drama, I settled in for the long haul.
The crisis du jour is whether or not Donna Martin should embrace this trendy new thing called the Internet and build a website for her retail clothing store. As an online marketer, I was endlessly amused by the way the internet was represented around 2000:
Donna’s website could do all sorts of revolutionary things such as track inventory and allow people anywhere (yes anywhere) in the world to buy her designs. For $20,000, an internet developer promised to place Donna’s website “all over the worldwide web so everyone could see it.”
After Donna said no to dating the developer, he refused to relinquish her site. Don’t panic too much — everything seemed to work out OK and Donna’s site was launched successfully…although there were still those awkward, unresolved feelings between her and David Silver.
Even though Beverly Hills 90201′s treatment of the internet was totally ridiculous and a blast-from-the-past, they actually brought up some very real problems we’ve seen such as:
Functionality: does the site do what you need it to do? For example, will you need to update your site a lot manually but you don’t have knowledge of HTML? Ask us about easy to use content management systems (CMS). Using one is typically no more difficult than editing a document in Word. We love WordPress because their platform is free and you can create all sorts of custom looks based on existing templates.
Visibility: the “build it and they will come mentality” has never worked. Do you have an advertising budget to make your site seen? How about organic search engine optimization? Or, paid keyword searches? A website is only good if people can find it. Our sites are built with best SEO practices in mind plus we offer ongoing maintenance programs to keep your site fresh, relevant and optimized.
Integrity: do you have a good relationship with your hosting provider? Do you have access to your domain name record and know how long it is renewed for? Do you know who your hosting provider is? These may seem like trivial questions but we have seen sites held “hostage” and it is a horrible situation. Protect one of your most important assets – your website – by staying on top of this information.
By thinking about these considerations, you’ll not only build a better website, but also have a better end-game goal in mind for it once the site is live…and we promise, we’ll never make you watch an episode of 90201 (unless you want to).
The post How Is the Soap Network Relevant to Web Design? appeared first on BlueRiot.
