Blog
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The last news item is three years old
There is a News item in the menu with three posts under it, the newest dated three years ago. A visitor reads the date before the headline, and the date asks a question the page never answers: is this company still there? This is not a Google penalty, it is a signal to a person. Three honest options for a dead news page, and a list of the dates that make promises on your site.
WebAdmin9 min read
Google your own company name
You type your web address from memory; you have never typed your own company name into Google. Your customer does, and does it last of all, just before calling. What meets them there: your site under a heading you did not choose, the state figures, a competitor advert, an old Facebook page. Who put each row there, what you can change, and how to run that search as a stranger.
WebAdmin9 min read
The words that sit in the quote
It is twenty to midnight and you are on the second page of the quote, the one that says what the number buys. Scope, prototype, staging, acceptance, change request. Here are those words in a sentence each, along with the ones a designer says beside a draft and the ones that arrive in the yearly domain letter. And the single word that costs the most.
WebAdmin9 min read
The testimonial you wrote yourself
"Very happy, highly recommend!" - Mari K., satisfied customer. You did not invent it; Mari really said it, on the phone. But what reached the page does nothing any more, because there is nothing in it anybody could check. The four questions a testimonial has to answer, and the one shift in asking that changes everything.
WebAdmin9 min read
Where the data your form collects actually goes
Somebody filled in your contact form. A name, a phone number, an email and one box where people write more than you asked for. Most owners can say where that message landed. Far fewer can say who else got a copy of it, and how long it stays.
WebAdmin8 min read
"Price on request" is not a price
A reader came to your site with one question and left without an answer. Hiding the price does not filter by budget, it filters by patience. Four honest ways to put a number on the page when you have no price list, and one uncomfortable reason it usually does not happen.
WebAdmin8 min read
Why your website is still not finished
The quote was signed in spring, it is autumn now, and the site has been almost finished for four months. Four things actually hold a website project up, and none of them is the technical work. Three of the four sit with the client, and one chapter here is about our own mistakes.
WebAdmin9 min read
"Welcome to our website" and other sentences that do nothing
The first screen says "Welcome to our website", and below it "Quality and reliability since 2011". One test you can run today: if a sentence stays true with a competitor's name in it, delete it.
WebAdmin9 min read
Your website is down. Now what?
Friday afternoon, a customer says your site is not working, and on your own computer it works fine. What you actually do in the next ten minutes: how to check, what the error message tells you, and which of the three doors to knock on.
WebAdmin9 min read
Someone is selling you an AI agent. How do you tell if it is real?
You have surely been offered an AI receptionist, a chatbot or a missed-call text-back. The same technology is sold for a handful of euros a month by one seller and for several thousand by another. Five questions and three warning phrases that tell you which offer is real, without you needing to know anything about AI.
WebAdmin9 min read
Do you actually need an online shop?
An online shop is not a website with a basket on it. It is an operation, and the website is the cheapest part of it. Three honest options, the costs no quote contains, and the questions that separate a real quote from a cheap one.
WebAdmin6 min read
Why nobody gets in touch through your website
More visitors than last year, the same quiet inbox, and two expensive conclusions waiting at that fork. The enquiry is usually lost in the last thirty seconds of a visit, and almost everything broken in there is small and boring.
WebAdmin12 min read
Does a Facebook page replace a website?
For a number of Estonian businesses that page genuinely works, and it is worth saying so honestly. Four things still go undone, and one of them decides the rest: you are renting the shop, and the door is not yours.
WebAdmin13 min read
Accessibility is not charity
The people your design quietly excluded are not the ones you picture. Seven checks you can run today, and one five-minute test that tells you more than the rest.
WebAdmin14 min read
Repair the website or rebuild it?
The question arrives as "our site looks old". That is a symptom, not a diagnosis. Five questions you can answer yourself in ten minutes, and what a rebuild resets that a repair does not.
WebAdmin5 min read
Why your email lands in spam
A message filed as spam gives you no error, no notice and no bounce. The three settings that tell the receiving side a message is really yours, and the one contact form that sends your customers' mail under a stranger's name.
WebAdmin12 min read
A slow website costs you customers
A visitor will never write to tell you the site was slow. They just leave. Where the speed goes, what it costs you, and what you can fix today.
WebAdmin10 min read
The website nobody updates
Nothing happens to a website nobody touches, for a long time, and then everything happens at once. A walk through that time: what ages, what breaks quietly, and what your customer sees before you do.
WebAdmin14 min read
Where your website's photos came from
Almost nobody can say where the photos on their website came from, and the person who could has long since moved on. The four ways a photo gets onto a site, and how to go through your own media library before anybody asks.
WebAdmin11 min read
What a website costs, and why quotes differ so much
Three quotes for the same job, and the highest is four times the lowest. Usually nobody is cheating: three people read the request three different ways. What you pay for, and what to put in the enquiry.
WebAdmin11 min read
What your website numbers actually tell you
Almost every site has statistics and almost nobody has a question. Which figure is empty, which one decides, why bounce rate does not mean what you think, and a ten minute routine that fits into a month.
WebAdmin6 min read
Your business on the Google map
A local search puts a map and three businesses above everything else. Only below them do the ordinary results begin. How you get there, what actually moves it, and what nobody can promise you.
WebAdmin14 min read
Should your website also be in Russian and English?
The question comes round every year and the answer is usually two flag icons. First it is worth knowing who the second reader is, what machine translation does to a price page, and why half a second language is worse than one.
WebAdmin6 min read
Why Google cannot find your new website
The site is live but nobody arrives from search. Seven causes in the order we actually find them, and five of them you can check yourself for free.
WebAdmin10 min read
A logo is not a brand
The new logo has been delivered, six months have gone by and nothing else has changed. A brand has five parts and the mark is the last of them: here are the other four, in the order in which they actually decide things.
WebAdmin12 min read
Your customer looks at your website with one thumb
The site was designed on a 27-inch screen and is read one-handed in a shop queue. Most of what is broken in there adds up to about an hour of work. One thing does not, and that difference is worth knowing.
WebAdmin6 min read
A cookie banner is not consent
The bar at the bottom of the page is not where consent happens. Seven mistakes we see on almost every site, and how to check for them yourself in ten minutes.
WebAdmin10 min read
Who actually owns your website?
The domain, the hosting, the site itself and the accounts around it are four separate things, and they can have four separate owners. How to find out in half an hour whose hands your keys are in.
WebAdmin12 min read
The web words nobody explains to you
You nodded through a meeting about A records and TTL. The invoice says "unlimited", the report shows a red LCP. Here are those words back, in groups and a sentence apiece, every abbreviation written out. Including the three that actually cost money when they go wrong.
WebAdmin11 min read
Does AI recommend your website?
A customer asks an assistant and gets three names back. An honest look at what makes a machine name you, how to rewrite your own sentences, and what nobody should promise you.
WebAdmin13 min read