websites
Building a website, running it and keeping it in shape. The practical side, without the sales pitch.
The last news item is three years oldThere 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.Read more
The words that sit in the quoteIt 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.Read more
Why your website is still not finishedThe 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.Read more
"Welcome to our website" and other sentences that do nothingThe 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.Read more
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.Read more
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.Read more
Why nobody gets in touch through your websiteMore 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.Read more
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.Read more
Accessibility is not charityThe 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.Read more
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.Read more
A slow website costs you customersA 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.Read more
The website nobody updatesNothing 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.Read more
Where your website's photos came fromAlmost 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.Read more
What a website costs, and why quotes differ so muchThree 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.Read more
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.Read more
Why Google cannot find your new websiteThe 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.Read more
A logo is not a brandThe 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.Read more
Your customer looks at your website with one thumbThe 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.Read more
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.Read more
The web words nobody explains to youYou 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.Read more