Tropical Blogging

In my opinion, ugly sites can perform very well, and there are a number of factors that can contribute to that: First, ugly sites are often sites that were originally built back in the 1990s by some business owner who had no web design sense or technical knowledge but wanted to promote his business online. (more…)

Daily newspapers have been fighting decreasing readership and falling subscriptions for at least a couple of decades now. More and more, newspapers are putting their content online. For that I salute them. But the web is now about 15 years old, and I wonder why so many newspapers still don’t manage to get some of the basic things right. (more…)

Many of my clients already have an existing web site when they contact me. Often they’re unhappy with their site’s visual design, or its functionality, or its performance in the search engines. I hate — I really hate — telling a potential client that their site needs to be completely re-developed from the ground up in order achieve the level of performance they’re looking for. Yes, I can charge more for a complete redevelopment, and I like that part, but it always feels sort of “snake oil salesman” to me. I’d rather tell the client, “Yes, we can work with your existing site. We can make these changes, and add this functionality, and we can do this, that and the other thing.” But sometimes that’s simply not possible. Particularly when the potential client is looking for improved search engine performance or better usability. (more…)