Monthly Archives: March 2013

Things that annoy me

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Should this be a post or should it be kept secret and let me seethe away on my own!

Well, you’re reading this so you know the conclusion I came to.

This is, (in X factor style) in no particular order.

After the obligatory 100 year pause:

  • Bad customer service. I’ve written about this before. See Customer Service. Why do some businesses seem to actively discourage people from buying form them. I don’t get it.
  • Arrogance. There’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance. Confidence is great (and needed a lot) but don’t cross that line. Arrogance is the worst. You are not God’s gift to mankind. Your opinion is not the correct one every single time.
  • Apathy. The dictionary describes this as: absence or suppression of passion, emotion, or excitement. There must be one thing that excites you. Somewhere. Come on get off the couch and find it. Preferably it will be getting a nice shiny new website through DP Web Development.
  • Pigeon holing people. Just ‘because someone is one something once doesn’t mean they always will be. If they were we would be a much poorer world. Encourage people, help them keep in touch they can become great like you.  Someone once tried to encourage me at the beginning of my career. Hey there are plenty of jobs at your level. (!) I don’t want to stay on this level I want to go the next level and the next and the next. I changed and grew. Everyone can. Don’t place people in a box. You’ll almost always get it wrong.
  • Not replying to my email. Bit like bad customer service. It is only manners. I took the trouble to compose an email and send it the least you can do is acknowledge it! A lot of Companies looking to recruit are guilty of this. At least acknowledge receipt of the damn application. Don’t use the excuse you get so many. You can send one email to many people you know) Even an automatic reply is better than nothing.
  • Breaking a promise. This is the same as destroying trust. It is as true for business as it is for friendships. DO what you said you were going to do when you said you were going to do it. Is it that hard? Don’t say you’ll do something if you can’t deliver. I promise to reply to every message I get within 24 hours. Unless it’s Spam.
  • Lateness.  It’s not cool to arrive “fashionably late” It’s rude.  The party starts at 5. That doesn’t mean you should arrive at 6. It means you should arrive at 5. Is that so strange?
  • Bad manners.  Just because you’re the customer doesn’t’ mean you can behave as badly as possible. Say please and thank you. Don’t rant if a staff member   makes a mistake. It doesn’t help. It doesn’t make you any more important than you already are.  (It has the opposite effect).   Say please and thank you. Mile when you say it and mean it. Trust me; you’ll be a happier person for it.

And last but by no means least. The UK passport office. They lost my passport. That really annoyed me.

There are other things. But I think these are the main ones (at the moment!)

What annoys you? Do you agree / disagree with me?

What makes a high quality website?

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In today’s world simply having a website is no longer impressive.  Indeed having a bad website is distinctly unimpressive.

You need a high quality website. A website that people will want to visit again and again. Everyone wants a high quality website. DP Web Development can certainly help you with that.

But what makes a high quality website? Below I list the five  main (and by no means all!) criteria to think about when building a website.

  • Content is King. Whenever someone comes to a website their primary reason for doing so is to find information.  Your website needs to have this information required for it to be of any use to the user.  Your website could have a million pages all with a single line. This is less than useless. Every single webpage should serve a specific purpose and needs to have well written coherent information that your target audience will find invaluable. They will wonder how they lived their lives without it. The text should be unique. Don’t copy and paste and if you do reference where you got the text from don’t claim it as your own!  To increase credibility check and check and check then check once more spelling: Nothing is worse than a spelling mistake or typo. Don’t rely solely on spellchecker. A website will lose respectability as a whole if there is one spelling mistake on a single page.
  • Accessibility and Usability. It doesn’t matter how good websites information is if the user cannot find it. Disorganised pages, too many links, page that go nowhere all hep destroy a website.  Serious thought, best done in the design phase, should be given to how websites information will be displayed. Will it be best to have a simple navigation bar at the top?  Is more needed? How many pages are needed to best display the content? DP Web Development is on hand from day one to help you through the myriad of options available.
  • Design. The look matters now. Simplicity is key (usually). Think about the image you want to portray and design accordingly. Animation and fun graphics can work well but can also seem amateurish and unprofessional if not done well.  On the other hand if you are aiming your website squarely at kids this might be exactly what you want. Every image and application on the website should serve a specific purpose. For example every image should enhance a website. Not just placed there top pad it out a bit.  The website is now a huge marketing tool for companies and people will base their opinion on the organisation as a whole on what they see.
  • Domain name. It’s important. Two things to consider: is it easy to remember. The company name .com could be fine but double check that innocent words nested to together don’t make another word. For example the company “Who represents” decided a website was need. The obvious name would be www.whorepresents.com/. Do you see the confusion in a name?!  This has been pointed out and a new address is being thought of but this link still works it is worth double checking this pitfall. Generally a shooter URL is better.
  • Focus. You can’t please everyone all the time So don’t even try to. You need to be clear on who you target audience e is and cater for them. A detailed website with good information on a niche area (and this can be surprisingly narrow) is almost  always better than a website with a lot of content but none of it detailed. It also runs the risk of being too vague and of no use to anybody.

What do you think makes a good website. comments welcome!