Don't Shoot Yourself in the Foot
If you are a mom-and-pop shop, are you shooting yourself in the foot because you haven't done a redesign since the HTML5 revolution?
If you are a mom-and-pop shop, are you shooting yourself in the foot because you haven't done a redesign since the HTML5 revolution?
This week I was traveling without my laptop. I only had my iPhone and iPad with me. While I was away I had to look up a number of local restaurants where I was, and perform other mundane tasks that I would usually use my laptop for if I were home.
I was amazed at how many of these “local” websites that I went to are still entirely developed in Flash, with no non-Flash fallbacks. I understand that small restaurants or stores don’t have the large budgets of major Internet retailers. But with every domain hosting company offering simple website designs for free, it’s not that complicated for these small sites to have a non-Flash-based Internet presence.
If you are a mom-and-pop shop, are you shooting yourself in the foot because you haven’t done a redesign since the HTML5 revolution? If so, here is a simple checklist for signs that you are shooting yourself in the foot:
My own pet peeve is this last one: the incorrect use of quotes. The local Dairy Queen near me had a sign a while ago. It was handwritten and said: Please give “money” to our “charity” and help support “sick” kids. Need I even make a comment about this?
To a corporate reader of this column, this list might seem borderline dumb because these are obvious steps that companies take to make sure their sites are professional. But the reality is small sites are still often run by non-tech people who hired a local guy in their tiny town to build them a site, and have no idea how to make any changes to it.
If you have a small site that you operate on your own, are you shooting yourself in the foot by not doing these basic things that will make would-be customers take you seriously?
Until next time…
Jack
Image on home page via Shutterstock.