This is a question that I get a lot from new customers with existing websites.  Who owns their current website?

This is actually a legal question, so a lawyer can tell you for sure who owns your site, that is really the best way to go if you have real questions.

However, in general, if you did not have a formal agreement with your designer or they did it for free, your designer owns your website!  It is that simple.

If you had a formal agreement, then the agreement spells out who is the owner of the site.

If the site was designed by an employee, then the company owns the site.

Why is this question so important?  If you don’t own your website, you are limited on what you can do with it, including changing it, moving it to different hosting and a whole range of other things.

When someone buys a web site from my company, we own the website, but we give them license to use it.  This is very common.  For companies who want to own the website and content outright, that can be agreed to after the site is complete or before it is started.  Either way, it is something that needs to be discussed.

Up until lately, we have been creating our ecommerce domains as http://domain.com rather than http://www.domain.com.   However, we are now switching back to www because we are getting really sick of having to explain to people why their domain doesn’t have a www on it.

In the big picture, it doesn’t matter and most web people don’t use www, ever!  However, there is a small segment of the web community that think that www has something to do with the way Google indexes websites and are continuously pointing out that if a domain doesn’t have www on it, then Google rankings and SEO in general will suffer.

Of course, this isn’t true.  Yes, it is true that if your site uses both www.domain.com/page and domain.com/page, then you may end up with two different listings for the same page, sharing the search engine ranking.  That would be bad.  However, the likelyhood of that is low.

So, www isn’t better, it is just an option, you must use the same format each time for your URL, not some here and some there.

What is the worst thing you can do?  Change your website from www to non-www!  That is like renaming your website.  Google would have to stop indexing the site under one and index it under the other.  So suggesting that you change it, is REALLY BAD.  Anyone that suggests that truely doesn’t understand what they are saying.

So MagicAngel.net isn’t going to be called www.magicangel.net any time soon, but from now on, we aren’t going to buy any SSL certificates without www on them.   It just isn’t worth explaining it to people who take advice from SEO vendors who don’t know better.

6 words that scare the crap out of many professional web designers for several reasons;  Mainly because that means lost revenue for them.  Most websites can be created by a ‘friend’ who knows nothing about web design, that is the simple, plain truth of it.   Using website builders and free tools available at GoDaddy, anyone can create their own website.

So, if a business owner can create their own for free, why use a professional?  That is a very simple question, but the answer is very complex.  From a business stand point (and remember, I’m a web designer), I’ve always been told that a business owner should work “on the business, not in the business”.   Simply put, the business owner should do what makes the business money, but not spend time actually producing the product.

When it comes to website development, as I said, anyone can do it.  I’m told by people who don’t do websites that they can create a simple website in about two days.  Lets assume that the website can be marginally effective, which is stretching it in some case, but lets assume that.   Lets say that the value of that website is about $650.00.   To some people would say,”I just saved $650 by doing my own website.”   However, what if that 16 hours was spent cold calling or on visiting customers?  How much would the business owner make in that time period?  Is it more or less than $650?  What about if the business owner just worked “in the business” for 16 hours, would they make more than $650 in profit?

Answering those questions brings the business owner a lot closer to the answer, should I make my own website, am I saving money or costing myself money?

Of course, cost saving isn’t really the big issue.  Lets compare what happens when a knowledgeable professional does a job instead of a first time novelist or hobbyist.   With five or ten years of experience, who would do a better job the first time, a professional or someone who maybe has seen a bunch of them?

In the end, it boils down to this: Do business owners want your website to be cheap or do you want it to be effective?   There are cases were cheap does the trick.  Problem is, that very cheap websites are very inexpensive to purchase ready made.  So why spend time on them at all?  Effective websites can be made by the novice first timer, but are business owners willing to risk that it will be done right?    What if it is ineffective?  Does the average business owner have 6 months or a year to waste to find out?   Who will show the business owner how to determine if it is effective or not?

So, having a friend make a website for your business might make sense, but it might be a year down the road before you realize it was a mistake.  Got a year to waste?

Coupon problem

Interesting problem for one of my customers, they offer products with 10% off retail pricing online all of the time.  In their shopping cart, they also have a spot to use a coupon.  They got some advice that people would be expecting to use a coupon, so not having one might make them wonder what they were missing.  The person giving the advice thought that maybe the lack of coupons could be solved by raising the price 10% and then providing existing customers with a 10% off coupon.

Scenario 1:

Raise the price to the retail price and offer customers a 10% off coupon via a news letter or some other method so that the majority of customers would have access to the coupon.

Scenario 2:

Leave the price at the current 10% reduction and send out coupons rarely for giveaways and free shipping or other ‘nice’ items, but never price reductions.

Scenario 1:

Pros:

• Customers will notice and value  of the 10% off, as they can see it actually being removed in their cart totals.
• Coupons bring in customers.

Cons:

• Product feeds to places like Google Base and Shopping.com will show a 10% greater price than is actually available. Customers may exclude the store prior to visiting
  because of the higher price.
• Existing customers will notice a 10% increase in price and my not notice the coupon system.
• Customers may wait for coupons and not shop when they are not available.  This also could eliminate impulse buys as customers might not want to shop without a coupon.

Scenario 2:

Pros:

• Same as before, no one notices any price increase
• Customers can shop at any time, no waiting for coupons.
• Customers interested in the rare coupons will sign up for the news letter to get them
• Across the board, prices are lower so customers on feed sites like Google will at least come to the shop to see it.
• Site appears more ‘honest’ since coupon scams are fairly common.

Cons:

• Customers may wonder why they never have coupons.
• Prices can never be discounted, as they are as low as they can go normally.

Conclusion

I would think that having normally discounted pricing and not making customer use coupons will bring in more customers in the long run.  I would hate to raise my prices 10% to just lower them back down again with a coupon, that seems rather obvious and my customers might wonder if when the coupon expires, if they will have to pay the higher price.

What do you think?

For some time, I’ve been looking for a way to convert FLV files, such as those found on YouTube, to files that could be played on the desktop.  The solution to view them was to use VLC player to play them, but some FLV files will not play using my HD-100 *(don’t worry what that is, it isn’t important).

Today, I found a way to covert the FLV files to AVI files which can be played with any player.  The solution is Free FLV Converter.   Here is the link:

http://www.koyotesoft.com/indexEn.html