Minerva

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/ is a handy little tool for calculating web site load times for dialup and base broadband user experiences. Does a nice job of breaking down the page parts showing sizes and speed.

Content management systems or CMS is the key to a real-time data driven web site. There are over 2,000 CMS applications, some free some cost big bucks.

But I'd like to kinda focus on just a few. Particulary Joomla! and Drupal. These are 'good' free CMS apps that can work with some really nice designs. Of course, taking a template and plugging the CMS into it is not rocket science, its barely even web development.

Lets examine all this for a minute. A "template" is a graphical user interface (GUI) that is pre-made and are sold by the thousands online for around $25-50. There are some that cost more, but most template shops are pretty inexpensive. It usually has the orginal graphic files so it can be somewhat customized. Oh one more note on GUI templates - the vast majority are made offshore. India, China, etc - places where people get paid very cheap wages to produce high-volume cookiecutter designs. But these things are sold and resold on the Internet, it would be difficult to find out the actual origin of who designed it. 

Template sites are pretty easy for an experience internet user to identify right off the bat. (psst - they all look the same).

Next are the popular FREE CMS apps. All designed to show a web site in a particular format, sometimes with a good bit of customization possible through the use of "modules" or "plugins" for that particular CMS. THese modules/plugins are usually designed for a specific use such as displaying weather, or getting some kind of Federal data, or providing a level of social networking - the possibilities are very creative.

So far we have a GUI that is under $100 (conservatively) and a FREE CMS that is going to be the basis of your web site.

Now for the hard core part - check your contract or proposal, if the web company is charging you money for or selling you the CMS application, ask to see the full license for it - it MOST likely has to be given away free of charge for any commercial use. Okay, to be fair, the web company CAN charge for the time they work on it - this is probably at best a few hours or days.

Now, I'm not knocking good companies that can take a GOOD template and creatively add a free CMS into it and deliver a good product to the client. It takes talent and experience to do that. What I am trying to drive home is what are/were you being charged? A couple thousand maybe? Thats reasonable, and maybe a little low in some cases. Did you or are you planning to drop oh say 15k or more on a web site - I would finding out what PRECISELY am I being charged for.

There is no real standard for how a web proposal is quoted. This creates its own set of problems. Potential clients are comparing apples to oranges when assessing web comapnies in most cases. The important thing is disclosure. Find out if your site is custom designed or a purchased template. Find out if your CMS is custom coded or if it uses a off the shelf CMS.

Custom designed web sites are just that. Fully custom designed and based off of the clients NEEDS. These are not 1-size-fits-all premade programming. Dedicated professionals design and develop a custom site from the ground up. Every element, every feature specifically tailored for the client. When you see a Digital Beckley logo, you KNOW that site was custom designed.

The analogy I would use is it takes craftsmen and artisians to create a masterpiece but anyone can paint-by-number.

Stay tuned for Part II where I take a hard look at updates and custom features.

 

It struck me the other day as I was watching a new emerging trend happen right before my eyes.

If you're normally spending more than 10k/week, you're excluded from this conversation - but for the smaller organization that has a limited marketing expense budget it becomes rather critical.  

The "twitternation" is contributing to higher costs in business. Its free, how can this be? Simple math. 1 employee using up to 30 minutes a day to read/post tweets by 240 days is 120 hours LOST PRODUCTION a year! 120 hours is pretty much 3 full weeks.

Oh wait, ah you ARE the marketing director/new business development coordinator/your title here. Lets lok at another angle shall we?

Lets say you're making oh say $8.00/hour and then this cost is around 960 bucks for a year! Most companies would want to know how to CUT costs by that much per employee (some will spend twice that to learn how). So - what does $1000 buy in marketing today? How many new customers would one expect from that outlay?

Search engines will also end up frsutrating users as well. Say they see a link to one of your "tweets" only to discover its so old its not even in your recent logs - so seeing everything thats NOT relevant to what they were looking for - they move on instead of spending time searching through your tweets. Oh some DO take the time to actually hunt for a certain one - hence the conservative 30 minutes mentioned above LOL. Additionally, its deemed by the searchee that search for 140 characters of topic matter is MORE important than actually checking a routinely updated web site. (This is not the time for a dissertation on deeming what is appropriate use of the web when one is on the clock)

Ask yourself when you post: "Is this the same information that goes in the newsletter, online news, email blasts, and the like?" Is it duplication of effort OR is it actually having a positive result?

By decentralizing your media stream you begin to expend a higher number of resources to maintain each and every outlet of information.

 I am still on the fence on this trend BUT if its working for you, thats great - but step back and take a look at the true cost versus return (new customer/member/etc).