Website design marketing and hosting in Telford Shropshire

I’m annoyed. This has happened before and in the past I have just binned the letter, but now I think it’s better to mention it.

Domain Registry of America sent me a Domain Name Expiry Notice, if you read it - which I know a lot of people don’t ‘actually’ read things. It says that your domain will soon need renewing and that you can do it through them. They aren’t saying you ‘have’ to but that you will ‘need’ to.

Now, I register my own domains, so I know I have never used the DRA before - and they have nothing to do with my registrar. So under no circumstances am I going to fall into the trap of transferring my domain to them… but a lot of people - I suspect - do.

It’s happened to a client of mine in the past, the letter is very convincing that it is the right thing to do to renew with them. So they went ahead and renewed without asking me or waiting for me to remind them.

I get annoyed by this because so many people don’t know what they are doing on the internet, so many people don’t know what they are buying when they take a domain name or a hosting package. And this blatant attempt to capture someones renewal is just adding to the confusion.

So the advice is:

• Check with your webdesigner when your domain is up for renewal
• If you bought your domain direct, login to your control panel and double check what you are doing

This week I’ve had 2 phone calls from potential new customers, both of which totally confused me. Now I understand that people not in this industry don’t understand the technical terms, but there is no excuse for not knowing what you want.

The typical opener I get is: ‘Hello, how much does a website cost?’

OK, lets try asking that question at a garage: ‘How much are your tyres?’ Who can answer this question without getting some further information: what size wheels, type of car, how many are needed?

A website can cost anything - it could be a holding page at £75 or it could be a shopping site the size of Amazon and cost £30k upwards.

Here is a quick list of info that you need to have and the type of questions you need to ask:

Tell the designer:

• if you have a domain already registered
• if you have hosting
• what type of site you want and the type of content you have for it
• what other sites you have seen that you like
• if you have a budget to consider
• if you require photography, or if you have the photograph, or if you need stock photography purchasing

Ask the designer

• whether you can see their previous work
• what are their techniques regarding search engine optimisation
• if they have payment options
• whether they work from templates or design bespoke

Try and think of any useful information and offer it in the conversation, I quoted at least one of my potential clients an incorrect price because I didn’t fully understand what they wanted.

The incorrect price was in their favour by the way!

MARKETING: - Take every opportunity to tell people what you sell.I was recently on holiday and needed some beach shoes, you know those rubber soled scuba jobs that you can walk into the sea with - I was in half a mind to get a wet suit too - well it was a holiday in the UK and the kids wanted to be in the sea.

I took a stroll into town to start searching for shoes and came to a fishing tackle shop (of all places) with crates of shoes outside. I looked at the price label which said £9.99 each - that seemed a little expensive to me so I went to walk away. Out of nowhere up sprang the shop keeper to point out that she had written on the back of an old label (which had turned over in the breeze) and the shoes were actually 2 pairs for £5. I bought a pair (and some for my daughter) and as I was paying, the lady mentioned that they had the cheapest wet suits in town. I had a good walk round and, she was right - they were the cheapest. I went back and bought 4 - one for all of us.Now think about that for a moment - I could have walked away from that shop and would never have grabbed a bargain. But what’s worse the shop keeper might have missed out on two sales. All she did was tell me (the customer) what she sold and because of that I was able to make up my mind and buy what I wanted.

This is a fundamental rule to apply to any business, just tell people what you sell, plain and simple, and shout it louder when you have items on sale. There are many ways of doing it too, send out letters to your past customers, run a mailing list on your website, print flyers and have them inserted in the local free papers or just go house to house and push them through letter boxes.

Remember if people don’t know you sell it - they can’t buy it from you.