Blog

So you need to know how to choose a website designer.

But here’s the problem.

“It depends” is both the most correct and the most unhelpful answer.

There have never been more choices in the website design industry than now. But paradoxically, all those choices make actually choosing more difficult than ever.

The secret to choosing wisely is to understand exactly what you need rather than attempting to sort & filter all the choices on offer.

Like any other large purchase… a house, car, appliance, etc – ditch the idea of a “best” – and instead, write out your exact needs, requirements, and goals. The best option for you will usually self-select itself.

In other words, choose a website designer through elimination based your goals rather than searching out the one right fit.

With that concept in mind, here’s how to walk through the process of elimination to choose the right website designer for your project.

For years, I’ve had issues with email forms on websites hosted at GoDaddy. Whether I was trying to get a contact form in WordPress to work, or simply forward emails within cPanel, the whole troubleshooting process was just a pain.

The GoDaddy email issue especially pops up when a client switches from GoDaddy email hosting to a 3rd party email host like Google, Zoho, NameCheap, etc.

And it turns out that it’s not just me. It’s a documented issue with everything from WooCommerce to other non-WordPress software.

But GoDaddy’s documentation is straight-up horrible and poking around StackOverflow / Googling developer forums gets old after a while. So here’s a short guide to GoDaddy form email problems that I wish I had several years ago.

So you want to get your product/service/thoughts in front of an audience, and you need a website. Time to buckle down and create a massive, beautiful site, right?

Wrong.

When you’re launching anything, the most important goal is to get data. Without data, you can’t possibly make something as good as it can be — and that applies to your website, too.

You need data on what it takes to build & run the site of your dreams. You need data on who actually visits your site and what they do. You need data to decide what to do next.

One of the biggest mistakes business owners make when launching a website is starting too big and too well-designed (especially eCommerce sites).

You don’t need pages and pages of content or a fancy design. What you do need is a minimally viable website.

Here’s how to build one…

If there were an award for “webpage that customers visit most and website owners think about the least” – the FAQ page would likely come in close second to the About page.

In a way, the FAQ page is simply a Miscellaneous content stuff page or a “every other website has one, so we should too” page that customers look at.

Many content strategists argue that you should not have one at all.

But FAQ pages have been around for so long that customers usually hunt for them.

I mean – just think about it as a user. What do you like to click on when researching a product line? Do you like reading through FAQs?

They can serve a very useful purpose if you think through them step by step. Here’s some starting points & FAQ page best practices to use when creating your own website’s FAQ page.

My client and I were able to build 1,120 quality backlinks pointing to 700+ of his website pages with a single line of code in less than 1 hour.

How? We found and decided to reclaim 404, dead or otherwise broken links that were already pointing to his site. We used a regex expression to redirect nearly every single broken link to the correct, existing page on his site.

A visitor has taken some sort of action on your site… hurray!

Before you celebrate too much, let’s talk about your Thank You page.

The Thank You page is one of the most underrated pages on a website. We often focus so much on getting someone to take an action (like purchasing a product, signing up for a webinar, downloading a whitepaper) that we forget how valuable a Thank You page can be, or the effort we should put into it.

When used correctly, it can be a crucial part of nurturing your audience. But before we dive into some best practices, let’s cover the basics.

So you’re creating an event website, and you’re looking for event website design examples for inspiration and guidance. You’re also wondering which website platform is best to use for your event website.

But before we dive into examples of what event websites look like in the wild on a variety of website builders and hosting platforms, there is one thing to keep in mind when you’re evaluating a website: it’s not just about how the websites look. The functionality matters too.

Think of it like buying a car. You have a make / model in mind, and you’re probably looking to see them drive by on the road to see how they actually look. However, you also care about how they operate. Does it accelerate well? Does it have the hauling capabilities you need? How is the gas mileage?

Looking at a event website examples should be done in the same way. We collected the following event website examples not just to show you how they look on different platforms, but how they can function, so you can be sure you create a website that fits both the look and functionality you need!

It’s an annoyance for site owners and visitors alike – the 404 page. A visitor types in a URL or clicks a link and expects to land on a certain page, but they get this instead…

It’s frustrating, but it’s also a part of life on the web. Mistakes will be made, and error messages will happen.

But it doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom. In fact, you can turn your website’s error page (also known as a 404 or Page Not Found error) into a positive experience for your visitors.

But before we get there, let’s cover a few of the basics.