Scared of your website? You're not alone!

It was interesting and a little alarming to visit friends and relatives in the UK and learn about website provision in their various small businesses. 

Saw a couple of websites evidently set up by tech-heads who like using Word Press but who don't offer much in the way of writing skills, structuring information, or graphic design. And one site which uses Flash (graphics sliding around the pages) and is thus rendered completely invisible to any customers trying to view it on a smartphone or tablet. The owner is being told it will cost several thousand to put right... and he confesses to feeling paralysed by the complexity of the hosting set-up. All he knows is that if he stops paying his GBP350 a year, his emails stop arriving. 

I don't know whether this web designer should be given a prize for business prowess, or put in prison! 

To be clear, you can create a perfectly good website in Weebly which looks good, reads well and can be optimised for keyword results, and Weebly creates a mobile version for you automatically. 

There's no doubt that hosting arrangements can be complicated but they don't have to be expensive, and if they are, it probably means that someone (your web designer) is outsourcing your hosting and on-charging to you. This isn't illegal or anything, in fact it's good business for them, and a good arrangement for you if you want someone to just look after the whole kit and kaboodle for you. But you should at least understand what's going on. 

I'm putting together a couple of small-business-friendly options and quotes for those people today with a focus on simple and affordable. 

And now for something completely different. Here's are some gratuitous pictures of me and mine at play in the streets of London, the most exciting city in the world!