The other day I was at a business lunch and learn and somebody asked me why I wanted to sell them a website, I couldn’t imagine such a silly question and so I answered him ‘because you need it.’ Sadly, it wasn’t just me being snarky (I don’t get to use that word often enough) it was the simple truth and most likely, you need one too.

This isn’t a sales pitch, you’re welcome to contact me if you feel you need a new website design or help with your WordPress installation and my portfolio is always online if you’d like to see the type of work that I do but I’m not writing this piece to convince you to buy from me, I’m writing this piece to help you understand that you should buy from somebody.

Most websites fall into one of three categories, and each has points that damage your businesses ability to compete in the modern world of technology. Remember, in 2009 people are more likely to visit your website than visit your office. If your website doesn’t fall into these three categories, congratulations you’re one in a million:

Out of Date

Web sites are like living, breathing organisms. You have to constantly feed them and that takes fresh content. Every web page on your website should be reviewed and updated at a minimum every three months for accuracy.  Your home page should change once a week at the very least, which is where a blog comes in handy. Blogs (web logs) are used to promote events and feature news from key employees much the same way newsletters used to reach clients.

Unlike other forms of technology, websites are still relatively young and the basic technology which makes up a website is still evolving. To determine if your website is compatible with the majority of web browsers today, test both your home page and an internal page (such as the about page) with the W3C validator.

Effective modern websites should make use of Cascading Style Sheets and feature tableless design. This is critical to meeting the needs of 10% of the population as websites which feature tables are poorly interpreted by  web browsers for the visually impaired. You can test if your website has tables by viewing the source code of your document (often found under the Edit menu of your web browser) and you can also test the quality of your CSS using an online validator.

Modern websites are not strictly used as online brochures, they are also feature rich tools for social networking. This “web 2.0″ technology allows users to access data from your website using a number of tools including XML (extendable markup language) sitemap documents, RSS feeds and interconnectivity to tools such as Twitter and Facebook. Each of these technologies has it’s own place in making your website a successful online tool for both yourself and your prospective clients.

Difficult to Use

One of the biggest problems facing website owners is a misunderstanding of the purpose of a website. Web sites are sales tools, not technology projects. Web Sites use technology to deliver your message, don’t be a slave to what your web design can (or can’t) do and don’t assume that your IT person knows the first thing about websites.

I have an image in my mind of some printer in the 18th century buying a brand new printing press only to discover it didn’t ship with the letter R so instead of admitting he couldn’t do the job right and hiring another printer to get his clients work out the door, he pinted eveything using othe lettes o wose simply didn’t do it at all. That’s what I think most web designers are doing, they lack the skill to do it right so they don’t do it at all.

Here’s the honest truth, there is no reason your website doesn’t work as well as Apple’s or Dell’s. Go on over to those websites and try to order a computer. See how easy it is to find what you’re looking for? Notice that it’s easy to order? Guess what, they’re using the same HTML as your website uses so there’s no reason your website sucks.

Poor Representation 

Take a good long look at your website, now take a good long look at the business that you’ve spent years building up and ask yourself honestly if what you see on screen is what you want the public to think of your business. Ouch. I have no tolerance for bad web design and even less for business owners who allow it to happen. The web is the great equalizer, you can do anything your competition can do with a website and you can do it faster, cheaper and more often than any other time in history so honesty ask yourself … does your website represent your business in a positive light? If the answer is no, then fire the team you’ve working with and look around for a new team.

Conclusion

So, if you don’t need a new website and you’re proud of what you have … leave a comment with the URL to your site below and I will feature it in a new write up, people need to see great websites.