Websites

Now, I’ve never been one to turn down a drink as most of you will know. So when my mate George (Publican) invited me around to his place with the promise of a very decent Australian Merlot, I felt duty bound to oblige.

 After two bottles had slipped down very nicely, George announced that he’d finally lashed out on a new PC and would I give him an opinion. “No problem” says I, and to be fair it was a fairly decent set up with a 26” monitor which was essential as George’s glasses looked like the bottom of two milk bottles. I mean, he certainly weren’t going to be top of the leader boards on Call of Duty, but it was OK.

“My website doesn’t seem to be doing a lot though” he said and I quickly realised what had been the real reason for the invite. “Ok, let’s have a look” I said. George’s fingers didn’t exactly dance over the keyboard; they more or less stumbled, fell over and died. We eventually got the site displayed though, and initially, I thought someone had hit me in the face with a hammer! The home page was bright orange with pea green menus and an image of a beer bottle, or bottel, as the web designer had spelt it.

“That’s……err, different” I offered as I fought the desire to regurgitate the Merlot on to the shag pile. “Who did that for you”. “Young Ryan down the road, he did it in between cramming for his A levels”. He replied. “Only cost me £400”. This time the shag pile got a liberal dousing of red wine. “George” I screamed, “it’s a one page site, people will think their monitor has blown up when it displays, it tells visitors nothing other than the fact you need to go to Specsavers, and young Ryan obviously uses your product as it’s affected his spelling ability.” I paused for breath. “On top of that, it’s not SEO optimised, it’s not constructed correctly and more importantly, it will do more harm for your business than good”

George doesn’t talk to me anymore. He doesn’t need to. He sends me six bottles of Merlot a month, free of charge. Why? Well, I got him a totally redesigned website, properly optimised and he can add information about his Guest Beers himself, and all for the princely sum of £9.99 per month.

And what about Ryan, I hear you ask, George persuaded him to hand clean his shag pile carpet which appeared to have a large red wine stain. He managed to do it between visits to the acne clinic. Think I’ll have a drink.

Frans LaRoc

PS Don't make George's mistake, visit www.dp-group.co.uk now.