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Top 3 Mistakes of Rookie Web Designers

Kevin Henney — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 22:01:31 -0700

Everyone makes mistakes, and web designers are no exception. However, there some web design goofs that are frequently made by designers who are just starting out - so consistently that most web designers will admit to committing some or all of these at some point early in our careers.

We aren't talking about the real amateur problems, like cheesy animated GIFs, loud backgrounds, and horrible font choices. Here we're looking at mistakes that you might see from professionals who get paid good money for their work. And it often looks good. But even a site that looks great to the untrained eye can conceal problems beneath the surface (and invisible to the client).

1) Insufficient Browser Compatibility Testing

Everyone in the world doesn't use the same combination of web browser and operating system as you do. Rookie web designers might check their design in one or two browsers, but few do any extensive testing on the full range of browsers and even fewer test on multiple operating systems.

Those who haven't experienced the differences in platforms may be surprised to learn that Internet Explorer for Windows behaves very differently from IE Mac (fortunately the latter is nearly dead).

Professional web designers learn to support as many browsers as possible, even if the extra effort often goes unnoticed by clients. A web site may get only a handful of visitors using Camino, but if one of that small group is looking to make a million-dollar purchase, you want be sure your site looks great to them.

2) Lack of Plain Text

Have you ever seen a search result like this? "Copyright 2005" isn't a very good description of any site, so what's going on here? Usually you'll see this when a page has virtually no plain text content (including ALT attributes and META descriptions).

New designers often succumb to the temptation to lock their text within image files, where they're able to use a wide range of fonts and render them with pixel-perfect precision. Unfortunately, while the end result may look great on screen, it takes longer to load, can't be easily resized, and it's unreadable to machines (including screen readers for the blind).

The internet may have changed a lot since it's early days, but at it's heart it has always been about text, and it still is. As good as computers have become at displaying multimedia content, they're still not very good at understanding it.

Plain text is still the most reliable way of representing information in a way that's understandable to both people and machines, and it's the web designer's challenge to present that text in an appealing way, without resorting to images and other methods which are less accessible.

Multimedia has it's place, of course, but plain text should not be neglected.

3) No Call to Action

Almost every web site is created for a reason. Online stores, obviously, exist to sell products, but many small business sites don't actually incorporate ecommerce features. These "brochure sites" don't just exist to provide information; they are created in the hopes of eliciting a specific reaction from the visitor. It may be a phone call for more information, or generating a lead by filling out an online form. Often, new designers focus so much on things like graphics and page layout that they forget to tell the site's visitors what they want them to do.

It's important that a web designer understand the goals of the web site, and structure the site in a way that encourages visitors to take that action.

Sites built to generate sales calls should feature the company phone number prominently on every page, not just buried on a contact page. If the goal is to have visitors fill out a form, then the link to that form should be the most "clickable" element on the page.

Visitors are more likely to do what you want if you give them some direction, and web site owners are much happier when their web site generates real leads and sales - not just page views.

Still Looking Good

Again, a web site can have all of the problems above, yet still look fantastic. That's why these mistakes can go unnoticed by clients and newer professionals. They may not be apparent until the site has been live for some time, and clients begin to complain about poor search engine performance, or lack of conversions, or an important customer who can't view the site properly.

Fortunately, they can all be fixed (some more easily than others) and as designers gain experience we learn to avoid these pitfalls - and discover new ones :)

Designers: What other mistakes did you make when you were just starting out? Or what mistakes do you see newbies making again and again?

*This post was written as part of the Three Blog Project.

Ruffled Feathers on the Top 100

Kevin Henney — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 03:38:36 -0700

I admit it. Until a few weeks ago, Tuesday nights found me repeatedly dialing the toll-free number for American Idol, voting for Sanjaya. A terrible singer, perhaps, but thousands of American TV viewers delighting in keeping him around week after week. And really, there was no harm in it - the more talented singers on the show will no doubt be signed to recording contracts, regardless of who wins or loses.

The Technorati Favorites list works in much the same way. Being listed doesn't make you a successful blogger, and the best bloggers will find success whether they're on the list or not. Still, the recent appearance of a few "Sanjayas" on the Top 100 list seems to be ruffling the feathers of some A-list bloggers.

Maki Making Trouble

Maki at Dosh Dosh started things off earlier this month when he offered to exchange favorites with anyone who was interested. It turned out that many bloggers were interested. A few weeks later, and the Top 100 list has been invaded by a whole slew of new blogs, many of them virtual unknowns.

While the movement that Maki started has been sweeping through the blogosphere for weeks, it only now beginning to draw the ire of some higher profile bloggers who feel they've "earned" their spot on the list.

Won't Someone Please Think of the A List?

First it was Amit Agarwal (currently the 41st most favorited blog) lamenting the displacement of some long-standing members of the Top 100 and fearing that "the list will soon lose credibility."

Now Darren Rowse at Problogger shares his opinion "that the practice of swapping favorites is a little sad," and that bloggers should spend their energy elsewhere.

In these same posts, both Amit and Darren invited readers to favorite their blogs.

Who suffers?

Who is really suffering from this practice of reciprocal favoriting? Certainly not the blogs participating - Maki's original post has inspired hundreds of others, all of whom seem quite enthusiastic about this little movement.

Technorati users? The favorites feature was hardly being used prior to this month, as evidenced by ease with which blogs have been breaking into the Top 100. And some blogs have been gaming the list long before Maki came along: check out MySpace Layouts, favorited by 600+ faceless bloggers who count it as their only favorite. This list has been of limited usefulness for some time.

Technorati's owners? It seems like this "scheme" has brought them more attention, links, and page views from the blogosphere than anything else in recent memory. I can't remember ever seeing Technorati mentioned on so many blogs. And if Technorati really wanted to stop the reciprocal favoriting, some official statement of disapproval would stop a lot of it, and a few lines of code could curtail the rest.

The only victims I can really imagine here are the egos of the A-listers who've held those top positions for so long. Many have been displaced, and some of those who remain may feel their prestige is lessened by their new "lower-class" neighbors. But it's only egos at stake here. Those who have fallen off the list are not seeing a decrease in traffic, their PageRank isn't falling, and 99.9% of their readers will never even notice (unless they choose to blog about it).

In fact, most of those affected probably aren't suffering any ego damage. I seriously doubt that Doc Searls or Dave Winer are losing any sleep over their displacement, if they've even noticed they fell off the list.

Whatever

Is it pointless to expend energy trying to make the Top 100? Of course it is. Every blogger can find better uses for their time. But some happen to be enjoying trading favorites. Why not let them? They don't appear to be violating Technorati's terms of service, and if Technorati feels the need to stop it, they will.

So to every A-list blogger who feels the need use their blog as a platform to decry the horrible practice of trading favorites, I have to ask: Isn't there a better use for your time?

For every blogger who enjoys exchanging favorites check out Favorite Me, the favorite swapping site Problogger mentioned (but didn't link to), and engtech's program that automatically favorites those who've favorited you. And if you've enjoyed this post, please favorite this blog :)

Update:As I was writing this, Maki was apparently writing a thorough analysis of the criticism he's received. It's a long one, but well thought out.

I Took It, So Should You

Kevin Henney — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 11:05:44 -0700

Just a quick note to all the web designers and developers out there: Head on over to A List Apart and take their 2007 Web Design Survey. You'll help generate some useful data about our industry, and also have a chance to win event tickets, an iPod, or other swag. If you're like me, you've probably spent hours reading ALA's articles over the years, so a 10 minute survey doesn't seem like much to ask.

(Found via Essential Keystrokes, who got it from Working Solo.)

Train, Keep on Rolling

Kevin Henney — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 21:20:08 -0700

I was invited aboard the Technorati Train by Char at Essential Keystrokes. (Char blogs about design and marketing, and she's written some great stuff, be sure to check her out.)

If you haven't seen this meme making the rounds, the idea is to build your number of "favorites" on Technorati and discover some new blogs in the process. I'm usually a bit hesitant to jump on the latest blog meme, but I find this one appealling for a few reasons:

It brings some attention to Technorati, a site which I use and like, but seems lately to have fallen by the wayside as Google has jumped into blog search and MyBlogLog has rolled out better community features.
This widespread "gaming" of the Technorati's Top Favorited Blogs list will hopefully nudge them into improving their community features instead of wasting their developers talents on yet another Digg clone.

The rules for participating are below, but first, a brief introduction to the 3 blogs I'm tagging:

J David Macor blogs about web design and tutorials. Don't forget to check out his collection of beautifully done valid XHTML templates.
Sean Dinner is a design student writing about blogging and graphic design. And while it may be a bit off-topic, his Day in the Life of a Pizza Delivery Boy posts are great, and will make you feel bad about undertipping for your pie.
The Antman at Cre8Buzz blogs about word-of-mouth marketing. Word has it that Cre8Buzz will be launching their Word-Of-Mouth Engine very soon, head over to their home page if you'd like to be notified when it goes live.

Those are my adds; all of them deserve a place in your faves (and your feedreader) in my opinion. Read on for the rules and the full list.

-----Start Copying Here-----

Here are the rules:

1) Write a short introduction paragraph about what how you found the list and include a link to the blog that referred you to the list.

2) COPY the Rules and ENTIRE List below and post it to your own blog. You may want to change the titles of the blogs to help avoid duplicate content issues, and increase the amount of keywords your site can accessible for.. Just don't change the actual links to the blogs.

3) Take My New Faves and move them into the The Original Faves list.

4) Add 3 new blogs that you've added to your Technorati Favorites to the My New Faves section. Remember to also add the "Fave Me" link next to the blogs you add. (i.e. http://technorati.com/faves?sub=addfavbtn &add=http://www.yourfavesdomain.com)

5) Add Everyone on this list to your Technorati Favorites List by clicking on "Fave This." Those who want good karma will fave you back. If not, you will for sure get the benefits of faves from the bloggers who continue this list after you.

My New Faves

The Original List

-----End Copying Here-----

And thanks to ReformatThis for the train graphic used above (used by permission, of course).

Paid Links - Don't Ask, Don't Sell

Kevin Henney — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 01:55:13 -0700

Following Matt Cutts' recent announcement that Google will allow users to report paid links, Andy Beard has taken the bold step of submitting his own content to Google's webspam team, in the hope of getting some official statement out of Google. I certainly hope he gets a response, but it seems unlikely.

The disturbing truth is that the only noise out of Google about paid links comes from Matt Cutts' "personal" blog postings. And Matt's stance on the need for machine-readable disclosure of paid links seems to contradict everything Google has ever said about building sites for people, rather than for search engines.

There's obviously a considerable gray area regarding what constitutes a paid link, and Andy's post does a good job of listing many cases where a link may be motivated (directly or indirectly) by financial gain. If Google is serious about identifying and penalizing "paid links," and would prefer that webmasters avoid them, it would seem that the obvious first step is define what constitutes a "paid link." But rather than offering such a definition, or at least some clear guidelines, Google seems content to remain silent while Matt drops hints and spreads FUD.

It's also very troubling that, while no precise definition has been offered, the only "paid links" Matt seems to be concerned about are the cheap ones. Buying links for a few hundred dollars (through TextLinkAds, PayPerPost, ReviewMe, etc) is bad. But links gained through multi-million dollar corporate partnerships are okay.

Currently there's a live link to Google at the bottom of every page of Adobe.com. Are we to believe that this is simply an editorial endorsement of Google by Adobe, and that it has nothing to with the partnership between the two companies? That would be an odd coincidence, since Google's ubiquitous presence on Adobe.com began in in May of 2006, just a month before the announcement of an agreement to distribute Google's toolbar with Adobe software (terms of the deal were undisclosed).

Maybe trading links for financial compensation is okay if it part of some larger business dealing? What about a more clear cut case? Andy says:

Companies are allowed to buy links from the Yahoo directory, which is well known to confer a large amount of trust to a domain, and has been propping up Google's algorithms for years. Will we soon see Google state that the Yahoo directory should be made nofollow for all paid inclusions? Matt Cutts has previously stated that the Yahoo directory is OK because there is editorial review.

So it's alright for Yahoo to sell links because of their "editorial review." Certainly the paid reviews that Andy submitted to the webspam team required much more editorial review than the Yahoo directory can afford to give to the many sites it receives, so if Google's stance on the value of "editorial review" is consistent, Andy should be in the clear.

But then, Matt Cutts doesn't speak for Google, according to his blog's disclaimer, so we're left to wonder about Google's official stance on "paid links." Hopefully, some day soon they'll tell us plainly, rather than making us read between the lines of their employee's personal blog. Is that too much to ask from the company that pledged to "Do No Evil?"

Anchor Text Matters

Kevin Henney — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 14:19:01 -0700

How much thought do you give to the anchor text used on your blog or web site? I'm not talking about the anchor text of your incoming links, but the anchor text you use in every post to link out to your fellow bloggers.

All of us are guilty, from time to time, of being lazy with our anchor text. Using descriptive words in your links can actually have many benefits for your readers, your peers, and the search engines. When your anchor text accurately describes the resource you're linking to:

Your readers gain a better idea of what they'll see when they follow the link.
The sites you link to may get better search engine rankings (and thus more targeted traffic) for the keywords used in your links.
Search engines can use your anchor text to better understand what the site or page you link to is really about.

Still, many of us construct our links with less descriptive text such as names (of people and companies), post titles, and generic terms. For example, it's common to use a company name as the link to their web site, such as:

My friend Josh runs Wavefront Web Design, a Half Moon Bay web design company ...

That's certainly an accurate use of anchor text, but it doesn't really give the reader (or the search engines) much information about the site we're linking to. What if we use the description of the site as the link, rather than the company name:

My friend Josh runs Wavefront Web Design, a Half Moon Bay web design company ...

Now we've given our readers a bit more information about the site on the other end of the link, and we've helped the search engines understand what the site is about.

Linking with post titles can also be problematic, especially when when titles are written more to arouse curiosity than to be descriptive.

Check out this great post from Rob Watts called "What’s your tumbleweed ratio?", about using comment counts to measure the success of your blog posts ...

That sentence tells you what the post is about, but not until you've already read past the link. And the title, while it may make you curious, doesn't really tell you anything about what you're going to see on the other end of the link. How about this instead:

Check out this great post from Rob Watts about using comment counts to measure the success of your blog posts ...

The second version conveys the same basic information to the reader, but the new choice of anchor text will help search engines understand what the post is really about. I doubt many people have ever typed "Tumbleweed ratio" into a search engine, but there are probably some people looking for a way to measure their blog's success. Your choice of anchor text can help the search engines return more relevant results, which benefits both searchers and the blogs you're linking to.

The best anchor text simply describes the target of your link accurately. It's usually easy to describe a specific blog post in a few words, but it can be a bit more difficult when you're linking to the front page of a web site that may cover a variety of subjects. Sometimes you may want a little help in choosing your anchor text.

Francesco Mapelli suggests asking bloggers for their anchor text preference. It sounds like an effective tactic, but it's not always practical. I actually sent an email to Francesco to ask what anchor text he prefers, but it must have gotten eaten by his spam filter. Fortunately, most web sites contain very obvious clues to the keywords they're focused on.

Just by looking at the title tags on his blog's front page, I can guess that Francesco would appreciate "blogging tips" as the anchor text when linking to his blog. Similarly, a glance at my front page would reveal that I'm partial to "california web design" for links to the front page. But the best anchor text is your own concise description of the resource you're linking to. It's helpful to your readers and beneficial to the recipient of the link.

Just something to think about the next time you link to another site.

Top Commentators (kinda) Works

Kevin Henney — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 23:48:26 -0700

It's been one month since I added the top commentators links to the sidebar, and it clearly impacted the number of comments on this blog. Despite my less-than-prolific output lately (only 3 posts in the month of March), there were 3 times as many comments in the past month as in any previous month.

There's no doubt in my mind that the top commentators contributed to the increase. Why?

14 visitors found this blog via a search for the phrase "top commentators", about half of these immediately left one or more comments.
6 visitors left multiple comments in quick succession (usually exactly the number needed to get a link in the sidebar)

So if you want to increase the number of comments on your own blog, adding links to the top commentators is definitely worthwhile. If you're more interested in rewarding your existing audience and don't want folks commenting just for the links, I suggest titling your links with something other than "top commentators" and don't mention that phrase anywhere on your site - that way link hunters won't find you on Google.

Regardless of motivation, most of the comments were at least topical and showed that the commenter had read the post, so I don't mind if they were driven by the desire for a free PR5 link. Especially given my lackluster posting schedule last month - at least someone was adding new content here ; )

Oops! Learning from the Mistakes of Others

Kevin Henney — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 10:47:55 -0700

It's great to learn from your mistakes, but it's even better when you can learn from the mistakes of others. Here (in no particular order) are 47 posts from bloggers who share their blogging mistakes, and what they've done to correct them:

I Almost Ruined Everything by Annie
Mr. Frisky Retreats with his Tail Between his Legs by Rory
My Biggest Blogging Mistake is not Updating Often Enough by Julian
Lack of Persistence by Blake
The Ad King by Jason
The Biggest Blogging Mistake I did was not Blogging by Francesco
Copying, Mimicking, Duplication by Paper Bull
Don't Ignore the Basics of SEO by Simonne
Lack of Predictability on Your Posts by Roberto
5 Things I Regret About March by Bill
Should've Gone WP Yesterday! by Jimbo
DYH isn't perfect? by Cory O'Brien
Not Commenting Enough on other People's Blogs by Somu
Why Blogs and Blogging Will Ruin your Self Discipline by Dave
Don't Underestimate the Commitment by Andrew
Delete Your First Blog Post by Mark Alves
Don't Handle Important Matters Lightly by Amanda
How to Not Run a Contest by Robert
Move to your Own Domain Now by Gaurav
Starting Too Many Blogs by Mohammed
Common Blogging Mistakes by Vijay
I should have included media contents by Madhur
Failing to Realize the Importance of Relationships with Readers by Ronald
Always Install Wordpress on the Root Diretory by Daniel
Careful on How You Tag your Posts by Shankar
Why this Blog Looks this Way by Ben
Not Having Drafts Saved for Rainy Days by Inspirationbit
Don't Forget to Use Blog Carnivals by Andrea
A Star for a day. What I learned by Clever Dude
Don't Change the Name by Denise
What is Wrong with my Blog. An Honest Self-Assessment by Bret
My Blogging Mistake: Too Many Blogs by Green Llama
A Clear Point of View is Crucial to Increase your Blog Traffic by George
My Biggest Blogging Mistake: Posting Frequency by Chris
Internet Explorer vs. Firefox Issues by Mark Paddock
What to Do When You don't Have Anything to Say by Philip Liu
My Blogging Mistakes and Their Outcome by Thilak
Get your Own Domain and Wordpress for your Blog by Andrew Flusche
Be Careful how you Choose your Domain Name by Calvin
Don't Make the Mistake of Monetizing your Blog Too Early by Maki
Spending Too Much Time Link-Begging by David Paul
Use a Smart Permalink Structure on your Blog by Leftblank
Why you Should Own your Domain Name by Engtech
Trying to Promote my Blog without enough Traffic by Nathan
Leaving the Amateur League of Blogging: the Hosting Lesson by Rene
Your Blog Will Perish for Lack of Vision by Shawn
Learning from Mistakes: Opening Links in New Windows by Nirmal

Whether you've been blogging for years or just started today, you're bound to learn something from such a variety of stories, or at least be reminded of some tips you've forgotten. Visit, comment, and enjoy.

The Need for Feeds

Kevin Henney — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 20:27:56 -0700

One of my earliest blogging mistakes was underestimating the importance of RSS feeds, both for readers and for my own sanity. I'd never used a feed reader, and I didn't know anyone who had.

Having never subscribed to a feed myself, I did nothing to promote my own feed - it was practically invisible. Fortunately I soon saw the light. Building a base of feed subscribers can have many benefits:

Visitors who subscribe are making a commitment to read your future posts.
Subscribers aren't just passive readers - they're taking action to subscribe and they're likely to take action in the future to comment or link to your posts.
Subscribers are less impacted by your posting frequency - they get your latest as soon as you post it, and they're not checking back daily to see if you've posted anything new.

Make your feed address a prominent part of your blog, and offer email subscriptions as well for those who haven't discovered RSS (FeedBurner makes this easy). Also, offer full feeds. Darren Rowse of ProBlogger recently found that partial feeds were one of the top reasons users unsubscribe. Don't worry that you'll lose a few page views - regular, committed readers are far more important to your blog's success.

And if you're still not using a feed reader yourself, you should seriously consider it. It may take a while to get used to it, but your productivity will soar and you'll be able track many more blogs than you ever could with a list of bookmarks.

This is my contribution to the “Blogging Mistakes” project from Daily Blog Tips. I'll be posting links to all the other tips soon, so watch this space.

You Don't Need a Professional Web Designer

Kevin Henney — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 17:29:46 -0800

At least according to BusinessWeek. They're running an article called No Geeks Required, all about how small business owners can realize big savings by designing their own websites. They claim that "a variety of services make it easy for the tech-impaired and time-challenged to get a site up and running," and then go on to profile 3 business owners who've had success with these services.

It's interesting that BusinessWeek neglected to link to any of the self-made sites that they profile, and I took the time to track them down and have a look. Normally, I don't use this space to critique anyone else's work. But since the creators of these sites are not professional designers, and they're claiming in an widely read magazine that my profession is unnecessary and overpriced, I'm going to consider them fair game. Lets take a look.

Wow! Imports

According to the article, the owner of Wow! Imports used a do-it-yourself service at Register.com to create her site. "I stayed up all night cutting and pasting and did the whole thing in two days", she says. Take a look at what two sleepless nights can produce.

Clearly the work of an amateur, but not too bad. The pink-gray gradients are "interesting", though the header and footer seem to be completely divorced from one another, separated by a sea of empty space. I actually hit refresh and then tried a different browser, because it felt like there was a background image that wasn't loading, but it appears to be done that way "by design". The company name in the header is just plain text, instead of incorporating the logo which appears elsewhere (the logo is also a do-it-yourself design, I assume). Visually, it's unimpressive, but of course that's largely a matter of taste. Taste, though, is one of those intangible things that a professional brings to a design.

Beyond the visual appearance, other problems lurk. The pages carry non-descriptive names such as "page2.html" and are needlessly buried in a subdirectory. The page titles, largely identical across the site, are ridiculously long and stuffed with keywords. For example, the front page title contains 33 words and is 228 characters long. The products page has almost all of it's text hidden within image files. None of these things are helping the site on the search engines, and the spammy title tags may even be hurtful.

Dream a Little Dream Events

Next up is Dream a Little Dream Events, created with software from Homestead. The owner originally tried out the site builder at Register.com but found that "everything looked weird".

I wasn't surprised to find this the most visually appealing site. A company that plans weddings and designs invitations should be expected to have an eye for design, and the site is tastefully put together. There's an odd use of white space at the top of the front page, and a few alignment issues, but that's forgivable - these are amateur sites we're talking about.

Once you get past the visual aspects, the site doesn't hold up so well. The navigation is done with javascript, which is bound to cause problems for search engine spiders. This probably explains the fact that the front page has a Google Page Rank of 3, while most of the internal pages haven't even been indexed. If I could only fix one thing on this site, this would be it. Search engines can't send visitors to your site if they can't crawl it.

There's also a problem with the images on the site. Large images are used, with the scaling left to the browser. This causes larger pages, longer download times, and badly rendered images (most browsers are terrible at image scaling). Beyond the on-site images, there are photo galleries hosted with a different service on a separate domain. The galleries have a different design and no link back to the primary web site, and no contact information for the company. If a visitor finds the company via the photo gallery pages, they have no way to find the actual company site without resorting to a search engine.

Parking Padding Solutions

Finally, we have Parking Padding Solutions, created with Microsoft's Office Live. This is also a second attempt, after the first try with Yahoo produced a site that "wasn't as professional-looking".

This site manages to avoids most of the structural problems of the other two, so it appears to be well indexed by the search engines. Visually, though, it falls far short of the "professional-looking" image the site owner was going for. The logo and graphics are clearly amateur. Every element on the page seems to have a border applied, which only accentuates the lack of padding in some table cells. Viewed the Firefox, the design falls apart, producing horizontal scrollbars no matter how large the browser window is. In Internet Explorer, the right side of the page is cut off for users with a screen resolution less than 1280 pixels wide. I suppose that's fine if your target market is people with huge monitors.

Professional Design Matters

Despite their problems, all three websites are largely functional, and I have to applaud the efforts of the do-it-yourself designers. I only want to point out that you do get what you pay for, and that all of these low cost sites contain problems that a professional would know how to solve. Further, these sites were selected by BusinessWeek as examples of successful DIY sites, we're not hearing from those who have given up in frustration.

Although all 3 site builders are apparently satisfied with the fruits of their efforts, I believe that these are examples of businesses that have succeeded in spite of their websites, not because of them. How many potential customers didn't get in touch because the site looked unprofessional? Or because it wouldn't work in their web browser? How many clients never even found them because their pages weren't indexed by Google?

A note to the owners of the sites discussed: Please understand that my analysis of your sites is not intended to be mean-spirited. I merely feel that the BusinessWeek article you were interviewed for was one-sided and failed to present a serious critique of the low-cost services it featured. If you're interested in seeing what a professional can do for your sites, please get in touch. I'll fix your current problems, free of charge, no strings attached. It's just my way of saying thanks for being a good sport.