"Add This" book marking feature

To encourage return visits to a website, many people (including myself) have a 'Bookmark this page' or 'Add to favourites' feature. The rationale is that if a visitor finds your site, or a particular page, interesting, they will add it to their bookmarks or favourites list. The way this is shown on a webpage could be just plain text or a simple button.

However, there are two problems:

• The first issue with this simple approach is that – unless you can do some smart 'javascript' coding - each page needed its own specific code.
• The second relates to the growing popularity of 'social book marking' sites (see below for an explanation), each of which have different requirements. This led to many sites having a plethora of buttons; one for each service.

Social book marking sites are websites that store for you your list of favourite websites and pages. You do need to join the service (most are free) so that you have an account which holds the details. The features or approach differs but typically you can add a webpage, comment on it, see how popular that page is, who else has bookmarked it, share bookmarks with a friend – the list of options goes on.

Examples of such sites include: Del.icio.us, Digg, Facebook, Furl, StumbleUpon, Twitter…

"Add This" is a recent service, currently free, that is designed to overcome these issues. They provide a single button that can be used throughout your website which, when clicked, provides a list of all the major social book marking sites. The website visitor then selects the service they require. This list also includes the standard 'add to favourites' option. I have changed my book marking method on all my websites to use "Add This".

In addition, if you provide RSS feeds, you can get a similar button that works with feed readers. And, as a bonus, they also provide a simple report showing which pages have been bookmarked with which service. Below is an example report from one of my accounts:




You need to register with "Add This" to use the features. Once registered, the service provides some 'javascript' code that gets incorporated on each page of your website. If you can maintain the HTML side of your website, it is a simple matter of copying and pasting the given code into an appropriate location, otherwise your web developer can do it for you.

You can see book marking and feed reader examples on my photography website www.pmstudios.co.uk/ and on the Computing and Photography blogs: http://smecomputing.blogspot.com/ and http://pmstudiosuk.blogspot.com/

AddThis can be seen at www.addthis.com

Who owns your website?

I am raising this as a topic because I am working with a client to regain ownership of his website – the web developer won’t let go. This was also an issue when I worked as an Opportunity Wales Advisor; we had several clients who had no access to their own website. In one instance the client had a shopping site and had to request that the web developer add new products, change prices etc.

What these web developers did not seem to realise is that it does not gain or keep customers, it loses them.

As Opportunity Wales advisors, we were not allowed to recommend or oppose any web developer; we had to be seen to be impartial. We were obliged to give the full list of developers to our clients and let them choose a shortlist. If they chose such a web developer, we would report to them our other clients’ experiences. In all cases they were removed from the shortlist. Now I am freelance, although I am still impartial, I can be more explicit about the reputation of some of these local web developers.

This was such an issue that when we put out invitation to tender to design a website, one of the conditions was that the client is the registered owner of the domain (the www. address) with the clients contact details, had full access to the website, and was supplied with a copy of the website on CD once it was completed.

This, the better developers were happy to do and they rarely lost a client. In the real world, a business relationship can break down or other factors come into play that requires the responsibility to change, so why make it difficult for the client?

In a rural location such as where I live and work, a lot of recommendation is by word-of-mouth, so you always want good things said about you. I have found that being open and honest with people and treating them fairly is the best business proposition. And should you do that extra bit for free, you can have them singing your praises…

Back to this current client – by the way he has no computer or internet experience. His website was originally developed by this person before he had any impartial advice from organisations such as Opportunity Wales. I got involved because the website was not working for him. I will not go into the details here, but the web developer proved unhelpful although we did get the ‘FTP’ ID and password from them – this enabled me to make the necessary changes to the website. But I could not change any other details such as the email forwarding (emails were going to the developer).

The domain and hosting recently came up for renewal. The developer wanted about 3 times the cost of that charged by another hosting company for this simple website. So the client said no, I have a friend who will look after this for me. The developer went ahead and renewed the domain anyway and still expected him to pay (but he hasn’t as yet).

Meanwhile, I created a new hosting account with another supplier and asked for a domain transfer. But the original developer has not relinquished control. So, today, I spent some time on the phone to the hosting and registration company to see what needs to be done. I have had to register with this supplier to create a new account, and then write a letter on behalf of the client. This I am posting to the client to sign then post onto the hosting company. They will then transfer the ownership to the new account, from which I can then gain control and give it to the client. In all probability I will continue to look after the site, but the client will have all the passwords and other information that is required.

The end result? The original developer has lost a client who will warn others of his experience. I have gained a client who will be happy to recommend me to others.

Time for a new site

I saw an interesting client this week. He works full time selling second-hand goods over the internet. The vast majority of his trade is through Amazon, the bulk of the rest through eBay.

He has a website, which was done by a friend when he fist set up business a couple of years ago. This was quite clever, for a cheap ‘get me started’ job. This website is basically a simple brochure site with one page, for the stock listing, being a wrapper around his presence at yet another web site. This other website is essentially a stock listing which in itself produces a couple of sales a week; his own site sells about one a week.

This client was looking to move forward with a more professional site that would improve his visibility on the web. With the large number of products that he sells, the solution demands a database driven site, so that any updates are automatically reflected in the website.

The difficulty with such sites is that the search engines have problems extracting data from the database. This was explained to the client, along with one or two ideas for a solution. This will give him a background of understanding when he negotiates with developers for his new website. Unfortunately, many developers do not understand such issues. I also covered with the client the basics of how to market the website.

He will need professional advice in specifying a website and analysing the results back from those developers quoting for the work. For this reason, I referred him to my colleagues on another project that is structured to assist businesses through this process.