Is it right for a webmaster to decide who gets to see your website?  If you own a business and want earn more customers though your web presence, and someone was able to effectively cut your customers off from you, whould you be mad?

In todays market that would be suicide for your business.  If you don’t have a contract with your web hosting company, and your webmaster, about this you could be in trouble.  Most people don’t understand that the webmaster has access to the server your are hosted on, and can ban I.P.s from accessing your web site.  In a normal world this would be bad business.  There are webmasters that do this, because they are not happy with an individual or company, or are scared of the compition.  So scared, in fact, that they start cutting of access to YOUR website so THEIRcompition can’t see you.

As they start cutting off I.P.s, one mistake and they can cut off whole ISPs, there by cutting off ALL the potential customers being serviced by that ISP.

How do I stop this?

This is the easy part.  Make sure you have a contract to safe guard your business interests in this matter.  That simple.

Most webmasters have enough ethics, not to do such things, but some don’t.  Better to be on the safe side, and make sure.

Shannon Smith

SilverFlame Designs

Tampa Website Design

I think this asks it all!  As a small business owner, you need to be Very customer related.  Are you?

We have all fallen into the routine of making or web site copy geared toward selling ourselfs and our product.  While this in itself is not a bad thing, we tend to forget the customer in this.  They are why we are here!  We need to tell them how we can help them solve that pesky little problem of thiers.

I myself realized I was doing just what I preach against.  My website SilverFlame Designs is being re-worked as I type this to re-align the content to focus on my customers, and how I can help them with thier problems, not push for their business. 

“WHAT!” you say? “Don’t you want business?  You need to sell product to live!” True enough, I do.  First I have to help my customers understand what it is they need, and how I am able to help them get it.  Sometimes all they need is a push in the right direction, not a 1/2 hour long sales pitch.  I’ll bet my last nickel that if I help a customer get something that helps them, they will be back when they need something again to see what help I can give them.  This time it will be a service I DO provide.

 I have serveral customers like this already.  They come back and ask questions all the time, and I answer the best I can, or turn them on to someone that can answer better.  They ALWAYS remember this, and pass my name along to that “friend” that needs my services.

The end comment I have on this is an “Old Saying”  “What goes around, comes around” or better yet “you have to give, before you can get.”

CSS techniques I use all the time | The Montoya Herald this is a real good look at some of the problems with CSS and how to address them.