• 74.7 percent of surveyed websites lack an email link on their home page for consumers to contact the business.
• 65.7 percent of surveyed websites lack a form-fill option to enable consumers to request information.
• 93.3 percent of surveyed websites are not mobile compatible and will not render successfully on mobile devices or smartphones.

I don’t know about you, but that astonishes me! What is your website there for?

The chances are that your website cost you a lot of money. And yet, if people can’t get in touch with you, what’s the point? Why did you spend that money? Is it because you just don’t understand and had a website created because ‘that’s what companies do, these days’?

Did you listen to your web people? I admit that if you look at sites we have created you’ll find sites that all into the traps noted above and do you know why?

Simply because the client hasn’t taken our advice.

I built my first website in 1996. Since that time, I have worked on websites just about every day, seven days a week. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that I know what I’m doing by now? But nevertheless, I still come across clients who have an AOL email address and don’t even know how to use the address bar (let alone refresh their browsers) but somehow, they know more about websites than I do. Amazing.

They tell me things like that I should use metatag keywords for search engine optimization. (Not used by search engines since 2002). They tell me that the content on their site means nothing. They ask me to add their information as PDFs or (truly) Word documents. They tell me that no-one uses the web with their smartphone – and what is a smartphone anyway? They are just a teenage thing, aren’t they?

They tell me that social media is just a fad that ‘doesn’t work’. And again, it’s a teenage thing or for the geeks. When I tell them that my 87 year old dad has a Twitter account and that my 12 year old nieces are active on Pinterest, that’s just water off a duck’s back. (“And what is this Pinterest thing anyway? Another of these social media things?”)

Go ahead. You tell me how your website should be. Just don’t blame me when it doesn’t work for you.

As you know, I built my first website before Google was even invented so I’ve seen it change a lot over the years. One thing has remained constant though – even though the changes have been many – and that is the importance of words. In the bad old days, it was possible to build a website about,  for example, Italy and have it come up in search engines for Iceland.

It was all done by the use of images instead of text and metatag keywords. Very simple. Google was just a baby and easy to fool.

Google quickly realized this though, and before long, stopped paying attention to keywords that were embedded in the code of a site. Over the years it has improved and improved and become better at predicting what we’re looking for.

The most recent change was, of course, the social search which was brought into being a few months ago but this latest development is one that’s going to drive traditional search engine optimization ‘experts’ crazy.

For some time now, Google has ‘predicted’ what searchers are looking for – to some extent. See the screenshot. Result number one tells me when the next local sunrise is. The next, because Google knows where I’m located, is the city of Sunrise locally.

This is going to become even more so. Google’s new technology will ‘predict’ what you’re looking for when you search, in the way it does a little now.

This is going to be fun …

Miami Beach Body.

One of the galleries on Marco Andretti’s 2012 website.

More logo work for Valentino’s restaurant. One of many designs submitted.

SmartTutor brand.