The High Cost of Free Web Sites

A few years ago there was a funny commercial on TV featuring the owner of a small barber shop. Across the street from his shop, a large chain “super cheap cuts” was moving in and offering $6 haircuts. Naturally, the barber was concerned because he could not compete with such low-pricing. However, being a small-business “survivor”, he got the idea to print a banner which read “We Fix $6 Hair Cuts”. Eventually, the “super cheap cuts” went out of business.

It was a funny commercial with a happy ending. However, the TV commercial highlighted a common strategy used by big-business. Large companies will often underprice a product or service with the goal of grabbing other related business at full-price (or higher than average cost).

I’ve seen this same trend with web development. Large technology companies are offering free (or nearly free) web sites in order to grab related services such as hosting, SEO, domain names, software sales, tax services, and a variety of other things.

Unfortunately, there is a high cost to these “free” web sites. We’re now seeing new clients come to us as refugees from the “free web site” world. Here are some of the damaging effects of turning your web presence over to a “freebie” web provider:

1. No Identity: A free web site is a “template” site which will look exactly like the 10,000 other businesses that have used the same template. There will be no brand identity.

2. No Service or Support: A free web site often has little or no customer service and support. We’ve commonly seen people unable to get simple updates posted to their web sites.

3. No Reliability: Freebie web sites are often “down” or offline. Companies that host free web sites will load as many sites on a single server as possible to control costs. When too much traffic overloads the server, all of the sites on that server will go offline. This is similar to loading too many people onto a small row boat. The boat is going to sink.

4. No Control: In many cases, domain name control is in the hands of the company offering the “free” web site. If a business wants to move to a new provider, they must leave their domain name behind and find a new one. This is the same as starting over in the web world.

5. No Search/Visibility: We’ve seen many sites virtually “disappear” from Google because a business moved its site to a “free” provider and no search optimization was performed. Alternately, we’ve seen businesses forced to pay huge SEO fees once the site has been transferred to the “free” provider in order to keep their rankings.

All of these translate into loss of opportunity, which equals loss of business, which equals loss of revenue. This is the high cost of “free”.

In today’s technology-driven world where nearly everyone carries the web on their smart phones, your web presence is more important than ever. Turning your web site over to a “free” web site provider is similar to getting a cheap haircut. It might be cheap or free, but in the end, your business will look bad. And unlike a cheap haircut, business will not grow back in a few weeks.

Nightmare on Main Street - How a single hacker can end your business forever

by Steve Bowers

Have you ever wished you “could have” gazed into a crystal ball and seen a disastrous event before it occurred? With such knowledge you could have avoided that car accident, fire, missed opportunity, or…fill-in-the-blank.

If your business stores client or customer credit card data electronically, consider this your crystal-ball-warning. There could easily be a hacker in Russia, China, or your neighborhood who is trying to breach your systems right now.

In 2009 the estimated cost of identity theft to companies and consumers topped $54 Billion. Stopping identity theft is a major priority for credit card companies. Several years ago, the major card companies banded together to enact something called “PCI Compliance”. This cryptic and scary term is the name for an even scarier set of security standards that businesses of any size must follow if they touch credit card data in any way. Card companies use this compliance standard to judge the security of your business as it relates to their credit cards.

Here’s the nightmare story. The ACME Widget Company (fake name) was a solid business producing some of the finest widgets in the country. The company was financially strong and had been a family owned enterprise since grandpa Acme started it after the war. Because ACME was an older company, its technology was somewhat “dated”. They had a good client base and often had recurring widget orders. This is why they made the fatal mistake of storing card data on their internal system. Acme also had a simple web site on which customers could place orders.

One dark and stormy night, a hacker compromised ACME’s system and obtained all of their customers’ credit card data. Eventually, the credit card companies traced the breach back to ACME. Based on the PCI Compliance standards, they fined ACME $50,000 per instance of stolen information. Unable to withstand the financial devastation wrought by these fines, the company was forced to close. And no one lived happily ever after (except the hacker).

Here are some tips you can use to avoid ACME’s fate:

· Don’t Touch It! - Never store customer credit card data in your own systems if you can avoid it. If you must store it, use an established and reputable card processing company to store the data for you. These card processors are experts at PCI Compliance and help shield you from liability.

· Don’t bargain shop your hosting! – If your systems are hosted on a server owned by a “guy you know” and his server resides in the data center known as: “his basement”... you are at risk. A reputable host will use a data center with multiple layers of security and which has been certified by various security authorities. I recommend a data center with a “SAS 70” certification at a minimum.

· Do your homework! – Learn the basics of PCI Compliance. Credit card companies will not allow you to use ignorance as an excuse (neither will the government). Google the term “PCI Compliance” to find a large list of varying resources.

Windows 7: Maybe the Best Ever

By Steve Bowers

Hi. My name is Steve and I’m a Microsoft fan. There. I said it and I’m not ashamed.

I’ve made my career using their products and everything our company produces is based on Uncle Bill’s technology. Even so, I was embarrassed by the initial versions of Vista. It was clearly released before it was “ready” and became a PR nightmare or the company whose software is estimated to run more than 90% of the business computing machines world-wide. Microsoft fixed most of the early problems with service-packs, but the damage was done.

As a result, over the last 4 years Apple has enjoyed a slightly increased share of the Market despite inferior hardware (plus they’ve produced those commercials that make my blood boil).

However, Microsoft is now staging a huge come-back with Windows 7. A few days after it was released to the public, we installed Windows 7 on one of our older machines in our development office. The guinea pig pc is 5 years old and has no special hardware. Here’s the verdict. Windows 7 installed with 0 problems. It was the simplest and most problem-free install of an operating system I’ve ever performed.

To make sure it wasn’t a fluke, I decided to install Windows 7 on my trusty lap-top that I use every single day of my life. Lap-tops, as you may know, can be tricky to “rebuild”. They have all kinds of special drivers that can be a problem if not handled correctly. I wiped the system clean and installed Windows 7 from the ground-up. Not only did Windows 7 install perfectly, it has improved the performance of my lap-top’s power management and battery saving features.
If you want another opinion, look at this. PC Magazine said this of Windows 7: “It's far and away the best OS we've ever seen from Microsoft. “ Here’s a link to their full review:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2348899,00.asp

That is high praise indeed.