Is your website or your business website - old and out of touch?

There are many great changes that are taking place online right now. This is particularly true when you are trying to reach and sell to potential customers who are up-to-date with new technologies and ways of using the web. We are certain that many of you are aware of the lessons that perhaps your father, grandfather and or uncle may have taught you "If it isn't broke, don't fix it." This unfortunately has many small business owners, perhaps you are one of them, having a hard time of seeing the value of their website be redesigned.

If you are not staying up on technology and the ongoing moving target of the Internet as a business platform, you’re not likely to know intuitively if your site needs a redesign. As a small business owner, we here at Fast Reliable Hosting know that you are concerned about the up-front costs of a website redesign. But once you understand how a redesign can help you drive traffic to your site, convert more users and even save money, you’ll feel more positive about making the investment in your business.

Not long ago, in a galaxy far far away... Many of us used typewriters (a typewriter is a device with a set of keys that when pressed caused characters to be printed on paper) along with the U.S. mail as a means to send/receive business documents.  Later in years, the invention of the computer and printer along with software technology called Word Processing, quickly replaced the typewriter. This technology allowed many documents to be printed quicker, easier and with more finesse. However; businesses quickly found that they now wanted to get these newly created documents into the hands of their clients quicker than the U.S. mail could provide. Businesses soon would have an answer to their dilemma. 

 The Fax Machine arrives.

For the past several years, the fax machine was the best way to deliver business documents fast. And now today, even as you read this article, the fax machine is being replaced because businesses are finding it so much easier to scan their documents and with the push of a button, send that document instantly to one or more individuals, businesses VIA email riding on the World Wide Web. With the use of the Internet and email, recipients of these documents, created with a Word Processor and or scanned, can choose to read and perhaps even archive the message and its content for later use all online at and at their own personal computer, they can even print it out themselves on their own printer.

Why did we bring all of that up? - Simple... The original HTML and Table based websites are like the fax machine and the typewriter - technology that has seen its prime and is now ready to be retired.

Over the years, we have seen many consumers with limited product or service options as well as little prior knowledge and experience of the latest technology, and what that new technology can do for them, come to simply rely on what is given to them by their original "Old School" HTML Table designer. This is not doing you the customer justice.

In early day of the Internet, Tables were the best way, if not the only way to display information on the Web. But like the fax machine and typewriter, Tables technology left something to be more desired by many users of the Internet. The clean, professional and creative layouts that you see in many of today’s websites, are created with Cascading Style Sheets and these new layouts could never be achieved with original HTML and Tables alone.

The use of Cascading Style Sheets allows designers to separate their presentation elements of a website from its content. CSS allows web designers to format a layout as well as a style (fonts, spacing, text size, color, etc) of  multiple web pages using only one file, rather than entering the content and code on each individual page. Thus making changes to styles and layouts a lot quicker and easier with CSS as well, as updating one file “deploys/cascades” the changes to every page on the site. Using the CSS format provides a lot less room for error, and the website will always maintain a professional consistency, which is very important, especially when you are having the web site and the Internet portray you, your products and most importantly your business image.

We here at Fast Reliable Hosting are not the only ones who benefit from CSS technology. You as our customer and you as a business owner benefit even more!

 So is it bad to use Tables?

No, We are not saying that at all. There are many good reasons to use tables to display certain types of content. However; the beauty about CSS is that you still can use tables when you need to, but you don’t need to use tables for everything which significantly reduces the time it takes for website pages to load.

Now, if you’re already using CSS, there may be other ways your business could benefit from a website redesign such as driving more traffic to you, improving your customers and visitors experience, making your website more accessible to users, such as offering them the option to subscribe to news feeds or even have the site and or content delivered to be displayed correctly on a mobile device, such as a cell phone or PDA. In the long run you can even save save time and money on  updates, which makes deploying CSS a sound investment.

Whether you choose to redesign your site now or in the near future, make sure to choose a design company that is not only skilled in the use of CSS technology but most importantly one that will always place you and your companies interests and needs before their own interests and needs.

In the end, we are confident that you will choose Fast Reliable Hosting for all of your technical solutions.