Musicians' Websites
Is your website helping you or is it actually doing you harm?
6. How To Spot The Cowboys
So, when someone offers to take your money for building you a website, ask them if they hand-code the pages themselves.
If they reply that they use this wonderful programme which means you don't need to know how to write any of that boring HTML stuff, you're talking to a cowboy so take your money and your web requirements elsewhere.
(Or, if the wonderful programme really does make it that easy, why should you be giving them your money? Spend some of it on getting your own copy of the wonderful programme and do it yourself! You'll save yourself a small fortune!)
In admitting that they don't know how to write HTML, what they are actually telling you is the equivalent of a builder saying, "Oh, I don't need to know how to lay bricks to build your house - look at the lovely colour I painted the front door!"
Then ask them if they build sites which comply with the Disability Discrimination Act to make sure you won't find yourself being sued sometime in the future.
If they look puzzled, you're talking to an idiot so take your money and your web requirements elsewhere.
Or ask them how familiar they are with all the web usability research, or if they check their pages with the W3C validator.
If they look at you blankly as if you're speaking a foreign language, you're talking to a complete novice so take your money and your web requirements elsewhere.
Then ask them the bottom-line question - how they'll go about making sure the information on your site will be perfectly accessible on, say, a handheld mobile device or phone, and/or with a text-to-speech browser, and/or on a Unix box running Lynx.
They might try to tell you that this is only a small percentage of the people using the WWW. Excellent. That means you've only told a small percentage of your audience to piss off, that you don't want them buying your CDs or coming to your gigs. Only a small percentage, so no worries there then, eh?
The reality is this - if they say anything other than, "By building a fully standards-compliant site", you're talking to someone who is utterly clueless, probably beyond any hope of redemption - so take your money and run as fast as you can.