Health & Safety in the Webspace

On my (now) regular morning flounce into work I adroitly negotiate my way past all manner of obstacles – the main street traffic, the weather-worn back alley prophylactic, and the clouds of pre-work smokers. But, this morning I had to make my way round a couple of roofers attending to their business on a building next to Subway on Market St.

Having been on a site or two in my time I’m well aware of certain health and safety measures. The most basic being, when working above the general public you have to cordon off an area so they aren’t walking under ladders or, to be more precise, walking into them.

Invariably this means wrapping yellow tape marked ‘caution’ round the base of your ladders, the nearest lamp post and a handy fire hydrant.

Now these two roofers on market street had managed to redirect pedestrian traffic from going underneath their ladders to ensure a taught balancing act on the sidewalk edge was in order. Failure to keep said balance would result in a head to head showdown with oncoming traffic.

And most certain death. Genius.

Thankfully, my new T’ai Chi balance saved the day.

This is what we’re in the business of doing at Direct Online Marketing. No, not dubious health and safety implementation that often proves to be less safe than the alternative, but helping repair or build extra bits to your common or garden Web presence.

Many sites we come across, both big and small, all suffer from a lack of or bad development. They have poor architecture and are difficult to navigate. They read atrociously or lack content altogether, and they haven’t been optimized to help them be found in search engines.

This obviously means they aren’t converting as well as they might.

It always makes sense to get your head round this from the very beginning as it becomes more difficult to plan and budget for a full rework further down the line. After all, if your site isn’t bringing in the money then why allocate more cost to it, right?

But, a Web presence is an ongoing and evolving process. It isn’t the same as patching up a leaking roof or replacing the shingles (do you people have shingles?). Your Web presence needs to evolve as the Web evolves.

And, more importantly, exponentially as Web users evolve and mature.

The most successful on the Web are proactive as opposed to reactive.

Not only do they build their roofs with longevity in mind, but they also do any maintenance when users won’t notice.

Not at the beginning of rush hour.