What’s the hold up? Why your website development might be sloooowwwww….

I must confess that I have a pretty awesome list of clients.

We work well together and always create functional sites that look good and grow business. Sometimes however, there can be issues that disrupt that client relationship and we both need to work a little harder to see the job through to the end.

One of the main problems in the development of a site can be the timeline from when a client accepts the quote to the actual upload of the final website. Invariably, as with any project, there can be issues that can slow down the entire process and hold things up. And if you are “chomping at the bit” to get that site online, it can sometimes feel like your designer is dragging their feet. But it often comes down to issues that are out of their control.

To give potential site owners an idea of the problems that can pop up from time to time, let’s take a look at some of the “little” issues that can hold up the release of a website.

Domain Name Issues

If you have already purchased a domain name and are transferring it over to the technical control of your designer, there are a number of steps to be followed, all of which can hold things up. Some of these can take up to 48 hours to take effect even after they have been implemented.

Even once the required changes to the settings behind a domain name, it can still take another couple of days for those changes to “bounce” around the web and become official.

ARRRGGHHHH for all parties involved – drives me nuts sometimes!

Server Hold-ups

I won’t list company names in this section but if you were using my services, it would be my job as your developer to steer you right away from some of the largest web server providers in Australia. From past experience, I can guarantee that the biggest holdups in site development can be caused by these providers.

Some are so fernickety about their servers that, even after a customer has purchased server space; they cannot make any changes online with submitting a customer service ticket. These often take up to a week to get any action taken and some even demand that the customer must give a reason for the change (What? – it’s my server space – I have paid for it!!!)

If some of these guys need to be contact via phone, you will always be routed through the Philippines or India. Not a great situation when you need something done straight away.

Google

Once a site is complete, some customers hold the false notion that it will automatically appear on Google. Unfortunately, sites need to be submitted / indexed by Google before they will appear on the search results. Although there are tricks to expedite this delay (I have a nifty trick…) – in the end, it is completely out of your developer’s hands and into the realm of the Google Gods….

On-Site Issues

Another hold-up in the completion of a new site is the creation of the content for the site. This generally will not be done by your web developer and some customers have not read the fine print to find this out.

If you don’t want to write your content or you feel that you can’t produce the quality you want, get in a touch with a copywriter. They can take dot points for each page and create fully written paragraphs for placement on your site.

Despite the potential for the issues above to arise, the road to a website is more often than not smooth sailing if you have the right web developer “on the job.” They will be able to foresee the problems above and build waiting time for various parts of the process into the overall plan.

How do you find this developer I hear you ask? Quite simple really, just ask around. Find some sites in your local area that have been well designed and contact those business owners for the details. You can check client testimonials on various developers’ sites too but take these with a grain of salt, no developer will ever post negative comments on their own services for the general public to see.

If you have any questions about the issues above or you want to talk to someone who navigates these murky waters on a regular basis, give the team at Tropical Coast Web Design a call on 0488 406 050 – we’d be glad to help.