These days it’s hard to find a good web design agency that fits your needs and budget. There are so many aspects to web design and development it can often seem over-whelming. Sites range anywhere from a few hundred dollars for some small amateur site to well over six figures for a full blown custom production. With this wide price range it can be hard for clients to determine fair value for a site. The old saying usually rings true “you get what you pay for”, hiring your kid neighbor to build a web site for your company may not be the best way to watch the bottom line. You should hire a web design agency that professionally builds sites.

To correctly build a web site that looks good, converts, ranks well, and is easy to navigate requires lots of work. Much more goes into a site than what is on the screen. It’s important to clearly define the goals of the web site and get to the core of the message. You want to make clear what your business is about and what you offer; this is accomplished through good design and focused content.

There are hundreds of talented web design agencies, but if their particular style and core skill set does not fit your business objectives you may be better off elsewhere. Some agencies are great at programming and web development, if your site requires lots of dynamic content these types of companies are a good fit. If your business requires leads and potential customers you should look for a web marketing agency that can help with the business and consulting side. Some agencies specialize more on the creative side with lots of graphics and flash development. Some offer clean user friendly interfaces and search engine friendly design. Whatever your need is it is best to go with a web design agency who has a core skill set that aligns with your needs.

I’m sure many of you have heard of Square or Square Up by now. For those of you who haven’t it’s definitely worth taking a look at. I signed up a few months ago after I was at a GRAFF TOYZ event and someone wanted to purchase two of our boards but didn’t have any cash. I was unable to service that sale and lost out on the transaction. I had heard of Square prior to this but neglected to sign up at the time (I wish I had so I could of made that sale).

Basically Square allows you to swipe any credit card and accept payments right through your iPhone. If no card is present you can also key in the digits manually, or accept cash and keep track of the transaction that way. You do not need a merchant account. The service is free. There are no contracts to sign. It doesn’t get much better than this. With rates similar to PayPal and Google it’s another alternative for accepting payments and great for non-web transactions. The card reader or ‘Square’ is free. If you swipe the card it will cost you 15 cents plus 2.75% of the transaction cost. If you manually key in an order it will cost you 15 cents but 3.5%.

The ‘Square’ device simply plugs into your headphone jack and securely transmits the transaction through their iPhone app. Your account is not linked or attached to the device but through the app itself, meaning if the square is lost or stolen you won’t have to worry about any fraud against your account. The other advantage of that is the ability to log in and out of different accounts but use the same device – so you can charge a client for services under your business account, and then log into your personal account and charge your friend for those concert tickets you bought.

The app is very slick and simple to use. You can take a photo to accompany the order, the user ‘Signs’ on the screen which is kind of hard with your finger. An email receipt is sent to both parties along with a Google map location showing where the actual transaction took place.

I am hoping they will upgrade the app allowing you to switch between accounts with a simple click. Currently you have to log out and log in which may be cumbersome if you set different passwords for each account. I also hope they will come out with a web interface allowing transactions over the web as well. Currently you would have to use PayPal or Google Checkout for the web and Square for in person transactions, so it would be nice to be able to do everything through one place.

Check it out, sign up and let know what you think of it. I have done one test charge and two actual real transactions so far.

Today I was going through client websites and updating some basic seo information such as robot text and fixing canonicalization issues on my own time and I got to thinking.

Over the years I found myself always going back through my clients sites and making small minor improvements. Even if we were not paid to do regular maintenance on the sites and just did random updates when the client requested I would often go in free of charge and make minor improvements. Many times they are only things that probably I would notice. But those things over time help keep the site fresh and little improvements add up. The changes would be small graphical improvements, adding favicon logos, iphone bookmark logos, google analytics or improvements with cleaner code.

Clients would greatly appreciate this attention to detail which has enabled us to slowly grow our base of close clients. Often times a small improvement or doing that little extra thing is all it takes to set you apart.