A Tangled Web

>>When Eli Fleishauer first attempted to develop a Web site for his business, Carbon Net, he made the mistake of choosing style over substance. He knew he had a hot idea—helping individuals and businesses reduce or offset their environmental impacts—and wanted to get the company’s name out. So he researched local Web designers and narrowed in on a Fort Myers company based on the attractiveness of its portfolio. He now knows he should have dug a little deeper.

For after months of phone calls, meetings and frustrations, the company still couldn’t produce the site that Fleishauer wanted, despite assurances to the contrary.

"The biggest mistake I made was picking the company I was going to use based on what I found online, rather than based on what I learned about them after I talked with them," he says. "The Web pages they had built previously were very beautiful, but not very technically deep. They seemed very genuinely to get what I was doing, but I don’t think they had the technical experience to do the more difficult aspects of what I was asking them to do."

With a half-finished Web site, Fleishauer searched for someone to complete the task. This time, he interviewed several companies. That led him to Bonita Springs-based Internet marketing and Web development firm Atilus, where he had a different experience.

"One of the greatest things about Atilus was that I got to meet everybody who was going to be involved in the process," he says. "They showed me, in that experience, that not only did they have technical skills to do it, but they knew better, cheaper and easier ways for me to do it."

Having a Web presence is a given for most companies. But when it comes to establishing that presence, companies have plenty of horror stories to share, ranging from embarrassing mistakes (like forking over money when they shouldn’t have) to stranger-than-fiction scenarios (like servers hijacked by terrorists).

Most people don’t understand the complexities of setting up a Web site; that’s why they hire someone. But that lack of understanding makes it hard to know if a Web developer is offering viable solutions or taking you for a ride. So here are some things to consider before signing on the dotted line.

Maintain Control. Make sure the domain name for your Web site is registered to your business, not the Web developer. If you don’t own the name, you can’t control what’s done with it.

Similarly, make sure you know who owns the completed Web site. "Under copyright law, whoever creates something is the owner of the copyright to it," says attorney Jeanne Seewald, a partner with Hahn Loeser & Parks LLP in Naples. "Unless in the contract the developer assigns the copyright to you, you don’t actually own it. That’s how the law works. So you want to be sure that even though you pay for it, you have language in the agreement that assigns ownership rights to you."

If not, you could run into trouble should you want to change hosts or make significant alterations to the site. In some cases, a Web developer could charge an intellectual property fee, which can depend on the amount of custom programming for the site.

Know What You Want. Do you want your Web site to serve basically as an online business card, or do you want to conduct sales or interact with customers? Do you want to start off simple but have the potential to expand? Those kinds of things should be discussed as you meet with Web developers.

"It’s always best to have a clear idea of ‘What does my Web site need to do?’" says Brian Yerkes, owner and creative director of local marketing and design firm Brian Joseph Studios. "A lot of Web design companies will build a site in a certain way that when you grow and want to add on, they might say they have to redo the whole site. You get stuck with extra costs you could have saved if you knew what you wanted in the beginning."

Do Your Homework. Get references and call them. And check out a Web developer’s portfolio online, looking for inactive links or sites that are significantly different than how the developer portrays them. "If the portfolio doesn’t send you to current, live sites, there’s something a little wrong there," Yerkes says.

Be aware of who is hosting your site, where the servers are, and what kinds of protections are in place in the event of natural disasters or other potential disruptions. "You never want your site hosted or designed by people in different time zones," says Jim Reid, chief development officer for EMCc Web Design in Fort Myers. "It just creates confusion."

Protect Yourself. Make sure the contract you enter into works to your advantage. Include deadlines, acceptable response times, confidentiality protections, and warranties that nothing on the site, like photos and graphics, will infringe on any copyrights. "You want to make sure you do have some representation of the kind of service you’ll get," Seewald says.

If all of the technicalities are too much for you to handle, get some help. "The best thing to do is to try to make sure you address these issues on the front end," Seewald says. "If you can afford it, have somebody review the contracts before you sign them."

Insist on Service. Through your interviews with Web developers and their past clients, you should be able to gauge a company’s level of customer service. Don’t settle for mediocrity. Once he switched to Atilus, Fleishauer got the help he needed when he needed it. "Not only did they really seem to genuinely get what I was trying to do, but they were interested in doing it," he says. "As we moved forward, they were calling me saying where we were, sending proofs, asking, ‘What do you think about this?’ Those are the things that really made the difference for me."