1. People are talking about you online. Not all of them are saying nice things.
2. Nobody can "just call Google" and have them remove negative mentions of you or your company on other websites.
3. Facebook and Twitter might be free, but building an audience takes time, energy and persistence.
4. You don’t need to squat 279 website domain names. It’s expensive and confusing.
5. Don’t be afraid to put your client list on your website. Your competition already knows who’s on it. Be confident you are servicing them better than the competition ever could.
6. Don’t be afraid to put your management/employee list on your website. Your competition already knows who’s on it. Be confident you are treating them better than the competition ever could.
7. No CMS magically makes you a designer. It’s still HTML, and you can still screw it up.
8. Websites typically don’t just “stop working”. If your junior IT guy was in there monkeying around and broke something, we aren’t going to be mad, but we do need to know or we can’t fix it.
9. It’s like a house; the price changes based on how big and how nice.
10. It’s like a house; once it’s built, a change means more time (and likely money) is needed to do something different.
11. It’s like a house; if the deadline is January 1st you can’t wait until December 31st to approve the blueprints and expect to finish on time.
12. Don’t require users to fill out a form to access your content. Your users don’t want it that bad and your competitors are just going to enter fake data.
13. You can’t keep me from stealing your images. Turn the right click back on.
14. You can’t tell somebody everything at once, so stop trying. Slow down and focus on what really matters.
15. You can’t force people to stay on your site. If you want them to stay, give them a good reason to. No, opening external links in new windows is not a reason.
16. Your site has to have content.
17. Your site has to have good content before other people will link to it.
18. You can’t steal that content from other people.
19. Good content is hard work. Hire a content strategist and copywriter.
20. Use straightforward, meaningful, real words in your content. Nobody knows what it means to “synergize core competencies through proactive dialogue” (nor are they searching for that).
21. It’s okay for a page to scroll. Honestly, if Target.com isn’t worried about it, neither should you be.
22. Make the logo smaller. Big logos don’t mean people will remember you. It means you have a logo that’s too big.
23. I don’t care what your print designer is telling you…If you don’t make the link look like a link; people won’t know they can click it.
24. Don’t ever tell a designer to “make it pop”. It’s not helpful feedback and they’ll be secretly wishing that you stub all of your toes later.

Aztek is a Cleveland, Ohio based web design firm who sincerely hopes you appreciate that we are only using humor as a vehicle to illustrate our points. But seriously, don't make the logo bigger.

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14 years ago today, Aztek was born.

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