Your website is an incredibly important component of your online marketing. While that may seem like a “well, duh” statement, there’s no shortage of poorly designed websites to make it worth saying again. First off, your company’s website may be the first (but hopefully not only) impression your brand gets to make on a potential customer.

What does your website say about you? Is it outdated, cluttered and unappealing? Or is it simple, streamlined and professional? Secondly, your off-site SEO is only as good as your site itself. You can invest the man hours into building an incredible portfolio of diverse, quality inbound links second to none, but if all those links lead visitors to a poorly designed site they’ll leave just as fast as they came. All your off-site SEO efforts go right out the window.

Developing a good website starts with one question: “Do I want to pay for it?”

There are hundreds upon thousands of free website templates for you to choose from when building your site. Some are great, and some should never see the light of day. Chances are you’ll have to sort through a lot of the latter before you find one that you can make work for your brand and site goals.

Pros of Free Website Templates

1. They’re free.

If you’re brand new business launching a brand new site, you may not have the budget for a professional, custom website design. Using a free template means you can allocate your limited budget elsewhere.

2. Plug and Play

Since free templates are ready-made, you can just drop your information in and launch it. There’s minimal backend work needed on your part. New domains need time to earn a trust factor with search engines. The sooner you get your site launched the more time you give yourself and your site to do so.

3. You can do it yourself

When you use a free template, you’re the designer. You can make changes at 2 AM if you feel like it – you call the shots.

Cons of Free Website Templates

1. Other sites look the same

The best free website templates get used a lot. You’re probably not the only one to stumble upon that certain perfect design for your site. There might be hundreds of sites that look just like it.

2. People can tell when it’s free

Most free templates don’t hide the fact that they’re free templates very well. Unless you do some serious editing to create a custom header and footer, most people can tell.

3. It might not mesh perfectly

Since the template wasn’t designed specifically for your site, you may not be able to create your ideal site.

If you decided you did want to pay for a custom website design, there’s no shortage of great web designers and developers willing to do the work for you, if you don’t have the skills.

Pros of Custom Website Designs

1. It’s whatever you want it to be

No need for compromise when developing a custom website. You can build it to look and feel however you want.

2. Accurately reflects your brand

You aren’t trying to fit a round peg into a square hole when you custom design your site. You are the only one with this design. Every aspect of that site is designed to reflect your brand and online goals. You can customize your site design to fit in with the rest of your Internet strategy.

3. You don’t have to worry about it

If you don’t know anything about web design and development, hiring a professional to do it for you lifts the burden off your shoulders so you can concentrate on other things.

Cons of Custom Website Designs

1. It can get expensive

Depending on skill level, a web designer or developer could charge you anywhere from $35 to $300 dollars an hour to build and maintain your site. Even if you just want to make small changes, it can get very costly very quickly.

2. Changes may take time

When you’re not the one handling the web design, you have to count on a 3^rd party to make the needed changes. Developments might not happen as quickly as you’d like.

There are pros and cons to both free templates and custom designs. You have to decide what makes sense for your business and your budget. New sites may want to stick with free templates until they have more wiggle room in their budget. Established brands might want to create a custom design to ensure their online and offline branding align properly. Whatever your reasons, just make sure you think it through before you go live!

The National Weather Service has issued a hurricane watch for various parts of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, including Northern Westchester, as Hurricane Irene makes its way towards the East Coast.

According to the alert, the storm could hit the area tomorrow night. “The worst conditions are likely late Saturday night into Sunday afternoon with increasing potential for damaging winds…flooding rains…and signficant coastal flooding across much of the region.”

In Bedford, the NWS forecast for Saturday night calls for a 100 percent chance of rain, with accumulations of about two to three inches and winds hitting as much as 46 mph. On Sunday, the chance of rain stays at 100 percent, with “tropical storm conditions possible.”  

Bedford Police Chief Williams Hayes says they are “reviewing all of our procedures and plans” and working together with the other town departments to ensure preparedness.

He urged residents to sign up for the recently reinstated Nixle alerts so as to receive notifications via text or email from the department with updates on road closures, accidents and more. You can sign up for the alerts by going to the town website or at www.nixle.com.

Hayes also suggested residents visit www.ready.gov and to “always have a plan.” Currently, information on important items to have on hand and safety tips can be found on the town’s website.

Officials from the town supervisor’s office says that if the situation is warranted, the Bedford Hills Community House would be opened in case of emergency. The public will be notified of this from the radio and updates posted on the town’s website.

Bill Heidepriem, the superintendent of parks and recreation for the town says the department has been hard at work preparing for the storm, clearing catch basins, putting away trash bins and taking various other measures to try and lessen the damage.

As of now, the pools will likely be open for at least part of the day on Saturday, according to Heidepriem. He says that they’ll be monitoring the situation throughout the day and then determine whether or not to close the pools. They will likely be closed on Sunday, he said.

As for the parks, they’re open as well, although Heidepriem noted that if necessary, the department would “barricade park access roads.”  

The American Red Cross also issued a “safety and prepardness checkist,” which can be found here and Westchester County is updating their website regularly with information on closures, outages and more, which can be found here. 

Protesters thwart home repossessions in Spain

‘Indignant ones’ mobilize through social media

An activist movement in Spain has turned its attention to blocking evictions, according to news reports.

Dubbed the “indignados” (Spanish for “indignant ones”), tens of thousands of protesters camped out in town squares in May to object to the government’s spending cuts and a 21 percent unemployment rate — the highest in the European Union. Since then, the protesters have turned their focus to preventing evictions of unemployed people who cannot afford their mortgage payments.

They organize using social networks such as Facebook and Twitter and gather in crowds outside of homes to prevent officials from delivering court orders for eviction.

Last week, about 200 activists helped an unemployed woman and her two adult children, one unemployed and the other disabled, avoid eviction. According to Reuters, the protesters have helped stave off evictions “in dozens of cases.”

In contrast to the U.S. and other European Union countries, banks in Spain may foreclose on a home and still collect on a certain percentage of the mortgage debt. One activist organization, the Madrid Mortgage Victims’ Forum, is asking the law be changed so that the debt is cleared upon foreclosure, in addition to other demands.

via inman.com