The Ultimate Aviation Insurance Directory

• It is a long page of good material and half way down it the viewer decides he wants to get back up where he can see the menu and send you a inquiry for service or to he wants to go to another of your pages to read more on a special subject. On many sites he has to use his mouse on the navigation bars to the right of the page and push up. How much nicer for your client or prospect if there is frequent placing of a 'Go to Top' hot link. Just click and they are back at the start.
• First page too long. When your main page opens all the key information of what is on the site and the navigation should show right in the screen without any input by the viewer. On many sites the first screen was taken up by a logo or introductory information but the navigation or good lead-in material required paging down. The viewer does not see what is important and may not see how to get around your site so he leaves. Shorten up that first page and do the detail on later pages. Alternatively, make it so attractive to page down that the viewer does it intuitively.
• No 'Home" hot link. After getting into your site and on the sub pages the viewer should be able to easily return to the first and main page. There should be a hot link on every sub page to take him back. Presumably that first page has you best pitch on it and you are happy if he wants to look at it again. It may also contain important information he wants to review.
• For some reason some designers hide some of your sub pages! They don't put any links to them and they can only be found by some sort of site map search. Seems dumb to me to go to all the trouble of putting up a page with information and then making it hard to find.
• Site after site had links that did not work even links to navigate to other pages in the same site. The most common failure was the 'Home' link from a sub page. There you are deep into the site and want to get back to the Home page. Click and nothing happens or you get the dreaded '401, not found' page. Links should be checked regularly and there are even free internet sites that will check all the links on a page for you. One such is http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html
• Another Horror! Some sites think it is clever or sexy to change my cursor from its nice little arrow to a custom arrow or a toilet plunger (I think). This just makes viewers mad. They are used to their cursor for clicking around and have to really concentrate to use another one. Mad viewers are not happy with you. One site changed my navigation bars (right and bottom) to a bright red and when I left the site they did not revert to my good old grey.
• Under Construction is an insult to the viewer. Who wants to click on a link and go to a page with a graphic telling you there is nothing here and won't be for awhile. If the page is not finished do not post it or do not put a link to it.
• A few sites did not use the alphabet for the their URL. Instead of 'www.ourplace.com' they had ''www.210.345.456.com'. Why I don't know but it is sure hard to remember if you want back. If the viewer goes to add the site to his favorites or bookmarks the numbers are not very descriptive for the future!

• No Email at all. Don't you want the viewer to get in touch with you if he is interested in your firm? I cannot picture someone having a web site and not having an email address to post on it.
• On many of the 'big' deal sites the only way to Email was through the use of an online form. This seems like a good idea in that it assures certain minimum information is sent to you and in a common format BUT there should always be an Email address obvious somewhere. For a new inquiry the form is fine but what of your current client who just wants to send you a message and has found your site while he is on the road without your email address in his mail box. Do you really think it is positive for him to have to complete a form like a newbie? Maybe he just wants to record the address in his mail box right now. If it is nowhere on the site he is out of luck. I was able to find some of the missing addresses by looking at the page code but not always. Do you want your customer to go through this?
• So you have an Email address on your site! Is it easy to find at all times. On many sites it was shown only once and not prominently or hidden by a graphic that was not intuitive.
• No snail mail address anywhere. The viewer just may want to write you or know where you are.
• No snail mail address and no indication of even what country the firm was in. Now this is a big help. A prospect looking for service is most likely to look for it in his own country or state or even city.
• Three sites had snail mail addresses but neglected to show anything past the street address - no state, no country, no zip code.
• Full name of firm appears nowhere in the site. An abbreviation or short trade name is the only one used.Somewhere it should show that "SIA" stands for "Superman's Insurance Agency Inc." and not "Sadistic Introverted Academics"!
• Some poor salesman out there. A page of text and it never uses the firm name. Instead it is "we are" or "our" or "contact us" - just pronouns throughout. You want the viewer to remember your name, I think, or why have a web site. Use you full name often through the text - "ABC Ltd. is", for example. The viewer may be shopping and go off to another site. When he makes a decision he won't remember your firm unless its real name is "WE LTD." - a rare name.
• Horror of horrors - a pop up screen pitching something else. Is your firm so cheap it needs revenue from some cheap advertising to support a web site. No only does it look cheap it is irritating to the viewer and surely this is not what you want to do to clients and prospects.
• Your web designer has used what are called frames to repeat the same content ( menu, heading, logo) on every page of your site. This can be OK but without some extra coding presents a serious problem and loses you potential customers. Search engines produce funny results. Often the first result for your firm is not your main entry page but one of the many sub pages you have. The searcher clicks and gets to the sub page and he is stuck there with no way to get to your main page or any of the other pages on your site. The frames with the navigation menu did not come with the sub page - it stands alone. From the main page the sub page would be loaded into the 'frame' with the navigation buttons. Your designer has failed you. Either they should not use frames so that the menus, etc. are repeated 'manually' on each page or they should use some special code to force the loading of the sub page in the frame. To check this, enter the full URL of your site plus / and the rest of the extension for a sub page. This will take you direct to the sub page and if there are no frame menus, etc. you have a problem.

What Sinecure_Bob does:
1. After you contact me, I gather a sense of what your goals are for the site and a bit about your preferences for the philosophy of the site - colors, fun or all serious, number of subjects to cover, etc.
2. I will do a very rough example or two of what I propose for the first page and at least one sub page. This will be posted on a 'secret' site for you to review and comment upon.
3. When we reach an agreement in principle on the basic pro forma, we will agree, more or less on the number of pages involved and the complexity. An estimate of total cost will be given and held to unless you change the agreed standards. Any minor pages or extras I throw in as the development goes will not affect any pricing.
4. If you then accept then you must send me a cheque for 50% of the estimated cost for the site within 30 days of agreement. I will start working right away but will certainly stop if no cheque comes in.
5. I will be coming to you for material for the pages - biographies of staff, brochure type material and all the things only you can supply. Most everything can be sent by email.
6. The basic page format will be agreed and finalized. This is critical to get right as each subsequent page is based upon a template. If this needs to be changed late in the process due to your whim then there will be extra charges as it is a heck of a lot of extra work.
7. Throughout, new work and pages will be posted for you to view and comment upon. Each will require your approval in writing (email) before being accepted as part of your new site. This protects you from me putting up something wrong and protects me from any errors and omissions. It is accepted that all content is yours not mine ( I am held harmless).
8. Steadily each part of your new site will be done and accepted by you until we have a final site completed ready to post on the 'net'. Whatever site you wish.
9. We post your site and run a test period of a week to catch the inevitable errors that sneak in.
10. At this point you are billed the final balance for the site. This will be the balance of the amount agreed in the first place plus any extras YOU agreed to during development.
11. At no extra charge I continue to monitor the site for a further 30 days and respond to error corrections and changes of heart.
12. I am done unless you enter into a monthly maintenance agreement.
Posting Issues
How the site is finally posted is contingent on several factors.
1. You already have a site and an ISP (Internet Service Provider):
      a) we can simply take down your old site and put up the new one provided the ISP gives you enough space for the new site. Most give you plenty.
2. You need an ISP and a domain name like broker.com:
      a) First for a domain name we will assist you in registering and selecting a good one. This can be a tricky issue as some names that look good will not be user friendly; may not be found by search engines easily or will not be available. Some registration services are better than others. We can assist you on all of this.
       b) Selecting an ISP must also be carefully done. Cost is not the driving factor as today annual costs are relatively low even at the best of ISP's. You need an ISP that is going to be in business for a long time; that provides reliable service with little down time; that has good support services should things go awry; that provides facilities as part of their package for special programs for forms (if you are going to have these), extra email address and such. Again we can assist here.
      Monthly Maintenance Agreement Services:
1. I continue as your 'webmaster' looking after the site for you.
2. I make all the changes you might need - address update, staff changes, new content you want, error correction.
3. I make regular submissions to the search engines on your behalf to encourage traffic for you. I only use the free submission sites unless you pay for one of the professional services through me. Some engines charge fees anyway such as Yahoo and these would be an extra option for you.
3. I might even work on a new better format and submit it to you for implementation at no extra cost!
4. There are no hidden costs except if you want more pages or major revisions.
5. The Maintenance Agreement may be terminated at any time by you and upon 60 days notice by me except in the case of nonpayment when termination is immediate.
6. In the event of friendly termination, I will cooperate with any replacement by supplying files and such so they may take over smoothly.

What is expected of you:
Sorry but you or one of your staff have to be part of the process. It is the only way you will get what you want and the only way I can keep working steadily. It will not be too onerous, however. Following along with what I agree to do - on the left, your input will be the following:
1. ABOVE ALL, you must pay some attention to the process and conscientiously review the work as it goes. Picking up what errors you can, criticizing what you don't like, suggesting improvements and APPROVING FINISHED PRODUCT in writing. I make it easy for you with a response form on the posting site. NOTE: This is particularly critical in the stage where the template is set.
2.You can take your time as I know you are still trying to run a business and cannot be catering to this all the time, however, you should email me when there is going to be a a break of more than a couple of days in responses so I can take some time off too and not wonder what the heck is going on. In other words take your time but don't frustrate me.
3. You will be expected to supply text content in at least a rough draft stage. I can do an editing job on anything you give me to make it read better or to fit the site. In many cases existing 'in house' brochures and advertising copy will do the job and can be emailed or snail mailed to me.
4.I have access to many graphics which can be used for your site and most are copywrite free. If I must use a commercial or copywrited item you will be advised and agree to the copywrite notice or payment or reject it. This is a rare event.
5. You may have to supply photos and any special graphics in a format I can use or scan depending on what you decide to have on the site.
6. A pat on the back comment once in awhile helps the creative juices flow!