THE THINGS PEOPLE ASK...
We've been asked some strange questions. Some very strange questions. We'd never say by whom but it seems a shame not to share some of them with you...
10. Will everyone be able to see my website?
You'd be surprised how common this question is. We understand, in a way, why people might think only users in their own country might be able to view a website. However, we've actually been asked if someone in another Town/City (in the UK) would be able to see a website....
9. Why would someone else want the domain name I want?
We've been asked this twice. Before people venture online as a business you'd be amazed how many don't think for a moment that someone else might have called their business exactly the same and have registered the domain name they want.
8. Who is visiting my website?
Nothing odd about that question, you say? Well there is when the site owner wants to know why you can't identify the names and addresses of the people that visit their site. Some people genuinely think you can capture everything about a visitor. If only!
7. Can you stop my competitors viewing my website?
An interesting idea! But no. Well, not unless they knew all the IP addresses of the possible points of connection that all their competitors might ever use!
6. Is income from a website tax exempt?
Yup, believe it or not, we've actually been asked that! If only!
5. How many people will visit my website?
This is actually a lot more common than many might think. However, in this instance we were asked very specifically why we couldn't say how many visitors a website would get - before an order was placed or a concept was even discussed. Well if we knew that....
4. I needs jobs website writing to rival Monster.com within 3 months, can you do that?
Hmm, well Monster.com is rather large and successful - hows that for understatement. On this occasion we were asked to produce a website that, within 3 months of going live, could top Monster.com in rankings and visitors. We like a challenge, but when the request was suffixed with the fact that the person didn't have any funds in place to pay for the site....we declined.
3. Do I need internet access at home to use my website?
We know, you'd think this'd be No.1. However, strictly speaking the answer could be 'no' if they meant broadband access but had a mobile phone with browsing capability. That's not what they meant though. They did indeed mean 'would I need internet access?' to access my website!
2. If I change my telephone number, will my website need rewriting?
We liked this one! They did actually mean 'fully rewritten'. We were delighted to be able to tell them 'no'.
1. Is that a price for a mono or colour website?
This wins by a mile! Yes, we were actually asked if the price we quoted for a site meant it would be full colour or just black and white. It stumped us for a few seconds and we asked the customer to clarify what they meant. To which they said "Well, do I have to pay more to have a colour website?". They had been used to years and years of press advertising!
AND A LONG STORY...
Prepare yourself for the story of the website that just wouldn't work.
It was bright, sunny (unusual here) and pleasant winters morning. Everything was running to plan and all was well. Then the telephone rang.
A customer asked if there was a problem with their website hosting. We duly checked, even though we knew we'd have known of any issues probably long before they did. 'No, everything is working fine, why?'.
The customer replied that they were unable to get onto their website. We could, but they couldn't. They insisted something must be wrong. We did our very best to assure them that there was nothing wrong with their website and that it was 100% functioning.
Ten minutes later, they rang again, now getting agitated and absolutely convinced their website was down. On this occasion they added that it wasn't just theirs. The BBC website was down too. Ahhhh...hang on.
We asked them if they were able to get on any website at all. No. We asked if they had accessed their Outlook mail. No, it was giving errors.
They then asked if it could have anything to do with the fact that their ISP had cut them off for non-payment the evening before....
Very possibly!!!
But we're not finished yet. Five minutes later the telephone rang again. They'd just spoken to their ISP who had informed them it would take 10 days before they could reactivate the account, after payment of the outstanding rental fee. Their question us was:
'Can you do anything about that? My website isn't much use to me if I can't access it. Can you ring them and tell them I need it quicker than that?'
We were as polite as we could possibly be in explaining why we couldn't help. They still couldn't quite understand why we couldn't help them.
Fortunately the ISP got them back online within a week and they were happy again. They even rang us to say 'My website is back up!'. Fabulous.
More to come
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