Imagine if I came to you and said, “I’m going to build you a custom designed house.  It will be beautiful and I’m going to charge you thousands of dollars. However,  I’m going to keep title to the land I’m building the house upon.  I’m going to use building materials that only work on my property.  I’m going to let you live in the house, but if you need any repairs you will always have to call me because nobody else can get on the property.  But don’t worry, you’ll own the house.”

Wouldn’t you think I was crazy?  But this happens every day with websites.

You’re too busy to learn how to buy your own domain name so you let your website company do this for you.  That means they own the title to your house.

Then the website gets built using their proprietary inhouse technology.  You are assured that it is easy to use and you will be able to update your website any time you desire.  But this means you’ve used building material that will only work on their property.  And any future additions to your website (i.e., like a shopping cart, video testimonials, etc.) must be custom developed.  So now you can’t use any other repair men on your house, you can’t negotiate the best deal or find the best offer.  You’re stuck with the builder and what ever price they want to charge you.

Then they tell you that the website will get hosted on their server, which means they now own the land upon which your house was built.

Later on in the relationship, if you get tired of working with this web development company you’re basically hosed.  The website you spent thousands of dollars building can’t be moved to any other hosting company.  They own your domain name (www.yourname.com).  If they are really unscruplous they can hold this hostage or sell it back to you for thousands more than the $9.95 they paid originally.

With today’s open source CMS tools like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and many others; this is a problem that should never even happened in the first place.  There are too many free or inexpensive solutions available for developing your website.  That doesn’t mean you get a website for free. You’ll still have to pay someone to code the site, install it on the server and make sure the design you’ve selected is properly installed. You’ll also pay for good copywriting, hosting and customized graphic design.  But here are some ways to help ensure you won’t find yourself left with a website you can’t use and no more marketing budget:

1.  Buy your own domain name.  We use godaddy.com for all our domain purchases.  Regardless of which service you use, make sure you set up an account and centralize all your domain purchases through the same service.   List yourself as the administrator, you can add other administrators to the account later as required.

2.  Select your own hosting company.  We use inmotionhosting.com.  We like InMotion because every time we call for help, a human being answers the phone.  They know their stuff and have the patience of a saint.

3.  Make sure your web development company is willing to build your website using an open-source tool like one of those listed above.  If they start talking about custom coding, proprietary systems, or using words like “DreamWeaver” then find another firm.

4.  Make sure that your website development company gives you the original photoshop files for your website design.  You won’t be able to do anything with these files yourself (nor should you) unless you are an experienced designer.  However, if you and the web company part ways, you’ll have the design files that the next web development company needs in order to modify or update your website.

As a side note,make sure youhire a good copywriter.  Someone with experience writing for the web.  The web development company may have copywriters on staff.  But don’t assume the price you’ve been quoted for the website includes any copywriting.  That is often the most expensive part of the project, and well worth every penny if done correctly.

Thanks to Web 2.0 and some pretty cool tools, we are able to communicate with each other, collaborate and share files as if we were right down the hall instead of 20 or 30 miles apart. And, because of my love for Web 2.0, Zephyr ends up being the “beta-bunny” for a lot of new online services which we are then able to recommend to our clients based on our personal experience. I’ve listed the tools we’re currently using at Zephyr below – if anyone has suggestions or new tools to share, let me know!Telephone Service – we subscribe to Ring Central.  It is a great VoIP system, delivering voice mails right to my Outlook, routing calls to cell phones and the user interface is very user friendly.

Backup Systems – MozyPro is why I sleep at night.  Everyone at Zephyr works from a laptop.  Mozy Pro automatically backs up all our data, emails, etc. every day.  It works quietly in the background while we’re working for our clients.  My laptop could blow up tomorrow and it wouldn’t matter, I’d be restored and in business within hours.

Accounting – We used QuickBooks online for a couple of years.  I still love Quickbooks but the online version isn’t robust enough for us.  So we’ve got QB installed on a computer and I access the data using GotomyPC.  Now I can pull financials whenever or wherever I am by popping in and out of the office computer.

File Sharing – I can’t say enough great things about BaseCamp.  This product, developed by 37 Signals helps us manage projects, files, customers and deadlines.  Our clients love this easy-to-use system.  Every time I think about a feature I’d like to add, 37 Signals is one step ahead.  If you need to manage deadlines, tasks, deliverables, files and clients then I encourage you to check out this software.

Instant Messaging – Skype is incredible.  The entire team uses this for the fast chats and questions that pop up all day.  And when you’re working at home alone for hours it is nice to take a quick break and see who is available online.  I use the built in phone service to bring someone into a client meeting on a conference call.  We transfer files on the fly, and often have 3 or 4 way conversations using Skype’s bridging capability.

Conference Calls – Freeconference.com really is free.  And you can download an interface that lets you schedule conference calls through Outlook, invite attendees and automatically schedule your calendar.   If you want to add services (for pay) like toll-free calling, recording, and computer sharing you’ll register using the online version.  The system  remembers your contacts in an address book and the interface is very intuitive.

Websites -  We use Wordpress and Joomla to develop all our client websites.  These are both open-source CMS tools.  We are passionate about making sure our clients maintain complete control over their websites and domain URLs.  We hear a lot of horror stories about websites being held hostage, or developed in proprietary CMS systems.  WordPress will meet the needs of about 80% of all businesses today that need an online presence.  It’s free, easy to use, and has thousands of great plug-ins to give you the bells and whistles you want.  Joomla is great for larger websites, those that need a lot of content management and more robust applications.  We’re also checking out some of the newer tools on the market today.

So those are the tools we use for the most important parts of running the business.  There are a lot of other fun online resources that we play around with.  But that’s fodder for another column!