Web Design, Internet & Social Media Marketing

Q. Describe the most common types of jobs you do for your clients.

A. Our most common type of job is redesign. Most clients either built their own website or had an inexperienced developer create a site that was aimed at being a marketing tool - a one-sided tool that told visitors about how great the business is - and not a tool that engages the customer in what the business could do for them. By far, redesign jobs are our number on our list of projects.

Q. If you were a customer, what do you wish you knew about your trade? Any inside secrets to share?

A. Most customers don't really understand the complexity involved in creating effective short-term and long-term internet marketing programs. I thinks it's absolutely essential that customers understand every aspect of what we do, from the basics of site development to the complexity of creating user friendly content and reasons for their customers to come back to their website time and time again.

Q. Why does your work stand out from others who do what you do?

A. Our knowledge and extensive experience in both the mobile telephone and internet industry combined with almost 30 years of marketing experience make us different than our competitors. Primarily - we are not geeks. We have the ability to clearly discuss our clients needs and convey their message in an effective means via their website, social media and mobile content delivery.

Q. What do you like most about your job?

A. The people! Our most rewarding time is getting to know and help our clients. We consider them a part of the family and treat them with the respect and admiration they deserve. Because we build relationships, we can gently guide them away from the mistakes that so many businesses make relating to their websites - and to guide them to the tools that are most effective for getting them positive results.

Q. What do you wish customers knew about you or your profession?

A. Most people don't understand the amount of technical expertise and patience it requires to do my job. The ones that think they can develop their own websites usually end up with the least professional looking sites that are lucky to get any generic search engine traffic.

The days of "build it and they will come" are long gone, and in reality you have a maximum of 7 seconds to make an impression on your website visitors, or they will look elsewhere.

So many business owners try to achieve positive results on the cheap - something that doesn't work in any form of media. Free websites from Microsoft and other providers just don't cut it.

You know your business and profession. You don't know mine - and after 18+ years in my profession, there are few competitors that know what I know, let alone customers.

I love serving my customers and the ones that let me use my expertise get the best results. Those that "think" they know more than me typically get the boot.

If you want your business to get the best results with your internet marketing campaign, let me do my job to the best of my ability. You will never regret it!

John Delaney
Integrity Technology

Q. How did you decide to get in your line of work?

A. Getting into the web development business was a result of working for a web design company that went out of business. It was a shock, but absolutely worth all of the initial headaches in getting the business started.

Q. Tell us about a recent job you did that you are particularly proud of.

A. In mid-2011 I got connected to the Denise Amber Lee Foundation, based in Englewood, Florida.

If you don't know Denise's story, the short version is this. Denise was kidnapped from her home in North Port, Florida in January 2008. Despite the fact that she managed to contact the police, she was murdered because of faults in the 911 system and human error on the part of emergency operators. Google her name for the entire story.

After 3 years, the foundation was languishing with an outdated website and nobody to manage it. I took a very nominal fee to rebuild the site and have joined the staff of the foundation as their Internet & Social Media Coordinator. I am a volunteer - as in no pay. And I provide the foundation website hosting for free.

As the father of three daughters, I fully support the foundation and my involvement to date has been extremely rewarding.

The mission, vision and work of the foundation is proving to be fruitful nationwide. I'm happy to be a part of it in a very small way.

Q. Do you do any sort of continuing education to stay up on the latest developments in your field?

A. The best way to stay up on changes in the industry is to be a reader of the top resources in the industry and a participant at annual events like CES and SXSW. Both events unveil new products and services every year. Great website resources like Wired, Mashable and ReadWriteWeb give me insight into what's happening in the industry long before it actually occurs.

Q. What are the latest developments in your field? Are there any exciting things coming in the next few years or decade that will change your line of business?

A. Developing for the mobile web is becoming more important daily. It's exciting to see the convergence of the mobile and internet industries, especially since I've spent the last 28 years in mobile and internet - at separate times. Now they are becoming one and because of that, we are adding mobile capability to most of the websites we develop.

Q. If you were advising someone who wanted to get into your profession, what would you suggest?

A. Do your homework and be sure you have plenty of knowledge about the industry. In the 16 years since I got into the web development field, I've seen hundreds of companies come and go - primarily because the owners had no clue how to develop for current times. Most get into the business and never stay up with changes in the industry. That's bad for them, but it's even worse for the customer.

I've seen people claim to be the best because they "hard coded" websites, yet their client profile was filled with sites that were no longer active - a casualty of bad web design and results. I've seen people claim to be the best at web design because they were good photographers - not a qualification for getting a customer good results. I've seen beautiful websites developed by amazing graphic artists - but ones that will never be found by Google because Google doesn't read pictures, it reads text.

Being a web developer means knowing what works and what doesn't, then using the best tools to achieve positive results for the customer. If you can't do that, stay out of the business.