free seminar

I’m co-presenting a free seminar, Don’t Get Tangled Up in the Web, at the Small Business Administration on Market Street in San Francisco Thursday night.

Another SF web designer and I are going to go through the common questions that new clients come to us with. The blurb says we’re talking about: “how to develop and maintain your business’ home on the Internet. Why should you be on the Internet? How do you get there cost effectively? A non-technical discussion facilitated by two industry professionals give you the answers and tell you how to avoid common problems and pitfalls.”

It should be a good chance for people to feel more comfortable about what they want from their business’ web site. And, it’s free!

But, I might use the SBA site as an example of what not to do for your own site. They make it really difficult to link directly to the seminars. When you go to the SBA site, find the calendar of classes, and find the one you want, you cannot then copy the URL of the page you’re looking at and share that link with your friends. The calendar link is http://web.sba.gov/calendar/public/index.cfm?rc=0912 and that address doesn’t change in your browser when you look at an individual class.

So, if you share the address of the page you think you’re viewing, your friends will be taken to the generic calendar page. They’ll have to find your seminar on the calendar, and there are a hundred other events competing for their attention.

The direct link to the seminar information is for the page at http://web.sba.gov/calendar/public/dsp_viewevent.cfm?&EventCntr=135416&EventRptCntr=198516&OP=MAIN&GRP=0&YR=2010&MN=6&DY=17. Whew!

You only see the true page location if you right-click on the link on the SBA calendar page and copy the link location to your computer.

This is a pretty good example of getting tangled up in the web! The SBA isn’t making it easy for its clients to get and share information on its site.

Something we can talk more about Thursday, so come on down!