Note: For those not as familiar with irony, this series of posts is intented to use humor to illustrate important points about getting a website that works for them, and the potential pitfalls along the way. —ed.

One thing you figure out pretty early on in the web biz: You don’t really have to know how to code web pages all that well.

All those people who talk about web standards, CSS layout, and building sites for efficient updating, blah blah blah—that’s not stuff that’s going to get you a hundred dollars today, and it’s not stuff you should worry about. Your mechanic doesn’t tell you what’s going on under the hood, and your small business client’s not going to ask you what’s going on underneath the hood of their website either.

Believe me: The vast majority of small biz clients who want a website, just want it now, and the last thing they want you to worry about is learning about “best practices,” “usability”, stuff like that. Just get in, get out, and get on to your next website. Duh!

What I’m trying to say here, is, most small businesses know next to nothing about what it really takes to build a good website—one that will last over time, give them what they truly need, and match their real business objectives.

And that’s where you come in: Since they know so little, your not knowing a lot, or keeping up with standards in the industry, that’s really not that big a deal.

Sure, over time, the next web designer that works on your code might be a little frustrated because you laid the entire site out using tables (the web wunderkind of design for 1999).

Sure, it might take them three times as long to make a change to your HTML. But what I’m saying here, is: Your client is never going to figure this out, so you may as well do it the old fashioned way, and save all that precious learning time, which you could more profitably spend… churning out some more websites!

Sure, outputting your client’s 20-page site as a series of static HTML files might not seem very efficient to the effete “web professional” who has to make a tiny change in all 20 of those files later on. I can just see the poor sap whining to the client—“but the reason this is taking so long is because the code wasn’t architected well.” (They love using big words like “architected!”) Wah, wah, wah.

Meanwhile, you’ll be on to someone else’s site, and they’ll be toiling away. What’s it to them, anyway? They can just charge the client more to make the changes, because it’ll take so much longer! It’s a win win for everybody! Well… almost everybody!

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Last year, my wife and I had a contractor come out to our house and add an extra room. He seemed like a nice guy, and since I know nothing about building stuff, I just pretty much trusted him. He worked and worked, and said, “that’ll be $xx,xxx.00″. Fine, and we paid him. I found him through a friend of a friend of my wife’s uncle, and we went with him because he offered us the cheapest price by far!

And what’s wrong with that!?

I am wondering what the strange smell coming from our new room is, and if you look at it from a certain angle, I bet you’ll notice that it doesn’t quite “line up” with the rest of the house.

But … so what?

• The Business Value of Web Standards (Adaptive Path)
• The Business Case for Web Standards-Based Development (Navigation Arts)
• Why Tables for Layout is Stupid (Seybold, 2003)

I love this list from AllFacebook.com.

Some of the highlights:

• Go steady. It may take a little more time, but it’s worth it. Don’t expect instant results or blow all your enthusiasm in the first few days, but slowly progress and make progress.
• Contact your fans directly. Treat each one as a new business lead. Greet them personally, and connect with them. This is a nice idea!
• Don’t spam. I’d include in this, things that are too promotional in nature. People don’t want to be hard sold things on FaceBook!
• Use incentives. Of course, give people a reason to connect with you!
• Keep fans entertained. Post occasional entertaining statuses.

The full story: www.allfacebook.com/2009/07/facebook-small-business/