|
Archive for the ‘website development’ Category
Wednesday, August 4th, 2010
In the old days of the Web, if you said anything about content you were likely talking about words and graphics. Not much else. And the graphics weren’t really all that sophisticated. In fact, it was during those days that the phrase “Content is king” came into being.
But the idea of content has changed quite a bit since then. Content is anything that you can put onto your web page. Anything.
Videos are content. Audio files are content. Photos are content. Graphic design is content. Even widgets can be considered content. Articles are content. Links, even, are content. Did I leave anything out?
This brings up the obvious question: What will be considered content in the future? You never know what new technology will come along and change the face of the entire Web, or at least a part of it – perhaps that part of it that you are responsible for building up. And whatever that technology may be, you can bet we’ll call it content.
Tags: content, website
Posted in website development | 1 Comment »
Monday, June 14th, 2010
Website development is part science, part art. The science part is in the coding and developing your marketing strategy based on solid historical and trending data that you know to be true. For instance, we know that user eye tracking studies have demonstrated the hottest part of a website are in the top left corner of the page and the bottom right, with lesser hotspots in between in a zigzag fashion from left to right and down.
The art part of website development is the web design. You want your site to be attractive. You want it be functional, but attractive.
So how do you achieve both functionality and attractiveness and can the aesthetic aspect of website development (web design) increase your revenue? You bet it can.
There’s an old saying among web developers – “An ugly website that makes money is more attractive than a pretty one that doesn’t.”
That may be a true statement, but even more attractive than an ugly site that makes money is a beautiful website that makes money. And you’d better believe that your visitors will judge your business by the attractiveness of your website just as they judge your business by how you dress.
So when it comes to ensuring that your website is profitable, make sure that you plan its functionality well and don’t leave out its attractiveness. Make sure your web designer is in his best form.
Tags: web design, web development
Posted in website development | 1 Comment »
Sunday, May 16th, 2010
If you’re fairly new online then you might be wondering, What’s the difference between web design and web development? Trust me, there is a difference.
Web design deals with the attractiveness of your website. Web designers concern themselves with elements of the web page such as header graphics, footer layout and look, sidebar width, navigation design, etc. It’s an important task, but if you expect your web designer to ensure that your website reaches its fullest potential in functionality then you’ll likely be disappointed. That’s the web developer’s job.
I don’t mean to denigrate or demean web designers. Their job is important and many of them do good work. But if you are planning to build an e-commerce website that will make you money then you need a web development team that specializes in those types of websites. It’s not easy to build a multi-tiered website that is functional, attractive and that has the type of architecture built into it that will get your customer to buy.
Web developers care about more than just attractiveness. The are experts in getting your shopping cart functional and the navigation between your categories right on. Without a knowledgeable web development team on your side it is next to impossible to succeed at e-commerce. It’s a lot of work and it requires a well thought out plan.
Tags: web design, web devlopment
Posted in website development | No Comments »
Friday, April 16th, 2010
If you have been reluctant to use video on your small business website because of particular technical limitations related to embedding, sizing, SEO and video hosting then you’ll likely be excited to know that HTML 5 will change all of that. In its current incarnation, Web video is limited for most website uses. YouTube, and other video sharing sites, have paved the way for video popularity on the Web, but until now it has been rather impractical for most website owners to use video on their websites.
Most Web browsers require a plugin before a site visitor can view a video. Site visitors either need to download Shockwave, Flash or another browser plugin just to view a video and due to concerns for Web security many of them are reluctant to do so. That means there is a huge segment of your website traffic that you are not able to reach. HTML 5 will change that.
With HTML 5, webmasters will be able to upload a video to their server and display it on their website in the same manner as they can currently do with a photo. All it will take is a simple HTML tag that will tell browsers where your video is located and the styling elements involved. Anyone will be able to view the video in their Web browser.
The HTML 5 Poster Attribute
One unique aspect of the video tag in HTML 5 is the poster attribute. This attribute allows you to use an image placeholder that shows where a video will be displayed while it loads. The possibilities here are endless. You can show your branding logo, a Google AdSense ad, an in-house ad for an event you want to promote or sell the space to an advertiser. Whatever the case, your site visitors won’t be looking at an ugly black and white box or a spinning kaleidoscope as the video loads. You’ll have their undivided attention; you might as well put it to good use.
If you’re as anxious to see HTML 5 as I am then hold onto your breeches. There’s no release as of yet but it’s in been in development for a couple of years now so you can look for it real soon.
Tags: HTML 5, video, website development
Posted in website development | 1 Comment »
Monday, April 12th, 2010
If you’ve got a website that you know is doing well, but you think could be doing better, is it time to conduct a site redesign? Is it ever OK to redesign a website when it’s doing well or should you redesign your site only when things are not going so well?
It might come as a shock to you but I do believe that a site that is doing well in the search engines and that is making money can sometimes and often should undergo a redesign. Not every time, but some times. So the question is, When should that call be made? Furthermore, who should make it?
If you are a small business owner then you are responsible for everything that happens in your business, online and off line. That means you have a vested interest in what happens in every aspect of your business, including the website.
You know it’s time for a redesign when there are certain aspects of your website that are measurably doing well and when there are certain aspects that are below par. The idea behind the redesign is to capitalize on those things that are going well and to improve the weaker areas. A redesign can sometimes make a profitable site even more more profitable, but you have to make sure that you don’t take it backwards. That’s why it is very important that you measure results you get from your website long before you attempt a redesign and that you only redesign the site when you’ve gathered enough information to warrant the best decision.
It’s a big move to redesign a website, especially one that is making money. Don’t make it lightly.
Tags: redesign, website, website design
Posted in website development | No Comments »
Saturday, April 10th, 2010
There are a variety of ways to build a website. You can, of course, build your site using HTML and other languages like PHP, ASP or Ruby. Perhaps even a combination of these.
You can also design your website by taking a template, either off the shelf or custom, and modifying it to your own needs. Or, you can use a content management system (CMS) and design a website for your purposes that way.
But what advantages, if any, does a CMS offer?
Many people like a CMS because you don’t have to worry about designing your website using code. Every time you update your website you’ll have to play around with the coding elements to ensure that your site looks the way you want it to look. You’ll either have to pay someone to do that for you or learn how to code the site yourself. Most small business owners cannot afford to pay someone to update their site every time they want to do that nor can they afford to take the time and learn how to build a website from scratch. That’s where the CMS can come in.
With a CMS, the initial design and set up can be done by someone else then when you want to update the site with new content you simply sign in with your administrator login and password and add the content using a WYSIWYG editor.
Many small business owners prefer this type of set up because it means they can update their own site with new content. You can add items to your shopping catalog, add new sections of your website and even change existing pages when you have the time. No coding necessary. But which CMS is right for you?
That’s a matter of personal preference, but you do have some options. Some of them are free and some cost you money. Some of them are very expensive. For most small businesses, a free CMS is a great option. There are two free CMS solutions that I’d recommend for small businesses – Joomla! and WordPress. Pick the one that you feel is right for you and hire a designer to make it look the way you want it to look and you’re in business.
Tags: CMS, small business, web design
Posted in website development | 2 Comments »
Sunday, March 7th, 2010
WebProNews reports that cyber phishing and brand hijacking are on the rise. The sad fact here is that these cyber fraud schemes are targeting smaller companies online than what they used to. It really means that no business is immune from attack, including yours. And I see this problem only growing worse.
There are really two sides of this issue. Phishing scams pray off the naivete of e-mail users. It used to be that the phishers would send out e-mail blasts to random users. Now they send out personalized e-mails to specific users of a particular site whose brand they are attempting to hijack – for instance, Amazon or eBay. This scams the e-mail user.
The second side of the scam involves the brand hijacking. The company whose brand is being hijacked is a victim in a way that the victim of the phishing e-mail is not. The phisher cons the e-mail user into divulging account details or personal information like credit cards but the brand loses credibility when the end user (the e-mail user who was scammed) views her victimization as being perpetrated by the brand that was hijacked.
It’s a two-victim crime. So how can you protect your brand from being a victim of cyber phishing and brand hijacking?
First, you’ve got to protect your site users’ personal information with vigilance. Always use secure firewalls and encryption for personal information being transmitted between you and your users. Secondly, conduct all financial transactions inside of a secure area of your site and take every precaution necessary to ensure phishers do not get their hands on your site users’ personal information.
Tags: brand hijacking, phishing, website security
Posted in website development | 2 Comments »
Thursday, February 18th, 2010
One of the most important things to do before you make your website live is to test it in every major browser available. Of course, there are so many browsers on the market today that you can’t test in all of them. But you can test your web pages in the most important ones. Here are five browsers you should definitely test your web pages in before you publish them:
- Internet Explorer – The most popular Web browser. But don’t just test for the latest one. You’ll need to test for IE6, IE7 and IE8.
- Mozilla FireFox – The is the most popular open source browser on the market. More people use IE, but most web developers use FireFox. It’s the second most popular browser online and you shouldn’t do anything without testing your pages in FireFox.
- Safari – This is Apple’s Web browser for the Mac. You want your pages to look good on the MacIntosh? Test them in Safari.
- Google Chrome – Not very many people are using Google Chrome, but it is Google’s Web browser. It is the fastest browser on the market so there’s a good chance it could grow in popularity. You should test your web pages in it before you publish them.
- Flock – Fewer people use Flock than use Google Chrome, but it is billed as the social media browser. Enough people use it that you shouldn’t ignore it.
If you want your web pages to look right in the most popular browsers you should test them in those browsers.
Tags: testing, web browsers, web pages
Posted in website development | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010
If your website allows people to add content, leave comments or fill out forms of any kind then I highly recommend that you use some kind of spam catcher to prevent spammers from introducing dangerous content to your site visitors.
It’s a sad fact that most spam is generated by bots, not humans. Therefore, if you allow a doorway for their malicious content then you are likely to be an easy target and you’ll receive more spam comments than you can ever filter through and kill on your own. That’s why you need CAPTCHA.
CAPTCHA stands for “completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart.” There are a variety of these tests online, but they all have one thing in common: They are easier for humans to fill in correctly than bots.
Because CAPTCHAs are difficult for bots to fill in, they filter out the bot generated spam comments so that you don’t have to. That doesn’t mean you won’t get any spam. You’ll still get human generated spam, but there is a lot less of that than the bot generated spam. Get the CAPTCHA. You’ll thank me later.
Tags: bots, CAPTCHA, spam
Posted in website development | No Comments »
Monday, January 18th, 2010
Link structure is important for a website. It does more than just lead your site visitors from one page to another. The way you build your website does two things, primarily.
- First, it tells your site visitors which pages are most important. If you have five pages that link from off your home page and each of them have five pages linking off of them then that tells your site visitors that those five pages linking from the home page are a higher priority than the other pages. Otherwise, you would have made them all equal.
- Another thing that your internal links do is provide the search engines with a crawl path. Each of your pages, if linked from another page on your site, will be crawled by the search engines and indexed according to their content. By building your site structure a certain way you tell the search engine robots which pages to crawl first and which ones to crawl more often. You also give them clues as to which pages are most important for each of your keywords.
Keywords within your links are very important. You want the majority of your links pointing to a particular page on your site, no matter which page they are linking from, to use the same anchor text. Anchor text is the word for the words you use to link with. For instance, if you place the words “small business” around the a href tag, the tag used to signify a hyperlink, then that is your anchor text.
Your site’s link structure is very important for ranking purposes. It’s also very important for driving traffic to the pages you want traffic to go. Many new webmasters overlook link structure when building their website and this is a huge mistake. It’s one of the most important things to consider.
Tags: anchor text, link structure, traffic, website content, website visitors
Posted in website development | 3 Comments »
|
|
|
|
| |
|
