Understanding Web Design

These days, websites have become the first source of communication between the customers and the company. Customers/visitors have become so much familiar with different web designs, that they can easily make out the differences between a good and poor web design. As per the definition of web design given in Wikipedia, “Web design is the skill of creating presentations of content and then delivers to an end-user through the World Wide Web, by way of a Web browser or other Web-enabled software like Internet television clients, micro blogging clients and RSS readers.”
The Intent of Web design is to create a website. Website consists of text, images and rich content and it should be interactive. These days, more people are opting for custom web design as it caters to the particular business needs and hence proves more fruitful in terms of boosting business sales and marketing perspective.

Background Of Web Design

In August 1991, first website was published by Tim Berners-Lee. He was the first to combine Internet communication with hypertext. Websites are written in HTML , earlier the HTML was very basic which only provide a website with basic structure and linking is done by using hypertext.

As web design progressed fast, HTML changed and became more complex and flexible and ability to add images and tables to a page. After that Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) came into existence, with this table-based layout became outdated. Time to time, coding of websites as well as visual design changed as new programs and utilities evolved. Now the need to convert PSD to HTML emerged as the urgency of the hour and hence it led to the growth of markup service industry.

Benefits Of Web Design

Companies which has a business on the web should have their website professionally designed so that it helps in many ways:

1.    Expands customer reach

2.    Higher market visibility

3.    Promotes Business

4.    Ease of contact

5.    Creates Credibility

6.    It guides visitors in learning and purchasing from the internet.

7.    Good web site design, create a ever lasting impression on the visitors.

Now a days, more and more people are opting for CMS development. As it forms an easy way out to handle and manage websites on our own, without being dependent on designers and developers. Joomla, Wordpress, Drupal are the most widely used content management systems.

Types Of Approach Towards Web Design

There are five types of design approaches:

Designer Philosophy

This type of technique is used mostly by small, designed-focused enterprises. As website is built by a designer who uses his or her creativity as well as personal view to create a website which are sometimes loved by users but sometimes hated by others. This concept fails for the websites which deals with large amounts of content.

Enterprise Design

It is one of the most common types of design. Here website is designed with help of everyone in the company as each department is responsible of its own part of the site but with this users get confused, gets lost and get out of it quickly.

Content-Centered

As Content is another big issue, a good website should have rich content. Content should not be grouped by many ways as it gives a negative impact on users, moreover website should be interactive enough to gain a customer’s attention.

Technology Driven Design

This technique is used frequently as the focus is on implementation and to reach to a final product quickly. Here solutions are available at a relatively low cost or free but they are designed to fit general needs. It is typically hard to use and not even cost effective in the long run.

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User Experience Driven Design

It is also called user centered design (UCD). It is popular among many companies because for the development of products and services companies are more focused on what the user needs are. This approach reduces cost as focus is on user needs.

It is very important to understand the different aspects of the web design. It would go a long way to help designing the websites in relation to the specific business requirements. You must know the business needs and accordingly design and categorize your website design. Different business needs would fit into the different web design classes.

Understanding the needs of a client

For us to create and deliver a great project, it is fundamental to know who we are working with and what his or her requests are so that we can use this information to compile a very preliminary worksheet. An essential tool that we can use to keep track of a client’s input is a brief.

What is a brief?

Briefs can be considered the foundation behind every great project: essentially it is a document which contains detailed information regarding your client. It is compiled once the client is met, with the objective of collecting as much information as possible, such as data and personal inputs from the client that will help us in developing a web project.

Briefs are created when the client is met for the first time and this first phase can be considered of great importance that will determine the final look of a given project. Briefs are not as popular as one might think, considering they are of obvious importance. For instance, projects are laid out as drafts, and eventually started without even considering the specific needs of a given client.

Working this way is useless: it is highly unlikely that one will be able to satisfy the needs of a client by working through trial-and-error, without having a valid point of reference.

Imagine being on a boat, ready to set sail from a port without even knowing where to go.
What are the chances that you will go shipwreck if you don’t’ know where you’re going exactly? What are the chances that you will arrive at a port that is in worse condition than the one you’re coming from? Chances are pretty high for both situations. And for a number of reasons. The main reason is because you don’t really know what you want, therefore it is impossible to realize anything.

This is what happens when one lacks organization.

What are the requests of the client?

In an ideal situation, a client would come to you with something already in mind, letting you know what his or her needs are. However, in reality clients can be confused and not have a clear idea as to what they want. Then it is up to you to listen to them, guiding them to the most adequate solution available.

If there’s something unclear, it is important to ask the client simple and concise questions: gathering data will become a much easier process and in the meantime you will avoid creating a sense of misunderstanding with the client.

What information do I have to gather from the client?

It is up to you to know what the needs of your clients are; so that you can then point them in the right direction.
Keep in mind that a brief will have to answer the following questions:

1. Who: Who is our target audience?

2. What: What are we offering to this target audience? (What’s our product line?)

3. How: How can we make sure a potential customer knows that our offer is genuine? Is there any evidence that we can provide as proof?

4. What main idea are we trying to convey to our target audience?

Once this basic set of information is obtained, we can go into more detail by sharing our ideas with the client and by debating on the various aspects of the project.

It can be useful to look at the websites of the client’s main competitors together with the client: this will help you get an idea of the client’s preferences concerning aesthetics, so that it will be easier for you to ask your client about what kind of look the site should have:

· Does the client need to have corporate colors shown on the website (such as logos, brochures, labels)?

· Does the client have any preferences in the colors that will be used?

· Does he or she request a specific set of graphic-related elements?

· Does the client want to have a photo gallery or any type of animated effect?

· Will the client provide the material that is going to be added in the website (such as images, logos, and text)?

This will allow you to understand better the needs of your client.

An outline of a brief, compiled at the end of a meeting with a client:

Heading
Details concerning the meeting: date and place, title of project, names and titles of participants.

Background
Who is the client and what is his or her line of business.

Objective
What kind of objective does our client have? Does he or she want to sell products? Obtain better rankings? Advertise the services that are offered?

Target Audience
Who is the target audience? Who are the potential customers and/or users of this service?

Summary

Exactly what kind of service is the client requesting?

Keywords

In this section we are to jot down some keywords that summarize and identify the client and his or her type of business. For example, if our client was involved in the auto-transport business, what kind of keywords would we jot down? Promptness, safety, efficiency, stability.

Key points
These are essential details that need to be written down.
For example: company colors, logos, images that will be used, the personal style of the client.

Conclusion

After reading the previous sections, you should know what the client expects from you. And, it should be clear what kind of work you will have to do for the client.

Open Source E-commerce Solution – Is it the right choice?

This is the age of technology and technology has made inroads in almost every aspect of our lives. Technological advancements have certainly made our lives much simpler. When it comes to shopping, we have tons of ecommerce stores to help us buy any product without leaving our homes. In today’s time, it has become mandatory for every business organization to have an ecommerce store. It not only helps in expanding the business, but also provides much better chances of the growth and success and of your business. Considering this, many business organizations across the world are opting for ecommerce website development.

Fortunately there is no dearth of good ecommerce solutions. But is an open source ecommerce solution the right choice for your online store development? An open source ecommerce solution can be used by anyone and everyone. It is available for all to download and use. Oscommerce and Magento are two of the most popular open source ecommerce development solutions. Both of these solutions offer a wide range of features and have their own set of benefits to offer. With the help of these open source solutions, you can easily create an online store for your business.

These open source solutions provide you with good customization features to produce a full fledged and a fully functional online shopping store with all the requisite features and a user friendly navigation. There are other open source ecommerce technologies like Prestashop, X-Cart and Zen Cart which allow the user to personalize the shopping carts.

Like any other ecommerce solution, an open source solution also offers a whole range of features. You can add content like articles, blogs etc. you also get a full control over all the departments of your online store. You get to have plethora of interesting features that help you in enhancing the merchandising and promotions of your business. With an efficient online store for your business at your disposal, you can automate the business process thereby making the process even faster with much more reliability. It also brings in more productivity and profits for your business.

Another great feature about open source ecommerce solutions is that these have a huge developers’ community. The communities provide you with the constant updates and also keep updating the software to remove glitches, add new features and functionality, also a 24*7 technical support. The best thing is that all this comes for free. And even if there is a cost involved in any open source developing tool, it is really small and affordable. Thus all you have got to do is to spend on its production and hosting cost. Thus opting for an open source solution is quite lucrative and is an inexpensive way to start a business.

Magento, a popular open source solution has some really amazing features to offer. Magento development offers multiple language and a multiple currency support. This augurs well for a business. It means that a business organization can expand its base and can reach out to international customers without worrying about the language barrier. It also supports multiple currencies which will ensure that your international customers will not face any trouble while making a transaction.

It also has multiple payment gateways. Through a payment gateway, customers can transfer a sum for the product which he or she intends to buy. In today’s technology dominated time, there are many options available like PayPal, iPayment, 2Checkout, Sagepay etc. which offer a secure and a reliable transaction process. When it comes to furnishing your store with attractive product catalogs, the open source solutions offer product catalog management feature. You can easily add new items, remove or edit the existing ones. You can have unlimited number of items and varieties in your product catalog.

Good visibility and a good search engine ranking are a must to survive and stay ahead in the competition. These open source solutions provide search engine friendly solutions thereby enhancing your site’s chances of success and growth.

Basic SEO Needs for Small Business Websites

Basic SEO Needs for Small Business Websites

For small businesses, covering the basics is a good starting point. A good designer, like at AMS Technologies, will cover these basics with your design.

You also need to have an understanding of content basics in order to set your site up for SEO success. There are a lot of details you could cover with SEO, but here are five basic ideas to get right when launching your new site.

1. URL and Titles

Your site needs to be optimized for people. Think about what makes for a good experience on your site. Do this and the search engines will like your site as well. This is what the search engines preach anyway. They don’t want sites optimized for their algorithms. They want to show good sites that people find relevant.

Its very important to have relevant URLs. These would be URLs that are easy for people to understand what the page is all about.

For example, the Services page on your site should have a URL like this:

http://www.yoursite.com/services

It’s basic. It’s easy to remember. It’s optimized.

Think short and simple with URL structure.

Titles are similar. There are two titles on your website you need to be concerned with.

The first is the title of your page. Our previous example was the Services page. The title or headline for this page on your site could be as simple as Services.

The other title to consider is the title search engines use for their purposes. If you go to Google and perform a search you will notice the link in the big blue letters. This is the title of the page in the context of search engines. It’s possible for the title of your Services page to be Services for visitors and Services for search engines. But in some cases it’s better to have two separate titles.

In the Services example, it might be better to have a search engine title that is something like:

Residential Plumbing Services in San Diego,California by Jack’s Plumbing

This is more relevant to people trying to determine if they should click on your search result. When they arrive on the page they’ll already understand some of this information so a title on the landing page could simply be Services or Services by Jack’s Plumbing.

This brings us to the next section…

2. Headlines

The on-page title and the headline of a website page are probably the same thing. I still feel headlines warrant discussion in a different section.

My feeling is that a visitor to any page on your site should have a good understanding of what the page is about within a few moments. That’s about all the time someone will take when deciding if they want to stay on the page.

In our Service page example, the main headline should be Services. It’s simple, but to the point. People will understand that they are in the right area of the site if they’re interested in your services.

Below the main headline are sub-headings, which go into more detail. On a services page you could list your various services and provide more detail under each heading.

The headline structure allows people to scan the page and then dive in for more detail.

3. Conversion

Search engines are concerned with conversion. They want the sites they send users to are as relevant as possible. This means that your site needs to convert. If you have contact forms or other calls to action on your site you need to make sure they are being utilized.

Obviously this is something you’re already going to be concerned with. You want to make more money and that requires leads and contacts.

Search engines want to associate with successful sites. They track conversion at various points in the online funnel. The better sites are rewarded with higher rankings.

4. Navigation

Websites can be confusing. Think about sites you’ve visited that don’t really lead you through the site in a way that makes sense. Most of the time you will probably leave the site frustrated.

The navigation on your site is important. You want to have a good understanding of how you want visitors to travel through your site. Think about how the average visitor will benefit from your site. It’s hard to think about the visitor instead of yourself, but it will help you and your designer understand how the site should be laid out and navigated.

Consider a common situation for someone looking for a plumber. Maybe they are looking to do some work in their master bathroom. They get a tip from a friend about Jack’s Plumbing. The new visitor heads to Google and types in “Jack’s Plumbing in San Diego”. Jack’s site appears near the top and the person clicks the result.

The visitor checks out the home page. They read the basic information about the business. The home page then has a call to action for the visitor to move on to the Services page. This is a pretty basic next step. From the Services page there is a call to action to contact Jack’s via phone or contact form. A conversion has been made. The visitor is happy. Jack’s Plumbing is happy. The search engine is happy.

This is a basic conversion, but it’s important. Think about the ways your visitors will navigate your site or how you want them to navigate your site and work out the structure with your designer.

5. Content Strategy

The final basic need for SEO is a content strategy.

We’ve discussed a few elements of content above (headlines, etc.). These are important, but content strategy goes beyond headlines.

Your home page and every page on your site needs content. In most cases, you need content before your designer can even begin their work. Its best to work with a content strategist or copywriting when developing everything for your site. I find its good to work with someone when discussing how you want to sell your business to your target customer. The team of you, the designer, and the copywriter is great for developing the content strategy.

Much of the content on your site will be static. It will be informational and persuasive. The goal is to sell your business to the new visitor.

Search engines will also use the static content on your page to determine where its appropriate to rank your site. Don’t write with this in mind, though. Focus on your target visitor.

Beyond static content is the issue of fresh content. Search engines have been adamant recently about the idea of continuously updating websites with new content.

You could create a news section on your site or even a blog. Find something you can do on the site to keep the content fresh and continuous.

Search engines love fresh content because people love fresh content.

These are the basics when it comes to SEO. For your business, focus on these five strategies with your designer and copywriter. Your site will be in great shape in the eyes of the search engines.

Increasing traffic to your website - SEO

All efforts to drive traffic to your site culminate with the idea of Search Engine Optimization. Everything that you do online, whether its social media, blogging, uploading photos, or naming products, contributes to your organic search ranking. Experts say that most, if not all, of your marketing energy should be directed at landing the top search engine rank for your keywords. Here are three tips to improve your search ranking in Google.

• Google places a lot of emphasis on links. When someone searches on Google for a particular keyword, Google has analyzed how many other sites have your link on their sites, which increases credibility and therefore heightens your ranking.

• Use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. This tool offers you keyword suggestions for your site, as well as provide stats on each keyword, like how many people search that per month and which websites you'll be competing with.

• When Google crawls your site, it's going to want to know what – and who – you are. Creating meta tags and posting keyword-rich content to your site are essential. Don't forget to name all of your photos with keywords, either.

Outsource Web Design services

You have finished dreaming and thinking about your website and have it all planned but are unsure of your next steps. This is the time when a web design and development outsourcing company will help you get exactly what you want. Web designs can be outsourced in several different ways. There are web design companies that you can find by browsing online who will work directly with you or you can look online for an outsourcing company that will assign a quality web designer for you that will fit your needs.

It is very simple to do, just find the site you like and give them the information about the job you have, including, in as much detail as possible, what you want to have done. Someone in the web design and development outsourcing company will be available to answer your questions and give other help and advice. It doesn’t matter if you only want a simple HTML web page or a more complex CSS page. For whichever language you require there will be someone there who can help you with your new website. Outsourcing companies are usually dedicated to pleasing their customers in order to maintain their business, so they will make every effort to be sure you get exactly the website you have been dreaming about.

You may have strict budget considerations, if you are new to your business venture, and most outsourcing companies, when quoting you a price, understand that and will be flexible according to the amount of work they have to do on your project. When you add more content to your webpage, the cost will generally be higher. It is not uncommon for web design and development outsourcing companies to have up to a dozen programmers ready when new projects come in. There are also small companies online who may give you a less costly quote, but they may not have the programmers needed to take many projects and unable do your website the way you want.

In order for the web design and development outsourcing company to begin immediately, you need to be sure you have all your plans and ideas for the content of your page ready. If you require flash animation, photo galleries or any other widgets you should be ready to tell them along with the programming language you want. At this point you should also have decided on a theme and color scheme that you can tell them. If you want your website completed as soon as possible, it is important to give them all the information you can, right from the beginning, so it will come up to your expectations.

You want the web design and development outsourcing company that has the resources to be able to do exactly what you have in mind, which should you have already prepared well in advance, and do it for a price that you can afford and have something left over to invest in your business. With such professionals attending to your website, you can be assured of getting a quality product that will support your business venture when it takes off.

Static Website or Dynamic Website - Which one should you choose?

Websites are built for different purposes, one could be to sell a business’ products online, or simply as a brochure to show potential customers what a business does, and then to attract them to contact for more information.

Today I aim to describe the differences between a static website and a content managed website using a content management system by describing the benefits and disadvantages to small and medium sized enterprises.

We hope that this blog helps both business users, and other website design firms to understand more the difference between these two types of websites.

Using a Static Website

A static website is a website that is designed by a website designer and is usually programmed using a static language like HTML or XHTML. Once the website is online, any changes that are needed require a website designer, or someone that knows how to edit, create or delete web pages.

Typically, static websites are much simpler to create than a content managed website, due to the fact that no database needs to be created.

Advantages of a Static Website

There are a number of advantages of static websites over a dynamic, content managed website for SME’s, dependent on their business:

• Less cost involved
• Simpler to create and host
• Quick to download on lower bandwidths

Disadvantages of a Static Website

• Could cost you more in the long run depending on the frequency of the updates
• Long change process as you have to wait for a website designer to have the time to make your changes
• Not as much functionality, so your website could be lacking against your competitors

Using a Content Management System for a Website

If a business decides that they want to sell their products online, update their website content when they need to and capture customer details, then a content management system is more than likely to be the best solution.

A content management system is a system that allows users to add, edit, update and delete their website content quickly and easily through the use of an administration section on their website and a database (usually MySQL, MSSQL or Access). Content management systems use server side scripting languages such as PHP, ASP or ASP.net.

The database is used to store information that the user enters via the administration section, and the data is retrieved from it each time a user accesses the content managed website.

A content management system is suitable for all types and sizes of businesses, and it can be used to drive all types of content, including text, documents, sound, video and much more.

Advantages of a Content Management System

• Content can be changed on the website as frequently as is needed, without having to use a website designer or to know HTML code.
• Changes can be made immediately due to a much shorter change process
• Can be cheaper than a static website in the longer term
• Easier to budget for ongoing costs than a static website

Disadvantages of a Content Management System

• Initial cost is normally higher than a static website
• May be slightly slower for users on low bandwidths than a static website
• Training may be needed depending on the complexity of a content management system

Both of these type of websites offer various benefits over each other, however it is becoming increasingly evident that SME’s want to be able to look after their own website, without having to ask a website designer to make changes to their website.

New technologies are being implemented on an almost weekly basis which is allowing web designers and web agencies to create and install content management systems quickly and therefore with less of a cost implication to their clients.

AMS Technologies uses Joomla or Wordpress which are both a modular based content management system allowing SME’s to choose which aspects of the system they need, such as bulk email, e-commerce, forum, event calendar, photo gallery, news stories or job postings.