Web Site Design

1) Usability testing doesn’t have to be a huge task. Having five users test your site will catch most of the problems on your website before launch. The biggest issues are usually caught by the first one or two users and the rest of the users will usually confirm their findings. Any testing is better than none.

2) Users make purchases from websites based on perceived security, privacy, quality of content and design, in that order. Make sure if you’re selling a product or collecting any information about a user that your site is visibly secure with a privacy policy in place, then you’re free to work on the content and design of the site. This is particularly true in commerce, medical and insurance sites where trust has a lasting effect.

3) Modern Eye-tracking software has discovered a variety of useful information related to usability issues. For example, users tend to focus on faces and eyes when viewing a website, but if a face is looking in the direction of your content we will follow its gaze. This is an effective tool to drive users to information on your site.

4) First impressions count. Quality of design is a huge factor in establishing credibility. While content is king, packaging that content in a nice wrapper can give that content more credibility than it would have on its own and allow you to make certain pieces of information more prominent than others.

5) Most users still don’t scroll down a homepage, so make sure the most important content is “above the fold” which currently is around 768 pixels high. Some important content to include in this area are: the name of the website, benefits of the website, and the navigation elements relevant to the user.

6) Separating product pages from marketing pages helps you stand out. This allows each page to achieve its task efficiently. The marketing pages sell to the user while the detailed information pages provide additional information letting the user compare products. Provide detailed information on your products, but make sure you the information is easy to digest. Don’t use jargon your users aren’t likely to understand.

7) Most users will avoid anything that looks like an advertisement. Make sure your important content doesn’t look like an ad, because most users will treat it like one. The reverse applies too, people will click on ads that look like content, but this usually results in short-term revenue instead of long-term trust.

8) Forms are useful for communicating and collecting information from your users, but forms should be carefully designed for ease of use. Most forms are vertically oriented and read from top to bottom, so labels should generally be above the fields and left aligned. Try to keep the required fields to a minimum and if you must require certain fields, validating that information on the fly can be very helpful.  Most users find it annoying to fill out a form and have to go back and change information after an unsuccessful submission.

9) Icons aren’t as important as you think, in recent studies it was found that initial performance on a link is best with text alone, but frequent users can use either equally effectively. Icons are not faster relative to text links alone, but if you’re going to use icons make them as large as possible and collected into a taskbar area in a horizontal layout for to make them most usable. This is because users have to discover what the icon means on their first visit, while text links tell the user what the link is immediately.

10) According to recent studies an ideal search box is 27 characters wide. Making your search box 27 characters wide, much like Google’s search box, will accommodate 90% of user’s searches. This can be highly important depending on how much information is on your site. If you have clear and concise navigation, it is more useful than a search box, but if a user can’t find the information they are looking for in the first few seconds, the search box will become their primary navigation.

We all know the old adage, "Sex sells", but we certainly recognize when the message is inappropriate for our business. The equivalent message in online advertising is, "Interactivity sells." If you can draw the user's eye and successfully get them to do something, you are on your way to winning new customers.

Be interactive, because when your customers feel compelled to action, they are one step closer to buying!

A website redesign is lot more than just giving it a “face lift”. When someone gets a face-lift the sole purpose for doing so is to look younger and better. A strategic redesign not only improves the look of your website, but also goes far beyond the surface, dealing with increasing the functionality and improving the overall structure of the website. You could have a great looking website but that doesn’t eliminate the need for a redesign.

If you have redesigned your website twelve months ago, but since then you have added more content and features cluttering the website, you may want to look at a strategic structural redesign. This redesign would primarily focus on the placement and structure in order to ensure your website is simple to navigate and that you can direct your end users to specific content before they lose interest. Click here to view few of our most recent strategic redesigns.

People are known to have a very low attention span; you only have seconds to impress your end user. Your website should allow them to make a decision to explore and go beyond the first page. The look of your website plays a very important role, but the interactive content that your website provides will keep them coming back for more and provide them with a reason to make a positive decision towards your product or services.

A website redesign is nice for getting a burst of clients coming to check out what’s new, but in order to keep potential prospects interested while visiting your website it takes a sound strategy to back up that design. Utilizing these ideas, a strategic redesign can make your website the most productive employee in your company.

Not long ago, the only competitor you had to worry about was the business down the street, but with the growth of the internet you now have to worry about competitors throughout the nation and in some cases around the world. How do you sell products or services to your consumer when you are competing against millions? By standing out from the crowd.

To “Stand Out” you don’t have to change your products, or services, it just means, you have to change the way you present your products or approach your customer. Humans are emotional beings, we purchase things based on our emotions. If we have a bad experience with a company, even if the product or services are good, most likely we will try to find an alternative source. If you can win over your customer emotionally they won’t look to your competitors for the same goods or services.

Your website is a 24/7, on demand, advertising medium for your company and it needs to stand out, not only in the way it looks and feels, but also in the way it functions. With today’s advancements in web technology your customer expects more from your site then just few static pages and the who, what, where and why of your company. The functionality required depends on your industry. For example, A realtor that has just the contact information and introduction of services on their site is not impressive, today’s buyers and sellers are looking for featured properties, relocation packages, neighborhood information and other tools such as a mortgage calculator, and the ability to email a property to a friend.

A visitor to your site decides within seconds if they like your site and want to take the time to learn more about your company. The difference between getting a lead and just another visitor to the site is your ability to stand out and offer the experience the customer is looking for.

At Integrated Webworks when we structure “the solution” for you we will make sure we implement ideas that will allow you to stand out from the crowd. To do so, a lot of research, planning, and detailed understanding of your business is required. The more we learn about your business the better we can work for you.

Your team at Integrated Webworks would like to thank all of you for your loyalty and good will throughout the year. Thanks to you our customers and partners we have been able to grow even during an economic slump. We are continuing to expand and grow our capabilities so we can provide both expanded services and exceptional websites, and applications. We pride ourselves on our client’s success. Your success literally means we've done our job right. 

We are looking forward to working with you to make sure 2010 is an exceptional year.

Integrated Webworks Holiday Schedule

Integrated Webworks will be closed on December 24th-27th and December 31st-January 3rd. If you have an emergency during this time please contact John Padgette at 904-279-0279 ext. 708.

Sincerely,

The Team At Integrated Webworks

 

 

How do you know if the web development firm you've chosen to represent your business online has your best interests at heart? There are signs that can help you spot companies out to take advantage of you and choose the right one. Integrated Webworks has some tips to help you find the right company that can best bring your project to fruition.

The company should be interested in your business more than closing the deal.

If a company is too hungry then they'll do whatever they can to wring every last dollar they can out of your pocket. Go with a company that is calm and collected in their dealings and can provide you with the security you need to know you're getting a good deal.

Look for a "One-Stop-Shop" that can handle all the aspects of a project's development.

There's nothing worse than getting to the middle of a project and finding out that you have to find another company to complete the job.

Does the company handle your project in-house or outsource part or the entire project?

Some companies are just sales offices and the real development is done overseas. Much needed changes can sometimes take days to finish in this kind of company. You need a development firm that can product quick turnarounds and has the needed staff in-house to handle your project.

Does the company take time to understand your project and give you THE solution rather than a possible solution?

In the end there is only one solution that fits YOUR project. If a company is giving you a grab bag of possible solutions, then they aren't doing their job. Why should you have to do the job you're paying them for?

Does the company give a detailed proposal, take the time to explain it, and answer any questions you have?

If a company is hiding behind legal and technical jargon and is afraid to explain a proposal so that you can understand it, then it's not the right company for you.

Does the company provide a detailed process on the execution of the project?

You should know every step of the way how a company is doing on your project. You should know what phase of a project you are in and what each phase means. It's their job to provide you with a schedule and a plan for your project and update you promptly if something has changed.

Does the company provide referrals from past clients?

If a design and development firm is afraid to stand behind their past clients, do you think they will stand behind you once the job is done? Companies should provide a portfolio of past projects as well as references and referrals from past clients.

Follow these few tips and you should have no problem making your next project an easy-going, stress free, and successful venture.

The web is always growing and changing and people are constantly coming up with new ideas to help make things better both for the user and the developer. HTML5 and CSS3 are the newest changes to come to the web. There are a ton of new features that will make it easier on your users to both find and understand the content on your site. Some of these features add functionality like Video and Audio, some help with search engine optimization like the new structure tags, some help understanding like the new form tags and some just make the web look better like CSS3 drop shadows. In a series of articles we’ll go over these new functions and how they can help you and your visitors.

Lets take a look at HTML 5 first…

Page Structure

HTML5 introduces some new formatting tags to control the organization of a web page. This will help search engines and browsers understand the content of the page leading to higher search engine rankings for your site. These include the:

• < header >
  Typically a headline or grouping of headlines, but may also contain other information about a section.


• < na v >
  Defines the navigation or menu area, typically a list of links and should be contained in a section, header, or footer.


• < section >
  A section is a group of content that is related and can be nested inside of each other to organize information.


• < article >
  An individual entry in a blog, magazine, compendium, etc.


• < aside >
  An aside indicates content that is tangentially related to the rest of the page.


• < footer >
  The footer of a page typically containing information like copyright, who created or wrote the document, links to related documents, etc.

You can see how this new organizational framework would work in the chart below:

As you can see if it’s that much easier for a normal person to read, Google and Yahoo’s complex search engines should have an even easier time finding the appropriate content on a page.

Forms

HTML5 also added new functionality to forms. Most browsers do not support these functions yet, but we’ll show you on an Apple iPhone, Opera browser, and Safari browser how useful these new functions can be.

The new form functions include:

• Search
  When you start to type in the search field a small X appears to let you clear the field.




• Tel
  You’ll notice in the example that the iPhone’s number keyboard is enabled when the field is clicked.




• url
  You’ll notice in the example that the iPhone’s keyboard is enabled when the field is clicked.




• Email
  This field will check for certain characters like an @ and a . to make sure the email address is valid.




• datetime, date, month, week, time, and datetime-local
  Depending on your options this will either show a date picker, or a field to select a time or a combination of the above.




• Number
  This field only allows you to input a number or select the number by increments.




• Range
  This field brings up a new slider allowing you to select a certain range.




• Color
  This brings up your browsers color picker allowing you to select a color, but is not supported in any browser at this time.

In addition to these new fields there are also some improvements to how these fields work such as:

• Autofocus
  This allows you to set which field you want the users cursor to appear in when they enter the page.


• Placeholder
  This tag allows you to inset placeholder text into a field explaining what the field is for, when clicked this text then disspears.

Video and Audio

The < video > element is probably what most users are going to be excited about in HTML5 and as you probably figured out, it allows you to play a movie in your website. This tag can also contain images or audio associated with it in addition to video.

You may say, but I already have video on my website using flash! Well, that’s in the past now and to be honest, Flash is kind of clunky. First of all your users have to have a plugin to even see your flash video. To deal with the second, lets take a look at how the video is called into the page.

Here’s the old way:

Now here’s the new HTML5 way.

Not only is it easier to implement and much cleaner, but utilizing some of the options for video in HTML5 we can have a screenshot of the video appear and some text telling them where to download the video if their browser doesn’t support HTML5.

The HTML5 audio tag works in much the same way enabling sound on your website. Just think, you won’t have to worry about telling all your visitors to download multiple plug ins to see the content of your site. They’ll have everything they need already!

Coming Soon: CSS3’s new features

If someone was to come up to you and tell you that every person will own a cell phone, would you think they were crazy for asking that? What if that happened ten, maybe fifteen years ago, how would you have responded? Today, it is very hard to find a person without a phone or portable device of some kind that isn’t connected to the internet. We need to stream our content on the fly when were not at home, and our phones do this for us. Our phones are incredible little devices but have nowhere near the computing power of their larger cousins. When we want to pull up a webpage on our computer, it can take mere seconds to download thousands of bytes of information through text, pictures, videos and applications. Due to the limitation of the screen size on these smart phones, we came up with mobile versions of our favorite sites.

Popularity in mobile devices like Blackberries , iPhones and now Android powered smartphones are increasing daily more companies are now looking into their websites and services to be viewed on these devices without any hassle. Today's advanced mobile phones come with fast processers, significant Internet capabilities and unique interfaces like large touch screens or a mini keyboard. These phones have become a favorite with those who want quick access to information at their fingertips while still on the move.

Mobile website designs are becoming increasingly more popular in recent times, companies and businesses around the world are increasingly tapping into gaining information on the move. This creates a large number of people trying to access the Internet via their mobile devices. Here at Integrated Webworks, we are now offering mobile website design as a forefront technology.  Whether the mobile site is just a slimmed-down version of their site where only some links or articles are displayed or near recreations of the desktop version, Integrated Webworks is looking into bettering your experience.

Are there any benefits for my business that a mobile website can offer? Tons. What if it’s not for me you ask? Of course it is. Any business can benefit from the use of a mobile website. Banks can allow their clients to gain access their accounts and make changes. Restaurants can post their menus to help someone see what type a food they offer, they then link to something like Google or Bing maps that can give the person the location and directions to the restaurant. Not optimizing for mobile web access is ignoring a huge potential customer base; businesses are becoming increasingly aware to have mobile-friendly websites. Your business cannot ignore this change in technology either. Having an inferior mobile web-face, or lack of, can damage a business and cause any potential customers to move on to a business with a more accessible site.

With the ever growing broadband users in the United States, and the move to faster connection speeds, video has become a mainstream tool. You only need to look at the most popular sites on the Internet and see that Youtube is the 3rd most popular website in the world. It is estimated that 77% of Internet users in the United States have broadband access. If you’re not using video on your website yet, then you’re missing out on a great opportunity to increase customer awareness.

As you are undoubtedly aware, web video is massive right now, and there is a lot of potential you may be missing out on if you are not using videos to promote your business, either on video sharing websites, or on your own website. Putting a video onto a website can seem quite intimidating if it’s something you never done it before. A very convenient option is to go through Youtube, Google Video, or Yahoo video and others that can embed the video on your website and make your site more attractive to visitors and more effective in communicating your message. But problems can arise like the video is taken down or the video quality isn’t that great. Embedding from another site can cause distractions to the viewer from your site and have them turn away to a site like Youtube.

If you are new to the whole Internet marketing and are still struggling to have your website set up, one of the most important things about doing business on the web is getting the formula right for getting your sales. One of the best ways to keep visitors glued to your pages is using video to convey some type of message. Depending on what you have to sell or the goal of your site, video can enhance the experience for the people who search for what you have to offer.

Videos offer an experience of sight, sound and emotional pull that can make people laugh, cry or feel excited with a well edited video. The goal of course is to increase your conversion rate. When people are in a heightened state, they will be more likely to follow your lead.

Some websites use a short flash based video on the website to allow quick review of the subject matter and to get everyone interested in seeing more. The benefit of that alternative is that the viewer can determine from the quick introduction whether the subject matter is what they were looking for. HTML5 is rising as capable competitor to Adobe’s Flash as a faster and less computer memory intensive.

At Integrated Webworks, we pride ourselves in offering our clients the best of what is available. Focusing on what the client’s needs of integrating interactive media and video into the design of their site is just one of our chief goals.

Businesses are always looking into finding ways to grow their business and they see the internet as a place to do just that. The confusion is knowing where to start from or which, of many paths to take. Working with the right web marketing company can make or break your internet marketing success. There are many ways to get traffic to your website, but which one is best for your business depends on many factors.

Getting new traffic to your website and turning new visitors into leads, or better yet a sale, is the single largest request we get from business's contacting us for internet marketing services. The problem may be that nobody can find your website or the problem may be the visitor that does find your website never turns into a lead.

One unfortunate fact is very evident for business websites; despite having plenty of liquid assets at their disposal, many corporations are lost in bland Microsoft Word-esque designs that have become more mundane than going to a museum.

While designers know that a user’s experience on a website has a large impact on the way that customer will interact with them, impressing that concept on the business establishment has taken a very long time. Trends in design are making their way into corporate web, albeit slowly; with patience and a little luck, businesses will soon start to consider carefully coded and appropriately functional design as important as their mission statement and recent sustainability reports.

Overall design for your website should be simple, but pleasing the potential client without being too bland or having them get lost in the site. You want to wow the viewer with visual appeal, but also try to get them into the buying process to either buy a product,return later to continue business or find out more information. At Integrated Webworks, we will always work with you to apply the best possible solution to your web site and facilitate your design needs.