The Best Articles

Just as in private life, first impressions in the very public life of business are very important. Creating that positive, trustworthy and value-laden image for your company is essential to success. Today the battleground is not only a storefront window, or a company\'s print and billboard ads, but its \"always on\" and highly visible website. The Internet revolution revolutionized public relations, along with everything else.

The phrase \\\"web design strategy means a range of different things to different people, and involves more than merely \\\"design decisions. The term seems to imply that the issue is about color, page layout and the use of Flash animations. Yes, these factors are part of the big picture, but the \\\"bigger picture is about the overall design of your website, meaning its entire \\\"architecture.


You need to find out how your site\\\'s overall \\\"information architecture affects its visibility to search engines. The truth is, specific web page elements like your navigation scheme and technologies like CSS (Cascading Style Scripts) or JavaScript can either interfere with or aid a search engine\\\'s ability to \\\"spider and rate your site. Sometimes an element can do both, at the same time!


The whole topic of a \\\"site architecture or web design strategy that supports Search Engine Marketing (SEM) has really been quite poorly addressed. Many companies that do SEM consulting have less than state-of-the-art knowledge of how information architecture and design strategy affect a site\\\'s usability and organic rankings. If your consultant, or your own research, is focusing only on search advertising, media buys and bidding processes, you are not getting the whole picture.


A top position in the Google results is useless if site visitors aren\\\'t being converted into buyers. A successful site architecture and site design strategy will address the needs of both the search engines and your visitors/customers.


Directory setups


Generally speaking, the pages nearest the root directory are the most important pages of your site. Essentially, by placing them near the root you are telling the search engines your priorities, strengths, and focus.


One of the oldest and \\\"wrongest SEO myths, however, is that search bots won\\\'t \\\"crawl farther down that a third subdirectory. This is not true now, if it ever was, because as long as related pages are linking with each other in a \\\"spider-friendly way, the search engines will keep on searching. Many experts in the field recommend that the most important pages (up to 200, if you have that many) can be kept in the root directory. This means pages that are important to your target audience, not your consultant or IT expert.


Navigation is key


A key element of your site design is the navigation scheme. Sets of buttons are generally friendlier than pull-down menus (DHTML), but plain old hypertext links are even friendlier than those buttons. While it is true that these text links are easiest for programmers to format (a click with CSS), the site design must consider the preferences of the end users, not the site designers or owners.


The fact is, many usability tests and user focus groups reveal definite preferences among Internet users for intuitive buttons and those dynamic, pull-down menus. Even though some usability experts may not recommend these latter approaches, you really must consider how the users react to them, since it is their actions that lead to sales and rankings, not the theories of the tech squads.


File names, directories, URL\\\'s


When queried on which URL is more memorable - domain.com/car/seats.html or domain.com/carseats.html - more than 90 percent of people in an online survey reported preferring the one without the subdirectory. A surplus of \\\"forward slashes\\\" is a common complaint heard by site designers who take the time to check in with actual users.


Many SEM experts create extra subdirectories as a means of adding another keyword in a URL, assuming that it will help ranking. It is fairly well established that keyword-rich title tags are far more beneficial than keyword-rich URL\\\'s. Never forget for whom you are creating those URL structures. It\\\'s the users. URLs that are easy for users to remember are also easy for them to pass on to others.


Web page categories


Some usability professionals have broken web pages down into seven specific types, while others assert that there are 11, or an even dozen, or more. The actual number is not really that important. The knowledge to take away is that there are different types of pages that SEM-oriented web strategies must consider. Which ones you will employ depends both on your type of business and your approach. And how you will conceive, design and promote each web page will depend to a great extent on the type of page that it is.


Some web page types are home page, category/gallery page, advertising (landing) page, product page, news/media page, form page, services page, shopping cart page, search/results page and \\\"credibility page. Each one naturally requires a different approach. It would be silly to optimize your product page the very same way you optimize some other kind of page, since optimization and design strategies differ according to many factors, not the least of which are the calls to action (CTAs) for each page type.


Layout, look and feel


Naturally, layout strategies will be as varied as the different page types, and a product page will not work according to the same principles as a news page. Of course, you also have to have an integrated and consistent overall design. When you are planning for a site, you need to focus not just on the overall effect, but all the individual ones that are put into play on each page. There must be some overarching sense to the site, while still allowing for differences at the page level.


Successful site design and web strategy entails issues of language, design, color, shape, layout, look and feel. The strategy must make sense while allowing for sufficient flexibility and creativity \\\"along the way.\\\" Certainly you want to improve the ability of search engines to access your keyword-rich content, but the bottom line is that you want to increase those site conversions. Keep your eyes on the prize and stay vigilant.

About The Author

Moonrise Productions is a custom web design company specializing in custom web development and design. Whether you need web application development or social network web designcontact us and we\\\\\\\'ll get it done right.

It wasn\\\'t so long ago that being told you had \\\"your head in a cloud\\\" wasn\\\'t any kind of compliment. For computer and IT folks, it is now. As \\\"cloud computing\\\" becomes the Buzzword Of The Millennium (until the next one) it is going through the usual growing pains—defining itself, redefining how companies use applications, being misunderstood and, sometimes, being adopted too quickly.

New developments, in everything from computing to gardening, tend to be disruptive, especially to systems whose rationale has been reduced to \\\"the way we do things.\\\" That\\\'s a dangerous attitude in any enterprise, but can be deadly in business. Cloud computing has already started to disrupt the way in which business users think, but the big question is, When do we jump on board? Fortunately, the benefits of running your web applications in a cloud are starting to come into focus.

Fast rising vapor?

The term for software or products that are talked up but don\\\'t show up, is \\\"vaporware.\\\" In an interesting nexus, clouds are made up entirely of vapor. Let\\\'s hope the similarity ends there, since cloud computing is already starting to have effects, although small at present, on how people and companies consume (or don\\\'t consume) hardware and software. \\\"Cloud computing\\\" is not just the latest hip terminology, it is already part of the core IT thinking of tech pundits and corporate evangelists.

Naturally, as with anything new and different, cloud computing is causing a good deal of arguing and finger pointing. Bloggers, technoids, Twitter talkers, think tanks and programmers galore have already invested thousands of hours and spread billions of pixels in efforts to convince everyone (themselves, too, perhaps) that they have The Correct Take on Cloud Computing. Of course, almost as many other smart folks are taking pot shots at the whole idea. All this, of course, is a good thing.

Debate good, groupthink bad!

The debate(s) will spur a lot of good thinking and force proponents to turn their PR soundbites into real explanations and suggestions. Necessity is the mother of invention, while tension is the mother of refinement. Among the most important refinements to watch for, naturally, are those that will address the glaring security and privacy risks. Still, there is enough meat on the cloud computing bone right now to see at least half a dozen benefits that IT decision-makers should consider. Briefly, and in no particular order, they are as follows:

Reduced cost

Adoption of cloud technology is done incrementally, which means the costs are spread out over time, saving money.

Increased storage

Organizations will be able to store much more data in a cloud-computing model than on their in-house, private systems. Scalability and \\\"JITS\\\" (Just In Time Storage) are also efficiency enhancements, and can be money-savers, too, when done right.

Automated updates

In an echo of Scott McNealy\\\'s pitch for Sun\\\'s \\\"the web is the computer\\\" of some years ago cloud computing enthusiasts point out that IT personnel would no longer need to fret, bother or raise a finger to keep software updated.

Flexibility squared

Cloud computing will offer many more times the flexibility than existing computing models. IT managers will be able to manage dynamic, evolving networks and accessorize them however they deem necessary, for a minute or an hour or a month. This is an amazing benefit that could quickly turn into a liability with dithering, indecisive management. Cloud computing will require good planning, deft execution and quick thinking, but why should that scare anyone off?

Increased mobility

Individuals and corporate employees will be able to access their information from wherever they are, anywhere they can get Internet access, rather than remaining tethered to their desks. Again, this is a double-edged sword, since security and privacy issues magnify when access points multiply. In addition, project management can often suffer without \\\"face time,\\\" and the notion that teamwork can proceed with tight controls as the team turns into telecommuters is as yet untested.

IT efforts can be (re)focused

If IT managers no longer need to bother with ongoing server and application updates, and a host of other computing issues that the cloud model is built to address, organizations can focus and refocus their efforts. In an ideal world, this leaves creative minds free to create, solve, innovate and improve. In a fallible one like we really live in, this may have unintended consequences, like complacency.

Summing up

Will there be benefits to cloud computing? Of course, and Amazon and others are already showing the way. Will it be a smooth ride from here to there (wherever \\\"there\\\" is)? Of course not. In human systems, which is where the non-human systems like cloud computing have to reside, there has been very little success with planning, managing or controlling the evolution of a new technology.

At this point, with massive interest in this new computing model, the best approach is the \\\"multiple lab\\\" method. That is, watch from the sidelines, while dipping your toe in the water if you want to, and see which of the myriad approaches works, or at least points in the right direction. There will be benefits, certainly, but they will come after the requisite number of mistakes and missteps. As long as you don\\\'t venture down the path ahead of the group learning curve, you will be walking with your head in the clouds along with a lot of other folks—and sooner rather than later.

\"If you build it, they will come\" is a fine quote from a fine movie about hope and dreams in, well, a field of dreams. But just because you make something – like, say, a company website – doesn\'t mean that a single person or an appreciative crowd will peruse every page of it and become your biggest fans and greatest repeat customers.

In today\'s fast and fickle world of electronic online communication, fighting for the attention and wallets of computer users is a game with stiff competition. There are likely many more people and companies who do what you do than you think – if not down the road, then somewhere else in the world where they can use overnight delivery to reach the same customers. But like any match or event, if the coach creates a solid game plan, then the team has a fighting chance of coming out ahead. It takes good, thorough analysis of what happened before and during the game to help make sure that the next one is won.

Focusing on the targets

In the game of website creation and marketing, companies and people who are represented online ultimately need to focus on their target users and potential customers. One of the best methods of doing this is through web analytics. Web analytics enable website creators and the site owners a way to see the daily trends of users, such as how long they looked around a website, which way they came to the site in the first place, what pages they looked at on a particular website and whether or not they left the site or clicked over to a related, yet different, site.

One thing that web analytics let us know is among the most important pieces of information, namely, where the web target users actually came from. Where did they enter? Through a common search engine like Yahoo or Google? Through a specialty clearinghouse site that lists current links related to your company? If you know the answer, you can easily redouble your forces and pump up your presence at those sites (and/or similar sites) to increase traffic.

Key keywords

Another thing that web analytics do is help to determine which keywords on your site have been hit most frequently. Say that common search engines have driven your visitors to you and turned them into paying customers. Many analytics applications can tell you what words were the magic ones. Often, customers take action immediately after they see certain words and later retain these for many site visits and searches to come. This kind of information will obviously help you to strengthen the presence of these terms on your site and that, in turn, will \"organically\" pop up online in search engines.

The statistics that are rendered through analytics help to show you what ideal position your site can be in. If you look at other sites for similar businesses that show up maybe ten pages back on Google, it is easy to look at feedback on those sites and exterior sites about what appeals to users and take that information to heart when trying to lead your field. When you couple that feedback with analytics about what names created traffic, what links were clicked on, how many people left the site, etc., then you are heading in the right direction towards exposure success.

Back to the blogs

With analytics, you can easily find the best-hit words used in your field that you can, in turn, use for the site and ancillary blogs that will help direct visitors back to you. It is best to use words that have a track record. Familiarity, in this case, breeds traffic and sales, not contempt. Analytical applications may be able to predict the number of clicks such individual words may have every 30 days. Those with larger numbers, of course, are the ones to think about incorporating into your site text.

Sometimes it is worth it to appeal to your unique audience, though, and not simply string together easy \"high hits\" text and phrases on your site. There are sophisticated audiences who like unique content and headings and expect it. Those same people may also want to read more than less. So even though your analytics say that viewers tune out after, say, an average of a few hundred words on your first few site pages, a crowd that looks at book excerpts that encourage them to buy books may actually read over a thousand words. You have to read between the lines, too, in some cases like this.

In the end, knowing your audience statistics – what viewers do and how they do it – will allow you to make the best site that you can for the people who love what you do. Just make sure that you understand how your audience relates to this information and you\'ll be able to keep your expanding customer family coming back for second and third rounds of the \"main event,\" whatever it may be.

Modern websites are a far cry from the static text and graphics showcases of a decade ago, Today almost all popular and successful websites, be it online shopping portals, lead management systems, surveys, event registration, reservation, and ticketing systems, social networks, entertainment sites, eCommerce websites implement web based applications.

Web applications are computer programs. These programs allow website visitors to submit and retrieve data to/from a database over the Internet using a preferred web browser. The data is then presented to the user within the browser as information is generated dynamically by the web application through a web server.

Web application development is not necessarily an easy task. A properly developed web application must undergo a series of actions to ensure success.

The 5 Step Software Development Cycle
The software development life cycle normally comes with some standard processes which can be managed by a well-trained development team. Like software, web site applications is also developed with a certain methodologies. Let us look at the steps involved in most any web site development projects.

1. Analysis:
As the web site is going to be a part of a system, It needs a complete analysis as, how the web based application is going to help the present system and how the site is going to help the business. Moreover the analysis should cover all the aspects especially what are the performance expectations of the finished product. Another key aspect of the analysis is identifying and understanding the targeted audience and their respective demographic.

2. Identify Specifications:
After the analysis, preliminary specifications are drawn up by covering up each and every element of the requirement. This specification document is then used by the design and development team as a master plan ensuring the ongoing understanding of the project requirements.

3. Design:
The Design step includes the creation and design of all the pages implementing the application features as design elements to be programmed later by the coding team. In most of the cases customer may be interested in viewing two or three design versions. Revisions are displayed via the web project board for the customer to view. In optimum project management processes, customer comments, feedback and approvals are submitted to a project management board for easy review and retrieval by all relevant parties. Throughout the design phase the team should develop test plans and procedures for quality assurance. It is necessary to obtain client approval on design and project plans. Once approved the approved coded designs are provided to the Programming team for development.

4. Development:
In parallel the Database team will develop the database with all the data structures. Unlike traditional design the coder must be familiar with the interface as the code should not change or alter the look and feel of the site or application. It is important the programming team and the designer interact and communicate well in order for the programmer to thoroughly understand the design. The coders should always produce necessary testing plans as well as technical documentation. The end-user documentation can also be prepared by the coding team, which can be used by a technical writer.

5. Testing:
Unlike software, web based applications need intensive testing, as the applications will always function as a multi-user system with bandwidth limitations. Some of the testing which should be done are, Integration testing, Stress testing, Scalability testing, load testing, resolution testing and cross-browser compatibility testing. Both automated testing and manual testing should be done without fail. For example its needed to test fast loading graphics and to calculate their loading time, as they are very important for any web site.

There are ideal testing tools which assists quality assurance testers. After the testing is completed a live Beta testing is necessary for web sites and web based applications. After uploading the site a final testing is conducted.
Successful businesses have made intelligent use of web application development to enhance their business prospects. However web application development should be handled only by firms who have the experience and technological understanding to undertake challenging application development .
Once your company requires an online application look for a web development with a strong portfolio of clients that have an industry reputation. A strong website development company can make any website effective.

About the Author
Gary Klingsheim is the Vice President of Moonrise Production. Moonrise is a San Diego web design company specializing in custom web design. Visit us online today or call us at 415.887.9240 to discuss how we can help you make the most of your online presence.

There are few things more important on the web than \"usability,\" because the Internet is an interactive space and not a one-way street. You want to improve the visitor\'s experience, make choices simple, be pleasing to the eye and not overuse the flashy add-on du jour. In addition, your site will tell visitors a lot about your company just from the way it looks, loads and functions, before they even read a single word. The importance of creating an attractive, user-friendly website simply cannot be overstated.

For reasons that are almost too numerous to list - marketing, sales, psychology, trust building, perceived professionalism, etc. - the way your website is experienced by users should be foremost in your mind. The following eight important reminders will get you going in the right direction, but you\'re the one who knows your customers (or should) so the finer points of personalization and \"character\" are up to you.

1. The importance of focus: You need to think like your visitors do. This is key to your site\'s success. Your customers simply want to find what they need, make the payment and get back to real life (jobs, family, tennis, whatever). If you can make their lives a bit simpler and easier, they\'ll reward you for it. If, on the other hand, you make their lives more complicated, they\'ll \"surf away\" and stay away.

2. The importance of understanding the medium: You are not creating a slideshow, a YouTube video, a TV commercial or a PowerPoint presentation. You are building a website for commercial purposes. You need to provide easy, simple, clear navigation on every page, since you never know how people will link to your site and what they will see first. Visitors to your site, no matter how hard you try, will not always go where you would like them to go, or do what you want them to do. Remember that, and give them a few tools to move around the site, like a sitemap and/or internal search engine.

3. The importance of non-aggression: Most Internet users, especially experience ones, like to stay in control of their movements. Research suggest that your first-time visitors are \"hunting,\" not \"deciding,\" so do not make unnecessary demands for clicking, scrolling, resizing windows or anything else. Neither should you put up any roadblocks that will slow down their hunting, like time-consuming \"Flash and splash screens.\"

4. The importance of reduced load times: Tied into #3 is the notion of your site\'s real and perceived \"speed.\" Carefully consider each page element and make each one earn its place, based on functionality, not \"wow\" value. Keep graphic file sizes small and do whatever else you need to do to have a fast-loading, easy to use site.

5. The importance of customer needs: Define all the kinds of people you expect to visit your site and consider what they\'ll be looking for. Ensure that the navigation design helps the greatest number of people to find the most popular items in the least amount of time. Don\'t \"bury\" essential information so that visitors have to dig down two or three levels to find it.

6. The importance of simplicity: Flash is powerful tool, especially helpful in demonstrating things that are difficult to describe in words, but it is so pathetically overused that it has turned people off. It can be a huge distraction, too, since animation and bright (moving) colors are exceptionally hard for our eyes to ignore even when our brains want to.

7. The importance of proportionality: Although Javascript is used on some sites to display all the links to the other pages, there is really no reason to do this when simple, straightforward, low-overhead HTML works fine. When you employ a \"new, improved\" or more complex means of doing something - anything - you have to take into account browser compatibilities, possible bugs and user resistance. Don\'t use more technology than it takes to accomplish something cleanly, clearly and consistently.

8. The importance of avoiding surprises. You should use the expected, usual and standard placements for expected, usual and standard site elements. Site navigation is not something you want to be too creative with, as it needs to be immediately understandable and usable. Such consistency across the World Wide Web is actually a good thing, as it tends to make people\'s lives a bit easier when they feel they are in \"familiar territory.\" Generally speaking, your various website components should look and work as people think they\'re supposed to.

To borrow from Oscar Wilde, consider also the importance of being earnest. More specifically, you want to be seen as being earnest, meaning that you want every visitor to understand, implicitly if possible but explicitly if necessary, that you are doing everything possible to make their site visit a simple, straightforward experience. \"No muss, no fuss\" is a great slogan to remember.

Therefore, rather than get caught up in profound design metaphors or using your bandwidth to display every possible website trick and/or treat, you should focus on making your site into a solution for your customers. Make it easy for them to do what they need to do and then get on with their lives. Perhaps the most important thing you can give a site visitor, then, is respect and appreciation.

Model-View-Controller (MVC) is a software approach to website building and display that separates what is called the "application logic" from the actual presentation. What this means in practice is that it permits web pages to contain just small amounts of "scripting," or PHP commands for automated actions, since the presentation portion of the page is separate and distinct from that PHP scripting.


A few quick definitions are in order. The "Model" means the actual data structures, the various functions that empower your pages to fetch, incorporate and even update the information in the database you are using. The "View" comprises all the information presented to a website visitor, normally a web page but possibly a page "fragment" such as a header or footer, an RSS (Real Simple Syndication) page or some other "page" type. Finally, the "Controller" is the intermediary among the Model, the View and any other necessary resources, all of which work in concert to reply to an HTTP "request" and generate web pages.


Programmers compete, you win


There are already various "coding companies" bringing the MVC workflow and structure to the application shelf. Some have a somewhat "loose" approach where Models are not absolutely required. If you can live (that is, if your pages can "answer the call") without the additional separation, or if designing and maintaining the Models is more complex than you like, you can simply build your site with just the Views and Controllers. Since you can usually incorporate your existing scripts, and develop custom core libraries, you get to work the way you want.


The notion that MVC is competing with HTML is incorrect, although some coders and site builders make a deal out of "MVC vs. HTML." Regarding RIAs (Rich Internet Applications, full-featured software packages that run in a browser), a leading software geek-Sho Kuwamoto, former Macromedia/Adobe engineer-opines that "MVC is probably not needed for most RIAs [and] is probably overkill for the vast majority of [Adobe] Flex apps." However, he also realizes that "MVC actually makes sense for the HTML-based world."


Peacemakers, not code warriors


This is hardly the type of "us versus them" talk some are using, and is much more sensible. Another sensible observation concerns the general tendencies exhibited by programmers and engineering managers, a leading one of which is laziness. This means "laziness" in a comparative way, in the expectation that only a truly serious, otherwise insoluble problem will motivate someone like Kuwamoto to get "into MVC [for] desktop GUI programming." For many programmers, separation between Views and Models was important, whereas separating out Controllers was in the "more trouble than it’s worth" category.


About MVC making sense "for the HTML-based world," the explanation goes like this: There is physical separation between the View, which resides on the client computer, and the Model that is on the server. The logic for responding to user events is typically handled on the server, so does it even (or ever) make sense for Models to manage these events? The answer is a definite "no way," so you separate the Controller logic from the Model logic. HTML and MVC capabilities can support one another, as they should, rather than be looked at as an "either/or" situation.


Downsides updated, too


There are some unpalatable things about a hybrid approach, of course. There are architectures where a single Controller handles every one of the "actions" for the whole application. A few programmers may see this as a "good thing," while plenty of others would consider it a necessary evil, at best. Isn’t the "World of the Giant Switch Statement" one of the very things every engineer in this niche wanted to avoid by adopting object-oriented programming?


With applications like Adobe Flex and others, you have these powerful, adaptable engines on the client side that can manage the complex logic-and access web services directly. The various forces that propelled the MVC model to the forefront should be reexamined in light of the goals of each individual. It is a powerful, even necessary, development, but certainly does not presage the "end of HTML."


For some applications it makes very good sense to separate out Controllers, and for particular components it makes sense to leverage the MVC method. For the majority of applications, however, separating Views from Models is the biggest winner in the workflow. Since, in the majority of cases, the Model part of the application comprises services that reside on an entirely different machine, the separation is something that you really have no choice about, anyway. Getting everything to work together to the greater good-the user experience-is the bottom-line goal for the scientists and the artists that join forces to push the Internet forward, often an inch or so at a time. Stay tuned to MVC, and HTML 5, or you will definitely miss something-and it could be soon, too!