Philadelphia businesses know there are endless amounts of e-commerce websites available, to the point where customers find it challenging to choose where they’d like to shop.  With the following e-commerce web design strategies, you’ll be able to get a leg up on the competition and understand which e-commerce strategies should be emulated.  The following are successful web design trends and web development strategies.

Useful (and Basic) e-Commerce Web Design Tips:  Philadelphia Web Development

1. Categorize your products and items properly, so customers can easily find what they’re looking for.  You’ll have to designate which categories and sub categories are appropriate so viewers are exposed to all site essentials and can efficiently navigate around.
2. Product descriptions are also necessary.  You’ll need to write clear and informative product descriptions, using SEO keywords when necessary for every product on your site.  Viewers like to know what it is they’re buying.
3. Keep it simple, keep it clear. Very clearly display all price related information next to products to maintain a level of trust with customers.  This means in addition to prices, you’ll need to prominently display discounts, special offers, shipping charges, or any other costs if they exist.
4. Make it easy for customers to pay. Your e-commerce website shopping cart should support as many payment options as are available, from PayPal, Credit Card, Google Checkout, etc so customers are provided with a variety of payment methods to accommodate the means of checkout they feel most secure with.
5. Security, assurance, confirmation. Keep in mind to only require the information necessary from customers so potential clients aren’t overwhelmed and lose focus.  Also, your customers will need a payment receipt or confirmation receipt after they’ve gone ahead and made a purchase, so remember to provide one.

Specific e-Commerce Web Design Tips:

Amazon.com’s success has come from much testing, retesting, and optimization, and remains the envy of many e-commerce marketers.  We can learn a thing or two from them and apply it to our own website in the process of web design and web development.  Several of these e-commerce web design trends don’t only look great, but they obviously work.

1. Offer your customers more then one picture to look at, preferably several that can be blown up, zoomed in, and viewed at many different angles.
2. Set up your ecommerce platform to offer comparison shopping.  This includes recommended products based upon consumer’s previous purchases, related items, or items “frequently bought together”.
3. Don’t underestimate the power of “big”.  Big is a popular web design trend, especially for e-commerce websites.  Modern, clear, and prominent designs are in—big logos, openly displayed coupons, and large images make large impressions.  This strategy also serves as a “call-to-action”.
4. Open source e-commerce platforms are easy to customize, convey professionalism, make navigation easy, and are easy to implement.  One e-commerce feature is “content sliders”, a very popular web design feature that displays a slideshow result of products/items for easy browsing and customer interaction.  Not only that, they serve as an easy way to manage and display content.  There are many customizable options available—choose one that best suits your product choices and page content.  Walmart, Borders, and Nordstrom make use of these.

Philadelphia businesses, explore your web design and web development options.  Incorporating the aforementioned e-commerce web designs is a sure way to improve user experience and gain a competitive advantage.  Learn more—discuss e-commerce options with a company that specializes in Philadelphia web design and Philadelphia web development.

This is was an important announcement because mobile devices are fast becoming a common thing in our life, and mobile handsets and smart phones are being used as shopping devices. Using a mobile store, customers can conveniently purchase whenever and wherever they want via a streamlined payment process.  In fact mobile commerce has been identified as a new retail channel called m-commerce, and Philadelphia Website Design firms will soon be asked to begin building compatible applications.

Magento’s website boasts the following: Welcome to the world’s first mobile commerce platform. With Magento mobile, you can easily create branded, native storefront applications that are deeply integrated with Magento’s market-leading eCommerce platform.

So why the excitement about mobile commerce apps?

Many industry experts predict that mobile is the next “frontier” for commerce. There are two ways that users interact with ecommerce sites on mobile devices:  mobile web (browser) apps and native mobile apps.  Mobile web apps involve using themes to optimize the store website so that it renders well on phones and mobile devices.  Native mobile apps allow users to engage more deeply with ecommerce sites on their mobile devices.   Some native mobile applications even allow a user to begin making a purchase, add things into their shopping basket, and finish the purchase from a mobile device. This is becoming an important trend in mobile applications especially since eBay announced that they project $1.5 billion in mobile sales this year.

However the current m-commerce technology is inadequate to meet retailer’s demands, and there is a lack of universal standards. Magento Mobile is one of the first attempts to meet retailer’s needs with native commerce apps for mobile devices, and the meet up with Philadelphia Website Design representatives helped to convey the features of the platform to developers.

Philadelphia website design representatives were quick to point out that native mobile applications are complicated to manage and expensive to build.  Magento’s new mobile native application works only for the iPhone now, but it features commerce, customizable themes that include background images and button colors, and integration with your existing ecommerce and merchandizing tools, at affordable prices.   And the Magento representative on hand indicated that an Android compatible version of Magento Mobile will soon be released.

A: A fantastic customized search experience for searchers, and more web traffic and visibility for you, if you web design with Web 3.0 in mind.

Web 3.0, according to some Internet experts will allow you to do less and your browser to do more.  You’ll be able to search more specifically—your browser will then gather, analyze, and then present the data to you based on the detailed or narrow parameters of your search.  Web 3.0 has a greater understanding of all information present on the web, and can efficiently and more effectively deliver it.

When using search engines today, you still have to work with them or “guide” them to display the best search results—they still don’t fully “comprehend” what you are seeking.  Search engines scour the net for web pages that contain the keywords or phrases you’ve searched for.  Web 2.0 browsers can’t confirm to you that the page displayed is relevant to your query, it can only confirm a keyword match.  (For instance, if you’re searching for pictures of a jaguar, Google will display an almost even mix of cars and cats).  Web 3.0 will be able to understand context and deliver a more appropriate search results, along with a match for the keywords you’ve entered.

Let’s say for instance you want to go on a vacation, perhaps a cruise around the Mediterranean.  With Web 3.0, you’ll be able to type “Mediterranean cruise under $4,000” and receive a variety of results related to your query, beyond typical cruise results including restaurants, activities, ticket prices, and other suggestions.  Web 3.0 puts the entire Internet—and all contextually related information—at your searching fingertips.

Web 3.0:  What to Expect

Most Internet experts agree that Web 3.0 will possess the following general traits.

• An overall “rich” and “relevant” browsing experience.
• The possibility of a unique browsing experience, based on what you’ve previously browsed for—you could be entering the same keywords as someone else, but will receive different results based on previous queries and profiles.  (Think of Pandora, the music genome project.  Pandora relies on trial and error to provide individualized content and music selections based on previous likes and dislikes.  Web 3.0 may be similar to this, but perhaps more efficient.
• A tailored web experience based on browsing habits and individual tastes.
• The overall transformation of the web into a database of information, with content made available by non-browsing applications as well.
• Overall focus on usability:  search engines returning fewer and better results, with less spam and online scams.

What Will This Entail for Web Design?

We’re already communicating, publishing, shopping, and sharing more quickly and easily, as data, content, and people are far more accessible then ever before.  Web 3.0 will take that to the next level—it’ll match information exactly to where it’s needed.  Web designers will have to design with that new experience in mind.

Web Design With Web 3.0 in Mind:  The Future of Web Design

Test the source of all web pages for semantic richness—content should be readable by both humans and web applications.  The clearer your content, the easier time search engines and other applications will have indexing and then displaying those results to users.

Web design 3.0 means web design for mobile devices, such as iPhones, Blackberry, iPads, and other computing devices.  Test existing web pages for compliance with all computing devices to ensure all users to have accessibility to your content.  Web design should always take mobile devices into consideration for Web 3.0.

Have your web designer verify that all HTML web pages do not use outdated or ineffectual table tags and coding. In addition, verify that all content as free of errors for optimal search engine indexing and search.  This will ensure you are Web 3.0 ready.

By now, most web designers know that Flash and Search Engines aren’t compatible. Web design with web 3.0 in mind will avoid using flash for content-related purposes.  If you must use flash, do so only for accent purposes, if at all.  The future of flash-compatibility with Web 3.0, iPads, and other devices are unknown.

Web design for Web 3.0 should involve the customization of website templates. Creating the optimal look and feel for users and search engine entails optimizing a template that complies with the W3C, search engines, and provides a superior user experience.

Web design with SEO in mind. Your web designer should work hand-in-hand with a SEO specialist to ensure that your website will rank highly in the Search Engine Results Pages, providing you the visibility that you want.  Effective web design will achieve heavy traffic to your website, and web design combined with smart SEO will deliver the bottom-line results you want, even as the internet continues to change.

It’s absolutely crucial to have a blog for fresh content. Google also recognizes and ranks websites that have blogs higher then those without.  You’ll be reaching out to your audience and connecting with potential clients, and you’ll be driving traffic to your website. If visitors find your content compelling, they’ll link to it and increase your site’s PageRank.

Here are a few helpful tips for Law Blogs.  When blogging, remember to:

-Use relevant SEO keywords.

-Write frequently.

-Educate your readers, not “sell” them or promote your services.

A blog will help you reach the kind of clients you want and drive the web traffic your law practice needs.  Fresh and relevant content demonstrates to your clients that you’re a valuable resource.  If you’re consistent in your posting and you connect with readers, you’ll have a popular blog.

Here Are a Few Other Great Tips:

Host a blog on your own domain—WordPress for example is free, and easily customizable. If you frequently publish valuable content, people will link to you, increasing the page rank of your website.   Write content about the legal issues you care about as well as those which deal with the type of cases you want to work on.  You’ll attract the customers you want.

Keep your blog posts simple and discuss areas that are relevant to your practice. Whenever possible, inject as much personality into each blog post as you can to make individuals want to read what you’re writing.  You’ll not only connect with your readers, but your information won’t seem stale.

Establish which keywords you’d like to use—relevant keywords let search engines know how to index your entries and lead new clients to your website. Find out your targeted audience—the demographic you’d like to reach and write about issues targeting them.

When writing articles/blog posts for the web, keep them short and to the point. Blog posts should typically be around 300-500 words—your readers will appreciate this, and the search engines will have an easier time indexing your posts.  Excellent topics include “How To” guides and helpful information that’ll educate and guide your readers, as well as engage your clients.  Encourage them to contact you personally for more information.

Open your blog up to comments and questions, and follow up with people.  If you’re interacting with your readers, they’ll perceive you as a valuable resource and “real” and knowledgeable person.

Of course, the very best way to blog is to do it yourself, since you are the one who knows your business best.  Before starting a blog, consult with an experienced SEO professional and let them inform you how to write specialized content.  With work, family time, and everything else that needs to get done, you may not have the time to create pages and pages of fresh content.  In these cases, you can hire a “Ghost Writer” to create content for you.  Provided with resources and your guidance, they can develop articles and blog posts that you’ll be happy with.

Is your website SEO friendly?  Here’s our Checklist for Making Lawyer Websites Popular With Search Engines.
Read the next blog post on Lawyer SEO/Internet Marketing Strategies…

Almost every law firm now has a website.  Fewer and fewer people consult the phone book when looking for an attorney.

Google displays 24,700,000 total results for “law firm”.

Per month, there are 2,240,000 Google searches for “law firm”.

Here’s one lawyer SEO/internet marketing strategy, guaranteed to make your website popular with search engines:

Your website is incredibly important! You want a website that’s easy to navigate, professional, and able to track success.

WordPress is a fantastic platform.

If you’re still thinking of Wordpress as a personal blog, you should know it’s actually so much more—WordPress is now state-of-the-art publishing platform and an excellent tool for small or medium sized websites. You’ll need to install the software on your own server or with a 3rd party provider to access the many themes and plugins, run advertisements, edit the database, and even modify the PHP source code.

Wordpress websites can host galleries of videos and photos, forums and online communities, corporate portals, and of course blog posts. In our experience at Boomtown Internet Group, WordPress is an ideal solution for the websites of smaller businesses and law firms. WordPress websites can be set up quickly, easily publish content, and be optimized to show up in Google’s search results. Every page can be indexed by Google, which sometimes doesn’t happen in other more traditional CMS (content management) systems. Wordpress has many plugins and applications that make it easy for internal optimization, allowing you to build a website that features an attractive and functional design, and one that can easily be customized and managed yourself—not to mention it’s SEO-friendly.

Maintaining a functional and well-designed website is absolutely critical to your success as a lawyer and necessary when trying to attract new clients. In this day and age, the majority of clients will find you on the Internet and then contact you, and for that reason it’s important to appeal to clientele online.  This entails tracking and monitoring your website and marketing efforts and then following up accordingly.

WordPress is both convenient and useful in that it provides you with the ability to update and edit content instantly, without assistance from a webmaster. You’re able to add additional web pages (not just to your blog) but to any page you wish, and to update your content whenever you’d like.  This is crucial in that it allows you to stay current with all recent news and events.  With other site platforms, this isn’t the case.

WordPress also allows you to upload videos to your site from your computer. Videos are a great form of online media and many lawyers use this as a way to personalize their website.  Many clients expect to see videos and other interactive media when they visit your website so they can feel as if they “know” you before doing business.  With WordPress, there’s no need to pay a lot of money to put a video up on your website.  Shoot the video in your own office, and then upload it to your Wordpress website and to any other video sites on the internet.  Wordpress provides Plugins for flash video players that allow you to host the video directly from your blog instead of YouTube, but you still have the option of uploading to Youtube first and then embedding on your website if you’d prefer.

WordPress allows you to store, publish, and archive your documents and to your website, without help from a webmaster.  If your law practice puts out a monthly newsletter whether online or offline, upload the PDF version to your website.  Google spiders appreciate the additional content, and your visitors will appreciate the collection of archived documents.  If you’re not sending out a monthly newsletter, online or otherwise, consider doing so.  It’s a great way to reach out to potential clients and drive website traffic.

WordPress allows you to track how visitors are converted in to clients. Your web developer needs to be able to help you create a compelling call to action that will provoke consumers reach out and say “I’m interested, let’s have a conversation.”

It is important that your website be well organized, attractive and professional, and also able to be quickly found.

Is your website SEO friendly?  Here’s our Checklist for Making Lawyer Websites Popular With Search Engines.
Read the next blog post on Lawyer SEO/Internet Marketing Strategies…

DO

• Use web-safe fonts wherever possible: http://www.ampsoft.net/webdesign-l/WindowsMacFonts.html
  The only areas where it’s OK to NOT use web-safe fonts are where images will intentionally be used to display text.  ie. logos, slide shows, image captions, etc…
• Design for 1024 x 768 screen resolution.  The generally accepted width of a design optimized for this resolution would be 966px wide.
• Design a page footer area with room for additional navigation, copyright, and credits for the development company.
• Provide “examples” in the design for any dynamic functionality. ie: drop down menus, mouse rollovers, hover states, etc…
• Design for easy reading with expandable fonts – Make your backgrounds as light as possible. If  the client insists on a background image, restrict it to the side, out of the way of the text, and make it very light
• Be conscious of laptop and wide screens – most computer screens are wider than they are tall, so it makes sense to keep text line length short and put navigation on the left or drop-down from the top of the screen.
• Include contact information on header and footer
• Use graphics resolution not greater than 96 dpi which works well on both windows and MAC machines
• Use reduced color palettes to keep essential graphics (especially any in navigation) under 10K.
• Use recurring visual elements for consistency – and make sure that you can reproduce all graphics. You might need another one of the same kind, so be sure to write down all the effects and the parameters used to create graphics.
• Use borders and white space and don’t cram your design to the edges

DON’T

• Use rounded corners on design elements unless absolutely necessary for the design.
• Use gradients excessively or otherwise develop an “image intensive” design.
• Crop the design at the absolute right/left and bottom edges.  Leave a good amount of blank space on the left/right and bottom of the design to show the developer how the web site (and backgrounds) will function as the browser is maximized and/or resized.
• Just convert print media for use on the web.
• Style input buttons (on forms) wherever possible.  Using the browser’s default gray input buttons is a web standard.
• Don’t OVER Design a huge header.  Remember that if visitors have to scroll to get to the  content on the web page, the header is far too large.

Additional Do’s  and Don’ts For Ecommerce Web Sites

DO

• Provide an area on the header or left nav bar for the following links:  Login, View Cart.  These links need to appear on every page of the web site.
• Try to accommodate a vertical left or right hand navigation bar for the cart’s product catalog.  This can be in addition to a main navigation bar, or part of the main nav bar if the main nav is vertical.
• Provide an area for a “Search” input box and associated submit button.  This should also appear on every page of the web site.

DON’T

• Use a background color on the “content area” of the cart that’s anything other than WHITE, unless the client has specified otherwise.  Integrating most carts into a design that’s not white increases hours.
• Develop a narrow “content area.”  Ecommerce web sites generally need to utilize a nice wide area of the design in order to accommodate the checkout process.  Leave at least 600px of horizontal space for the ecommerce pages to “live.”

And finally, please remember that web design is an art, and what we say here may not be what your client wants. Don’t take our word for it.  There is no real “best practice or standard” for web design, and this list is constructed for the purpose of creating cost effective, user friendly web pages that are easy to program and work in all current browsers.   In all cases, designers should please the client, and it is the programmer’s job to make the design work.

• Logins to your WordPress.
• Go to setting tab.
• Click on Writing Tab.
• Copy and paste this list on the text box given under “Update Services”
• Click “Updates Changes”

Also, as this list is huge (83 services); it may increase the time it takes to save a post. In this case you can use the following short list:

http://rpc.twingly.com/

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://www.bloglines.com/ping

http://www.octora.com/add_rss.php

http://www.wasalive.com/ping/

http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi

http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc

http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php

http://www.mod-pubsub.org/knapps/blogchatter/ping.php

http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php

http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php

http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2

http://www.weblogues.com/RPC

http://xmlrpc.blogg.de

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping

http://1470.net/api/ping

http://api.feedster.com/ping

http://api.moreover.com/ping

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

http://bblog.com/ping.php

http://bitacoras.net/ping

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC

http://blogbot.dk/io/xml-rpc.php

http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc

http://blogmatcher.com/u.php

http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc

http://coreblog.org/ping

http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt

http://mod-pubsub.org/knapps/blogchatt

http://ping.amagle.com

http://ping.bitacoras.com

http://ping.blo.gs

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc

http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc

http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc

http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.myblog.jp

http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://ping.weblogs.se

http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://thingamablog.sourceforge.net/ping.php

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php

http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b

http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php

http://www.blogoole.com/ping

http://www.blogoon.net/ping

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1

http://www.blogroots.com/tbpopuli.blog?id=1

http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php

http://www.blogsnow.com/ping

http://coreblog.org/ping/

http://effbot.org/rpc/ping.cgi

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.weblogs.se/

http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2

http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/

http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/

http://rpc.newsgator.com/

http://www.blogoole.com/ping/

http://www.blogoon.net/ping/

http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id1

http://www.blogsdominicanos.com/ping/

http://www.catapings.com/ping.php

http://www.feedsky.com/api/RPC2

http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/

http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud

http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/

http://www.xianguo.com/xmlrpc/ping.

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://ping.amagle.com/

http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

Also, as these list is huge (83 services); it’s sometime occurred that it’s take long time to save your post. In this case you can use following short list:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com

http://api.feedster.com/ping

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

http://api.moreover.com/ping

http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php

http://www.blogsnow.com/ping

http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi

http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc

http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://www.feedsubmitter.com

http://blo.gs/ping.php

http://www.pingerati.net

http://www.pingmyblog.com

http://geourl.org/ping

http://ipings.com

http://www.weblogalot.com/ping

Every website owner will at some point undergo a website redesign to improve the site, or bring it up to date on web standards.  The decision to redesign a website should not be made lightly because it is fraught with hidden costs and ramifications.  The more planning and the better prepared you are, the less impact to your business during a website redesign. Planning the entire website redesign will save you time, money and resources in the long run.

First you should determine if it is absolutely necessary to redesign your website.  If you can list at least three reasons for a website redesign that make good business sense, then a site redesign is probably a good idea.  To start your planning, begin making a list:

• List the redesign goals and current website goals.
• Take your best guess about the amount of money it will cost for a redesign. Make sure it is a good use of your marketing dollars and the time your staff will spend working on the project.
• Do not plan a redesign that corresponds with a peak sales cycle.

Addressing The Goals of the Website and Writing an RFQ:

Talk to your visitors, friends and colleagues about what would make the website function better.

• Identify your target audience.
• Identify the goals for the website.
• Identify what you want your visitors to do on the website.
• Make sure your staff can keep the website current.
• Decide if you will use a Content Management System (CMS) to update your own web pages or you will use static HTML web pages.
• Decide if you will be switching hosting at the same time as you are doing the redesign – consider any email address impacts if this is the case.
• Identify well-respected web design firms.
• Decide on a budget for the redesign project.

After you have answered these initial questions, you are ready to write a request for proposals (RFP). This will include a project description, a timeline, a budget, and a more detailed description of deliverables and goals.

Preserving Search Engine Rankings for Redesign

In order to measure the success of your website redesign, you will need to save the current analytics information and search positions of the keyword phrases for your current website. Make sure you have enough data about the current site to compare search rankings, visitors, and website goals.

Most established websites have a presence on search engines and certain search engine rankings on keywords that bring in visitors.  If you change your website, you risk losing your hard-earned search engine rankings. If you change the page names, you will have to direct search engines to the new page using permanent redirects to ensure that the pages that used to rank for phrases still do.  Before you begin a website redesign, you should review analytics on the site and identify important content that is currently ranking and make sure that you convert it over to the new design.

Other things to consider in order to preserve search rankings include site architecture, URL structure, page optimization, links pointing to the site and site interlinking. Changing any of these items can impact your search engine rankings.

Sending Out the RFQ

Send your RFQ to only a few carefully selected web design companies. In the RFQ, ask for examples of their work and references. Include specific examples of sites you like and dislike to give the firm a concrete idea of your ultimate redesign look and usability. Include your logo, font, color palette and design guidelines if you have them.

Once you’ve selected a company, they will work with you to create a Statement of Work (SOW) which is a signed agreement outlining deliverables and expectations on both sides, pricing, timing and payment information.

Inventory Your Content

Review the content on the current site and decide if it needs to be reorganized, contained in the new site, or expanded upon.  Update or remove any data that is incorrect, outdated, or incomplete.  Categorize all remaining content.  If you think you want to include more content, go through your existing newsletters, files, brochures, and other marketing material you can add to the site to help make it a better user experience.  In many cases, if your existing website does not have a supplementary article section or blog, you will want to add one.  If you don’t have enough articles and stories to populate your new blog, make sure you have budgeted time to write new content.  You don’t have to wait until the site is live, and the web development firm will appreciate all content sent in electronic format as soon as it is approved. One key element in understanding the flow of the pages on the new site is the site navigation and sitemap. Create an excel type spread sheet showing how old pages correspond to new pages. This will significantly cut down on design and programming and also helps you envision how the new site navigation will work.

Website Wireframes

Before any branding or design is applied to a site, it is a good idea to develop a website wireframe.  The wireframe is a structural diagram that helps a team visualize the relationships between the site’s pages.  Another aim is to identify what structural elements should appear on each page.  A wireframe helps the design and engineering team understand your vision of the website and how it should function.

Design Mock Ups

At this point, the Web design team usually will show you several mockups of the web design. It is very important to review these carefully and ask questions about functionality.  It is much cheaper to modify your site during the initial design phase than during the implementation phase. It is important to try to visualize how a user will navigate through the site using just a home page and internal page design layout.  The more often you ask your design team to rework the layout, the more expensive the site will be, but it is still cheaper to do it at this point in the process than to wait until the design goes to the programming team.  The web designers will probably schedule a meeting to review how they envision the site will work, and ask you to sign off on the design before proceeding to programming.

Items to Note for a Design in 2010

Many current Web 2.0 or Web 3.0 websites follow these conventions:

• Many sites make use of a CMS and social networking software to facilitate communication on the website.
• Shopping cart software works with as few page changes as possible to simplify the shopping process.  Shipping rates and price discounts are identified as early in the shopping process as possible, and products can be cross-sold, up-sold, rated and commented upon, and search features are more robust to easily allow shoppers to find the specific items they want.
• Shopping carts should be checked to make sure “in stock” products work, but don’t necessarily show the number left in stock.
• Shopping cart shipping time should be correct or overestimated so that customers receive their products when they think they will.
• If your site requires secure pages (for accepting credit card information or protecting private data) you will need to purchase and install an SSL certificate.
• Sites should be clean, fast loading, easy to navigate, and provide a user experience that makes people want to return.
• Avoid Flash introductions.
• Include videos, but avoid “must-view” videos that start playing on the home page, especially video with sound.
• Avoid technology that forces visitors to download software in order to navigate the site.
• Include a place for press releases, include a blog, and include an RSS feed.
• Include links to social sites, bookmarking, and make sure that it is easy to share your pages.
• Ensure the site works on all latest versions of browsers.
• Do not require a Login unless it is necessary – make the user experience as simple and quick as possible.
• Plan for Search Engine Friendly URLs instead of long URLs without any search words.

Programming the Site Redesign

Programmers will usually develop the site on a test server where you can follow along in the process.  The test server resembles your live production server as much as possible. Since content from the live site will probably be used for the new site, you should stop making any changes to the live site from this point on.

You may want to let your site users know that they could be affected by the redesign if this applies to them.

Testing The Redesigned Website

Before going to launch, there are several aspects of the site that need to be tested. The programmers will probably already have performed functionality testing, but you should go in at this point and make sure all the features work the way you envisioned. You may want to try some usability testing where you ask people who have never visited the site before to perform simple tasks, like finding a product, buying something, contacting someone, or retrieving a piece of information. If you expect a large number of visitors coming to your new site, make sure to have your programmers test with tools that simulate excessive traffic.

Launching the Redesigned Website

After testing is complete, the site is ready to move to the production server. The programmers will then back up your existing website so you can go back to it in the event of an emergency. Follow the checklist for going live. Finally, it is nice to send your newsletter subscribers an email letting them know about the brand new site, and perhaps offering them special incentive to visit it.

Checklist for Going Live

• Validate the HTML and CSS using this tool: http://validator.w3.org/
• Check for broken links: http://valet.webthing.com/link/
• Check that Robots.txt is correctly set up
• Check that Sitemap.xml is correctly set up
• Check that all “no follow” meta tags are removed unless otherwise indicated
• Check the site on various window sizes
• Check the site for various font sizes
• Check the site speed to make sure it loads quickly – you can use:  http://www.iwebtool.com/speed_test
• Check errors and image sizes: http://www.netmechanic.com/products/HTML_Toolbox_FreeSample.shtml
• If your site will be used by site impaired people, check accessibility using: http://valet.webthing.com/access/
• Check your site on all current browsers
• Test SSL Certificate if applicable
• Optional – Check that Google Analtyics is installed correctly and goals identified
• Optional – Set up Google webmaster tools
• Add verification files for Google, Yahoo and Bing in meta tags
• Print the pages of your site to make sure they look right
• Turn off Javascript and make sure your site still functions
• Turn off plug-ins like FLASH and make sure your site still functions
• Turn off images and make sure your site still functions.
• Double check the contact forms, payment gateways, shopping cart transactions, and other functionality

Planning a website re-design can be expensive and time consuming. The trick is to plan carefully and find the right balance between strong search engine optimization and usability, test thoroughly and plan carefully.

With that incredible number, you might worry about how people are going to find you, and if you already have good rankings, you might worry about losing them if you were to convert to a WordPress content management system.

If you need an easy platform that’ll allow you to rank well and drive more traffic, consider a WordPress website. WordPress websites are popular due to the ease of use, great functionality, and professional looks. Check out these showcased WordPress sites: http://wordpress.org/showcase/archives/ which showcase how popular and versatile the software platform is, and about its search-ability and large-scale usability.  If National Geographic and The Wall Street Journal are using WordPress, that speaks volumes about using it as a possible platform for your site.

If you’re still thinking of Wordpress as a personal blog, you should know it’s so much more—an excellent tool for small or medium sized websites, host for galleries of videos and photos, forums and online communities, corporate portals, and of course blog posts. Most people who have blogged are familiar with the convenience and usability of WordPress, which makes it a logical choice for using as your main website too.  If you are already used to blogging with WordPress imagine how easy it will be to maintain your own site pages using the very same tool.  So we know WordPress is easy to navigate, easy to administer and maintain, and very versatile.  The question is whether WordPress is SEO-friendly as well.  Converting your website into Wordpress could be scary if the software destroys your hard-won search rankings.

In our experience at Boomtown Internet Group, WordPress is an ideal solution for the websites of smaller businesses. It can be set up quickly, easily publish content, and quickly optimized to show up in Google’s search results. Every page can be indexed by Google, which sometimes doesn’t happen in other more traditional CMS (content management) systems.  Wordpress has many plugins and applications that make it easy for internal optimization, allowing you to build a website that features an attractive and functional design, and one that can easily be customized and managed yourself—not to mention it’s SEO-friendly.

So How SEO-friendly is Wordpress?

If possible, design your WordPress style sheet to have your content close to the top of the page, for better readability—most search engines only scan the first half of web pages. Wordpress can also keep sidebars, footers, and other page elements towards the bottom and out of the way.  This design will allow your visitors easy readability as well.

The WordPress default installation doesn’t allow for strict control of page titles and meta tags for keywords and page descriptions—but there is a really great plugin called The All-In-One-SEO Plugin that’ll take care of it for you.  For more control, it lets you add page titles and meta tags manually, as you’ll get the best results that way.  Don’t forget to optimize with regional spelling and supply the search engines with information specific to your website for the best results.

Since blogs publish the same content on many pages such as archives and category pages, you can be penalized for duplicate content.  For instance, if a blog post is placed in more than one category, the post content can appear on the individual pages for each category.  If Google sees the content on more than one page of your site, it can be downgraded as duplicate content.  However, with the All In One SEO Plugin, the post is only accessible to search crawlers in one place. The other links to it will not be followed, which takes care of the duplicate-content problem without messing around with the Robots.txt or other workarounds.

So you’ve got great content, now you need great links. The quality and quantity of your links are important and play a role in search engine favoritism.  Who is linking to you?  WordPress makes this easy, with trackbacks, pingbacks, and blogrolls.  You’ll know who’s linking to you and you’ll easily be able to link to other people, giving both them and you search engine credit. Consider installing the “Related Posts plugin” and have your articles link to other similar articles you’ve written.

Not only text can be optimized for the Search Engines:  WordPress allows you to optimize your images as well. Taking the time to write alt tags and mindfully name your files will drive additional traffic to your site.  It’s important to take advantage of image optimization—even if your visitors can’t see your image tags, you’ll still get traffic from different engines.  I recommend that you take the time to do this yourself, but if you don’t have the time, use one of the available WordPress plugins to do it for you.  The plugin is called “SEO friendly Images” and can add titles to images in posts and pages.

One experience we recently had while in development mode on a website convinced us of WordPress’s innate SEO-friendliness.  We were designing the website www.rcdtechnology.com which had a section on RFID UHF Wristbands.  We forgot to disable the xml rpc ping notification feature on WordPress while we were in development, and the same day we put up the page on UHF Wristbands, the client got a call inquiring about them.  This sort of looked bad for Boomtown because we were still in development, but it really accentuated the complete SEO-friendliness and quick rankings which can be achieved by using the WordPress CMS software as the basis for your website.

For many businesses WordPress is a very robust CMS platform that will allow you much more flexibility and administrative control over your content, while giving you the added benefit of inherent SEO-friendliness.  You don’t have to know HTML or CSS to use a WordPress website or blog.  WordPress offers a built in editor, pre-existing customizations, tutorials, and how-tos. Although WordPress may not be the most perfect CMS solution, it’s so easy to set up, run, and maintain a great website and if you put in a little time, it’ll deliver great search engine results.

If you’re interested in learning more about Wordpress, email us at sue.mccrossin@boomtownig.com and we’d be happy to answer any questions.

We’ve done a bit of research on Magento already, and found that while it is very powerful and flexible, there is very little documentation and some people have found that the layers of programming and thousands of files are tricky to customize, and this makes it take up to 5 times longer to customize. In addition, I have read that the cart runs slowly, requires at least a semi-dedicated server, and can be costly to host as the number of products increases.

Magento allows for multiple stores to use one cart, an obvious savings to our clients. It also allows for multiple product images so that customers can get a really good look at what they are purchasing. It also allows coupons and different pricing for customer groups. Google checkout, PayPal, and PayPal Pro are all integrated, and there is a one-page checkout process.

As far as SEO goes, this cart has the ability to add unique titles and descriptions and keyword rich URLs on pages, just like Squirrelcart. It also has a nice CMS which allows your customers to add informational pages which can be used for SEO as well.

You can download the cart for free from http://www.magentocommerce.com, and there is also a fully supported enterprise edition of the cart for just under $9,000 for larger businesses that want to integrate their carts and inventory systems. The cart is coded with the latest PHP 5 object oriented standards and uses the Zend framework.

Check back to our blog in early January after we complete our first Magento ecommerce website, when we will review our coding experiences using the software.