Website Design
Original, custom website designs made to captivate and entice your target audience. A site’s design—including aesthetics, structure, layout, and functionality ultimately creates the personality that users will interact and largely associate with “you”.
Preparation
- I’ll start by consulting with you about what it is you want the website design to convey. I am open to as much or as little information as you may have, but there are certain things that may be needed in order to proceed, depending on the project.
- Once I have a good idea of your goals and a proposal has been received & accepted, I’ll perform applicable research and rough drafting to determine what I feel is the best route to proceed.
- I consider and consult on anything deemed important—from page content & site structure to specific features. Specific items are imperative to figure out before the actual design process.
Process
- To you the client, the next step is to receive a first design draft. For complete website designs, this usually includes a home-page draft and a mock-up of sub-pages.
- I include three major changes in design drafts in my proposals, and if needed, can provide more at additional charges as outlined in the proposal. Major drafts constitute large modifications, not minor tweaks.
- Once drafts have been approved, I start integrating the design into properly developed web pages. Any text content or imagery to be submitted is needed at this point.
- Portions are made available for review as completed, and usually open for adjustments or modifications at any part prior to completion.
Results
- If all goes as planned, the results will be apparent to you immediately. If your project was a website redesign, statistics such as time on page, time on site, bounce rate, etc. will give a great indication of the actual performance.
- Monitoring & reporting is a great way to further quantify the actual performance of a new web design and also start strategically planning future additions or adjustments.
- Basic usability testing will be recommended practically no matter the website, and will give invaluable insight into the new website’s performance and allow for extremely valuable yet often minor adjustments.
Website Development
A beautiful looking website can be largely a waste if it takes unreasonably long to load, only works for Mac users with Safari version 3.0, or if search engines cannot understand and thus rank it. You can rest assured the following is taken into consideration every project I put my hands on.
Performance
- Hand-written code from the ground up— as accessible, maintainable, and search engine friendly as possible.
- Tested in seven different web browsers for optimum compatibility, covering roughly 99% of user-agents.
- 100% Valid XHTML and CSS in accordance to W3C specifications.
- Analyzed and tuned for minimum footprint, download & processing times
Features
A website’s features and technical capabilities rely solely on its development.
Using the eight technologies listed to the right, I’m able to say “yes” to virtually every feature request I receive—from “Keyboard Chooser’s” to complete coach and runner management systems. I’d love to hear your special requests.
Technology
- (X)HTML—
- Web page markup
- CSS—
- Web page visual appearance
- AJAX—
- Client-side data retrieval
- Flash—
- Graphical animation
- JavaScript—
- Client-side web page manipulation & animation
- PHP—
- Server-side web page manipulation
- MySQL—
- Server-side data storage
- Cookies & Sessions—
- Client-side data storage
Website Management
Keeping your website up to date is as almost as important as having it in the first place—almost no matter the industry. If you have a website that is not being monitored and adapting accordingly, you are probably losing out.
Content Management Systems
Often abbreviated CMS, content management systems allow anyone who can use a computer to update and manage the content of their own website.
Although generally limited in functionality—I build custom CMS systems from the ground up around specific needs, creating simple yet powerful interfaces that grant control of your content to you.
Examples of what can be accomplished with a fully custom CMS can be seen in my website portfolio (under the management row).
On-Demand Updates
On-demand or occasional updates basically cover anything you cannot manage via your CMS—or if you do not have one.
They also include CMS expansions, modularly granting you more control over your website as you notice a need for it.
No matter the challenge, and thanks to having manually created your web site from the ground up, I’ll always be here to quickly and effectively adapt the site as your business evolves—which I’m thrilled to be a part of.
Monitoring & Reporting
Take the guess-work out of your website’s performance.
Updates based upon assumptions are fine—updates based on who your visitors are and their demonstrated preferences, however, are invaluable.
Know where users enter, their duration on each page, where they leave, and everything in between.
Website Promotion
People are searching for your exact products and services every day. Many of which may love to purchase from you or your website—if only they knew about it. Enforcing your off-line image is great, but why not take advantage of one of, if not the most cost effective means of promotion available. Allow those who don’t know you exist to start finding you.
Tracking, Research & Analysis
Knowing how users find (and don’t find) you online is the first step in maximizing your website’s potential.
The metrics made available by tracking a website’s visitors are invaluable, yet surprisingly uncommonly taken advantage of.
Tracking, research & analytics should be the major strategic backbone behind a website’s online visibility.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO involves advancing the position that your website appears in search engine result pages (SERPs) for valuable queries.
As ranking algorithms are trade secrets, misconception shrouds the mysterious field of SEO. Many people I mention SEO to think it consists of including keywords in certain places on a page, even a decade after meta keywords basically lost their purpose.
Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising
PPC advertisements are located very close to search results on SERPs—usually to the right and perhaps above regular search results.
The important distinctions between the two is that while regular search results are generated entirely algorithmically, PPC advertisements are entirely controllable in real-time by me as the advertiser with any given budget.
Website Hosting
Every website needs a host. Unfortunately, the options available to website owners are generally extremely limited. Being prepared when issues arise and knowing where to turn is one thing. The big problem is the complete lack of hosting solutions available that offer real guarantees, absolute control and premium performance at reasonable prices.
The Usual Options
Site owners have two options—shared or dedicated hosting.
For somewhere between $5 and $100 a month depending on specifications, shared hosting plans offer resources on a server shared with a large number of unknown websites. On top of having to respond and/or pay someone for support when something needs to be looked at or fixed, every site on the host is capable of hogging notoriously oversold resources and even bringing the server to a halt.
On the other hand, decent dedicated servers cost hundreds of dollars per month and you are still response for management of the server, backups, and any problems that may arise.
Revolutionary Web Hosting
I am very proud to offer fully managed hosting with the power and peace of mind of a dedicated server—all within regular shared hosting prices.
What this means to you;
- Your website is more fast and stable than otherwise possible for any remotely similar budget.
- You will know that no other websites interfere with your site’s performance.
- You will have access to features otherwise reserved only for high-budget hosting plans.
- Your website will be monitored for errors and backed up automatically and repeatedly.
- You will receive free support regarding your entire hosting package—including e-mail and FTP
How Can I Offer This?
There is no way around it—a dedicated server of quality all to yourself costs hundreds of dollars a month.
What I’ve done is split the cost of a dedicated server between clients without any of the usual shared-server risks—simply by ensuring I am the only person permitted to modify web-accessible areas of the server. The problem with shared hosting is the range of people that may have access to the server and it’s resources—each with the power to upload files that utilize more than their fair share of resources and even make the entire server vulnerable.
By acting as the sole administrator of the servers, my clients and I can rest assured that our websites will be safe, functioning optimally, and fully supported free of charge.
Please visit the following page for even more information about my premium website hosting services.