Overview

Website design is constantly changing. This includes both appearance—a website's "look and feel"—and ways to interact with users, collect marketing data and sell products and services online.

An Essential Step

At clrmedia.com, we recognize that educating clients about website design and development is essential to the success of a project. This section provides an overview of design options that are relevant to many clients. Please contact us if you have questions or wish to discuss how clrmedia.com can help you.

Necessary Information

It is the responsibility of clrmedia.com to:

• → ensure clients have the information needed to make good decisions about their Internet
  → presence
• → recommend specific solutions that will help our clients achieve their business objectives

This requires that we understand our client's business objectives and offline marketing strategies. We appreciate the opportunity to gather this information at the beginning of each project. On an ongoing basis, clrmedia.com helps its clients remain current and identifies new opportunities.

Feature Rich? Or Drowning in Features?

The inclusion of carefully selected features can add to the effectiveness of your website. Too many irrelevant features though and visitors can be distracted from the real purpose of your website, or even pushed to another website!

What Should You Include?

There is an almost endless list of features that can be included when building your website. How do you decide what to include?

At clrmedia.com, we like to ask a simple question—Does the feature contribute to your business objectives?

An Example—Weather Reports

Some websites include a weather report for the local area.

For industries that depend on the weather, such as tourism, transportation, and many sports, the weather report may be an important component of their website.

On many other websites, the weather report is just one more distraction from a company's information and another clickable link away from the website.

Many people bookmark a favourite weather website, such as Environment Canada's Weather Office. If you wish to know about Edmonton's weather, this is the place to go.

Content Management Systems

A CMS—content management system—gives non-technical people complete control over their website. Integrated text editors, formatted content modules and other user-friendly tools allow people to easily maintain and update their website. Non-technical people can change the content and even the look and feel of the website, without the need for specialized software and programming knowledge.

Client-Driven CMS Selection

At clrmedia.com, the selection of a CMS is based on the client's specific requirements. We use a variety of open source CMS, including Joomla, DotNetNuke and Plone, each of which has its own strengths and weaknesses. We also develop custom CMS applications to address unique client requirements.

Website Design

Websites are developed to achieve specific business objectives. You provide information throughout your website to influence peoples' behaviour and perceptions in a manner consistent with your objectives.

At clrmedia.com, we recognize that the important aspect of design is how it contributes to achieving your business objectives.

Key Website Design Attributes

The design of your website should ensure that visitors:

→ can easily move around

→ understand your information

→ know how to respond to the information they obtain
→(for example, contact you or purchase your products).

→ are encouraged to return to your website in the future

Contact clrmedia.com for more information about these key website design attributes.

Technical Design Attributes

Many website designers focus discussions on the importance of adhering to W3 standards, designing for multiple browsers, being aware of different screen resolutions, etc.

These are important technical design issues. They are also issues the designer should address in the background—all you need is assurance that the technical issues are being addressed in a professional manner.

eCommerce Considerations

Time for an eCommerce website? Chris Coyier's eCommerce Considerations is a very worthwhile read. Alternatively, just contact clrmedia.com to discuss your specific online opportunities.

Options for eCommerce range from an eBay store (i.e. Alberta Coins, with which we have no relationship), to providing a shopping cart linked to a credit card processor (i.e. European Tan and Spa, which we are currently revising, and Stony Plain Records who are both clients), to a fully secure eCommerce website (i.e. Canadian Tire, Sears, etc. which are not our clients. And we would never design a site as cluttered as that of Sears!).

Few companies can cost justify a fully secure eCommerce website. A limited sales volume is often sufficient to justify the addition of a shopping cart linked to a credit card processor. As well, the availability of online sales can enhance the aura of stability and professionalism of your business.

Use Images

Websites designed by clrmedia.com use images as an important component of the website's overall look and feel. Corporate logos, graphics and photographs can instantly convey important information to visitors or set the tone for adjacent information.

Search Engine Limitation

It is important to recognize that not all visitors respond to graphics. Google, Bing, Ask and other search engines cannot "see" images, they can only read text. Do not use images exclusively to convey the content and meaning of your website or its search engine rankings will suffer.

Describe the Image

When used, images should have an "alt" description that will describe the image to search engines (and screen readers). The "title" attribute can be used to provide a few words about the image on mouseover. More lengthy information, or information you wish to highlight, should be added adjacent to the image.

Move your cursor over the image to view more detail or click here to view a larger version of the image. When the zoom box is visible, left click and drag your mouse up or down to change the zoom amount.

Use Audio Wisely

As a general rule, most businesses should avoid using audio on their websites. clrmedia.com recommends the use of audio only when it is an essential part of the business (i.e. a musician) or it helps visitors comprehend information (i.e. some education websites).

When audio is used, it should not play automatically—especially on pages that will be visited on a frequent basis. Visitors must be able to quickly and easily turn off any audio that does play automatically.

"Our Musicians", in the right side panel, allows you to sample some music while demonstrating one implementation of audio. Visit Support for Caregivers of Older Adults to view—and listen to—another approach. Optional audio content, for which instructions are provided in the Help menu, enhances comprehension for text-phobic visitors.

Multimedia

Multimedia includes animations, Flash, video and other similar effects.

When used appropriately, multimedia can be an effective tool. An animated logo, a video demonstrating a product's use and a zoomable image of a product can all make a valuable contribution to a website. When used inappropriately, multimedia adds to development cost, reduces webpage load times, and distracts visitors.

YouTube, Vimeo and others contain a wealth of informative videos, which can be embedded in your website for free. Of course, businesses must ensure the embedded video is not promoting their competition!

The following video is an example of a text-based slideshow with images. Although the information in the video is relevant, the text is difficult to read. This is ironic given the video's focus on web design.

Contact is Crucial

Irrespective of your business, visitors should have the option of contacting you to ask questions or request more information. The more ways they can contact you, the better.

Your website should include:

• detailed information about each location that customers can visit, including phone numbers, addresses and location maps
• relevant email addresses, preferably in an encrypted or image format to reduce spam
• a contact form that allows customers to contact you without using an email program

Contact Forms

A contact form can be used for a variety of purposes, including obtaining information from the sender. You should keep the form short though. Long forms often result in people becoming annoyed or bored and abandoning the form.

Care must also be taken to ensure that the form filters responses from automated spam bots.

Newsletters—Pros and Cons

A newsletter typically includes news and events for your business and articles of interest to your customers. It is an effective way to keep your name in front of customers and generate consumer loyalty.

On the downside, people expect relevant content on a regular basis, such as weekly, monthly or quarterly. There are costs associated with the production of newsletters, both in terms of time and out-of-pocket expenditures. The quality of the newsletter—both content and appearance—must be consistently high as it reflects on your business.

Newsletters—Types

There are different ways to electronically publish your newsletter, including email, webpage and pdf. It is common to use a combination of email and webpage or pdf. This provides the email push for subscribers and easy access for website visitors, who will be encouraged to subscribe to the newsletter.

Stony Plain Records uses a template for its email newsletter, which allows the company to focus on content.