By Marie Coles

In this day and age, you've probably come across the term 'sustainable design'. But what does it actually mean in terms of web design....

Sustainable design is a concept whereby something is built or created accordingly to sustainability principles that include economic, social and ecological sustainability. The ideal at the very heart of sustainability is building something that can be managed and continued in the long term.

Sustainable web design follows the same principles as any sustainable designed structure. It considers its impact economically, socially and ecologically in order to create websites that are functional but also are sustainable in the long run. It also aims to keep websites open to everyone, so no matter what age your computer is you can still access it.

The web is full of active and inactive website all taking up space on this large network. Inactive websites are actually a massive waste of space, which could be used for other long-lasting websites. It is neither the most efficient use of space nor the most sustainable, so it is recommended that once you give up on your web space that you render it completely inactive or sell the domain name on.

Sustainable web design looks at the impact of usage of space, which is key to not only sustainability, but to website traffic. Keeping a minimalist design for the page can be if done correctly aesthetically pleasing, thus enticing custom. Yet, a minimalist page can also be sustainable, simply because it is not bogged down by heavy picture files. This also makes it much faster for your users to navigate through the pages - which should be a top consideration for web designers. Another consideration for usage of space is file formats. Having a website with large uncompressed formats will make your website much slower to load, taking more energy and time, and also rendering it not as user friendly.

Another consideration sustainable web designers have incorporated in their design is the ability for other non-designers to change the design as they please. With multiple tools, add-ons and programs that now allow the non-designer to edit their website easily, it has become easier for businesses to manage their own websites and rid them of unnecessary files that clutter websites.

Sustainable web design negotiates any impact your website may have, making it more environmentally friendly as well as usable to those all over the world. Sustainable web design not only serves functionality but aesthetics too, as it incorporates a minimalist design approach which looks at the aesthetics of the greater whole, not just the components. This 'green' approach to design hopes to help to maintain websites in the long run by making them easier to use by businesses and the users.

If you are looking for website design Birmingham, visit www.aimprouk.com who have a variety of website solutions for small to large businesses.

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By Colette Mason

If customers don't stick around on your website long because they find it confusing, frustrating or boring, ultimately, your business will struggle to make any sales online.

The great news for you is there are tons of quick and easy - usually free ways - to make your website more appealing to your customers.

Here's 5 you can apply today.

1. Site Search Is Easy to Access When you have more than 20 pages, it's a good idea to add a search facility. Make sure your site search is prominent. Usability guidelines tend to prefer the upper-right corner of the page. Keep the button label simple and clear - "Search" still works best for most sites. Don't unleash your powers of lateral thinking and swap in a word like "Retrieve". Keep it simple

To Do: Just using your search, try to find 3 pages of content. Is that process "quick, easy and straight-forward"? Or is it "hit and miss"?

2. Ensure Your Webpages Can Be Skim-read easily. Few people read word for word online; the vast majority skim-read to get a sense of the page before they read any of it in detail. Make it easy for visitors to skim-read your content. Always use headings and bullets to break up text.

Think about it. If a heading is not relevant for your visitor, they can easily skim down to the next heading, making it straightforward for them to get directly to the information they need.

Always keep your text in manageable chunks, not an unbroken wall of words, like insurance small print so it's easier for customers to look up what they want right away and with confidence - which is critical if they are making a buying decision.

To Do: Give your website a quick review and make sure all your text is broken up into clear, manageable sections.

3. Keep Your Styles & Colours Consistent Make sure people know they're still on your site by being consistent - confuse them and you'll lose them. Keep the look and feel of your website sections consistent and avoid any radical changes. Visitors can get confused and think they have left your site accidentally.

Layout, headings, and styles should be consistent site-wide, and colours should usually have the same meaning.

For example, don't use red for headers on one page, red for hyperlinks on another, and red as standard text somewhere else.

To Do: Check all your web pages appear to be part of the main site and that they are consistent with each other. Are there any "nasty surprises" depending on the part of the site you're in?

4. Emphasis (bold, etc.) Is Used Sparingly It's a fact of human psychology: try to draw attention to everything and you'll effectively draw attention to nothing. We've all seen that site, the one with a red, blinking, underlined "NEW!" next to everything. Don't be that guy or gal.

Remember, if your site's graphic design is counter-intuitive and doesn't help visitors get something done quickly, it's going to make your site much slower and difficult to work with.

Slow, awkward sites never, ever, ever, delight your customer or create a good rapport online.

Visitors will be back at the search engine in seconds if they find your website "complicated" or "busy".

To Do: Check your website is only highlighting critical factors you absolutely need your visitors to gaze at or click on order to meet your online business goals. Menus, buy buttons, opt-in boxes and so on

5. Keep Your Ads & Pop-ups Unobtrusive

Ads are a fact of life, but integrate them nicely into your site. Don't try to force ads and pop-ups down peoples' throats; you'll end up creating frustration for your visitors. Also, do people a favour and make your ads clear. If you blur the line between ads and content too much, your content may suffer, since many people have developed "banner blindness" when it comes to surfing, and might overlook some important content by mistake.

To Do: Doublecheck if your popup window is significantly increasing your opt-in rate. If it isn't you could be annoying present and future customers unnecessarily.

Final Word

Always make sure you view your website through the eyes of the customer and not through your eyes, the website owner.

Make sure there are no red-flags on your site that are going to frustrate, confuse or bore customers. Keep everything nice and simple to make sure your visitors enjoy spending time (and money) on your site

If you're fed up with a website that just doesn't boost your local business, check out my Website Success System, it's a jargon free way to boost your business online by reconnecting with customers and giving them a good quality website that showcases your business. Check out over 500 easy to implement tips: http://www.websitesuccesssystem.com

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By: Stephen Grisham, Sr.

The design of the majority of websites focuses on functionality and/or design, but in order for a website to be a success, other aspects must be taken into consideration.
These factors include:

• Usability: Is your audience able to locate what they are looking for?
• Functionality: How efficient is your website operation?
• Appearance/Brand Image: Is the website accurately & attractively reflecting the business brand?
• SEO: How much visibility does your website possess in terms of search engines?

Is the Site Easy to Use?
Usability is a term related to the ability of audiences to locate what they are seeking on your website. When a user has to spend too much time and thought on how to maneuver around a website, they will become frustrated and will not stay there long. All users will want the answer to a question, and they should have that answer within moments.
Questions that are commonly not dealt with clearly on e-commerce sites include those that have to do with finding contact information, purchasing procedures and hours of operation. During the design of the website, these easy questions are frequently overlooked, but they can have a strong bearing on how useful users find a website to be and how much credibility the site has.

How well does the site function?
Functionality refers to the efficiency of a website's performance. Examples of functionality problems include pages and media content that load sluggishly, inoperable links and error pages. The majority of users have broadband options available to them, but in rural areas, it is not always available. If media files are unusually large, advise the user that loading the media may take a bit longer, or make different versions available so that users can select the file that they wish to see.
Browser compatibility is something else that needs to be addressed. A site may not present itself as it should if you are using a browser that needs updating. Designs should be compatible with previous browser versions and a number of browsers, including Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. Be sure to always keep in mind your target viewers, and make an effort to factor in technical variations.

Is the Brand Reflected on the Site?
Two important factors in developing a sense of credibility and in maintaining consistency in all marketing endeavors are aesthetics and branding. When designing a site, make certain that you take into consideration your desired audience demographic. For instance, if senior citizens are your target audience, make the site appealing to them by making links easy to find and by permitting the re-sizing of fonts.
When marketing to people in their 20's play with visually stimulating interactive and social media. Keep the site simple, or it may become too frustrating to the user. The visitor should know when they get to the site where they are and who they are visiting every time. The logo should be clearly displayed on every page.

Is your website properly "optimized"?
You shouldn't overlook the importance of search engine optimization. SEO is a method of configuring a website so that it can be found and indexed correctly by major search engines, such as Yahoo and Google. If your website is indexed appropriately, the odds of it being seen by web searchers using search engines is nearly 50%! A professional usually provides SEO, though basic information can be provided by the books and resources that are available.

Successful Website Design
A completed website is likely to be a success if the web designer concentrates on usability, functionality, aesthetics/brand and SEO. A website is considered a success if it can be found by search engines, attracts the target audience, keeps the audience's attention for a fairly long time, simplifies the tasks of locating information and making purchases, and fosters a feeling of credibility and confidence.

About the Author

Stephen Grisham, Sr. is a copy writer for InfoServe Media, LLC. InfoServe Media is a web design and web hosting company. Or if you just need a few changes to an existing site, InfoServe Media also offers website maintenance. Fast and Affordable.

(ArticlesBase SC #3016800)

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By Ryan Boog

Choosing a content management system can be tricky. Without a clearly defined set of requirements, you will be seduced by fancy functionality that you will never use. What then should you look for in a CMS?

When looking at a content management system, consider what features you should look for.

When selecting a content management system, without a clearly defined set of requirements, you will be seduced by fancy functionality that you will never use. Before you know it, you'll be buying an enterprise-level system for tens of thousands of dollars when a free blogging tool would have done the job. In order to correctly determine what you need for your site, you need a list of requirements.

How then do you establish your list of requirements? Although your circumstances will vary, here are ten things that are particularly important.

1. Core functionality
When most people think of content management, they think of creating, deleting, editing and organizing pages. They assume all content management systems do this and so take that functionality for granted. However, that is not necessarily the case. Nor is there any guarantee that such functionality will be presented in an intuitive way.

Not all blogging platforms, for example, allow the owner to manage and organize pages in a tree hierarchy. Instead, individual "posts" are automatically organized by such criteria as date and category. In some cases, this is perfectly adequate. In fact, this limitation in functionality keeps the interface simple and easy to understand. However, in other circumstances, the limitation can be frustrating.

Consider carefully the basic functionality you need. Even if you do not require the ability to structure and organize pages now, you may in future. Be wary of any system that does not allow you to complete these core tasks.

Also ask yourself how easy it is to complete these tasks. There are literally thousands of content management systems on the market, the majority of which offer this core functionality. However, they vary hugely in usability. Always test the system for usability before making a purchase. Most of the best systems have an online demo for you to try out. If all else fails, try on YouTube.

2. The editor
The editor is one core feature worth particular attention. The majority of content management systems have a WYSIWYG editor. WYSIWYS stands for "What you see is what you get". These editors usually have a similar appearance to Wordpad or Word. Strangely, this editor is often ill-conceived, despite the fact that it is the most used feature within the system.

The editor is the tool through which content is added and edited. Traditionally, it has also allowed the content provider to apply basic formatting, such as font and color. However, developers have recently moved away from this type of editor to something that reflects best practice.

The danger of traditional WYSIWYG editors is two-fold. First, content providers are given too much control over the design. They are able to customize the appearance of a page so much that they undermine the consistency of the design and branding. Secondly, in order to achieve this level of design control, the CMS mixes design and content.

The new generation of editors takes a different approach. Content providers use the editor to mark up headings, lists, links and other elements, without specifying how they should appear.

Ensure your list of requirements includes an editor designed on this principle and that does not give content providers control over the appearance. At the very least, look for content management systems that allow the editor to be replaced with a more appropriate solution.

The editor should also be able to handle external assets, including images and downloadable files. That brings us to our next point: management of these assets. 2 decent editors that have been used by Happy Dog Web Productions are JCE editor and FCK editor.

3. Managing assets
Management of images and files is badly handled in some CMS'. Badly designed systems can frustrate users with poor accessibility and usability. Images in particular can cause problems. Ensure that the content management system you select forces content providers to add attributes to images. You may also want a CMS that provides basic image editing tools, such as cropping, resizing and rotating. However, finding one that does this can be a challenge.

Also, consider how the content management system deals with uploading and attaching PDFs, Word documents and other files. How are they displayed to end users? Can descriptions be attached to the files, and is the search function capable of indexing them?

4. Search
Search is an important aspect of any website. Approximately half of all users start with search when looking for content. However, the search functionality in content management systems is often inadequate.

Here are a few things to look for when assessing search functionality:

 

• Freshness: how often does the search engine index your website? This is especially important if your website changes regularly.
• Thoroughness: does it index the entire content of each page? What about attached files, such as PDFs and Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents?
• Speed: some search engines can take ages to return results. This is especially common on large websites.
• Scope: can you limit the scope of the search function to a particular section of the website or refine search results once returned?
• Ranking: how does the search engine determine the ranking of results? Can this be customized by either the website owner or user?
• Customization: can you control how results are displayed and customize the design?

 

The issue of customization, of course, goes far beyond search.

5. Customization
I have had the misfortune of working with content management systems that are completely inflexible in their presentation.

Your content's presentation should not be dictated by technology. It is simply not necessary now that we have techniques to separate design and content. Unfortunately, like some Web designers, many CMS developers have not adopted best practices and have created systems that produce horrendous code. This puts unreasonable constraints on the design and seriously impacts accessibility.

You need a content management system that allows flexibility in the way content is retrieved and presented. For example, can you retrieve news stories in reverse chronological order? Can you display events in a calendar? Is it possible to extract the most recent user comments and display them on the home page? Flexibility makes a CMS stand out.

Speaking of user comments, all forms of user interaction are worth mentioning.

6. User interaction
If you intend to gather user feedback, your CMS must provide that functionality or allow a third-party plug-in to provide it. Equally, if you want to host a community on your website, then you will require functionality such as chat, forums, comments and ratings.

At a minimum, you will need to be able to post forms and collect responses. How easy does the CMS make this process? Can you customize fields or does that require technical expertise? What about the results? Can you specify who they are emailed to? Can they be written to a database or outputted as an Excel document? Consider the kind of functionality you need and look for a CMS that supports it.

Also ask what tools exist for communicating with customers. Can you send email newsletters? Can recipients be organized into groups that receive different mailings? What about news feeds and RSS?

Finally, consider how you want to manage users. Do you need to be able to reset passwords, set permissions or export user information to other systems?

But user permissions are not the only things that need managing. You should also consider permissions for those editing the website.

7. Roles and permissions
As the number of content providers on your website increases, you will want more control over who can edit what. For example, one group may need to be able to post job advertisements but not add content to the home page. This requires a content management system that supports permissions. Although implementation varies, permissions normally allow you to specify whether users can edit certain pages or even entire sections of the website.

As the number of contributors grows still further, you may require one person to be able to review content being posted to ensure accuracy and consistency in tone. Alternatively, content may be inputted by a junior staff member who requires the approval of a more senior person before making it live.

In both cases, you'll need a CMS that supports multiple roles. This can be as simple as having one "Editor" and one "Approver" role, or more complex with customized roles and different levels of permission.

Finally, enterprise-level content management systems support entire workflows in which page updates have to go through a series of checkpoints before going live. These complex scenarios require the ability to roll back pages to previous versions.

8. Versioning
Being able to revert to a previous version of a page allows you to quickly recover if something is posted by accident.

Some content management systems have complex versioning functionality that allows you to roll back to a specific date. However, in most cases, this is overkill. The most common use of versioning is simply reverting to the last saved state.

Although this sounds like an indispensable feature, in my experience it is rarely used expect in complex workflow situations. That said, although versioning was once a enterprise-level tool, it is becoming available in more and more content management systems.

The same can be said of of multi-website support.

9. Multiple website support
With more content management systems allowing you to run multiple websites from the same installation, it is possible you may use this feature.

Although you may not currently need to be able to manage more than a single website, that could change. You may decide to launch a new website to target a narrower audience.

And with the growth of the mobile Web, you may want to create a separate website especially for mobile devices. Whatever the reason, having the flexibility to run multiple websites is important.

Another feature you might not require immediately but may in future is multilingual support.

10. Multilingual support
It is easy to dismiss support for multiple languages. Your website may specifically target the domestic market, or you may sell a language-specific product. But think twice before dismissing this functionality.

Even if your product is language-specific, that could change. It is important that your CMS be able to grow with your business and evolving requirements.

Also, just because you are targeting the domestic market doesn't mean you can ignore the issue of language. We live in a multicultural society in which numerous languages are spoken. Being able to accommodate these differences gives you a significant edge over the competition.

That said, do think through the ramifications first. Having the ability to add multiple languages doesn't mean you have the content for them. Too many of my clients have insisted on multilingual support and yet never used it because they neglected to consider how they were going to get their content translated or pay for it.

Conclusion
Consideration of features is an important part of the process of selecting a CMS, but it is not everything. It is also important to consider issues such as licensing, support, accessibility, security, training and much more.

I leave you with a word of warning: don't let your list of requirements become a wish list. Keep your requirements to a minimum, but at the same time keep an eye on the future. It's a fine line to walk. On the one hand, you don't want to pay for functionality you will never use. On the other, you don't want to be stuck with a content management system that no longer meets your needs.

Happy Dog is the small business specialists for Minneapolis and St Paul web design

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By Karen Thomson

Before you even consider starting to build your first website, you need to think very carefully about what you are going to include in it. For instance, you should not create a site that promotes numerous unrelated affiliate products. As you can imagine, a potential customer will not want to wade through fishing tackle supplies when she came to your site looking for handbags! What’s more, the search engines won’t approve of it either; they won’t be able to distinguish what it is you are trying to sell and therefore won’t rank it well for any of your products. The more products you have on your site means that they have to compete with each other to be viewed when what you really want is a fewer amount of related products that complement and enhance each other.

Here is a basic list of things that you must consider when creating your first and each subsequent website.

• The website needs to be clearly laid out, with separate pages for different topics within the overall subject matter.
• The site will need to focus on a specific subject which is aimed at a distinct audience.
• Both outgoing and incoming links to and from worthwhile and excellent top quality websites should be included.
• Diverse pages should link into each other where relevant.
• There should be plenty of superb content packed with useful information.
• Any affiliate or referral links need to be sprinkled throughout the web page in the relevant places; they need to be tested to see what works the best.
• The correct use of keywords and phrases which will help attract visitors and improve positioning within the search engines need to be used.
• And finally, you must include an internet site map to make it less difficult for visitors to move around the internet site and find what they need. This is often considered redundant in the process of building a website, and that is indeed the fact if you made a sitemap just for the sake of having one.

A sitemap literally acts as a map of your site. They can always refer to your sitemap to see where they are, and navigate through your pages with the utmost ease. There is no need to get the “big picture” of your site by reading through each page, and by doing that you will be saving your visitors’ time.

When you create a sitemap, you are actually creating a single page which contains links to every single page on your site. Imagine what happens when search engine robots hit this page — they will follow the links on the sitemap and naturally every single page of your site gets indexed by search engines! It is also for this purpose that a link to the sitemap has to be placed prominently on the front page of your website.

Don’t get overwhelmed by the amount of things on this list, they may take a little time to put together but they are not difficult by any means. Once they are in place, you can tweak and test your site and add new content to keep it fresh and interesting which in turn will keep the search engines and your website visitors very happy indeed!

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Karen Thomson is a successful Internet Marketing Consultant. If you found this article useful, claim your free social media for business e-book and more goodies, available at http://simplecashblogbonus.com
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