TODAY'S WEBSITES ENGAGE THEIR AUDIENCES!

Why? Simply because sites with more features generate more traffic! 

Wonder if your site measures up? Does it achieve its maximum productivity and efficiency? Thill Design can develop the right mix of web-features for your venture.

Check the following list of features to see how your site stacks up! Then get ready to welcome a whole new bunch of e-friends to your door.


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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - 
Improve page ranking in just four steps using; 1.) Title Tags, Metatag Descriptions, Metatag Keywords, 2.) Keyword Density, 3.) H1 Tags, 4.) Inbound Links.

Social Media Optimization (SMO) - 
Drive traffic to your site with Facebook, Facebook Like, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.

Cross Browser Compatibility - 
Enable your site to perform consistently across all major browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari and Opera** 

Dynamic Forms - 
Send and collect data with dynamic registration, feedback, membership, order forms. Add database features like email alerts, file upload, SSL, and Captcha security. 

Dynamic jQuery applications- 
Develop a variety of applications from jQuery Slider animations to fully functioning dynamic jQuery sites. 

HTML Email Campaigns - 
Drive traffic to your site with a dynamic rich-text HTML email campaign. Generate double opt-in prospecting lists. 

Google Analytics -  
Measure sales and conversions. Give fresh insights into how visitors use sites, how they arrive on sites, and how you can keep them coming back.

Google Maps - 
Enhance search engine capability when you show location, hours of business, photo, service description, etc. on Google maps. 

Google AdWords/AdSense- 
AdWords - Put your message in front of potential customers right when they're searching for what you have to offer.
AdSense - Display ads on your website that are suited to your audience's interests, and earn from valid clicks or impressions.

Mobile Web - 
Reformat your site for mobile web on Cell Phones, Tablets and Personal Digital Assistants.

Content Management Systems - 
Dynamically update your site via a browser based interface.

Site Map Submission - 
Submit your site to major search engines and internet directories with dynamically generated XML site maps.

Site Search - 
Dynamically search your website.

News Feeds -
Get easy access to updates about news topics that interest you Using RSS feeds.

Tag Readers -
Tag barcodes and QR Codes connect customers from your web to provide interactive experiences.

Site Bookmark - 
Bookmark your site in a favorites bars.

**http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

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I recently upgraded a site and corrected 17 poorly built or non-existent web features. These ranged from a simple bookmark to missing response forms. The biggest offender being totally non-existent meta description and keywords. 

If you are not sure if your site is missing features (for instance, if an XML site map has been submitted) click on the link below and let me know what you would like to have researched.

Contact me for more information!

YOUR WEBSITE DESERVES A STRONG FOUNDATION

STICKS, STRAWS OR BRICKS―CHOOSE BRICKS

Thinking about developing your first website? Or maybe you are just upgrading your existing site. Whether starting from scratch or looking for an upgrade, the first order of business is to make sure your site has a strong foundation. You need a structurally sound, built-with-bricks website that has three rock-solid components: 1.) industry-acceptable web standards, 2.) cross-browser compatibility, 3.) and de-facto development software.

The following descriptions for web standards, browser compatibility and developer software let you take comfort knowing there is a right and wrong way to develop websites. Sticks, straws or bricks—choose bricks.

Web Standards ― Building Blocks for Sound Site Architecture

The basic website building block is Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)―the language websites are written in. You can actually see this language in any given web browser by finding and clicking on view source or inspect element. There you will see a lot of (head), (body), (div), etc. tags―elements surrounded by angle brackets. Tags show text and organize images in a browser and create interactivity for the site user.  Back in the old days (about ten years ago) sites could only be "hand-written" in HTML. Today, website development programs create HTML on-the-fly using text and images in a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor much like popular desktop publishing applications do in the print world.

The second basic website building block is Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) which define the appearance and layout of HTML elements like colors and fonts. CSS prioritizes rules and assigns weights so that the results are predictable. Among many other features CSS enables multiple pages to share formatting and allow the same markup page to be presented in different styles for different rendering methods. If you have worked with style sheets in Quark Express or Adobe InDesign, CSS is a similar indispensable tool.

HTML5 and CSS3 are the two web-standards building blocks that best assure your site is as strong as the proverbial brick house.

Web Standards ― Cross Browser Compatibility, Ease of Maintenance, Media Conversion

HTML and CSS insure your site’s life beyond initial development. The latest versions of HTML5 (Hypertext Markup Language, version 5) and CSS3 (Cascading Style Sheets, version 3) insure cross-browser compatibility, ease of maintenance and ease of conversion to other media, e.g. smart phones and tablets.

Cross-browser compatibility. Using HTML5 and CSS3 web standards makes sure your site has the best chance of displaying correctly on the latest popular browsers like Chrome v13, Firefox v6, Safari v5, and Internet Explorer v9. And W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) has got your back.

The UDM (Ultimate Decision Maker) of HTML is the W3C. They oversee and police html standards to assure your site behaves correctly in all modern browsers.

http://www.w3.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web_Consortium.

Ease of maintenance. Sites can be developed two ways, one using off-the-shelf software like Adobe Dreamweaver, Expression Engine, WordPress, Joomla, etc. or you can have someone hard code your site using a proprietary schema. Maintaining your site becomes a lot easier when it has been developed using a program thousands of people know how to use―not just the guy who wrote a proprietary development program. The popularity, acceptance and universality of HTML and CSS incorporated within de-facto development software assures more than one developer can maintain your site

Ease of conversion. Sites need to be optimized to reach smart phone and tablet devices in a format comfortable to read on smaller screens. Optimizing your site for smart phones such as the Apple iPhone, Samsung Galaxy or tablet computers like the Amazon Kindle Fire, Apple iPad 2 or Samsung Galaxy Tab is relatively inexpensive and significantly increases your target audience. Interestingly enough, people who own web-capable handsets do not necessarily own a computer which means your site needs to be optimized for them.

Developer Software ― Choose the Standards–Compliant Visual Editor

A strong case can be argued for developing websites in Adobe Dreamweaver (formerly Macromedia Dreamweaver). Considering the resources Adobe can bring to the table it is no wonder Dreamweaver is by far the most popular and feature laden WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) code editor available today. Dreamweaver enables the designer to create a page visually while simultaneously writing HTML and CSS for eventual export to the internet. The popularity and acceptance of Dreamweaver means more than one developer can maintain your site, not just the person who may have written a proprietary code schema.

Beyond Dreamweaver

Dreamweaver gets a lot of creds for being what it is but, unfortunately, falls short when it comes to developing dynamic sites. DW alone cannot make a PHP form send an email so I look to the developer-extension WebAssist for that function as well as adding additional functionality to PHP* pages.

*While PHP originally stood for "Personal Home Page", it is now said to stand for "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor", a recursive acronym.

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