The features your website offers will determine how much professional assistance you’ll require to create your presence on the Internet. Even if your website is entirely a leave-it-to-the-experts job, you’ll want to have a basic understanding of the terms used in web design.
As Web developers, we often throw around terms in meetings that our clients may or may not know. Terms like themes, CSS, SEO and a bunch of others.
Here’s a primer on some of the jargon associated with designing a website so you’ll be in-the-know when the acronyms start flying about:
CMS (Content Management System) — Your designer may choose to use a program called a CMS to create your website. WordPress and Drupal are two popular CMSs. They include the interface in which text, photos and the other content that comprises your website are entered. When created in a CMS, oftentimes, you can update your site’s content on your own without needing to hire a designer every time you change a price or add a photo. However, the CMS systems need to be maintained so they stay up to date and don’t get hacked.
Theme — Often this word is used in relation to a website’s design, or overall presentation. A website’s theme is its appearance, including the number of columns, location of particular features that appear on the page and the look of any graphical elements. The design, or theme, is the foundation upon which the look of the site is built.
Many platforms on which websites are built, like, WordPress or Drupal, use the theme to keep the design of the site consistent. While the client can change the content on the site (the text, images, posts, etc.) typically, updating the theme requires more technical knowledge.
CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) — This is the technical term for the computer code that creates the ‘style’ of your website. In other words, CSS dictates how all the elements of the site’s appearance will be displayed, such as:
so that whenever these elements appear, they are consistently displayed site-wide. The CSS also controls how your site displays on various screen sizes, for example if your site is responsive, it will display differently on a mobile device with a smaller screen size.
Browser – This is the program on your computer or mobile device that you use to view websites. Internet Explorer (IE), Safari, Chrome, and Firefox are all browsers. There are also different versions of each browser, for example IE 8, 9, or 10.
HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) — This is the computer code that creates the structure of each page on your website. It includes information about the page, such as the version of HTML that is being used, links to other scripts (including javascript and css), search engine information such as page titles, and the content of your webpage.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) — Search engines are the means by which Internet searches are conducted. SEO includes measures you take when developing your site (including proper keyword insertion and search engine-friendly site development tactics) to make the content on your website more likely to come up in Internet searches. Optimized content ranks higher in search results – and is therefore more easily found by interested people.
JavaScript – JavaScript allows additional functionality within a webpage. It can be used to make a webpage more usable, report information back to the web server, create animation and more. Although it can be very useful, it can also be disabled by the visitor to the website. Java and JavaScript are not the same.
Java – Java is a programming language, typically used to create applications. While it can be used to create websites, typically smaller sites don’t use Java. In order to run a Java application in your browser, you will need to have Java (the application) installed on your computer. Java and JavaScript are not the same.
A basic understanding of web design jargon will help you feel like you speak the language as you tackle creating your website on your own or consult with a designer.
As a business owner, you can’t afford to focus all your time and energy on web design: you’ve got to hustle to find customers, handle your accounting and manage all the different parts of your company. That doesn’t mean that you can get away with knowing absolutely nothing about web design, though.
In order to make sure that you get a website that will actually help your business to grow, you need to know at least a little about actually designing a website, as well as how to find the best possible web designer. After all, you wouldn’t buy a car without knowing how to drive it or how to find a good mechanic.
Knowing the basics of web design is a matter of vocabulary, and understanding the definitions of the words on your list. Here are a few terms to get you started.
A good web designer is always willing to discus the technology aspects of your website with you. Not only should your designer be able to come up with the right design and appearance for your site, but they should be ready to talk to you about the decisions that go into creating a reliable and useful website. If your designer isn’t comfortable with the technical elements required to develop your website, you can always work with multiple vendors with one supplying the design and the other doing the production.
The next website you have created for your company isn’t likely to be the last site you’ll ever need. Most companies find it necessary to update their sites regularly, as well as may need specialized sites or pages for individual promotions or projects. That makes it worth your while to keep up to date on what’s going on in the world of web design.
Redoing your website and print branding can refresh your business’ image and help you attract new customers — but such changes can be less beneficial for your existing customers. When you’ve invested time and money into creating a brand, updating it can make your business less recognizable to your clients, as well as lead them to question if you’re changing anything else.
Handling such a change carefully is important to making sure your customers stick with you through the process.
With these steps, you can move your business to the next level while still maintaining your connections with your customers or clients.
A website makes an immediate and lasting impression on customers as to a business’ overall mission, personality and trustworthiness. A website that makes customers feel safe and welcome is a champion for a business’ reputation. Does your business website foster a sense of trust in your customers?
Whether your business is represented by your website or is an e-commerce venture conducted directly on it, there’s a lot you can do to make it a trusted destination for your customers. Nurture trust by providing an atmosphere that demonstrates respect and consideration for your customers. Like being a good resident of any community, the more approachable you are, the more neighbors are likely to drop by for a visit.
Here are four ways in particular to help your customers trust your website:
Is there any more important element than trust in your relationship with customers? Because your website represents your degree of commitment to your business, maintaining a site your customers trust is critical to your success and growth. Your website can be your biggest asset to demonstrating trust — or the biggest detractor from it. Incorporating these simple elements into your website will go a long way toward fostering customers’ trust in it — and ultimately in your business itself.
It’s not just the marketing staff who can reach out to customers these days: any one of your employees may have a Facebook account, a blog or a presence on various sites out there. Depending on your employees, that can be a very good thing or a very bad thing.
It’s very tempting to create draconian policies prohibiting your employees from using social media, or at least telling them never to mention your company’s name online. But it’s essentially impossible to enforce such rules. Even attempting to ban the use of social networks while at work is tough in the era of smartphones. If you’re serious about having and enforcing such policies, you have to be prepared to stare at every one of your employees every hour of the day in order to be sure that they’re following the rules. It’s not a practical situation.
The alternative is creating a social media policy that your employees are on board with, that they feel that they can live with and that satisfies you as well. Such an approach can also give you the opportunity to talk to any employees that might be interested in working on social media initiatives within your company.
The first step to a good social media policy is to find out how your employees already use sites like Facebook and Twitter. A survey of your employees can be a good starting point, along with an online search for their names. When you have a clear picture of what your team is already doing, you’re in a better position to identify what you do need to discuss with them and perhaps even spot where they can help you.
From there, you should consider what your own social media needs are. If you need employees to monitor social media accounts or look for online commentary about your company, that needs to be a key topic for your policy: rather than listing out the things that your employees shouldn’t do, go from a positive approach and discuss the goals you’re hoping to accomplish.
You will likely find that there are at least some behaviours that you need to describe as not fitting the image you want to establish for the organization as a whole. Including such problem areas in your policy is a start, as long as you’re specific enough that employees don’t feel like they’re being faced with a long list of ‘can’ and ‘cannot.’
Don’t just send out a memo to your employees, telling them the company’s new policies on social media. Train them so that they can handle those policies. The more training you can provide, the less likely you are to have problems — or even need policies. An employee who knows that you want to use Twitter to seek out and address problems is more valuable than an employee who you have to monitor on Twitter on a regular basis, after all.
Everyone is excited about the power and influence of social media. Technology has facilitated a way for people to conduct real-time conversations from across the room and across the globe. Social media represents the opportunity for you to spread the word about your business to a huge and interested audience with ease and at your convenience at a relatively low cost. Social media is an advertising dream come true — when, that is, it’s used intelligently and responsibly.
Like all technology, social media is constantly evolving. And true human nature, people often become excited and overzealous at the prospect of using technology to connect with an even larger audience. It seems there’s a new social media site or trend coming down the pike every day. Some may enable you to connect more effectively with your audience, while others are merely gimmicks that will ultimately waste your time and that of your social media community. How do you know which trends are worth your time and effort to investigate further and which you can safely ignore? Here are some ways to help you filter out which to heed and which to let slide by:
While it’s important to remain agile and current with your social media efforts, it’s of equal importance to avoid seeming flighty by jumping on every new trend. The wisdom is in knowing the difference between a substantial, useful, social media tactic and one that becomes a popular trend because it’s new and shiny. Careful consideration of your overall social media strategy and your online community will help you safely ignore those trends that won’t benefit your marketing efforts and adopt the ones that will.
PowerConnect allows financial professionals to search through multiple transcripts simultaneously, making their jobs more efficient and allowing them to easily track changes from one transcript to the next, across multiple companies and quarters.
We created this video to provide a high level overview explaining the concept since the idea is new to many people. The video was used to help generate interest in the product from both users and potential investors.
For most websites, the number of visitors using mobile devices — smart phones, iPads and similar gadgets — is on the rise. That makes it truly important that you take your mobile visitors into account when planning any changes to your website. Doing otherwise is simply a fast way to miss out on sales.
There are three key questions that you need to ask in order to make sure that you’re presenting the best experience to anyone visiting your site from a mobile device.
With a growing percentage of all online traffic coming from mobile devices, you don’t have any option but to make sure that visitors to your site can read what you have to offer. They have to be able to interact with your site whether they’re on an iPad, on the phone or anywhere else.
When you consider that it’s even more likely that a business owner or manager is likely to be out and about when they need information online, it’s especially important for B2B companies to make sure that their websites are ready for mobile users.
When you’re already paying for rent, advertising, and every other expense that goes along with running a business, the thought of paying for all the bells and whistles that go along with having a website can seem painful. But a website is a necessity for businesses both large and small. What’s a business owner to do?
There are ways that you can minimize the costs that go along with building and maintaining a website, while still getting the results you want — more clients, more sales, and more awareness of your business.
You don’t need to become a web expert to make sure you get the most out of your website and there are some options that make the ongoing costs of maintaining a website much lower than in the past.
We believe in providing the best possible hosting service at WalkerTek. To accomplish this we have an enterprise infrastructure which provides the best possible performance for your site. Below are some of the steps we take to ensure this performance.
A lot of planning and engineering go into making WalkerTek one of the best possible places to host your website. Before you decide on where to host your company’s website, make sure that their infrastructure is appropriate for your needs.