Website Design

Because I feel that Website design requires thought and preparation, I do not have an online questionnaire. I prefer that you take your time when answering this particular design questionnaire, and thus only offer a print version. 

DOWNLOAD my website design worksheet/questionnaire in the format of your choice (Instructions for sending your finished questionnaire are included in the file.):

• Design Questionnaire – Adobe PDF
• Design Questionnaire – MS Word

You might also be interested in downloading my Web Safe Color Chart. This chart shows the Hex codes for common website colors.

A brochure website is an informational site with content that does not regularly change. Typical sections of a brochure site would be: Home Page, About Page, Contact Page, Products/Services Description Page. Many service providers utilize a brochure site, to provide general & contact information, directions to an office, and hours of operation in an easy to access website.

A blog is a great way to interact socially with your visitors. A blog is basically an ongoing chronology of information segmented into articles or “posts”. Typically, the newest “post” by the author or authors is listed first, and the visitor is given the opportunity to “comment” on each post. A blog also includes archives of older posts, and is usually categorized into different topics or sections.

Blogs have what are called feeds wherein special software accesses the site automatically to look for new content. This allows visitors to receive updates via those feeds on the newest content posted to a blog.

With a WordPress blog, there are an incredible number of plugins that increase the function of your blog. You can schedule your posts for the future, add photos to the posts, share the posts with your social networks, and be published to a world wide audience..all with just a few clicks. Blogs also include a search function allowing visitors to easily find information that’s not on the “front” or “home” page of the blog.

Every blog I design uses WordPress as its CMS (Content Management System), and the themes I create are designed to work seamlessly with that system. A theme is a template or “skin” that controls the look of the blog. There are many themes available to WordPress users…both free and custom.

Learn more about blogging with WordPress. You can easily get started by installing WordPress on your host, and using a free theme. As you build your blog, you might then want to consider purchasing a custom theme to better match your blog’s content.

If you already have a website, having a custom theme designed to match your site can be very advantageous. It allows you to post news aobut your business, and communicate with your customers, while looking and feeling like a part of your website.

A dynamic website includes a scalable Content Management System (WordPress) that gives you the ability to add unlimited pages and to completely control your own website content. The site will include a search function, contact form, search engine optimization tools, social media integration, custom navigation menus that you control, database backup tool, a mobile theme, video integration tools, and Google Analytics.

Optional enhancements include: blog function (for news or articles), photo gallery, slideshows, testimonials, ratings, reviews, form creator, mailing list, calendar, memberships, Google Maps, and more!

If you plan to sell products from your site, then you’ll need an eCommerce solution. Typically, this means a shopping cart script, as well as some type of Merchant account and payment gateway. 

When it comes to a shopping cart companies, I prefer to use Cart66 on the WordPress Platform. This cart offers what I consider to be the best functionality, on both front end and back end. When you purchase a website design that includes e-commerce, I’ll do all of the shopping cart integration, for you! There are both a free and paid version of the cart, and I will discuss with you which version will work best for what you want your Ecommerce site to accomplish.

Setting your website up as a “store” where your customers can purchase your products online, requires a few extra components. If you also own an off-line (often referred to as “brick and mortar) store, then you probably already have a merchant account.

Merchant Account: A “bank account” established with a payment processor for the settlement of credit card transactions. Any merchant who wants to take credit card orders must establish a merchant account. Internet merchants need a ‘Card Not Present Merchant Account.’

Internet Merchants also need a payment gateway to process payments online.

Payment Gateway: A payment gateway is a service provided by a billing processor, which allows credit card information to be collected and passed over the internet. A payment gateway can be thought of as a digital equivalent to a credit card processing terminal.

If you do not have a merchant account, there are ways to accept credit cards online, without having one. The companies who offer this service generally take a percentage of each sale as the fee for using their service. Many times this can be economical for a small, start-up company. We recommend that companies with a larger sales volume set up a merchant account and gateway from the start, as the fees will generally be less in the long run.

Ecommerce Merchant Account/Gateway Providers

(these providers all work with the Cart66 Shopping cart)

• • PayPal
• • CDG Commerce
• • EProcessing Network
• • Authorize.net (Gateway Provider)

INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE: The organization of (sometimes complex) online content into categories and the creation of an interface for displaying those categories. It is very important that your website “architecture” is compatible with your target market. Your site structure should be easy to navigate, and flow well for the people you intend to provide a product or service to.

A basic website includes the following architecture:

• a HEADER-which typically contains your logo or business name and states the purpose of the site as quickly as possible through text and images. Some other items included in a header might be: trust symbols (such as security certificates, or BBB, etc.), a search box, a tagline, or contact information (such as a phone number, or email link).
• NAVIGATION-links to other sections of your site-typically on the top, left, right, or all 3-should be easy to read and understand. Text navigation is preferable for better SEO. Drop down navigation can provide better structure, and easier flow through the information on your site, and can help to lead your visitors to the right section. Lower or footer navigation is important when your pages require the visitor to scroll down for viewing. Lower navigation allows the visitor to find their way without having to scroll back up to the top of the page.
• the BODY of the website-the place where all of your information and images go. Placement is key in the body of your website. Important items should go “above the fold” (the area viewable before any scrolling is done).
• CONTACT INFORMATION-always make yourself easily accessible to your visitors. This is a key component for promoting security.
• COPYRIGHT-you should always include a copyright statement on your website to protect your content legally.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION: (also known as SEO) is the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a website by ranking high in the search results of a search engine. The higher a website ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that that site will be visited by a user. It is common practice for Internet users to not click through pages and pages of search results, so where a site ranks in a search is essential for directing more traffic toward the site. SEO helps to ensure that a site is accessible to a search engine and improves the chances that the site will be found by the search engine. 

Optimizing your site includes writing keyword rich content for every page of your website. Experts say each page of your site should include 250 words of content to be effective. At a minimum each page within your website design should include a title tag, keyword tags, a description tag, and optimized content to go with those elements.

YOUR WEBSITE PHOTOS AND IMAGES: It is also very important to have the images and photos within your website optimized for fast viewing. While technology has basically “caught up” to higher resolution images, there are still people surfing the web on dial up connections who may not want to wait for a high res image to load. Even people who are viewing your website on a fast connection will want your site to load rapidly. Site load time is now a factor in the major Search Engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Nola Cooper Designs optimizes the images and photos within your website for the best of all scenarios. Never sacrificing the beauty and integrity, yet allowing them to load as quickly as possible. I always make sure that all of your images have an “alt” tag (or attribute) as is required by compatibility standards. Alt tags are used in many ways: by the search engines, when a browser has images “turned off”, and in Internet Explorer when your mouse hovers over an image the “alt” tag will show on the screen. Also, it’s important to remember that screen readers used by the vision impaired use your site’s alt tags to determine the type of content on a web page.

Download Google’s SEO Starter Guide

CROSS-BROWSER COMPATIBILITY:

In today’s online world, your website could be visited using one of many different browsers. It is important that your site look the same in every browser. We make sure that every site we design meets W3C compatibility standards. Every site we design is tested on our development site, before it’s installed on your host.