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designeRodriguez

Walter Wimberly — Wed, 18 May 2011 13:55:57 +0000

As a lost coder and developer, Walter was my go to person. Several times I contacted Walter instead of contacting Google! He always had great answers to all my questions and consulted with me on any issue I had with development. After contacting Walter, on several occasions I had “AHA” moments, “Now I get it!”. I always come back to WaltDesign to learn more. Consulting with Walter is always on my to do list on any project I’m working on. He is definitely a guru. Thank you, WaltDesign, for easing many headaches and answering all those questions.

Amanda Rodriguez – owner designeRodriguez

Today is Data Privacy Day

Walter Wimberly — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:04:53 +0000

I don’t know about you, but I’m always a bit paranoid with how much information is out there about me. Whether it comes from Credit Card receipts, or data stored on other people’s servers.

Whether it is your information, or your customer’s, you should always mindful of how personal information is being used. This is the idea behind Data Privacy Day (http://dataprivacyday2010.org/).

Personal identifiable information (PII) while necessary to have in many businesses needs to be handled with care. Consider the following steps when working with your clients (and make sure the companies you work with have similar practices).

Limit access of PII to only necessary individuals
Destroy PII documents after they are no longer needed for business or by law. (cross cut shredders, and secure deletion from the computer)
As a minimum format the hard drives of computers removed from service. (My mother works for a school which has computers donated periodically – you would be surprised what they find when the clean them up before they install them.)
Perform a security audit to see if any PII is located on unauthorized computers, then close the security holes. (http://www.dbdatafinder.com/ is a link for an application which searches for Social Security Numbers and Credit Card Numbers in all different types of files)
Come up with a good password requirements guidelines for yourself and your business. (more on this later)

Using your analytics data to improve web site performance

How Many People Use Other Browsers?

Walter Wimberly — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 00:40:32 +0000

Recently I wrote about a company who designed their website solely for users of Internet Explorer. Most research shows that on a typical day 20% to 25% of all web visits occur with another browser (Firefox, Chrome, or Safari for example). And not allowing your site to be viewable in other browsers, is just like it not allowing a customer in your store because of the type of car they drive.

Interesting research is being shown, that more and more users have multiple browsers installed on their computers, to the tune of Firefox is estimated to be on over 50% of all computers. Chrome is gaining popularity as well, and estimated to be on around 10% of all computers.

So make it easy for users to just use the browser they pick, and not have to switch to view your site.

Shiny Future for Chrome? (myventurepad.com)
Google Eyeing 10% Market Share For Chrome. Mac Version Due By The End Of The Year. (techcrunch.com)
Firefox: 1,000,000,000 Downloads (mashable.com)
More Than Half of Computer Users Now Run Firefox (webworkerdaily.com)

Optimize Your Site For More Sales

Walter Wimberly — Mon, 11 May 2009 13:34:14 +0000

Previously, I’ve talked about optimizing your website to improve how fast it loads. This not only improves the perception of your site, but also how likely it is for people to stay and make a purchase, or request more information.

Optimizing your site for sales isn’t as easy as optimizing your site for speed. When we want to increase speed we know many ways to improve the performance. We can modify files to be smaller, have files load in a different order, move the server to a faster computer, etc.

However, modifying your site to increase it’s sales requires knowing your users and testing assumptions.

Recently I was helping a client test her website to get more conversions. While using the same traffic gathering methods previously used, she noticed a whopping 500% improvement in lead generation during the first month alone. Another client saw improvements of over 40%.

So what do you change?

There are several things which you can easily change to find improvements.

Improve your site speed – whie not directly related, Google notices a 20% drop in usage for every half a second slower their web page is. If your users leave early, they cannot buy from you, or contact you for more information.
Change headers – the client who noticed a 500% improvement, tried three different headers. Her original, and 2 new headers on the conversion page. One header did worse, and was pulled half way through the test, the other blew the first out of the water.
Change images - pictures can tell a thousand words - so picking the right one is important. The client with a 40% improvement got it from picking the right images to let his customers know about additional items for sale.

There are of course others, such as the call to action, guarantees, opening paragraphs, etc. When you test these, you can see improvements in how much and how often you sell.

If you need help with optimizing your site, contact me and we can start working on your site.

How Fast Is Your Website?

Walter Wimberly — Sat, 02 May 2009 01:32:42 +0000

: Image by zerok via Flickr

Yahoo recently updated one of their tools for grading and optimizing websites. It’s called YSlow, and it checks your site for several different decisions and tools which you (or your web designer) may have implemented.

YSlow is an add on to the Firebug tool which is a Firefox extension – so at this point, you can’t run it in any other browser, however both Firefox and Firebug are free tools so there is no cost to you other than time.

YSlow is nice because it rates things on a scale of A to F, for each of numerous categories. It also gives a numeric score for the overall grade. By having it calculate where the biggest improvements could come from – it lets you quickly find areas to optimize. With the previous version, I took one website which had a horrible score of 18 (out of 100), and in an afternoon with some minor changes, brought it up to a 32.

Other websites I’ve taken from a 55-60 range and gotten them into the 80s – usually within just a few days, depending upon the complexity of the site.

Users perceive your site partially in how fast it responds – so the faster your site, the more likely they are to make purchases or other related decisions, so optimizing your site’s speed can be very important to the health of your site.

Optimize Your Website For Speed

Walter Wimberly — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 01:06:38 +0000

: Image by tirebiterz via Flickr

How do you increase the speed and response of your web site? Good question. We’ve talked about it some in the past, but the people at Inside CRM have provided a list of 50 items.

While this can help with the loading of your site, it also takes someone who knows how to implement these changes. One other thing to check on is how will this affect the other aspects of your web site? For example:

Will modifying your web site affect how users use your site? The usability of your site will directly affect how effective your site is in getting sales or leads. Granted, the speed of your site directly relates to your site’s usability, but it is only one part of many that make up your usability. Especially since some of the efforts is in reducing image use – which might be very important to your site.
Will your modifications affect your search engine optimization for better or worse? Generally a site should receive anywhere from 35-80% of their traffic from a search engine. If you negatively effect your search engine optimization, you could seriously hurt your ability to be found on-line. So always consult your search engine specialist first.Recently Online Marketing Blog wrote about needing to talk to your search engine person first. You don’t want to make a change to your site, which makes if faster, but harder to be found in the search engines.

If you don’t have someone to advise you on search engine optimization or website usability contact me, and I’ll help you out. I have over 10 years of experience in optimizing websites to get them to run faster for you.

How fast do changes take affect online?

Walter Wimberly — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 03:43:05 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

People often want to know how fast to changes occur on-line. They may be used to traditional print advertisign, such as newspaper and magazine, in which changes to an ad might take weeks or months to be seen.

Even worse, consider wanting to change some text in your phone book ad. If you see an error (imagine a wrong phone number), or want to make a change the week your book comes out, it will take a twelve long months to update your ad.

On-line, things can occur much faster. We can see errors and correct them at almost the same instant. We can try different lines of text in an ad, or add in products to our catalogs.

Recently, I was working with a client updating their website. They wanted to add a new package to their offerings on-line. They contacted me that morning, I made the change to the website the same day (which is fairly typical of minor changes to a site such as some text, or a new product or service) and within 5 minutes of posting it to the web server, the client had a request for the new service package. You can’t get that quick of turn around in any medium other than the web.

Compliments Can Come From Odd Places

Walter Wimberly — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 12:57:31 +0000

The best compliments come from people you’d never expect them.

Recently, for one of my clients, I was looking at some of his competitors. I wanted to get a feel for what they were doing, and see how my client compared.

One of them has on their site “No, we do not have a fancy drop-down program that lets you choose from our other showcase designs and mix and match. That would cost lots of money“. Well when looking at the competition field, he is clearly referencing the Options Showcase page for my client.

The fact of the matter is, while I try to provide sites that look expensive, they often are not. The feature is fancy but not expensive compared to the returns on having a well developed website, and the income it can generate for you.

So I’ll take the compliment, and if you want a website that looks expensive, but isn’t necessarily so, let me know.

What I’ve Been Working On

Conference Speaking

Walter Wimberly — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 02:51:12 +0000

This week I had a chance to spend a few days at the eLearning Guild’s Annual Gathering – immensely enjoyed it by the way. It combined two of the things I really enjoy – education/training and technology.

I gave a session on Free and Low Cost Tools for Developing eLearning Content. In the current economy it helps to find the best resources that you can, at the best prices. And while there are many expensive solutions, there are also many low cost solutions.

I have posted a website as a resource for the session I gave, and am opening it up for everyone else as well. http://www.lowcostelearning.com/ is a free resource to find out about tools for devloping eLearning content, as well as other content, while not breaking your buget.

It is built upon WordPress, and using several plugins to allow communication between the readers and myself, as well as allowing users to rate the tools if they have experience with them.

Updating the Any Occasion Photography website

Walter Wimberly — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 13:58:04 +0000

In the last post, I mentioned that I had updated the Any Occasion Photography website. There were several core updates to the design, as well fundamental changes to make the site better. I thought I would give a small list, so you could get an idea of what types of updates occurred, and if they would be appropriate for your situation.

The Site Design

The design of the site is completely new, which many people who had visited will notice. However, each of the elements was specifically choosen to make the site easier to use. For example:

Better grouping of pages in the navigation, so under photography examples one can now find the different types which Any Occasion takes, but then, can also find sub groups to show sections of weddings or sections and types of school photography. We also improved the behavior of the buttons so that they had some simple animations to them, instead of being so static.
The total number of pages actually decreased. There used to be a page discussing the types of photos they took, then a second page for a sample gallery. Now that is all combined, so the photo examples are on a page describing the type of photography.
More prominent contact information on each page, under the main menu. This includes a phone number and e-mail link for people to be able to email the photographer.
Enhanced homepage buttons – to really get the user to focus on some important pages which we wanted to highlight, such as the top 10 reasons to higher Any Occasion Photography, sample video, and a few other highlights. This helps direct the user to the high impact parts of the page.

Technology Improvements

Use of CSS Framework – by using a CSS framework, I was able to create a page layout which will be more consistent between browsers, and should work with future browsers as well. I had originally looked at the YUI framework, however found it a little too cumbersome and meant the page sizes were growing.Instead, I opted to use the 960 grid system, and it worked well for this situation.
Use of a JavaScript Framework – similar to using a CSS Framework, the JavaScript framework allows for development time to be reduced, and stability/sameness among all major browsers. It also luckily allows for faster code since the people who developed the framework work solely on that, which means they can spend the time to develop a robust and fast framework.
Improved Search Engine Optimization – looked for and improved in several areas the local, on-site, optimization for search engines to improve its crawlability, as well as it’s abilty to rank for key terms.

Speed Improvements

Faster to Download – By properly implementing the frameworks, and being more efficient in how the coding is processed, I was able to make the overall file sizes smaller. This means that the pages download faster, and consume less bandwidth for the same amount of content.
Faster to Process – The number of externals which have to be processed compared to before has gone down. This means that the files are sent from the server to the client faster, and that more people can be on the server at the same time, since the server doesn’t require as much processing power.
Faster to Update – I made several updates to the template engine which is used throughout the site, so that updates to the files, additional pages, and more can be updated and uploaded faster.
Faster to Display – Taking some hints from the YSlow application, I was able to find a few bottle necks which was slowing down how the files were being processed by the client web browser. By improving its performance, we we able to make the site appear to be faster, without increasing the server, network connection, or any other expensive component. These enhancements will continue through time as the site is used more by more and different people.

Do you need assistance with your website? I provide affordable web design and optimization services to both new and existing websites. Contact me for more information.

What I’ve Been Working On

Walter Wimberly — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 00:47:17 +0000

I’ve not had a lot of chances to update my blog recently. The good news is that I’ve been busy with several client projects, and personal projects, the downside is that it has taken a lot of my time, so I haven’t had a chance to update the blog. (Client projects always have a higher priority over the blog postings.)

Here are a few updates on some client projects in the past 3 months:

Developed a site with threaded discusion forum
Redid the Any Occasion Photography website, completely updating the layout, and adding some new features
Updates to Showcases To Go, including new admin features and the ability for users to construct their own custom showcase.
Creating a new blog to track my experiences going through the “Personal MBA“
Currently developing a website to allow people to order a custom air brushed t-shirt. (Still working on this one, but I’ve done most of the heavy lifting to get it done.)
Worked on using a website optimization process for two different clients to help optimize their web pages to get more conversions. (Email leads for one client to get bookings, and additional and larger sales for another client.)

In addition to the professional projects, I’m still teaching, and I recently gave a lecture at an on-line conference. I will also be speaking at the Guild 2009 Annual Gathering Conference in Orlando, FL in March. If anyone is attending, please stop by my talk and say hi.

Browser Know How – Firefox

Walter Wimberly — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 21:49:42 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

Firefox is generally accepted at the browser which caused Mircosoft to have to restart development of Internet Explorer. Rising from the ashes of the former Netscape Navigator project, Mozilla‘s Firefox provided improved standards, and new features that are now known as standards in for the modern browser. This would inlcude things like improved speed of displaying pages, improved support for web standards, tabbed browsing, and others.

However, Firefox’s biggest advantage comes from its extensiblity. Where some browsers try to add everything in themselves, Firefox has kept it’s core fairly small, and allows third party developers to extend its ability, so users can add features they want, but not have features they don’t want.

The shear number of free extensions is why Firefox is the second most popular browser on the Internet, and the most popular browser that doesn’t come preinstalled with an operating system.

Some of the most popular free extensions include:

FoxyTunes – an addon to control and play music within your browser
AdBlock Plus – tool to block ads from websites. Also blocks tracking scripts and pop-ups. I find this one blocks about 95% of all ads.
NoScript – blocks javascript from running – to speed up pages, reduce ads, and add a layer of security.
Video DownloadHelper – To help you download FLV video files to your local computer.
Firebug - for web development
Foxforecast - for checking the weather in your browser quickly

Add to the list of add-ons, is that Firefox is continuously being updated with security patches as they are found, and new features, and no wonder Firefox is being used so often by so many people.

It has been my browser of choice for a while now (since version 1) and the only browser that comes close to its capabilities in regards to speed and stability if Google’s chrome.

Happy New Year

Walter Wimberly — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 17:03:56 +0000

: Image by Sabrina Campagna via Flickr

Happy New Year to everyone today. My the best of the past year, be the worst of the coming year.

Being Prepared for the Worst

Walter Wimberly — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 12:58:39 +0000

Let’s face it, small businesses lives knowing a couple of things.

Disaster striking is not a matter of if, but when. I think this is why a lot of small business go out of business. They go along just fine, until they hit a bump, and they can’t make it over because they haven’t prepared.
The more important something is, the more likely it will be the thing which dies. It will also stop working when you need it the most. Is this Murphy’s law!

For many small businesses, your computer system is one of your most important pieces; you can’t do anything without it. And if you are small enough, that you don’t have an “IT Person” on staff, even part time.

This means it is extra important to have a good system in place before disaster strikes.

I’ve seen this first hand twice recently. On Saturday, while I was working on a client’s project trying to get it ready for the live launch, lighting stuck. How close: try in my yard. With a loud crack and pop, I hear the smoke alarm go off. Why, the “magic smoke” which makes my electronics work escaped. Ok, so it’s not “magic smoke”, but it was fried circuits. In a second I went from working to a blown up modem, fried router, blown network card, and a computer acting a little flaky.

Luckily I had backed up my entire system just a few days earlier. I was also able to purchase replacements (because it happened in the afternoon before the computer stores closed), and be back up and working that evening, only 2 or 3 hours later. However, now I am keeping some additional spare parts, because if it had happened at 8:30 or 9:00PM, I would have been down the rest of the night. So for the $200 it costs to have a back up, it means I’m down for 30 minutes not 3-48 hours, and when time is money, I can’t be waiting.

The second incident happened over the course of a couple of weeks. One of my clients, a wedding photographer, has had a few local computer issues, which we thought were resolved. Unfortunately, a virus left a back door into her system, and now her computer is basically unusable. Luckily for her and her clients, she meticulously backups all of her photos. So later today I will be wiping the system to clean it of the virus for good. Then with the backups we will load the photos back, and her softare back off the original CDs. (She also keeps the original CDs handy, so she doesn’t have to spend a day or two finding them.) She has been down for about a day now, but compared to the cost of losing all of her client’s photos, it’s not so bad.

In either case, had the damage been worse, or backups not been kept, it could have driven us out of business. But for the cost of a few hours of backing up and few cents per Gig of storage on external drives, we can both stay in business and keep working.

“World Backup Day”

Eric Hutchinson’s “Back To Where I Was” with Randy Pausch

Walter Wimberly — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 02:22:34 +0000

I mentioned that people ought to take an hour out of there day, and watch the last lecture by the late Dr. Randy Pausch. I know not everyone has the time. Someone has put together as a music video, some highlights of the talk. So if you don’t have 60 minutes, you might want to take 5 minutes and watch this short music video by Eric Hutchinson’s with his song “Back To Where I Was”.

Search Engines and Flash Files

Walter Wimberly — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 12:11:41 +0000

In the past, the search engines (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Live, et all) couldn’t really search Flash files that well. Well Adobe has been working with the search engines to allow them to search the Flash sites, widgets, buttons, and more.

This is good news on the surface, but still requires one digging a little deeper before trying to get a nifty Flash site. Here are three quick take aways to know about, before

The first thing to know, is you still have to use text, as text, to be searchable. Many Flash developers convert the text into something known as shapes so that they can manipulate it easier to look nice on your screen. While your site will look nicer overall, it will cause the search engine to fail to read that part of you Flash site.

Second, most search engines cannot run JavaScript. Because of a software patent issue, Internet Explorer needs JavaScript to write the Flash file to the webpage. So now, in many cases, your Flash site is no longer searchable.

Flash screens, are not the same as web pages, and that means it will be harder to isolate a topic and rank for it, when looking at the overall site with all of the other text working along with it. Add upon that, that most Flash developers are inexperienced at Search Engine Optimization, and lack good tools to build a search optimized site (links, individual pages, helpful page elements, etc) they will most likely not be able to help you rank like a good HTML based website could.

Overall, I would hold off on developing your all Flash based sites if you are interested in long term Search Engine rankings. (Besides, most developers charge more for Flash sites – use that money to make more content which can rank in the search engines, it will be money better spent.)

SEOmoz has more information on his views on why Flash and Search Engines still don’t mix.

Goodbye Randy Pausch

Walter Wimberly — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 18:43:00 +0000

Image via WikipediaAs a college instructor, I always am interested in two things;

learning about how other’s have taught, and
what should I tell my students if I only had one last class.

Randy Pausch delivered the “Last Lecture” after he learned that he’d developed terminal pancreatic cancer.

I was able to take away some good teaching tips as he discussed his career, but I was also able to learn more about life.

Prof. Pausch passed away on Friday. If you’ve not had a chance to view the video of his last lecture, or read the book (which is like a longer version of the lecture), I’d recommend that you do so. Fulfill your dreams by living right, and help other’s full fill their dreams.

Below is the video from YouTube. I’d recommend it.

Another view on Web 2.0

Walter Wimberly — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:38:01 +0000

In the past we talked about different aspects of Web 2.0 and using Web 2.0 in your business, and how it was being used to give control back to the users of the web, and let people contribute.

We looked in the past at things like blogs and RSS feeds, wikis, and forums, as a method of people interacting with the owner, and each other.

The video below, shows the “how” (not the “what”) the web can be a social medium. Looking at things like user reviews, rating, etc.

Social Media in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.

Interview Published in Education Portal

Utilizing Web 2.0 in your Business

Walter Wimberly — Wed, 14 May 2008 13:06:22 +0000

So in previous posts, we talked about what the Web 2.0 is (collaboration between people and companies and clients to create a better result) and isn’t (a technology or specific tool). We’ve looked at tools that people have used to implement them, such as blogs, RSS feeds, and wikis.

I’ve not looked at tools like FaceBook, Flickr, or other sites and services which can allow people to access existing social networks. How you use these are similar but different to your own

There are only two questions now:

How can I (or my business) use the Web 2.0?
And how difficult are they to use?

I’ll answer the second one now. And the answer is actually not very, once they are set up. If you are not a technical person, I’d recommend contacting someone, like myself, who has set up sites and these very aspects of a site. I will even train you on how to use the new aspects of your site.

The first question, how can I (or my business) use the Web 2.0, requires a little more explanation. As each business is unique, how you can, and choose to, use the different Web 2.0 features is up to you. Here is how some of my recent clients have used web 2.0 features in their sites, this year alone:

One is using a customized blog to deliver industry and site related news to their viewers.
Another is using a blog to list contests/projects and show the works.
And yet another is looking to use a wiki to help slow the loss of information as their employees reach retirement age soon by documenting and updating processes and product information.

So the whole idea is to improve communication and interaction with those who would use your site and your products. The more you can provide useful information to your customers, the better your position will be.

If your not sure what can be done on your site, contact me, and I will be glad to assist you.

Happy Mother’s Day

Walter Wimberly — Sun, 11 May 2008 13:09:02 +0000

I have to admit, I like odd holiday days. I’ve said hi to both Pi Day (3/14) and RSS Day (5/1). But today isn’t as odd.

It mother’s day (in case you didn’t know). So happy mother’s day to all the mother’s out there. I’ve been lucky to have a great mom, and marry a great wife who has been a great mom to our two sons.

Happy Pi Day

Walter Wimberly — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 10:50:40 +0000

Happy Pi Day (3.14.08)

Let’s face: it you have to be at least a little bit of a geek to be a web developer for a living.