What would you do if you found out one of your best sales people was randomly turning away 1 out of every 5 people?  People who might have bought from you, but the salesperson  turned them away because of their own prejudices.

Recently I was on a conference call with a client, and one of the services he was using. We were trying to work through some issues  and during the discussion one of the issues that came up was that the services site was designed to run in Internet Explorer only.

I can understand if you are running an Intranet, inside a company where the browser is dictated by IT, but for a public website, you are essentially turning away 1 out of every 4 or 5 customers.

So I ask again could you imagine your  bank, grocery store, or gas station or your store randomly turning away 1 out of every 5 customers because they drove a mini-van instead of a car to get to the store? Of course not! That salesperson should and probably would be fired for such foolishness!

Web browsers are like cars in many ways. They are the vehicle which your customer uses to get to your website. Just because Internet Explorer holds 80% of the market share, doesn’t mean that it should be the only browser you allow your customers to use. Your site should be designed to work with all modern browsers – and if it doesn’t you should fire your web designer.

(Note: names withheld to protect the guilty.)

Popularity: 2% [?]

This summer I’ve been working on several projects with two of them being very large.  Well I just finished the first large project, Our Wedding Circle. Built using an existing framework, so it should be easier to maintain, there is also large sections of custom code and several key updates.

The updates, allow for, as all websites should:

• easier administration to add/update/and disable users,
• faster searching for users than before,
• more optimized database structure, and
• improved findability for search engines, so it should rank higher than it’s predecessor.

The client brought me their ideas, and I worked with them and showed them some others things which could be done to make managing a site of their size more manageable.

The site is huge already with many wedding vendors from all over the US, indexed by location and category and is growing daily. Sites have to designed with growth in mind, or they will fail, and this site is a perfect example of one which is growing as it should.

Popularity: unranked [?]

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.

Popularity: unranked [?]

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.

Popularity: unranked [?]