Web Design Development Articles

Choosing a website designer, to make my first website, was due to my being technology challenged, and without proper knowledge as to what I was getting into.  I still remain technology challenged, and the road has not been pleasant, but with fresh, innovative lessons, I have found true direction in making my websites.

Website expectation

The expectation was to find an affordable web designer, that could do all the tech stuff, so I could focus on writing content.  I had the design in mind, the colors, the format, the mission, and was ready to make the commitment of time and resource to achieve the expectations of my endeavor.  I would continue adding content, tips, facts, and articles at periodic intervals, and had expectations of adding a few tweaks, that were suppose to be no problem.

Web realities

I was working on a web-tv, more of a casual surfing keyboard, cast on the tv screen.  I started using the computer, but a mutual understanding in regards to the implication of my site was with ongoing discord.  I strived for my content to be perfect, so as to not need repeated revisions.  Cost was escalating with page cost and hourly cost, which seemed to take longer and longer.  There was project cost on top of it, appearing to be triple charges.  I dreaded her emails, and I grasped at indications that we might have some rapport, even a mutual understanding of the task at hand.

Sitebuilder Innovation

Sitebuilders, those innovative no HTML knowledge required website editors were not as assessable when I began, as they are now.  Of course it is likely, I just did not come across such a novel tool at the time.  I won’t say I became completely liberated, and even with a site builder, my endeavors are a bit basic, but that is fine.  It affords me to write, express, and seek the subtle interaction with my web visitors, through some unforeseen similar destination, and purpose.

It is about choice, full knowledge, and expectations.  From a foundation of personal resolve, all that is worth attainment, is a worthy endeavor.  Some endeavor may be a little more basic, but never no less sincere, and so are the confessions of the technology challenged.

Let me start out by emphasizing that I really do like WordPress for my blogging platform, but to actually attempt to compare WordPress to the expanded capabilities of DevHub is like comparing apples to oranges. Simply put, WordPress is very good at what it was designed to do, but at the end of the day it was designed for blogging — not commercial website development.

Many have tried to push WordPress beyond its intended purpose in an attempt to make an e-commerce or affiliate marketing website. This requires programming new templates and plug-ins and gaining access to affiliates and other monetizing agents. In the event that you can find a WordPress template that basically meets your needs, you will probably have to pay for its use. Then, if you wish to change how it is formatted, you will have to take the time to manually reprogram the elements you wish to modify.

Another thing to keep track of when using WordPress, templates and plug-ins designed by others may become incompatible and cease to function when the base WordPress software is upgraded. With WordPress you also have to invest in domain hosting, and once set up it may not bring in enough money alone to pay for the hosting fees. So even if WordPress meets your needs now, will it function as you need it to in the future?

DevHub, on the other hand, is specifically designed to be a website development platform with full monetization capability, and as an added benefit, hosting of domains is free. It is simple to use and requires no previous programming knowledge - which is usually a big barrier-to-entry for those looking to use WordPress.

Within the DevHub development environment, you simply drag-and-drop modules elements you want in your pages and effectively build a useful, robust, and content-rich website. You have direct access to a multitude of established revenue streams and website design tools, and there is no limit to the number of pages you create. All revenue generated from these modules, in addition to traffic statistics, are provided within the DevHub platform in an intuitive, exportable dashboard.

Since DevHub is web-based, software updates are automatic and transparent to the user. Templates are fully flexibly, so you can truly create unique sites. You have control of your own creative content, while taking advantage of an array of automated content and revenue generating components. The pages you generate will automatically update as new product and content becomes available from DevHub’s partners, minimizing maintenance while ensuring your content is up to date.

After this evaluation, I have moved my blog content from my WordPress blog to DevHub and have effectively created a real website that gives me monetary credit for the content I create. Onto my next site!

Website design & development prices vary because agencies are trying to make a different level of profit, have a different level of skills and / or have a different understanding of client’s requirements. It is not unheard of for an agency to quote one price at the beginning of a website development and for the costs to triple at the end.

This generally comes down to inadequate planning from the start and one of the key reasons that we always recommend putting in place adequate budget at the start of a project for initial consultancy and documentation.

Is price a true reflection of an agency’s quality?

There are some good digital design agencies out there that are inexpensive and other bad agencies that are expensive (even more so because they deliver poor quality products - doubly bad value). Value does not come down to low cost, value comes down to getting what you want or need at a price that is beneficial to your business - after all, if every time you invested £1,000 into your business, it returned £2,000 - that is good value, even though you are spending £1,000. Yet, if investing £10,000 was to return £20,000, that better value even though it’s more expensive!

In general, you get what you pay for and a £150 website redesign (as we have heard quoted) sounds suspiciously low. Is the work being done in the UK? Do they have a good understanding of what is required? What is the quality of their work like? For a potential client, if they have received a low quote that becomes their price ‘anchor’, then all additional quotes that might be in the thousands can seems like bad value, but can offer much better value when viewed from a return on invest perspective.

Perhaps a best first step is to ask for a relevant professional reference from the agency. Make sure the website design agency matches the referee’s turnover levels to yours, so that you have a realistic comparison. I have been involved in created websites for SME’s for under £2,000 and on the other side, websites for larger corporations with budgets over £100,000. References must therefore be carefully selected in order to provide realistic expectations.

It may be difficult to image how there can be such a difference in the cost of designing a website, but put simply, a larger budget allows more time and resources to be allocated. Many smaller businesses have ’till shock’ at the initial consultancy costs for the start of a project. However, the initial consultancy stage is incredibly important, creating a stable platform for the development of:

• content

• design

• code

• delivery

Without adequate consultancy, discussion and documentation, most projects are doomed to fail. Larger projects many have week and even months allocated for initial consultation and documention.

So what is a good ballpark idea of website development costs?

The ‘average’ business website would have between 10 and 30 pages of content created in HTML with contact form, some search engine optimisation, easy-to-use navigation and some basic animations throughout the site to engage with visitors visually. So let’s estimate the cost for a hypothetical basic 10 page website with quality design.

Consultancy & content

There should be around 5,000 words of content (500 words per page minimum) with each page targeting three specific phrases. These phrases should be researched in search engines like Google in order to accurately target the best terms for you business.

This leads to clear content guidelines for the pages plus naming conventions for the pages themselves and can take several days on its own. A larger site, one with hundreds of pages, would take longer to ‘rationalise’ as access to content becomes more complex, as the navigation structure must work within a ‘deep’ content environment.

A good ballpark for the consultancy for a 10 page website would be £1,500, broken down into:

• 1 day for project consultancy & brainstorming

• 1 day to document the projects requirements & expectations

• 0.5 day to research other sites, terms in Google

Design

The creative process is perhaps the most difficult stage to pin down in terms of time scales and costs. If the client has a clear idea of what they want from a design perspective (and can illustrate it through other example websites, print materials and/or brand ‘values’), the design process becomes quicker (and therefore costs less). However, if the client is looking for the creative agency to do all the work (”just make it look nice”), then there is more time and cost on the part of the agency.

Good creative design needs time to mature and develop otherwise the resulting product can be ’shallow’. In our experience, for the average 10 page website for a small sized business, the ideal balance of cost vs. creativity is:

• 1 day to consult, information gather and brainstorm with the client

• 3 days to create design concepts

• 2 days to artwork content pages

If branding is involved, then a further three days after the consultancy stage is required, bringing the overall design process to two weeks (a rough budget of £6,000).

These are broad generalisations of the design process and businesses in general. You only need to look at the breadth of businesses in the UK, to get an idea of the breadth of potential costs associated with a website development.

Multimedia details

Once you introduce multimedia & interactive elements, costs become significantly more ’spread’ because of the types of technologies involves and the relative work required to make each perform.

Flash has become a common element in websites, helping to lift the design of website page by bringing animation & interactivity to the content. It is possible to create a short 10 second intro animation for a website for a cost of £600 but does this actually add value to the website? It is doubtful.

A series of animated components distributed across various pages of the website might cost more (perhaps £1,500) and in spite of the higher cost, deliver much better value in the form of a better experience for website visitors.

Video can very quickly communicate the ‘values’ of an organisation, but can incur significant frontend costs in terms of the creation of the video. However, cheap video cameras and home editing software, means that it is possible to high impact create video testimonials from clients very cost effectively.

Interactive navigation provides a good, cost effective element to your site, as it is going to be used by site visitors many times and therefore becomes one of the most ‘noticeable’ components of the website, yet applying creative flair to the navigation should not cost much in terms of design & coding time.

HTML coding

Putting together simple HTML pages doesn’t take long or cost much. A simple HTML website can be code in a day, but again, the risk to your brand can be high. How often have you visited a website and immediately gotten the impression that the website was put together by someone’s “brother in law” or a student? Did you continue to investigate that business as a potential supplier? No.

So why take that risk with your own business? The small details on the webpage are obvious signposts as to the quality of HTML code that businesses are likely to recognise. A well constructed, modern website is accessible (even if at the most basic level of users being able to set the size of the print), quick to load (but with the prevalence of broadband these days, an agency would have to be making some fundamental mistakes for the site to be slow to download), use CSS (making it easier to update the design across all pages of the website from a single file) and readable in all browsers.

Writing good quality HTML code does not rely on tools such as Dreamweaver. The job of these tools is to make writing code easy - but unfortunately, this is often to the detriment of the code quality itself - so ask the agency what tools they use to create their code. If the agency is writing code from scratch, then it is likely to write better quality code and to have a better understanding of how that code works.

For our fictional 10 page website, the cost of producing quality, well constructed HTML code would cost on average £3,000

• 1 day for setup of CSS, navigation & overall page layouts

• 1 day to chop-up graphics for the pages

• 2 day to write HTML code with quality details (such as meta tags, alt tags on images, code comments)

• 1 day for testing

Setup & installation

Website hosting is cheap as chips these days. It is possible to find hosting for as little as £5 per month. However, there are costs associated with setting the account up, purchase of domain name, putting the website online & testing. These costs are likely to vary depending on the complexity of your website but again, using the 10 page HTML model website, the whole process shouldn’t take more than one day.

Ongoing maintenance costs

Keeping the content on your website up-to-day is essential - absolutely critical. Research indicates that after design, the most important factor in deciding the quality of a website is how often and how recently information on that website has been updated. People return to websites that update their content often and search engines ranking sites that update content often more highly.

The consultancy process should identify the best approach for keeping content up to date - whether a content management system is recommended or if it is more cost effective to edit HTML or text files directly. This may sound like a technical process, but it doesn’t need to be. A couple hours of training, especially with a website that has only ten pages, is often all that is needed to put you in the driving seat - saving you on development & implementation costs.

Overview

The overall cost for a professional, quality 10 page website constructed in HTML can be broken down as follows:

Consultancy £1,500

Design £6,000

Programming £3,000

Setup & installation £600

Ongoing maintenance DIY and pay nothing!

Inevitably, the quality of your website and its business performance will be reflected in its price, but this does not mean that more expensive is necessarily better. We often hear of companies charging many £10,000’s of points for websites that can obviously be created for much less.

Larger agencies have higher overhead costs and work on larger margins than smaller agencies. There is a sweet spot in terms of website development cost that is unique to you, so make sure you get at the very least three quotes for your project (and ensure that all the website design agencies has the same understanding of your requirements), but ideally try to target five quotes, from around the country.

Why are turnkey websites important?

At a day and age where the Internet plays a vital role in the day-to-day existence of companies, wouldn’t it be more practical to have a website that can respond to your various online needs. Turnkey websites is a necessity today since the success of your business is dependent upon the number of visitors that browse your website daily. Selling products or services through the net is possible through a well designed website.

In order for search engines (yahoo, google, etc.) to access your websites, it has to be fully optimized to enhance its page rankings. The elevation of your website is dependent upon the design, category and keyword range, factors that allow search engines to sort out the degrees of viability especially within the same niche. So, in a way turnkey websites that have the most impact with search engines gets the top priority in rankings and in user searches as well.

It is not also wise to over optimize your turnkey websites, because search engines may read it as spam websites that nobody could visit it. Search engines run on electronic data and impulses. Thus websites need to adapt to appropriate SEO measures in order for them to maintain the projected category level.

What are HSP’s?

HSP or hosting service provider is an independent company that serves as host to different turnkey websites. The main duty of the HSP is to provide assistance to turnkey websites in the delivery of visitors, maintaining accessibility of websites to search engines under a 24/7 set-up. Of course, since you would be relieved with the burden of managing your website, HSPs usually charge a high of $10 to a low of as much as $4.99 hosting service fee per month.

Small and medium sized businesses (SMB) usually do not have the resources to maintain an in-house IT staff to run the website, so many depend on outsourcing services for the needed requirement particularly in the selection of a reliable HSP’s. This likewise helped SMB’s a lot, because this relieved them with the hassles of running the turnkey website and enabled them to channel their energy to expanding their business.

The cost is really minimal, so place your turnkey website under a reputable HSP today and concentrate only on the more pressing concerns of your enterprise.

And why not?

Selling turnkey websites in the Internet is the hottest thing to hit the world of electronic data and impulses. As the competition among level category websites reach crescendo, it has provided many web designers a new degree of profitability. Website designing has been for decades a field frequented by computer geeks since it involves a very complicated system. But as the majority found web designing to be really financially rewarding, the number of players in this industry likewise tremendously increased.

Most small and medium business (SMB) entities, find it hard to create or design their business website. Some lack the technical know-how to begin with, while others refuse to learn and still a vast majority does not have the time at all to tinker with html and set up their sites. This spurred a need that gave graphic designers the chance to make money, since most businesses rely on the Internet for the needed boost, particularly those involved in e-commerce or online marketing activities. Thus, in order for turnkey websites to appeal to consumers, designers must provide the “it” factor and of course sophistication.

Turnkey websites is composed of a bundle of computer jargon sold to buyers that is deemed ready and functional. It is provided with a domain name, pre-installed CGI scripts, shopping carts (product images, description, prices), affiliate programs and other systems that make it thoroughly operational. What is left is for the buyer to turn-in the key and the system will be up and running, ready to process the various transactions.

Who sells turnkey websites?

Turnkey websites are typically sold by HSPs (hosting service providers) thru the Internet. Current prices, particularly for reliable sites, ranges from $300 to $600. That is inclusive of a one-month hosting fee. Majority of HSPs see to it that a lot of users browse your website daily to increase the traffic further as time goes by; make it search optimized for search engines while updating turnkey website owners about technological breakthrough; setting up a connection with eBay and providing advise on current market trends.

The work of the HSP is comprehensive and provides turnkey website owners the technical expertise as well as 24/7 support. The sale includes hosting services provided by the HSP, if the owners so desires, but they can elect to see other service providers as well. Most HSPs usually charge reasonable fees from a low of $4.99 to a high $10 monthly in exchange for hosting services. This expertise supplied by HSPs saves owners the needed funds as they serve as the reliable silent partners in business deals.

So, having viewed the importance of a turnkey website, why not get one today?

For every business big or small, for it to expand and form its network, it has to have its presence felt. And how does that happen? For any business to prosper, it should have that platform where it can reach out to the world, expand its network and enhance interactivity with the customers and clients. This is how a company makes its presence felt and the internet serves as the platform and this where web solutions play a major role.

Web solutions are required to design and bring up on the internet platform, a professional website. A website should have a number of features and is built integrating several designs and utilities which are called web solutions.

Web solutions basically incorporate web hosting, web design and web developmental features in a website and at the same time project it as a profit making tool in the online market. A website can be imagined as a profitable model which acts as an online medium where clients and customers from any part of the globe can meet and interact, products can be advertised and sold and viewers can be informed about the company in a comprehensive manner. These are offered by the web developing companies which are responsible for designing the site, creating optimized and engaging contents, programming for the application and utilities and helping the company reach out to the world.

But then again, having a mere presence on the web is not all. The web world is highly competitive and the mantra to a successful and profitable website is high return on investment (ROI). Developing a visually appealing web site with all the high end features is not enough until the website has the capability to earn good ROI and strengthen the customer-client relationship.

A good web solutions provider should be able to offer high quality technical as well as creative solutions for the web. The best kind of web solutions should feature cutting edge technology, sound graphics and animation, better e-commerce solutions, search engine optimization and world class content management.

Do you have a plan? Most companies spend a considerable amount of time, energy, and money planning what to do and how to do it.

Let’s say you need a website, so you develop a plan, present it to a bunch of website designers, and get quotes or proposals. You’re not going to get caught with your pants down like the last time by some nerdy geek, you know the skinny kid with the scraggly beard, whose techno-babble gave you a headache, or the bizarre young lady dressed in Gothic chic with the black lipstick and tattoo to match - yikes, no thanks, not this time, this time you got a plan.

Human Motivational Optimization

You read all the blogs on website design, you know all the ins-and-outs of search engine optimization, and Google AdWords. No one is going to pull a fast one on you. You know your business, your market, and your needs. Or do you?

How much do you really know about how real people interact with your website? How much do you really know about what we call Human Motivational Optimization? All the stats, logs, and number crunching analysis that forms the basis of many website development plans does not truly give you the visceral understanding of how to connect to an audience, and isn’t that what you want your website to do?

So maybe your plan is the wrong plan; it’s like planning a trip to Home Depot to buy a cabbage; it just doesn’t make sense. So how about a plan that does make sense, something simple, understandable, easy to implement, that is if you hire the right people to do it. But before we tell you the four steps to creating your very own Website Branding Plan, let’s talk about Don LaFontaine.

Every Company Needs A Movie Trailer

Chances are you don’t know who the late Don LaFontaine was, but you’ve heard his voice many, many times. Don was the most famous and influential voice behind thousands of movie and television trailers. He had a distinctive deep, gravely voice, and a writing style that reinvented the entire movie trailer format. But why should you care? Simple. Movie trailers are the ultimate elevator pitch, a short memorable performance that compels you to action, kind of like what a mission statement is suppose to do, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start at the beginning, or rather, the end.

Branding Starts With Thinking Backwards

Most people like to start a project at the beginning and work their way through until they reach the end. Makes sense, or does it? If you don’t start with where you want to end-up, it’s unlikely you’ll ever get where you want to go. Remember our cabbage? Planning a shopping to trip to Home Depot because they got cool stuff, doesn’t help if what you want is a cabbage.

Branding is no different. If you don’t start with how you want your audience to think about you, they will probably never think about you at all. So now that we got that straight let’s start our plan where it makes sense, the end.

The 4 Step Web-Branding Plan

1 The Slogan

Your slogan, you know the thing that sits underneath your logo, that simple little phrase somebody in your office came up with that makes you sound important, stuff like “the cool air conditioning company.” Most small and medium size companies don’t think too hard about this little marketing gem, and as a result they either have something really cheesy, or some meaningless platitude that has no memorable meaning at all, like “the best people for the best job.”

Just because you’re small and don’t have millions of dollars to spend on television ads promoting your pithy little motto, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have one. That catchphrase is who you are, and how you want people to remember you, short, memorable, and to the point. I remember my sons arguing over some complicated bit of business when one of them in frustration finally said, “Enough already. Give it to me in one word or less!” a demand to articulate what was important without all the peripheral issues; a lesson all businesses should pay attention to.

2 The Story Line (Logline)

To my mind, mission statements are a totally dysfunctional marketing element, misused and abused by a bean-counter attitude, born out of trying to squeeze every last drop of information into a statement that won’t offend anybody. A wise man once said, “If what you’re saying doesn’t offend somebody, maybe you’re not saying anything” and most mission statements that are full of meaningless platitudes and toned-down amendments, fall into the category of not saying anything, at least, anything worth hearing.

Okay so let’s forget about mission statements, after all this isn’t the military, and we’re not planning the next Desert Storm. Instead let’s think loglines, or what you can think of as your brand story line.

You know those short statements you find in TV Guide, or your weekend television insert, prompting you to watch the next episode of ‘House,’ or ‘Desperate Bimbos.’ They are a short form text version of a trailer, intended to get you to watch the movie or television show. For our purposes, we want people to go to our website, and stay-tuned long enough to get our core marketing message, and not walk out half way through the presentation. So, how do we do that?

The Six Elements of Effective Web Trailers

In order for us to come up with a compelling statement that prompts people to view our website presentation, we need to refer back to our old pal Don LaFontaine. What if Don LaFontaine wrote our website trailer. How would he do it?

Don had a very distinctive style that you’ve heard a thousand times for a thousand different movies, but they all followed a similar format. Each trailer needs to cover six distinct elements, who, what, where, how, why, and when. All the things businesses should be presenting in their elevator pitch, but with one extra ingredient, personality.

Here’s the format used in many movie trailers:

“In a place (where), one man (who) brings stability to chaos (what), in an epic tale that will both amaze and inspire (why)! Coming soon (when) to a theatre near you.” Sound familiar?

Let’s take our air conditioning example, you remember, “the cool air conditioning company.” Let’s say our fictitious company is called Kool Air Conditioning, their website trailer might sound something like this:

“In a town where summer heat melts the cool of the coolest homeowners, one air conditioning company comes to the rescue. When the mercury rises to eye-popping, mind numbing numbers, the men from Kool spring into action, bringing relief to the sweltering masses. The Kool Guys will amaze you with their prompt service and installation know-how. The heat is on. It’s coming sooner than you think; it’s coming this summer to your town, your neighborhood; your house. Kool, the cool air conditioning company.”

Over-the-top? Maybe, but we’ve covered all the bases, we know who (Kool), what (air conditioning), when (this summer), where (your house), why (the heat) and how (prompt service and installation know-how). Now that’s a mission statement; one with a little style, panache, and personality; one that will get you remembered and prompt your audience to action.

3 The Personality

Movies like businesses all fall into certain genres or categories. There’s the action movie format that’s suitable for sports related businesses, the chick flick style that’s ideal for cosmetic or fashion industry businesses, and the family comedy format suitable for entertainment and recreation based companies, and of course the kids movie version perfect for any business selling things for children. The point is that every company and website has to have a personality.

Many hard nosed business executives scoff at the idea of spending money on such seemingly trivial marketing concepts as company personality, but ignoring your website persona, is a big mistake. You can either invest a little in developing, creating, managing, and promoting this personality or you can let the marketplace decide for itself, or worse, find you completely redundant and irrelevant.

4 The Delivery

You may be asking yourself, this sounds good on paper, but can it really be done, and can it be done for my business, on my website? The answer is damn straight it can. Like most things in life, and in business, it’s not grasping the concept that so hard, it’s implementing it.

With a little investment and a willingness to take some chances, you can be the market leader. But if you thought you could simply take your newly created movie trailer style website elevator pitch and slap it onto your website in text form, you would be mistaken. How you deliver the message is as important, and in many cases more important, than what you say.

Whether you sell lipstick, licorice, or lingerie, you probably have lots of competition, so how you deliver your message is what’s going to make the difference.

You want your website presentation to motivate people to email or phone. You want to deliver a compelling performance that is more than a sales pitch, a presentation that uses voice, visuals, words, and music to create a website personality, a lasting impression; one that is going to allow you to stand out from the crowd and give you a competitive advantage.

Nothing will convince better than seeing an actual example, and guess what, we just happen to be able to provide you with one: check out SonicPersonality.com and see what an effective website presentation sounds like. If nothing else, you may get a chuckle or two.

Are you a woman in business or solo professional and still undecided whether you should invest in a website or not?

As we all know the primary function of a business is trading products or services in exchange for money, and as a female entrepreneur or woman in business, you would be selling a product or a service to provide a solution to your target market. The ways to create demand for what you offer are through various methods of marketing which ultimately get the customers or clients into your marketing funnel.

In order to attract customers we used to initially target the local market, then the regional market, then the state market, then the country market and finally the global market.

Before the arrival of the computer and internet, targeting and reaching anything further than the local market was highly expensive, time consuming and beyond the reach of the majority of small business owners. However, now it is not only easy and relatively inexpensive, but also common to have customers from around the globe, regardless of the size of one’s business.

Whether you have a home office, small shop, a medium factory, or even a personalised service business, in today’s society your business can be presented to customers globally by having your own business website.

Having an online presence is not only conveying information about your business or service to your global prospects but also a fabulous platform from which to market your business, attract more people to become aware of your product and services and reach levels of success that were previously difficult to achieve.

Without a web presence for your business, the following challenges will be experienced:

- Have only the local neighbourhood for clients
- Remain invisible to a huge potential market
- Have high cost of marketing and advertising offline
- Your time is consumed with face to face clients
- A ceiling is placed on potential earning
- Restricted trading hours eg 9am to 5pm
- Business takes longer to return expected income

Do you have a website or presence on the internet for your business?

To achieve a higher level of credibility for you and your business in today’s climate, and to extend your market reach, it is crucial to have online presence.

Some business professionals or female entrepreneurs may have a fully fledged website, but if you’re starting out, why not at least set up a blog?

Having a presence on the internet will allow your business to grow not only locally, but around the globe, remain open 24 hours each and every day, all year round.

Take the leap today and use the power of leverage with an online presence for your business. Your chances of success as a female entrepreneur or woman with a highly profitable and sustainable business will be greatly increased.

To the lovers of the sea, there is nothing more compelling than the echo of the ocean waves, the haunting siren of the seagulls, and the pureness of dawn. But there is more than the sea, for you to explore in making a coastal destination web site. Coastal communities are not only cloaked in the mist, but are seeped in history, folklore, and mysteries.

Chose a coastal community

When making a coastal website, if possible, chose a community you are personally familiar with, as nothing speaks more of the sea, than having been kissed by the sea air. Select an area, that would have wide appeal for vacations, week-end getaways, and even day excursions.

Seep it in history

Tell about the history of the community, when it was established, the demographics of the local people, and the salty tales of a colorful character. Check out the local shops for folklore, and seaside festivities, and local celebrations.

I was there when

Take a visit into the past, before this coastal destination was known. I remember the Florida Panhandle, Panama City and the pure green of The Gulf of Mexico, a paradise undiscovered, that was to be Destin, Seaside, Okaloosa Island, and a diverse coastal haven of dunes, seagrass, gulls, powder white sands, and the sea as green as emeralds. Your chosen destination can be as enterprising, and captivating.

Turn up the fun

Name some names, places to eat, where to get certain dishes, the local recipes if you can get someone to divulge some. Tell your visitors, about the must sees, what not to miss, quaint shopping villages, a lighthouse, that once was a beacon in the storm still guides the weary home. Include annual celebrations, festivities, and events such as the blessing of the ships, the shrimp festival, kind of like shrimp until you drop.

Say it with photography

A coastal destination website can’t be a destination without photos, finely detained images of the sea, the community, the dunes, footprints in the sand. Include some of the unexpected, cars lined on a narrow island street, a row of beach dwellings, the color of cotton candy, abandoned multi-hued umbrellas in the wind. Your visitors will taste the salty, mist of a destination that will live beyond their expectations, and spirit as brilliant as a kite shop, with a rainbow of their wares.

Making a coastal destination site, is a destination in itself, a doorway to getaways, vacations, and dreams of a seaside paradise. May such aspirations of splendor be so pure, and captivating.

The sun so golden toys with her favor, as angel hair mist rushes on the morn to caress warm skin. There, I gather the reflections of my heart, and dreams of my spirit, as I keep vigilance, from my balcony above the shore.

What is Content Management System (CMS)?

Content Management System (CMS) is a recent buzzword in website development. It has made management of websites a lot easy for common users, who do not have a sound technical knowledge of various programming languages and applications.

CMS enables users to write, upload and store digital texts such as technical manuals, news articles, marketing brochures etc. The content thus managed entails electronic files, audio & video files, online documents, spreadsheets, image media, word processor documents etc. CMS also helps website owners opt for multiple content developers and protect various sections of their website.

There are basically three types of Content Management System as discussed below:

Enterprise CMS: An enterprise CMS primarily focuses on the management of unstructured information content of a business enterprise. It aims to manage the content and documents related to the organizational processes of a business enterprise.

Web CMS: A Web CMS aims to manage and simplify content and documents that are particularly planned and designed for Web publication by the non-technical content developers.

Component CMS: A component CMS facilitates building publications from re-usable parts of content within a document. it is concerned with the management of structured content, which produces documents that are to be sent to Enterprise and Web CMS.

What elements should CMS have?

Easy-to-user interface: The CMS should have an easy-to-use interface so that both technical as well as non-technical users can make most use of the same. An easy-to-use interface of CMS enables non-technical users to manage the front end look of your website.

SEO tool kit: The CMS should also entail an extensive SEO tool kit, which will lend the web surfers the ease to find your website on the Internet.

Usability of built-in Server Controls: The built-in Server Controls should be easily accessible and usable to software developers and web site designers so that they can come up with a content-rich website instantly and then customize it accordingly with the help of a good API.

Other elements required: In addition to the above-mentioned features, the CMS should also be inclusive of other elements such as social networking, Online 2.0 tools, personalization, memberships, subscriptions, geomapping, web alerts, blogging, forums, polls etc. These elements will help you build your online communities by giving you the advantage of repeat business and the visitors will repeatedly land up on your website.

All these elements help CMS facilitate development of web pages with professional look and feel without any technical skill. It helps website gain higher search engine rankings. CMS with a web editor will enable users have content of web pages same as the content of HTML documents.

Having gathered the basic information about Content Management System, you are good to go now! CMS will make your business a growth-enriching and rewarding experience. All you need to be careful about is that the product that you would be using is supported with all the features needed to address your business needs.