Website Development

What is the relationship between web hosting and a website which performs well?

Choosing your web hosting plan can make or break your online business. It requires some level of technical knowledge and for most people, is too important a decision to be made on their own. To be truly successful online, you should begin your search with a web designer and establish a relationship with that person. They will then guide you in finding the best web hosting service to fit your needs.

How well your website performs is strongly dependant upon your web hosting plan. The hosting plan you choose directly effects the experience your prospective customers will have on your site. When shopping for business web hosting, people often make the mistake of looking for the cheapest plan they can find. The problem with this approach is that you are not just paying for hosting, you are paying for bandwidth, which directly effects how fast your web page will load. If your page loads too slowly your prospective customer will never see your site, but bandwidth is not the only factor that effects page load time. Other factors include:

The number of people connecting to your site at the same time.
The type of content you have on your site (the number of images, flash, video, audio, CMS).
How well your website is coded.
Back up and restore capabilities
Pre-loaded open source software
Security features

Of the six factors listed above, #3 is the primary offender for page load delays. Poorly coded websites are most often the result of machine-generated code, from do-it-yourself website builder applications.

Choosing a Web Designer first – Knowledge and Relationship

There are many choices for web hosting companies and many different types of web hosting services. Knowing what web hosting you will need for your website before it even exists is difficult, if not impossible. That is why you will need to begin with an experienced web designer. That person will be able to build a custom website for you and will know what type of hosting will be necessary to accommodate your site. When you hire a web designer, he or she will begin with gathering requirements from you in which you will discuss all the features and content you would like to have on your site. Your designer will then choose a web hosting service that can handle all the requirements of the site that they are going to build for you.

Another reason to begin with choosing a website designer or developer first, is that they will design your site based on the idea that they will provide the hosting and that there will be an ongoing relationship. Business web hosting often includes the hosting as well as some type of website support contract so that you will have someone you can go back to on a consistent basis. You will get personal one-on-one attention and ongoing support from someone you have a history with, and who thoroughly knows your website and your business model.

Choosing Web Hosting First – A Space in Need of a Site

If you begin with choosing your hosting plan first, then look for a designer, you set yourself up for several problems. First of all most web designers will not take a job building a website that could potentially be more than the hosting plan can handle. Secondly, many hosting services have different shareware applications that come with the hosting. You could have trouble finding a developer who is familiar with the shareware that comes with your hosting plan.

Another problem with choosing the hosting plan first is that a hosting company is concerned only with selling the hosting and nothing more. If you encounter any problems outside of hosting, the hosting company will not be able to help you. You will be essentially orphaning yourself before the project has even begun. Most web designers and developers offer their clients web hosting as well as maintenance contracts, but if you choose the hosting company first, then the person who builds the site for you does not have an ongoing relationship with you. Since there is no contract tying you to them, they have no vested interest is making your website successful.

Choosing a web hosting service for your website can be a complicated but very important decision. You will have the greatest chance for success with your website, if you begin by choosing a web designer or developer first and then have a hosting and maintenance contract with that person. That will ensure that your hosting plan will be appropriate for your website and that you will always have a website professional available when you need them.

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A lot of people and design companies in the US are excited about getting web design and development done cheaply, especially during a recession. Many foreign companies offer $10-$15 per hour. Is it too good to be true? It can be! Below are some of the pitfalls of a low-low price website and how you can avoid them.

Requirements Writing:

All technical projects begin with a set of requirements. Basically, web design requirements are the objectives that the project must meet. When you begin your web design project, you will most likely be speaking with some type of Project Manager. That person will ask questions about your project. They are not trying to work with you to come up with a business solution, they do not wish to explore your business problems. They expect you to lay out the requirements and tell them exactly what you want. The difficulty here is that technical requirements require a certain level of technical expertise. Most laypeople don’t have the experience to properly communicate technical requirements to a technical person.

Thoroughly think through what you want to accomplish with your web design project. An offshore company won’t act as a consultant and make suggestions. They will only provide what you specifically ask for and nothing else. So you will need to do your own research, thoroughly think through your project, and write out what you want your project to accomplish.

Language Barriers:

The second problem that can arise in offshoring a web design project is the language barrier. If you are able to come up with your own your web design requirements, the next challenge is dealing with a web design project manager for whom English is a second language. Even if your Project Manager seems to be doing a good job, there are still many layers below him or her to which your project will be passed. Those people have even less understanding of the English language than your Project Manager does. In fact, your project will probably be passed off 2 or 3 more times to various people in various departments. With all that handing off, and the communication issues, the potential for problems are abound. You could end up spending countless hours of your own time doing quality assurance and still not really know what you’re going to end up with.

When considering who to go with, think about weather or not the person you’re talking to, really understands you. If you’re having trouble communicating with the web design project manager, it’s only going to get worse at the next level.

Project collaboration:

A design/development project requires a great deal of collaboration and is best done in person. If it cannot be done in person, the next best alternative is to have a very short cycle of collaboration, where the Project Manager or web designer/developer asks questions and you respond immediately. There is momentum to the discussion, followed by immediate action. When offshoring your web design project, you introduce a time delay. That delay can break all the momentum of the project. All of the stop and go can lead to 20 different broken threads or lists going back and forth and much confusion. Quick response time is imperative to project success. If there is a 24-48 hour delay in communication, it can lead to a delay in project completion as well as an increase in the budget, and the quality of the project will suffer. Plan for your project to take extra time. Start out with the assumption that the project will not be ready on time, and that you will need extra time to communicate back and forth to get it done properly. There are definite risks when working with an offshore web designer/developer.

It will mean more work for you:

• You will need to find the best business solution – An offshore designer/developer will not act as a consultant.
• You will need to do your own research and come up with the best business solution yourself.
• You will need to write your own web design requirements – You will need to plan your web design project thoroughly and communicate your plans in great detail. An offshore designer/developer will only give you what you specifically ask for.

It will require more of your time:

You will need to plan additional time to ensure that your project is done correctly. Ongoing communication as well as project completion will be delayed due to the time differences and language barriers.

The quality of your project can suffer:

Communication and cultural differences – Your designer may not understand your product or service the way you assume that they do. For example, if they don’t have private health insurance in their country, can they build a quality website that will help you sell insurance?

You don’t have any recourse if you are not happy with the results:

American laws won’t protect you if you are unhappy with your website. If you are going to spend over $1,000.00 on your web design project, then you may not want to risk going with an offshore designer/developer.

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Compared to today, the Internet of five years ago was a dinosaur. Connections were slow and technology was limited. Online video was a luxury that few websites could afford and few users could successfully view. But all that has now changed. For basic video content, budget is no longer a restricting factor. Broadband connections are now the norm. The quality of digital recording equipment has shot way up, while prices have fallen drastically. This makes it easier to create professional looking content without breaking the bank.

By adding video on your website to complement your written content, you’re catering to a wider audience. Some people respond better to a video message, and some messages are best expressed using video. Perhaps it is no longer about whether or not to use online video, but rather how best to harness this powerful technology for your website.

Using video in the right way

The right video can spark a debate to life, give a vivid extra dimension to your company’s personality, help explain complex issues or products, and generally help your business to expand its communication channels. The temptation for a lot of companies is to simply to put up a video version of their homepage. Perhaps get the CEO to say a few words, explain how the company was founded…and so on. However, people are unlikely to tune in to a half-hour episode about your latest widget or your quarterly sales figures. Keep your videos short, punchy and entertaining if you want to use the web to its best capabilities (i.e. – delivering short “jolts” of information).

Don’t be boring

According to web usability expert Jakob Nielsen, “broadcast video feels boring on the web”. Obviously, that’s not something to aspire to. Viewers of online video are easily distracted. Nielsen claims that many web videos are produced for TV broadcast or with those principles in mind. A talking head newscast on the television for example, does not perform well online. Make sure that your videos take full advantage of the dynamic and active nature of the Internet. Use video where it’s useful – not just because you can. Clearly, different types of website will require different forms of video content. Any web design agency you work with should understand this.

How to provide video content

You’re faced with many choices of how to deliver video for your users. You could offer clips for download via Windows Media Player. You could host and stream videos on your own site using QuickTime or RealPlayer. You could embed video code from YouTube or similar site. Each option has its benefits. All of these options now make it easier than ever to integrate video content into your website.

Using sites such as YouTube, MetaCafe and GoogleVideo can be a good PR strategy and release your content to a wider audience which hopefully generates a bit of buzz. This works best when you’re creating “virals” – distinctive little bits of footage that spread through the Internet by recommendation – like a cultural virus. This can be great for driving web traffic, and even sales.

Add value, create useful content, reap the rewards…

Of course, if your video content is badly produced, poorly integrated into your site or just plain uninspiring, it could do more damage to your site than not having it in the first place. It’s usually best to work with an established web and multimedia consultancy to ensure that your web videos hit the mark every time.

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Loads of profitable websites rely on repeat visitors to account for a major amount of the traffic to their website. Visitors that come back are easier to convert into buying customers because the more they return to the website, the more like they are to already have trust in your website. The credibility of a site is critical for your website’s success. So it is always in your best interest to keep visitors returning to your website.

1. Start a forum, chat room or shout box. When you have created a forum, chat room or shout box, this creates a way of giving your visitors somewhere to voice their opinions and exchange views with like minds – they will all be visitors to you website. When conversations grow, a feeling of community will also result from this, and your visitors are extremely likely to start returning to your website almost instinctively.
2. Start a web log (blog) on your website and continually keep it updated including all of the latest news about yourself and products that may help your visitors. The general public is always curious looking for information and they are highly likely to keep their eyes constantly glued to the monitor of your website if you post fresh news consistently. You will also gain lots of trust because you are showing to them that you are also a real life person!
3. Carry out polls or surveys, which give a quick way for your visitors to show their opinions and to interact on your website. You should probably consider the idea of publishing polls or surveys that are very relevant to the specified customers of your website, so that they are kept interested enough to find out about the results to the polls, and or survey.
4. Hold puzzles, quizzes and games. Just think of the amount of office workers that are doing nothing at work from day to day, and you can imagine just how many people are likely to visit your website if you provide interesting and addictive methods of entertainment. It will also benefit you to hold competitions that will award the high score winners and keep them attempting time and time again to win the prize.
5. Update fresh content frequently. You should update your website on a frequent basis with new information that will ensure that every time your visitors return to your website, they have some new information to read on your website. As you have probably guessed, this is the most popular and most powerful method of getting visitors to return to your website. People won’t enjoy browsing a website that looks the same and never changes over the years, so be sure to keep your website updated with the latest information.

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Javascript is a client-side programming language whose processing engine is embedded in web browsers like Internet Explorer, Netscape, Firefox, etc. This enables the processing engine to read and interpret web pages that contain the javascript code when browsing. Javascript first made an appearance in 1995, although by that time it was known as Livescript. This name was later changed to javascript.

Javascript was invented to add more exciting features to HTML pages. HTML on it’s own is pretty boring and it cannot do much besides display a webpage. Javascript programming, on the other hand, can provide a host of exciting features like perform calculations, allow the user to interact with webpages, perform form validations, manipulate elements on a webpage, provide excellent visual effects, enable dynamic functions, and so much more.

All of this provides the user to the site with an enhanced user experience. Because javascript is a client-side language, all of these features are available in real time without the browser having to refer to the server all the time. This prevents time delays and increases user satisfaction.

Let’s take a closer look at the great things you can do with javascript programming:

Perform Calculations
Javascript can be used to perform simple to advanced mathematical calculations. This is especially useful if you want your users to interact with your site by inputting some information that requires some sort of calculation and displaying the relevant content based on that result. For example, javascript can calculate a loan repayment and display the appropriate result if a user enters a required loan amount on the site. Furthermore, javascript can also tell date and time, time a certain activity, and perform intricate date and time calculations.

User Interaction
The javascript on the webpage can take interaction from a user and perform a certain function by way of events. Some of the most popular events are:

onblur
onchange
onclick
ondblclick
onfocus
onkeydown
onkeypress
onkeyup
onload
onmousedown
onmousemove
onmouseout
onmouseover
onmouseup
onselect
onsubmit

Perform Form Validations
Javascript can validate and check user input to determine whether it conforms to a certain requirement. For example, you can check if a field is left empty, if an email address is in the proper format, if a zip code code is in the proper format, etc. In most cases, if an error is made by your site visitor, an alert can display the appropriate error message to him or her.

Manipulate Elements On A Webpage
Javascript allows a user to change content or styles of a webpage upon a user interaction by way of the aforementioned events. For example, hovering over a certain text elemant can make an image appear, text on a submit button can change on submit, etc.

Provide Visual Effects
Javascript has a host of ways to provide visual effects to a webpage that other server-side programming languages cannot. A typical example of this might be some fancy image rollover buttons.

Enables Dynamic Functions
Javascript, together with AJAX (asynchronous JavaScript and XML), can be used to create dynamic applications. One example of this is to load dynamic content onto a webpage without refreshing the page.

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