by Steven
Continued from Websites are houses too - Part 1
Last week, I talked about a classic recurring dilemma among IT, and especially web development - that is a perception that making websites is somehow easier and less critical than, say, building houses. When a house is getting build, tonnes of time is spent planning and organising it - but with websites, time spent doing that is often perceived as a waste, and the “just get it done” mentality prevails.
There is a solution for the dilemma faces in part 1, and that is a little something called the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). There are many difference processes available for handling a project, and the best should be chosen based on the team, the size and nature of the project, time constraints and experience. A few of the more popular ones are Waterfall, Agile and Iterative (Spiral). I will go into a little bit more detail about the waterfall model, as it is what we use to manage our clients’ requirements.
The waterfall model splits development up into a handful of phases - It basically boils down to Requirements, Design, Implementation, Testing, Maintenance. The idea of the model is to specify as much as possible in an early phase, signing it off, before moving down to the next phase. Any irregularities that are found in a lower phase should be passed up to the earlier phase before continuing.
Continue reading “Websites Are Houses Too - Part 2″
Tags: devlopment, model, process, scope creep
by Jenn
…but zero to a search engine!
There are some who argue that it is useless to use alt tags in images from an SEO perspective. But most SEO experts claim that it does make a difference.
Sure, if you cram in 200 keywords in a single image, it will be useless and ignored. But use a few words that are unique, relevant and useful in describing the image will help search engines such as Google understand what its about.
Continue reading “ALT Tags : A picture means a thousand words”
Tags: content, images, SEO
by Kevin
Spring is well and truly in bloom now, and while you’re taking care of all your other business activities, have you been putting off a website spring clean?
… It’s not as hard as you might think to give your site content a creative lift and draw more interest by your site visitors. Here are a few important design tips to make your pages clearer, interesting and give that polished and professional look overall.
1. Graphical Appeal
Carry through your message in images.
It might sound like a no-brainer tip, but adding some well selected graphics or photos to your pages is great for evoking a response from your potential customers or info-seekers.
- Select some small photos to break up large blocks of text and try to make them as relevant to the text as possible.
- You can get your article’s text to wrap nicely around the image by using the editor’s image align options in the SauceOpen CMS.
- Where do you get images? - try istockphoto.com
This is a great way to attract a potential customer’s eye to a block of text; Putting in a catchy graphic near your critical sales point or call to action is a definite winner.
2. Are you listening? - Put Up Some Signs
In the way that we add images for allure, we can also use a tried and true technique often called signposting - put simply it’s the use of graphical elements, indention and blocking, bullets or numbering, or text styles such as bold and italic that makes your content much crisper and lucid.
- People on the web have a VERY short attention span! so numbers and bullets are fantastic to use as people may skim most of the text, but bullets are usually read.
- Bold and italic emphasis should be used within reason, but when really hammering home a point - are essential.
Continue reading “Don’t put off a spring spruce!”
Tags: tips, web design, website ideas
by Emma
We have realized for some time that the internet was one of the most powerful market tools we had available. The increasing number of our clients who used the term “We’ll Google it” re-enforced this so early 2008 we decided to look around for a firm that could develop a web site that would fit our needs.
Shapland Swim Schools are a franchise which supply friendly, experienced, caring and AUSTSWIM qualified teachers, small learn to swim classes and a warm environment. A successful formula, which ensures everyone, can learn to swim with ease and confidence.
By using franchising they were able to deliver a dream (smaller more personalised centers) as their franchisees are able to supply the most important ingredients for a successful swim Schools, stability, 100% commitment and passion for making a difference in children’s lives.
Continue reading “Case of: Shapland Swim Schools”
Tags: Case Studies
by Steven
It’s strange how people take web development a lot less seriously than other kinds of development. When a house is being built, does the builder get told “give me a quote on a house”, and expect an answer in 5 mins? Asking something like that would get the customer laughed at to the point of embarrasment, or a large series of forms and questions relating to it:
- How many rooms?
- How many stories?
- What colour walls?
- How do you want interior decoration?
- High set house?
- …and so on
Yet a large amount of people asking for things in web development ask the simple question - “how much for a store?”, “We just want to capture information to use it in an email campaign”. Let’s focus on some of the nuances of a simple online store, to show there’s just as much thought required into scoping out requirements before being able to accurately quote things:
- Are there different categories of products, or just 1?
- What fields do you want people to be able to search on?
- Tax rates? Multi currency? Shipping?
- Do you want the user to have to sign up to the website
- What about order tracking?
- How do you want payments taken? Paypal? Saucepay? Securepay?
- Are offline payment methods available - COD, pay on pickup, invoice, direct debit?
- What do you want the store to look like? (This is a whole new can of worms - I’ll leave this one open to the designers!)
- Do you want it friendly to disabled users?
- …the list goes on!
Continue reading “Websites are houses too…”
Tags: model, process, programming, requirements, scope creep, specification
