Since this is our first article in our blog we wanted to start with a infographic outlining CMS systems in use and what the final result should be when building a modern cutting edge website. Google and the other major search engines define what they want to see in a site and their algorithms for getting ranked are seriously based on all of the features mentioned in the infographic. Unfortunately there are no shortcuts and many of these issues are best handled by an experienced web developer.

Is there such a thing as an unexperienced web developer? Ask the tens of thousand of people who get their sites hacked everyday or can't get local traffic to their web sites.

You can always give us a call. The call and the consult is always free. Call : 1.877.498.5999

Today is the official release date for Google to begin rolling out their new mobile update.

If your website is not considered mobile-friendly to Google's standards, you can anticipate taking a noticeable hit in your search engine rankings in the mobile search engine.Google makes no guarantees as to how this will affect your site, but it is best to be prepared. On our sites in general we have noticed as much as 45 percent of our traffic from mobile devices

Tools For Mobile Testing:

Quick Test

We can help with mobile updates!

You can always give us a call. The call and the consult is always free. Call : 1.877.498.5999

View example of Mobile friendly Site

Users care much less about how beautiful a website is than about the ease of navigation and purpose. They care whether they actually got what they came to the site for. The design needs to be practical, not just pretty, because there is a purpose it is expected to perform. The most beautiful and original work can be ineffective if it does not appropriately reflect brand values, or incorrectly addresses its intended use.

A functional website that responds to the needs of users is engaging. It is clear how to use it – people will not be staring at it for 15 minutes, trying to figure it out. Clarity of use is actually the basis of design. If a site is cluttered and busy with many elements, neither its purpose nor its navigation will be clear.

Responding to Needs of Users

Designers do not pack things onto a conveyor belt, but create form meant to invoke emotions, inspire, intrigue, and inform. That creative freedom is actually limited by purpose. It takes into account the needs and desires of its end users.

Any visitor who goes to a radio station site, presses the play icon, and hears nothing will not stay there long, no matter how beautiful the site looks. All media, applications, and links within a site need to work, and they need to work quickly. People are impatient, and no matter how many great flash presentations and videos a website is loaded with, they will not wait more than a few seconds to see them.

Optimizing images and resizing videos for the web is an essential task. No website should take more than a few seconds to load, no matter what it contains.

Functional design also takes into account that users make mistakes. If they press the wrong link or button, it should be easy to get back to the previous page. Functionality has a lot to do with designing for humans, not machines. A user-friendly website gains visitors and clients because it functions well.

Informational Versus Responsive Websites

While there is a difference between purely informational and responsive sites, both need to best fulfill their intended function.

Informational sites are usually static websites that contain a few pages of information about the business they represent. If the purpose is only to inform, then a static website fulfills its role if the design is clear, the message is correct, and every link within the site works.

Responsive sites offer users some form of interaction, such as online registration, signing up for newsletters, online forms for appointments, or, in the case of e-commerce, actual purchases. There is high interactive content within responsive sites that needs to work correctly every time. If designed well, it always does.

Purpose and Website Optimization

The two most important considerations for any developer are how, why, and by whom the website will be used, and that it can be easily found.

The purpose of a site like eBay is to sell products, while CNN’s is to inform. In both these cases, the audience is a huge consideration. Functional design always considers the audience and what they intend to do with the tool: the website.

Very few people will look for a product by its serial number. Most will type in a short description. Good website development takes human behavior into account and includes the correct optimization of keywords and tags, so either products or articles are easy for users to find.

Both eBay and CNN are brand names that everyone recognizes. But what good is having a website for a new business if no one knows it’s there?

A well-built website is optimized using SEO to rank high in search results. This includes processes like adding keywords, meta tags, and image tags to make sure these terms are accessible to search engines and indexed by them. If a website is optimized well, a customer will be able to find the new business by simply searching for the product or service.

A good developer will also take into account that any website should be optimized for mobile applications, such as smartphones with smaller screens. If a website looks uniform across all media, including desktops, smartphones, tablets, and TVs, then it has a high conversion rate and will probably attract more traffic.

Perfect Form and Function

The goal of good functional design is for a website to be aesthetically pleasing while offering great user experience. Yes, great design provides both. Well-developed websites fulfill their purpose perfectly, containing elements that always work and look beautiful. Visitors are engaged and find what they’re looking for. More importantly, they find the site to begin with, thanks to effective optimization. All these considerations are in the day’s work of a good developer.

One of the most effective ways to create an enjoyable experience for your visitors is with responsive web design. Responsive pages adjust themselves to any screen size automatically, providing the best browsing experience on a wide variety of devices. Responsive web design is the ideal way to create a website mobile users will love.

Responsive design allows websites to reformat themselves depending on the device being used, ensuring that the site remains user-friendly regardless of whether it is being viewed on a smartphone, tablet, or desktop computer. Google favors mobile-optimized sites when providing results for mobile searches, and having only one URL and one set of pages makes it simpler for Google to crawl and index content.

Redesigning your website as responsive enables you to maintain backlinks, focusing your search engine optimization on a single site. All of your links will be directed to a single domain, giving your website a boost on the search engine results page. This also allows you to build social shares for a single URL. When the site gets shared - wherever the link is viewed, whether on a smartphone, desktop, or tablet - all of the content will be clear and simple to navigate.

If a website doesn’t work effectively for phone and tablet users, bounce rate will be a huge problem. Google interprets this as a sign that your site isn’t offering relevant content to users, which will likely result in a drop in the search result rankings. Responsive sites combat this problem by providing all of the same content found on the desktop site, but in a usable and attractive way.

Responsive design allows modern websites to appeal to modern website visitors - users who are increasingly likely to visit your site using a smartphone or tablet, but who expect their browsing experience to be as smooth as it would be on the desktop. Going responsive allows you to make the most of phone and tablet traffic, while offering visitors the best possible user experience.

Your URL should be meaningful - a visitor should be able to figure out the content of the page just by looking at the address bar. It should be descriptive, and serve as a preview of your products and services, without being too lengthy. Shorter URLs are easier to read, easier to copy and paste, and easier to share on social media.

You’ll never get people to like complicated URLs, and it’s people you’re depending on to share the links that get your pages ranking well. When pasted into forums, keywords in the URL let users know what to expect, and helps the blog post go viral via social media sites.

If you can’t read every word your URL contains, neither can the search engines. That’s a big problem, since search engines can’t unscramble dynamically generated URLs. It’s better to use static (prettier) URLs rather than dynamic (uglier) ones. Static URLs contain your keywords and are more user-friendly, since a visitor can determine what a page is about just by looking at the URL.

A well-structured URL increases the click through rate on search result pages. If a user can see from the URL that the link is relevant to their search, they are much more likely to click on it. The key to ranking well is to keep your URLs relevant, compelling, and accurate.

SEO-friendly URLs appeal to users and search engines alike, encouraging sharing of your website links and making your site more visible in the search results.

With a CMS, design is separate from content, so it’s possible to manipulate the information on your site without risking accidentally changing the design. Since the underlying architecture is the same, you can make site-wide maintenance changes quickly and easily. Unlike a static website, a CMS allows for the creation of an unlimited number of pages. Since all of your content is stored in a database, you can change the design of your site whenever you like, while still keeping all of your pages, posts, and comments. Content may be published immediately, or scheduled for publication at a future date.

A CMS website is search engine friendly. This means search engines can readily locate, read, and index the information on your site. Built-in SEO features include customizable page titles, headers, metadata, and keyword-focused URLs. Since a CMS makes it so easy to update your content frequently, your business can appear more active, and search engines are more favorable to websites that are constantly providing fresh new content. This is particularly useful for a website that has a large number of pages - such as an e-commerce site - since you can create keyword rich, SEO-friendly content whenever you wish.

A CMS allows you to provide different levels of access to users, and it has mechanisms to ensure that content is approved before it goes live. It’s also possible to create restricted content, so that only authorized users can view your pages. Additionally, a CMS provides valuable information on performance metrics. You can login anytime to view analytics like referrers, traffic, and specific search engine queries. The CMS also provides statistics for time spent on the website, visitor location, and page views.

A CMS allows you to reduce the cost of maintaining and updating your website, since there is no need to return to a website designer every time your site needs to be changed. You’ll also enjoy a wide range of advanced features, such as built-in social media broadcasts and feeds, built-in e-commerce features, and instant mobile site generation.

Nothing else matches the benefits of a CMS. Modify your website anytime and anywhere, improve your search engine placement, increase security, and save money by utilizing a Content Management System.

Like all open source software, an open CMS is often developed by a vast community of programmers and users. The fruits of their labors are available free of charge and the sheer breadth of the user base produces a vibrant and varied range of possible features. This is why most of the web's most popular CMSs (such as Wordpress, Drupal, and Joomla) are open source.