Info

Here is some information to give you more of an idea of the deferent aspects of Web Design and Web Development.

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Analysis

On entry into the website, the visual elements should relate to each other directing the user through the information in a logical manner. The general look and feel should achieve stylistic consistency.

The site should have 'personality' and arouse interest thereby prompting visitors to return to your site. The content needs to be engaging, friendly and clear. Remember that your website is not only for people in the industry, it also needs to be clear to 'laymen', students or people in related industries.

Technical Aspects

Analysis

The website complies with W3C standards (World Wide Web Consortium – international body which sets the standards for web-based communications protocols such as HTML, JavaScript etc).This makes the site search engine friendly in general, although it does have keywords.

Popular Demand maintains a high technical standard. Our websites are W3C compliant, and they do conform to international technical standards. This ensures that the visibility to search engines, as well as browser compatibility, is maximized.

It is also important to remember that all images should be of good quality. It will be optimised for use on the web (the file size is reduced through compression, while maintaining acceptable image quality).

Keywords

Keywords are used by search engines on the web to find and rank your website. We require a list of keywords related to your website and industry from you. This list should be compiled keeping in mind how you would like people to find you when they enter search terms while using search engines e.g. catering, weddings, event planning etc. These keywords will be added as meta-tags to your website ensuring fast and effective search engine results.

The Phased approach

Creating an online presence is an exciting and ongoing process. It must be maintained or you will loose the value you have created – content must be up to date and relevant. Design should aim to maximize the communication impact.

We would suggest that the development of the websites be undertaken in a phased approach with incremental developments and enhancements occurring on an ongoing basis. This process would be governed by a maintenance agreement whereby Popular Demand will spend an agreed number of hours per month maintaining the website. This sort of approach allows one to continually and strategically adapt the website to suit your communication requirements and ensures that there is always a competent technical team on hand to maintain the site.

The first step involves us assessing your needs in more detail, developing the visual style of the site as well as the information architecture. This forms a blueprint for the structure of the website and includes the planning of the navigational structure.

Before a website campaign can be initiated, a full evaluation of the Client’s needs, objectives and current communication campaigns needs to be undertaken to allow the scope of the project to be accurately defined. This includes setting up the brand identity, and carrying it through to the rest of the campaign effectively, defining the functionality to be included and the technical integration of all of the different, but important elements, into the campaign to create a unified solution.

The Popular Demand team will continuously engage in creative brainstorms, extending their existing thinking paradigms in order to come up with innovative ideas that can be implemented, above the traditional and widely accepted campaigns. New innovative ideas grab attention, thus keeping the system top-of-mind. Popular Demand will oversee the successful rollout and communication of the “gems” identified in the evaluation and innovation process. These will be individually managed, implemented and measured accordingly.

Popular Demand use tried and tested ways to communicate in high risk communications, while using innovating and new ways in low risk communications, thus providing a balance of old and new and continuous progression into the future.

Prototype production phase

Design and Develop

Once the blue print has been created, you will be presented a ‘look and feel’ in the form of flat graphics, which can be modified as required.

The approved design will then go into the development phase where it is transformed from a flat graphic to an interactive HTML or Flash document. The phase starts with the breaking up of the images, then the creation of the HTML templates, the creation of each page, the content population of the each page and then final adjustments.

During this phase a prototype website is created and uploaded to our hosting server. You will be able to access this prototype and provide us with important feedback during the development process by going to a URL we will assign you (for example http://www.populardemand.co.za/client). This is the test bed for the website and is not intended for public access.

The prototype will develop from a homepage with perhaps a couple of working links to a fully functional website. At any point during this process, when the website is considered to be complete enough, it can be transferred to the public domain where development can continue in the maintenance and enhancement phase.

Once the final prototype has been fully developed, tested and approved by the client it is then transferred from the test bed to your domain, making it accessible to the public through your web address.

In order to have an online presence the following steps need to be taken

This phase begins as soon as the website goes live and is an ongoing process.

As electronic media is a mutable communications medium a website does not necessarily have to be absolutely complete to go live. Enhanced functionality such as making the site searchable, forums, interactivity, or any database driven functionality can be added incrementally to the website over a time period. In this way the website can develop and respond to your market communication needs as the audience you reach grows and justifies the development costs. Content should be updated at regular intervals to ensure that the website remains relevant and engaging to users. Content can be broadened to include supporting content that will encourage repeat visits from users. For example on a pet food site one might include information on inoculations or the option to donate money to an animal charity.

Not only is the maintenance of content and functionality important, but also the maintenance of the website’s online visibility. When your website first goes live it’s “visibility” will be relatively low. It will take some time for it to be actively listed on search engines and directories and the optimization of keywords used by these search engines. For a website to remain an effective communications tool its visibility needs to be maintained as part of an ongoing process which responds to the changing online environment (which can be monitored through detailed web stats, user feedback etc) and could include search engine and directory listings, requesting links from other reputable related sites, submitting press releases, website banners and articles to online news and community websites and so forth.

What does Online Visibility mean?

Online visibility is really how “visible” your website is on the internet. How easily it can be found determines the level of visibility.

Ways a website can be found:

There are two general methods of search engine optimisation: “pay per click” and “organic” optimisation. Pay per click refers to any listing which is paid for – search for something in Google, you will see a heading on the right which says “Sponsored links”. “Organic optimisation” involves the processes described below and if far more effective than “pay-per click” but requires time and maintenance. 

The URL

There is no point in having a web presence if no one can find it. If the website is to promote your products and services, in turn they need to promote their online visibility by including the URL (the website address) in all advertising, including the mediums of print, radio or TV.

Since people have to remember the URL from the moment they have seen it in printed form to the moment they open their internet browser, the emphasis on the URL needs to be increased in non-digital realms. In order to achieve this, some co-ordination between the marketing department and the web SEO (Search engine Optimizer) will be required.

Link Popularity

The more links you have to your website, the better as you are creating more “paths” for your users to find your website. Link Popularity is used to discover how many links to your site are found by search engines and exactly who links to your site. Modern search engines (especially Google and Yahoo!) not only analyze the content of your pages, but also look closely at who is linking to your pages and how. The point is that they treat each link to your site as a recommendation. When they have to decide how high to rank your page in their listings, they use this information as an important part of their algorithms.

What makes one website more relevant than the next is determined by the website’s link popularity. Improving the link popularity entails the client’s website linking to other credible websites and then encouraging those credible websites to link back to you (also includes directories).

Search Engines / Directories

The ultimate way for any user to find your website is through search engines. The main aspect of a good online visibility is the search engine and search directories.

Due to the incestuous and complex relationships that the engines share with one another, it is unnecessary to register with every single search engine and registering only on strategic ones from which others pull their information will have the same effect.

Ultimately you want your website to be found on all major international and local engines. Since each have a different registering process and look for different criteria, the Web SEO will optimize and select the relevant keywords, descriptions and titles, on what criteria and which engines /directories to begin with, and  to facilitate the search engine submission process.

Meta Tags

A good visibility is determined by the effective relationship between Meta tags (Title, description and keywords embedded in the website code) and the content of the website. Initially the entire website will use generic Meta tags, but once the search engine world has been substantially covered, every single page will have customized, extensively refined Meta tags to strengthen its individual relationship and ultimately increase the websites total visibility.

Please note that due to the variable and dynamic nature of the web, it is impossible to have total control of search engine ratings and search results, but can influence it to a degree. The search engine’s main robot will revisit the websites and refresh the search engine’s indexes every three to four weeks. So occasionally the changes that have been made to the website will take time to refresh on search engines, but don’t worry this is ONLY for search engine results.

Just listing your site on search engines is not enough and needs to be supported by good website content. You can’t create a good visibility for a website that has no substance. What you write in your text, alt tags (tool tips on images), the HTML hierarchy, and search engine friendly code is extremely important in maintaining an online visibility.

To create a long-lasting online presence the client website needs ‘stickiness’, that special something that keeps people coming back to the website. Many factors can be implemented to contribute to the quality of the stickiness, such as up-to-date, relevant and engaging information, weekly/monthly newsletters via email, poll / voting system, forums, Seasonal graphics, E-commerce and Database or backend interactivity.

Webstats are a vital player in maintaining the visibility. These webstats (dependant on hosting solution) give you the following information about your users and the website:

All Africa also compiles a full report periodically that includes the interpretation of these web stats, search engine saturation, search result rankings, and competitor analysis. This information is vital in determining the status of the website’s online visibility and gives an indication of where it is succeeding and what areas need improving.