Connecticut Websites Web Design Blog

Basic Features of Website Design

* Professionally Designed Web Site
Like your company brochure and other marketing materials, professional design provides a branded and memorable experience for your Website target market. The quality of your site’s design has direct impact on visitors’ perception of your company and value proposition.

The aesthetic look-and-feel of your Website has direct impact on visitor’s perception of your company and value proposition.

* Fast Downloads
Quick loading pages are unique to Internet Marketing. Studies have indicated time and time again that the number one reason for losing visitors is slow loading Web pages. Connecticut Websites takes extra care to ensure your Web pages download fast while providing an impressive and positive browsing experience.

* Effective Navigation
Navigation is another feature unique to Internet Marketing. Websites offer a medium that allows your target market to click where they want to go. Connecticut Websites takes the effort to ensure that visitors get to where they want to go fast, while maximizing visitor engagement with your company (visitor to lead ratio or visitor to customer ratio etc.). Poor navigation is the second most common reason for losing Web traffic and customers.

* Interactivity
Your Website will be designed to maximize visitor interaction and provide tools to allow visitors to become participants rather than just visitors. Interactive Websites have proven to be most effective to ensure visitor engagement with your company.

* Web Page Programming
Upon approval of your site’s design template, theme, graphics and content sections, we will begin programming your Website with the appropriate programming languages and/or web technologies.

* Results
We develop Websites with your company’s goals & objectives in mind. Whatever your purpose for publishing to the Web, Connecticut Websites designs your site to ensure a positive return on investment.

* Technology
The skill to design even the most sophisticated, interactive and high-performance Websites.

* Browser Compatibility
Your Web site will be designed to be compatible with Firefox and IE browsers 3.0 and above.

* User Compatibility
Your Website will be designed to be compatible with independent user computer settings including screen resolutions, Web page settings, colors and text size. This is to ensure a consistent browsing experience for all visitors.

* Flash
Flash technology has become a popular method for adding animation and interactivity to web pages Flash is commonly used to create animation, advertisements, various web-page components, to integrate video into web pages, and more recently, to develop rich Internet applications. If appropriate to the design, we may include flash graphical elements.

When Searching for a website designer / developer to take on your e-commerce project, there are many things to consider. The minimum feature set should be as follows:

General Functionality
• Compatible with all PHP 4 versions
• All features enabled by default for a complete out-of-the-box solution
• Object oriented backend (MS4)
• Completely multilingual with English, German, and Spanish provided by default Setup /Installation
• Automatic web-browser based installation and upgrade procedure

Design / Layout
• Template structure implementation to:
• Allow layout changes to be adaptive, easy, and quickly to make (MS4)
• Allow easy integration into an existing site (MS4)
• Support for dynamic images

Administration / Backend Functionality
• Supports unlimited products and categories
• Products-to-categories structure
• Categories-to-categories structure
• Add/Edit/Remove categories, products, manufacturers, customers, and reviews
• Support for physical (shippable) and virtual (downloadable) products
• Administration area secured with a username and password defined during installation (MS4)
• Contact customers directly via email or newsletters
• Easily backup and restore the database
• Print invoices and packaging lists from the order screen
• Statistics for products and customers
• Multilingual support
• Multicurrency support
• Automatically update currency exchange rates
• Select what to display, and in what order, in the product listing page
• Support for static and dynamic banners with full statistics

Customer / Front-end Functionality
• All orders stored in the database for fast and efficient retrieval
• Customers can view their order history and order statuses
• Customers can maintain their accounts
• Addressbook for multiple shipping and billing addresses
• Temporary shopping cart for guests and permanent shopping cart for customers
• Fast and friendly quick search and advanced search features
• Product reviews for an interactive shopping experience
• Forseen checkout procedure
• Secure transactions with SSL
• Number of products in each category can be shown or hidden
• Global and per-category bestseller lists
• Display what other customers have ordered with the current product shown
• Breadcrumb trail for easy site navigation

Product Functionality
• Dynamic product attributes relationship
• HTML based product descriptions
• Automated display of specials
• Control if out of stock products can still be shown and are available for purchase
• Customers can subscribe to products to receive related emails/newsletters

Payment Functionality
• Accept numerous offline payment processing
(check, money orders, offline credit care processing,..)
• Accept numerous online payment processing (2CheckOut, PayPal, Authorize.net, iPayment, ..)
• Disable certain payment services based on a zone basis

Shipping Functionality
• Weight, price, and destination based shipping modules
• Real-time quotes available (UPS, USPS, FedEx, ..)
• Free shipping based on amount and destination
• Disable certain shipping services based on a zone basis

Tax Functionality
• Flexible tax implementation on a state and country basis
• Set different tax rates for different products
• Charge tax on shipping on a per shipping service basis
Web Site Marketing and Promotion

Our highlight for May is a solution that combines the services and features of a web portal with the power of a Project Management system, with a highly flexible and easy to use browser-based administrative backend or Content Management System (CMS), allowing a website owner to distribute information and services, as well as add, edit or delete information and services at their discretion. Designed to be very customizable and flexible, our solution is easy and pleasant to use, eliminating the need for costly webmaster fees and hours to administer the website.

Features Of A Project Management System

• Clean, simple and consistent user interface
• Project Management functionality environment
• User Management
• Email based trouble Ticket System
• Client/Company Management
• Project listings
• Hierarchical Task List
• File Repository
• Contact List
• Calendar
• Discussion Forum
• Resource Based Permissions
• Project tracking and status reporting
• Graphical User Interface to conveniently edit your projects
• Multiple time zone support
• Workflow Management
• Project Management
• Secured by password

What Is CMS?

Content Management System (CMS) is a web package that will help you more efficiently manage the content of your website, in combination with other powerful online applications. Here are just some of the ways people use Content Management Systems:

• Corporate websites or portals
• Online commerce
• Small business websites
• Non-profit and organizational websites
• Government applications
• Corporate intranets and extranets
• School and church websites
• Personal or family homepages
• Community-based portals
• Magazines and newspapers
• The possibilities are limitless…

A CMS can be used to easily manage every aspect of your website, from adding content and images to updating a product catalog or taking online reservations.

Once a CMS is installed and running, it is simple for even non-technical users to add or edit content, update images, and to manage the critical data that makes your company or organization go. Anybody with basic word processing skills can easily learn to manage a CMS site.

Via a simple, browser-based interface you will be able to easily add new press releases or news items, manage staff pages, job listings, product images, and create an unlimited amount of sections or content pages on your site. You can try our simple demo to get quick taste of what a Content Management System is all about.

Out of the box, a CMS does a great job of managing the content needed to make your website sing. But for many people, the true power of a CMS lies in the application framework that makes it possible for thousands of developers around the world to create powerful add-ons and extensions. Here are just some examples of the hundreds of available extensions:

• Dynamic form builders
• Business or organizational directories
• Document management
• image and multimedia galleries
• E-commerce and shopping cart engines
• Forums and chat software
• Calendars
• Blogging software
• Directory services
• Email newsletters
• Data collection and reporting tools
• Banner advertising systems
• Subscription services
• and many, many more…

Now that the 1st month of the year has passed, I’m starting to think about where web design and internet development will lead Connecticut Websites and Maurer Graphics this year. Lately the trend seems to be towards clients asking for social networking sites or video sites - essentially asking for clones of myspace.com and youtube.com.

Last year, the hot trend in demand for web design & development was web communities and portals, and the year before that, e-commerce. Before that, there was the flash craze.
What’s next?

I’m not sure of the specifics, but I’m guessing that multi-media will continue to make major in-roads via the internet, as higher bandwidth and processing is more common among average web users. We’ve alreadey been working with video editing for a few years, so we’re ready. In all honesty, though, every year I make a prediction like this and every year so far I’ve been off.

My point? 34 days into the year, and I still have no idea what to expect from the other 331 days to follow, except that people will still want us to design and develop websites.

Today I got a call from someone asking us to update his site from time to time. Connecticut Websites is primarily a web design and internet development company, and although we also maintain some client sites, for the really basic stuff we dont get involved.

So I turned the client down.

Well, actually, I talked him into doing it himself. The beauty of the internet is that basic html is something within reach of most novice computer users. I spoke with him for about 5 minutes, and that was all it took to convince him that he was better off updating his very basic website on his own.

That’s when I got the idea of adding posts here in this blog for folks like him who want to do it themselves. I dont think it will hurt Connecticut Websites financially, because our products and services are more high-end, and less suited for the do-it-yourself type.

So, keep checking back, I’ll be posting quick tips and tutorials from time to time.

This is the first in a series of posts about website design and internet development by Connecticut Websites.

This is also an example of a blog, a typical application we can customize just for you as part of your website design or re-design.

Connecticut Websites is a full service web design and internet development company located in New Haven, CT.

Connecticut Websites provides high quality web design & internet development services for local and national clients, including web design & site re-design, flash animation, e-commerce, graphic design, search engine optimization, hosting, applications for wireless devices, web programming, and more.

Connecticut Websites takes great pride in providing superior site design and internet development to it’s clients. Contact us today for a free price quote - our rates are competitive with aggressive turnaround times.

Our Web Design and Internet Development Services Include:

• Site Design and Re-Design
• E-Commerce and Shopping Carts
• Information Portals
• Database Development
• Custom Web Programming
• Service and Maintenance
• Flash Animation and Scripting
• Search Engine Optimization
• Print Media Design
• Logo Design