A well-designed website has many important elements: elegant layout, pleasing color scheme, eye-catching graphics, and of course, relevant content. But unlike traditional print media where we typically read from cover to cover, there is no universal standard for interacting with a website. Users rely solely on a site’s navigation scheme to guide them through their experience.

In web lingo, a site’s navigation is often referred to as the menu. Think of how a great restaurant menu works: it’s a useful metaphor for web navigation.

A good menu should:

• Communicate effectively
  (FOOD is probably not a specific enough heading, but wordy menus can be confusing too. Find a concise balance.)

• Look visually appealing
  (Ever order something because the picture looked soooo delicious? Who hasn’t!)

• Emphasize what the customer wants and what you do best
  (Make sure your highest-priority elements are easiest to find. I would expect IHOP’s menu  to feature Pancakes prominently. )

• Utilize resources in an efficient manner
  (Maybe dessert deserves its own page, but soups and salads are often grouped together.)

Effective ways to Improve your Navigation

Simple, intuitive solutions are usually the best option. Unconventional menus can be confusing and even scare people away. But that doesn’t mean your site nav needs to be boring! Below are some navigation trends that can help spice up your site.

Expanding Navigation is a new trend in dynamic websites. Sometimes one or two keywords isn’t enough to effectively communicate the content of a section. A dynamic navigation scheme can expand to show additional information when a user clicks or hovers over a particular link. This can save users from heading to the wrong place, and also looks really slick and professional.

Visually appealing icons can be effective. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the right icon can illicit a thousand clicks. When using icons in your menu, make sure that they are easily recognizable, clearly convey the message, and correspond to the link they stand for.

Footer links can help declutter.
Your site will likely have pages that don’t really need to be included in the main menu, but which must be accessible nonetheless. This could include elements like Terms of Agreement, or your Privacy Policy. Footer links (text links at the bottom of the page) are an excellent location for pages that are important, but which might clutter the look of your menu.

What about Search functionality?

In a recent study, 70 percent of people started a given task by clicking on a link, while 30 percent used search: Generally, search is not a task that we enjoy. The larger the website, the more important it becomes to have quality search. However, there is a direct correlation between the quality of your navigation and the quality of your search. The better the navigation, the better the search results will be.

When designing or re-designing your site, focus on creating a solid, functional and intuitive navigation scheme and your users will thank you (by returning frequently)!

ISP stands for Internet Service Provider: Its primary function is to provide you with a connection to the Internet. Every Internet user accesses the ‘net through an ISP. On the other hand, a web hosting provider broadcasts a website to the rest of the world through a server (a fast, powerful computer dedicated to housing websites).

In the most basic terms, an ISP is the road that takes users to a web site. A web hosting provider is the building where the web site lives. If you want to run a website, you’ll need both: A hosting provider to house your site, and an ISP to connect to your web server and the rest of the Internet.

Hosting Through an ISP

Today, ISPs often provide additional services to their customers, such as e-mail accounts, remote storage of data files, and some even offer basic web hosting. Their main role, however, is providing Internet access. Though your ISP can also serve the role of a hosting provider, chances are that it’s better at one job than the other.

The High Cost of Low-Cost Web Hosting

Some ISPs offer “free” web hosting. It is not recommended for high traffic sites or for businesses. Technical support is often limited, as are options for site development. For example, the domain name is often provided for you:

http://www.freesite.com/users/~yoursite.htm.

This is hard to type, hard to remember, and not very professional. (Check out our blog on choosing a domain name for more on the subject.)

Cheap web hosting plans are largely supported by advertising: They place their own banners all over your site. These banners are designed to get your visitor to click out of your page and go some place else. Not what you want for your business, right?

When it comes to web hosting, you get what you pay for.

Checklist for choosing a Web Hosting Plan

Some of the most important considerations for a web hosting plan include:

• Ample hard disk storage for your site
  Make sure there is room for your site to grow.

• Generous data transfer amounts
  with the potential to upgrade if needs change

• Is there an uptime guarantee?
  You should never have to worry about your site being “down.”

• Frequent backups
  Redundancy is good: it keeps your data safe.

• Support for popular dynamic programming languages
  PHP? ColdFusion? Dynamic websites require a host that supports a server-side language.

Your hosting choice will not only affect your budget, it will also affect every user’s experience with the website. Surf other sites on various servers to compare. When you choose the right hosting provider, your site will be secure and consistently accessible, load quickly, and look great.

A web hosting service offers far more than just access to a virtual filing cabinet. Hosting services typically provide:

• physical hard disk space for the storage of your files
• an allotted amount of data transfer
• email accounts

and may include other goodies too.

There are many options out there for hosting your website. Cost varies depending on your needs, as the scope of hosting services varies widely. The following considerations will help you choose a range of hosting services that best suit your project.

How much disk space does your site require?

Expect each individual HTML page to take up between 5 and 50KB of disk space on your web server. The average size of HTML web pages is relatively small, but page size will vary depending on the elements included in your design. Images, sound files and movies require considerably more space than simple HTML. The more these elements are used, the more disk space will be required.

On average, a small, simple website will need between 10 and 100MB of disk space. A medium sized website will likely require a few hundred megabytes. Large, image-heavy sites will want at least 1 gigabyte of disk space, but likely more.

How much monthly traffic is expected on your site?

Data is transferred between the hosting server and the individual user’s computer every time your site is accessed. A small website will consume anywhere between 1GB and 50GB of data transfer per month. Larger, commercial sites often consume more than 100GB of monthly traffic.

The following calculation can be help determine the amount of data transfer you will require:

(average page size in MB) x (page views per month) = data in MB

So, if your average page size is 40KB and you expect 25,000 page views per month, the calculation looks like this:

0.04MB x 25,000 = 1,000 MB (or 1 GB).

Before you sign up with a host provider, make sure to ask these questions:

• What are the limits on monthly transfer?
• Will your website be closed if it exceeds the volume?
• What is the billing rate if the web site exceeds the volume?
• Is it simple to upgrade the monthly transfer amount?

Ok, so where do I get web hosting?

There is an almost overwhelming number of options out there for hosting your website. Check out our blog on Web Hosting Providers vs. ISPs for an in-depth look at the kind of services available and a checklist for choosing the best hosting options for your website.

Intoria offers a wide variety of website hosting packages. See our hosting packages

How does CMS work?

CMS is created and installed by web designers, but intended to be used by you. It provides an uncomplicated, non-technical way of creating, updating, and editing content.

Content is created on the web in an administrative portion of the site, referred to as the Backend. The content of the site is stored in a database that can be managed easily, and updated quickly. This part of the site is accessed by administrators through a log-in process. Generally, anyone who can use Microsoft Word can use a CMS to update their website: Point, click, type, save: Website updated! Once you have settled on a design for your site, your CMS will allow you to create unlimited new pages and content, with the same professional look.

Through the magic of dynamic programming, the content that is created in the Backend is processed and displayed according to your design on the Frontend. The Frontend is what visitors see when they access your site.

Benefits of CMS

CMS simplifies managing your site in many ways:

• Easy to update and maintain your site

Multiple staff can keep site up to date, and the CMS can control who has access to which elements. Edit from anywhere, even on your smartphone.

• Make changes at any time

Breaking news at 2 a.m.? Your site can be updated any time from anywhere. CMS works 24 hours a day (unlike your web developer).

• Reduces maintenance costs

No need to return to the developer for site updates. Editing your content is free.

• Supports website growth

Easy updates means it’s easy to add content to your site. Growing sites keep users coming back and rank higher in search engine results (SEO).

• Dynamic content

Tools like forums, polls, shopping carts, search engines, and news feeds are made possible (and simple) through CMS.

• Improves customer experience

Dynamic programming allows content to respond uniquely to visitor’s requests.

Powerful Tools

A CMS can have several different modules that allow you to enhance your website. You could incorporate a news publishing system, a forum, a blog and an image gallery on the same website, all managed simply through CMS. The right CMS can provide tools to support the unique goals of your business, from searchable databases to peer-to-peer information sharing to an online store.

CMS is a powerful tool that can bring a website to life. There are endless options available to suit any business’ needs, and CMS can be incorporated into an existing site with relative ease. The limitless potential of CMS means custom solutions for your website, managed by you. Your developer should work with you to ensure that your CMS is tailored to meet the specific goals for your amazing future site.

Static Websites in a Nutshell

Once upon a time, the Internet consisted solely of static websites. Static sites contain a fixed amount of pages and display the same pre-built content each time the page is loaded. The content of a static page never changes until the Web developer updates the site manually.

There are many static websites on the Internet. This type of site is used mostly by businesses who wish to show a specific, contained amount of information to users online.

You might be looking to develop a static website if you want the following:

• Simple delivery of information without a lot of bells and whistles
• A site which is relatively basic
• Information contained in the website which doesn’t need to be changed or updated much
• Printed marketing materials re-created in an online accessible format

Advantages
Cheap to develop
Cheap to host
Quick to build

Disadvantages
Requires web development expertise to update site
Site offers limited interaction for users
Infrequently-updated sites rank low on search engines

The Difference in Dynamic Websites

Quite the opposite of their static cousins, dynamic websites are built in a way that allows the site content to be updated and changed easily. At a basic level, a dynamic site might employ a Content Management Systyem (CMS) that gives the website owner the ability to update and add new content to the site without having to pay a developer to make these changes.

A dynamic website might allow clients or users to upload pictures, comment on the content of the site or display unique content to different users, based on their response to a web form; it might use discussion boards or employ a log-in system to allow members to interact with the site in a unique way. Interactive elements (drop-down menus, shopping carts, fillable forms and surveys) are possible only on a dynamic website. Features are only limited by the imagination.

You might be looking to develop a dynamic website if:

• The content of the site will be regularly growing and changing
• You want to integrate E-commerce on your site (have an online store)
• There will be user or administrator-generated content (discussion boards, news)
• You want to rank higher in search engine results (growing sites do this)

Advantages
Much more functional than a static website
Much easier to update
New content brings users back to the site

Disadvantages
More expensive to develop
Can be more expensive to host
Takes more time to build

A fantastic, professional website can be generated with either static or dynamic programming. Consider both the present and future role of your website in your business as you decide how best to develop your site.

If you want a great domain name for your business website, here are a few important considerations:

1. Who are you and what do you do? Be descriptive.

Often, the name of the company will be the name of the website (intoria.com). This is a great option if your company name is unique, well-known or memorable. Also consider how people might search for your site (“calgary web design”). Using descriptive keywords in your domain name can help people find you because it will rank your site higher in search engine results.

However,

2. A good domain name is short.

Most registrars limit a domain name to around 67 characters. But remember, the longer the domain name (and the more elements involved), the harder it will be to remember.

One-word names are excellent. Two-word names are good, too. Three-word names are ok. More than three words: best to avoid.

intoria.com vs.   intoriacalgary.com vs.   intoriacalgarywebdesignonline.com

Does the third URL intimidate you? Me too.

3. A good domain name is easy to remember.

Most people don’t use bookmarks; they remember the names of their favorite websites and manually type in the URL every day. A shorter domain is usually easier to remember, but a sometimes a longer, catchy word (or phrase) will stick better in your users’ memory.

icwd.com is short, but is it memorable?

4. A good domain name is easy to spell.

Many Internet users are below-average spellers. Typos happen, even to the best of us. Try to avoid using words in your domain that are difficult to spell or pronounce.

Cuppachinos? Cappuccinoes? Cupacheenose?     ← Avoid. (Try “Coffee” instead.)

5. Avoid numbers and hyphens in your domain name.

This relates to the spelling issue. Users will speak the name of your URL out loud. Is it  intoria5.com or  intoriafive.com ? Spelling numbers is tricky, and hyphens are easily forgotten.

6. Dot what? Choose your domain extension carefully.

Internet users are accustomed to the .com extension. If you stray away into the world of .net, or .biz, make sure it is for a good reason! If yoursite.com is not available, using yoursite.net may be forgotten and send your visitors to you competitors.

That is the extreme. Another reason for having your site content edited is that in this day and age, everyone has far too much to read, and will not put effort into reading something complicated. Studies have shown that if your wording is at a sixth grade level or below (i.e. extremely simple), you dramatically increase both the number of people reading and their retention of your information. If your text can be worded simply and read easily (actually, at about a grade six level), the average person will take the time to read it.

Most websites sites do not have too much text – perhaps only about 300 words. This takes just a few minutes to edit, but makes all the difference in the world. Good editing will turn your website text into something searchers will find easy to read, credible, interesting, and impressive.

If your site is large and your budget does not allow for a complete editing package, consider the most visible pages on your site. While editing every page may not be necessary, enhancing key pages may be something to consider. You also may be surprised at the number of pages that can be fully edited in only one hour.

At Intoria, we want all our sites to be excellent in every way.

1. What Do You Want Your Site To Do?

When beginning a web project, it’s a good idea to sit down prior to the initial meeting and figure out exactly what you want from your website. Focus your thoughts on the most important thing: your visitors. Who will be visiting and what will they want to see when they arrive? A great exercise to do while completing these steps is to ask either a current client or one that could be interested in your services. Sometimes your potential customers want things you’ve never thought of.

Most people simply want a small site to display a bit of information about their company and its abilities in an aesthetic design. However, there is so much more your website can do for you. Would you like it to keep track of prospective customers? Would you like to offer online coupons? Would you like to supply industry-specific articles that will showcase your expertise and give you credibility? Do you want an online-only promotion? Do you want to write a blog to gather subscribers who are interested in your knowledge?

There are countless things a site can do and so many ways it can communicate with your visitors, even outside of business hours or when you’re not there. Take a few minutes and write down what you want your site to accomplish.

2. Do You Have Any Repetitive Tasks?

Another great thing your website can do for you is eliminate repetitive or mundane tasks. Whether you’re a chiropractor who constantly has to give directions to your place of business or a landscaper who provides a list of land-care tips, you can use your website to communicate these. Think about what your customers will want. What can you offer online so you don’t have to provide it in person or on the phone? You can make your website work for you and free up your time.

3. Do You Already Have Existing Marketing?

Marketing needs to be congruent. Your website must match the branding elements of your signage, vehicles, business cards, letterheads, brochures, etc. If these elements are different, it causes confusion and dilutes your message and your memorability. Take a look at your current investments in marketing and consider matching what you already have. If you decide you want to start from scratch, realize there will be up-front costs to changing other elements of your brand.

4. What is Your Competition Doing?

An excellent exercise to do before you put money into your own website is to see what your competitors’ websites are doing. If you have specific competitors that you know by name, visit their sites with a neutral mind. Write out your thoughts and feelings about them. Is their web presence helping or hindering their business? What do you like about what they’re doing? What do you dislike? If you don’t know any competitors by name, do a Google search for your industry and your city (ex. “Florists Calgary”) and check out the first few pages of links until you find several actual business websites. This can be one of the most valuable uses of your time; things you can do better than the competition will become obvious.

5. What Do You Like? What Do You Dislike?

Then, expand your search to outside your industry. Find five favourite sites and five least favourites. List specific things for each address (ex. “I like the logo placement,” “I dislike the darkness of the site,” “The amount of helpful, free content builds their reputation excellently,” “The font size is too small,” etc.). This is an invaluable tool you can take to a web developer.

Going through these questions is an excellent way to prepare for your initial meeting. From our experience, if you answer them all, you will be more prepared than 90% of people out there looking for a new site. It’s an hour or two well spent and will save you a lot of time and money.

Tables are sizable containers with rows, columns and cells. A table’s purpose is to display tabular data, things like sport scores, weather data and client lists. In 1998, the majority of websites, including high profile ones, were using table-based layouts. The Internet was littered with tables and very few contained anything resembling tabular data.

When a single HTML file contains more than one hundred nested tables… well, let’s just say it becomes extremely difficult to navigate markup like that. When you have bloated code you have larger file sizes, which in turn results in longer page loads, and when it comes to the Internet, speed is king.

It used to be that a simple request to change the position of a logo and the width of a welcome message was nearly impossible, because changing the size of one table cell directly affected all adjacent cells and tables. I personally broke entire designs trying to fulfill such requests. Those were dark times for developers and websites didn’t change their clothes very often in an effort to avoid being caused embarrassment.

Thankfully, we’ve now moved into the age of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). CSS is the backbone of Internet design in the modern age. With it, design can be done outside the grid so that it looks less like pages from a textbook and more like pages from a high-gloss, full-page magazine spread (appropriate content, of course).

However, CSS isn’t exactly the new kid on the block. In fact, style-sheets, in one variety or another, have been around since the 70s and CSS1 has been around since 1996. Many of us were actually using some form of CSS to accomplish pretty spectacular designs (albeit terribly coded ones) back in the “table” days. At that time, we had no idea that CSS extended beyond background-image, padding, and text-decoration.

Thanks to the efforts of CSS design evangelists like The CSS Zen Garden, many of us have seen the light. CSS is more powerful than we ever imagined. We can now redesign an entire website by updating a single CSS file.

Now that we have CSS, designers are free to create website designs that are only limited by their imaginations, right? Well… that is what most designers believe but it’s not entirely true. CSS does have a few limitations, but actually the limitations are minuscule compared to the actual problem – browser compatibility.

There would be no way to see the Internet if it weren’t for web browsers. Browsers interpret all the boring code into something we can understand and interact with. Since the 90s, there has been a handful of them to choose from. But browsers each see the Internet a little differently.

Organizations like the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) have made great progress in implementing standards for browser companies to follow. The problem is these standards can’t really be enforced, only encouraged. For the last 5 years or so, many web developers have been forced to disregard some great CSS features because browsers hadn’t caught up to them or had disregarded the standards altogether.

Today, most web browsers are fairly W3C-standards-compliant in respect to rendering CSS, with a few exceptions (cough! Microsoft Internet Explorer). And most web developers are no longer limited by browser compatibility.

That being said, there is still a significant number of computers running (what I would call) “ancient” browsers, so many web developers are forced to program projects with legacy support in mind. But in the end, that doesn’t mean any of us need to go back to tables. There is enough functionality in the earlier versions of CSS1 to accomplish most of today’s website designs. You may just need to be a little creative. We certainly were creative with tables.

My advice to web developers and designers is to learn as much as you can about CSS. A user will never appreciate the developer’s work if they can’t accurately interact with it. Likewise, the same user will never experience the designer’s vision unless it’s properly translated into good markup and CSS. A proper job can never really be done with the wrong tools, and this is most evident when one finally learns to properly use CSS.

Intoria is a dynamic Internet programming firm. At this time, I am not describing the team that works here, nor the pace of our office environment. I am referring to the capability of the complex websites we create which are able to change instantly, based on user input. For example, have you ever been to a website which shows an out-of-date copyright year in the footer? This is a perfect simple example of static Internet programming. However, if you use dynamic Internet programming language, the website will sense the time the page loads, and always display the current year, so it is never out of date.

Take this to an advanced level. Complex, ever-changing sites that fully respond to user interaction are the basis of sites that are useful. As an example, when you want to book a flight, an airline site needs to find out where you are and where you want to go, then do numerous calculations and computations based on dates and locations to submit your results. It would be impossible to program pages for every itineration, so dynamic (or changing) programming is used.

Intoria is a full-service, Calgary web firm that has extensive experience in dynamic web design. Our team of experts will gladly work with you to achieve your online goals.