Open Sources for Services Base Website and Ecommerce Website

Today, because of the increasing popularity of open source CMS, majority of business men and professional web development companies like Spinx - Atlanta web development prefer to make their website with selected open source such as wordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento, osCommerce, OpenCart etc... These open source CMS are freely available to download by open communities and helpful to develop different types of websites whether it is for develop shopping cart, ecommerce website or service based website design.

Open Source CMS Used to Develop Service Based Website

WordPress: WordPress is a most popular CMS used by wide range of people around the world, the multi blogging functionality and useful features and plugins support make this CMS more admirable. It is easy to customize and also you can use ready wordPress templates and different widgets and customize it fully.

Joomla: Joomla is also one most popular open source CMS prefer by many web development companies, different modules available in Joomla give best opportunity to develop most proficient website, the built in features of Joomla is very flexible and easily used by different web developers. 

Drupal: Today Drupal is become most famous CMS because of its functionality. Developer can easily customize Drupal website. A website develop with Drupal has many features and functionality such as it enhancing performance, different modules code are available which can be extensible, easy to integrate, obedient with different security standards.

Open Source CMS Used to Develop Ecommerce Website

Magento: Magento is and open source ecommerce platform use to develop fully functional ecommerce website. With the Magento ecommerce any time you can expand you business. It allows you to create multiple store under one administrator control panel. Through a Magento ecommerce developers can create great and user friendly shopping environment on the ecommerce website.

osCommerce: If you are going to create your first online store and wants to make it simple and easy to use than osCommerce can become first choice for you. There are big developers community available for develop ecommerce store with use of osCommerce.

OpenCart: OpenCart is also one open source online shopping cart which has been written in PHP language. It is helpful to create easy online store which become a best solution for merchants in internet world, the inbuilt features of OpenCart useful to make search engine friendly online shopping cart system. 

These are the small list of open source CMS, there are more feature rich CMS available in the market.

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Some important Tasks to Do Before Initiating Website Design

Web design is the job where you need continuous interaction with your clients to take care of his business prospective and his satisfaction. Sometimes it become hard to get desire productivity or output working with the clients which are not efficient enough for exploring the exact ideas or thoughts about their website design. In kind of situation, pre work before starting the actual design and making communication with your clients from initial level proves beneficial which can save lots of time and efforts at intermediate phase of website design.

Use of certain images or implementing any element in design may require registering the license version of software you use to create those elements. While giving quote for your service, you must discuss this issue with your client and make him understand the legal issues regarding use of images or any software.

As web designer, we have industry knowledge on which kind of websites suits well for specific industry or which layout or style is appreciate for targeting specific audience or geographic region. So you need to interact with your client in detail and need to reveal certain things which may help you designing better website which you can add in your portfolio. 

In most of cases, you ask your clients to provide couple of websites he likes or he wants you to prefer designing his website. You review those websites and provide some samples and may get feedback like”Everything is fine but still not like I have thought”. It may possible he would provide couple of more websites to review and design it again. To avoid this situation, designing wireframe is far better option in which you ask your clients to confirm about the way you are going to arrange data in the website. 

After confirming the layout, you should make practice of gathering all resources you may need for building design. It may require gathering images, listing tools for testing, external add-ons for improving compatibility, font files or external JavaScript query or plug-ins. If you collect all these resources before starting your design, it would help finishing the design quickly as you don’t require spending extra time on research in between.

Designing complex websites, where there is a need of designing different layout, combining those layout at end is quiet difficult and time consuming as overall concept shouldn’t be broken while combining different modules. In kind of situation, finishing design of every section, it becomes importance for you to represent that to your clients for his opinion. Ecommerce website, where there are sections for product presentation, user cart and admin interface for product management is an ideal example where you may create individual design for each and present it to client.  

Providing Web design Chicago service and Working with different clients from various industries, above difficulties help us solving various issues tackling with clients.

Four Basic Modules of Website Development

Requirement analysis can be basic steps in website building process. Here you don’t need to worry about how specific requirement will get implemented instead need to focus on basic functionality that website would provide to its users with business prospective. In the circumstances when you are dealing with clients who would specify requirement in one sentence, your duty involves doing research about your client’s business requirement and minimal list of functions which are must to have.

Technology Research    

Once you finish with gathering requirement and finalizing the things which website would have with the client, this is the stage where you think about how things would develop technically and research about different platforms to make your work easier. As we know, different options are available for building various types of website; here your job is to identify the one which is capable of providing solution which satisfies all requirements which you have collected in above step. Here you would take decisions like selection of programming language, buying premium license if open source is not the solution, gathering the hosting requirement and giving final quote to client with selection of specific technology. You would also research for different platforms on which website would be accessed like different mobile device, tablets, laptops and desktops.         

Implementation

In this stage, you start coding for each requirement or functions you mention requirement. In large complex website, you may create first prototype of the website and represent to clients so he can get the exact ideas on how things would work before developing actual website. You may require communicating with SEO expert to develop website architecture search engine friendly and integrate design of the website provided by web designer or integrate design template given by client.    

Testing

It is one of the most important modules in web development process. You would test different functionality of website for different user prospect to improve user friendliness and user experience of your developed website. You would deal with validation errors, handle server errors and confirm correct working of database operations and compatibility of website on different browsers and platform. Many people consider testing as an intermediate stage after implanting each function which can be developed individually. Before deploying website to clients, you must conduct complete testing of your website.

An ideal Chicago web development company should have process to develop website which can include above described module. Importance of any module doesn’t lie behind its sequence but the way you execute each stage for structurally managed development for better productivity.

Things to Consider Before Redeveloping Your Website

Before 10 to 15 years, it was quiet difficult to build dynamic website to program user interface which can give content management facility to website owners. As of now with use of content management system and introduction to open source web development platform, it is common to have large dynamic website with admin interface panel to manage and update content or pages in website. That was an era of static website was the easiest way for having website online.

It might possible the interface panel built at that time might be little bit more complex in term of usability and UX compare to one built with use of latest technology. There was also some restriction on updating the type of data and managing it on website as internet technology has grown and new form of content distribution channel have been introduced as well. Web developer might also have to do lot of manual coding to implement simple functionality compare to one with use of readymade script or plug-in or add-ons. If your website has been built in 90’s, you must take benefits of new features which can save your efforts and automate your website management tasks.  But before tacking decision on adopting specific technology for its development, you should look out for certain circumstances described below.

List out your management tasks

 

First make a documentation of all tasks which you have been doing for management of your website and steps you have to perform with use of your admin panel to make update in website. Also create the list of extra functions or modules you want to integrate into your website. Now research for the specific technology or CMS or any platform with which you want to redevelop your website and try to analyze what flexibility new technology can deliver compare to existing one which you have been using. Also analyze the compliance of new technology to develop extra functions which you want to add.

Brainstorming on budget

If updating your old system with custom programming can avail same features and flexibility as of new one, there is no need to adopt the new one. But you need to calculate the cost of hiring a web programmer to update your old system and compare to new technology. If the cost of hiring developer can exceed to that of integrating new open source technology, it is time to invest in new one rather than updating old one.

Impacts on your past marketing efforts

Adopting new technology would force you to generate new website architecture and page structure. If you have gained good visibility in search engine by conducting continuous SEO for your site, it may possible that your visibility got affected due new changes. You should implement 301 redirection on old pages and redirected them permanently to new URL or pages generated by new one. On major changes, like shifting hosting from windows to Apache, you must take help from SEO expert on possible situation where your website can get impact on new changes. If certain pages are static which are currently generating high revenue for your business, you should keep those pages as it is on the server even if new website is dynamic one based on any CMS.

Above are the consideration which we have evaluated working with clients at Chicago Web development company with old websites who wanted to shift to new technology for better management and flexibility.

Three SEO Requirements Web Developer Should Aware of

Search engine optimization is becoming major traffic acquisition strategy for companies to generate higher revenue and it is the only marketing methods which require focus on design and development of website for better performance compare to other ways like PPC, Affiliate marketing, Email or banner advertising. Violation of SEO guideline from point of design or development can extremely impact on visibility of website in search engine.  

There are certain SEO guideline and features the person must know who is developing website. These are the features which may be required developing from your SEO department later.  If you are using any CMS for development, you need to check whether those features have been provided by used CMS or not or one has to code manually to develop those features and this must be done while developing rather than after completing its development. This post is the result of communication with our SEO expert at Chicago Web Development firm.

URL Rewriting and URL redirection

This is most of the common requirement of SEO. Default URL generated by your CMS or by programming may be dynamic and need to rewrite to gain better visibility. With technology, it became possible to create static looking URL which includes keywords in URL and which is dynamic hence look like static one so can be indexed easily by search engine and can memorize by your visitors. URL redirection depends on the hosting support and kind of server used. With Lenux server, you are suppose to write re-writing rules in .htaccess file where in windows server, you need to create modification in web.config file.  As working of page generation depends on these rules, I recommend you to hire expert programmer if you want to make any changes the way web page URL being generated.

Automatic Meta tag Creation

A website with thousands of pages, it is time consuming and almost impossible to create meta tags individually for each page to update it. So as developer you must establish a way which can create meta tags automatically with value present in database. Consider the example of product page, where you can define common pattern for page title, keyword and description and can generate it by fetching the value from product database. Here you can fetch the value like Product name, Model and most important feature from product specification. Most of the web development platform and CMS gives a way to generate dynamic Meta tags.

Structuring Internal linking between pages

Have you ever wonder why result from Wikipedia appears on first page on every search query you enter in Google?  The reason behind is the quality of content which and the inter linking between most relevant pages in good quantity. When you have website with thousands of pages or having large content, with use of inter linking you can gain better performance of your pages. if you remember most of the Blog CMS provide interlinking between post with use of category or tag match system . Same way your web developer can implement interlinking between different product pages based on their features or some common values. As developer, you should take care that interlinking happens between most relevant product pages instead of linking different pages blindly without any predefined rules.

Consequence of Prior Web Designs for Website Design Company

These days business website is necessary due to increasing popularity of internet world, today people are getting more benefits from their online businesses rather than offline businesses because in this modern world of internet majority of people did their shopping online.

Because of enhancing modern and internet world today all business men who have offline business are searching for the website design and development company which help them to create winning online occurrence of their business by creating professional business website.  

So now let’s we talk about selection of website design company. Well for business men it is really sturdy task that select an appropriate website design company and while selection there are many more factors work behind the selection but some of them are most significant such as prior web designs o website design company.

Website design companies have their portfolio in which they show all their previous work, these previously did website designs helps business person to approximation work of website designers and developers in particular web services company. Through the prior web design business person can came to know that how web designers are expert in creation of website for different types of businesses. Sometimes through a prior design website you can contact the business person for whom that particular website design company designs a website and inquest about web services they got.

So it is beneficial for website design company to create appealing web design portfolio which amazingly represent their work.

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Need of Usability Testing in Website Design & Development

After deciding starting of your own business and to fulfill the objectives and profit you would get through your business, you would think of having rocking website to impress your visitors and to get maximum exposure of your marketing efforts. With keep in mind the high reputation of your business that you want to build with the website, you would get your design and development work from best expert in the industry to confirm that everything goes smooth and as thought. You would prefer high animated banner or flash as an intro, modern website design to compete with big player, easy development of complex function of your business as you would have hope for future profit, and you would take care of each and every small things which is going to be added in your website. 

But wait what if the things on which you have spent money blindly after its development wouldn’t require or being obstacle in performance of your website. If someone UI interface expert would suggest simple design rather than stylist one which was very costly and what if you would require to change all the things on your website because they are not require anymore or stopping the success of your website in online marketing. I don’t know about you but it would be extremely disappointing for me that even after spending valuable time and money you came to know that the things you had done or you were doing was the waste of time and money. 

To make sure that you don’t fall into above described situation, usability testing of your website design is important before making the decision of investing money on specific things. In usability testing, you need to think of real time behavior of your visitors when they would visit your website. You need to think in advance that what action your visitors would perform on addition of any objects and functionality on your site and what result you would get. You need to test whether there is a good ROI of implementing specific entity on website or not.

At Chicago web design firm, when we have requirement of re designing website, first we make an analysis of existing design by our data analytic experts. Based on the analysis and extracted data, we suggest the things which gets good ROI in new design and applying usability testing on redesigning has saves lots of money and our efforts.

Things We Have Learnt by Conducting Interviews With Web Design And Development Expert

With our efforts on motivating our New York web designer to improve their skills and creativity, we have conducted couple of interviews of different web design and development expert in our industry. With those interviews, each has given us new way to follow and introduced the successful methods that they have followed to reach at the place they are now. It was extremely good feelings to talk with all great web designer and developer who have achieved certain skill in field of their expertise and it is always good to inherit some skills from them.

After making good communication from these experts, we have sorted out the key points which our employee can learn and get motivation from. First it was necessary to understand what things our employee can learn and apply on their skills or carrier. Below are the concluded points that we have marked for our New York Web Design & development team.

Where to start and which direction to follow

If you have good experienced parents or someone who can guide you for focusing toward good carrier with your interest, your way wouldn’t be that difficult. But even if you are passionate and desperate to learn new things, initial start up and right direction have good impact on overall carrier and getting achievement in time. One thing we have seen common in all these experts is, they didn’t have good start up and they have learnt from own mistakes but you can have. Knowing the mistakes which they have done in past and avoiding the same can keep your path easy and smooth.

Methods he is following and which you can follow

When it comes to designing specific objects, it might be possible that process you may follow can be old one and can be very time consuming. Experience counts on establishment of good web design process which includes all the prospect of web design, maintenance and measurement of time it requires for complete output which gets you final check from client. You can fetch the ideas from his method and can make improvement on yours to deliver better result.

                                 

Tools he is using for improving productivity

Whether you have a job of web development or designer, there is necessary to get yourself aware of specific tools and application which can reduce your time and make some work easier. Usage of tools and application is the key concern in improving efficiency. As I have said before, two designers can take different time to design one layout and use of right tools differentiate smart one from other. As technology changes, tools are also changing continuously.You must keep yourself aware of all available tools which you can use.

Basic source of inspiration to look for

Nothing is easier to achieve and perform. Great glory comes with great responsibility of maintaining it. Even if you have designed some of the best layout in past, one simple mistake or bad review can crash your reputation and spoil your brand name and value. You have to keep designing creative and unique layout and inspiration is the only thing which can save you from getting frustrated by your own design. For web designer, it would be good help by knowing the birth of inspiration any expert have got for keeping his name as top.

Ways for improving knowledge and stay updated with latest technology

Just like charm and attraction don’t remain forever. Old knowledge and skills doesn’t remain forever if you won’t improve and utilize it. With continuously changing web design trends, technology standard, software it become essential to keep updated knowledge of each. Without knowledge, you wouldn’t be able to compete with growing technology and latest demands. You need to figure out the ways to keep your knowledge updated and asking from expert about future technology and platforms which can be seen in short time would provide you certain direction.

 How to secure and improve for future growth

It is good to stay one step ahead in progress. Knowing about possible future platform and technology and learning and knowing about it before its actual launch would keep you two steps ahead than your competitors. Adoption of HTML5 is the best example which describes this point.  HTML5 was introduced before two years and is quickly becoming popular.