Island Web Works

As you might have noticed, we’ve made some changes to the Island Web Works web site lately.  Apart from redesigning the look and feel (more on this below), we have moved the Business intelligence section containing CRM, BPR and consultancy to its own web site under the name of Circle².  The reason for this is to allow the Island Web Works site to focus on its primary function: offering web design services.

Redesigning the Island Web Works site

When we started discussing the requirements for the new Island Web Works site, we quickly agreed that the new site needed a new look.  The old site had been online for quite a while and had started to look a little dated.  We wanted to make the new site feel more open, which meant abandoning the old layout with a centered column down the middle of the page.  Instead we opted for a design that spanned the whole width of the page, although we kept the content to the center part to give the site some white space in the margins.

Another issue was the Island Web Works logo.  As you can see at the bottom of this post, it consists of a yellow band with the company name in blue on top.  Whilst the logo is eye-caching and has served us well, its colour scheme limits how it can be placed in a design.  Our solution was simply to reverse the logo and remove the band, which made it possible to place it in the carbon-fibre textured header.  The colours were instead represented by a yellow line running through the header and the blue in the cloudscape below the header.

We also made the decision to get rid of the Flash animation and replace it with standard Javascript.  The reason for this are the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) limitations of Flash and - more importantly the meteoric rise in the use of smart-phones for browsing the web.  Even though some phones support Flash, many - such as the Apple devices do not. Additionally, by using Javascript instead we wouldn’t require a special mobile site.

Designing the Circle² web site

The new Circle²site use a similar layout, but has been designed in a more corporate style to fit its main purpose - promoting our business intelligence services and products.  Since the Circle² logo is in black and orange (or white and orange when inverted), we chose to balance these energetic colours by using a calm dark blue backdrop for the header and footer sections.  And, again, we opted to not use Flash animations to maintain smart-phone and SEO compatibility.

Connexions™ Content Management

Both sites are built using our new Connexions™ Social Content Management solution, which offers full control over all content.  Also, as a matter of course, we made sure that the sites work in all major browsers, including Internet Explorer 6, 7, 8 and 9, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera.

Visit Island Web Works

Visit Circle2

Andreas Web Site Development Browser compatibility, Circle2, Flash, Island Web Works

Developing a Web Site can be great fun and an opportunity to show the world what you can do in a modern and accessible format. But before you get started, it’s important to consider how to develop your requirements of the site. Have a look at these 10 tips to help you get started:

1. Appoint a Project Lead for the web site. This helps you form a coherent project with a central point of contact and responsibility. It helps us because we know we can talk to them and use them as a “channel” into the business.
2. Have you thought of the “back office“? Many sites, particularly e-Commerce sites, require support behind the scenes to track stock, monitor user submissions to the site and more mundane issues such as who is responsible for receiving contact requests from the site.
3. Make sure you have a clear purpose for your web site. Is it a brochureware site where visitors can find out what you’ve got to offer? Is it an extranet site that extends your internal business system(s),  helping both you and your customers? Or is it a e-Commerce site that needs to make a profit in its own right?
4. What is the site’s target audience? Are they young, old, professionals or casual shoppers? This will help decide what kind of user interface is appropriate, and what design style will work best.
5. Keep in mind increasing legal requirements for accessibility for hard of hearing or partially sighted users who may require larger text/contrasting colours or browse using alternative platforms such as braille or speaking browsers. 
6. Do you have a marketing campaign for your new web site? Remember to add your web site to all your stationery, outgoing emails and branding to embed your web site address (URL) into the minds of your [potential] customers.
7. How will the site be maintained? Will it be updated regularly? If so, you can use a Content Management System to manage your own content, such as our ACTMaster CMS.
8. How will you measure the effectiveness of your site? We can help configure statistics and analytics to help you quantify visits, but this goes hand in hand with less quantifiable analysis such as asking your new customers if they found you through your web site.
9. How interactive will your site be? While techniques such as Flash are great for users who have it, some information is better presented in a page of text - especially for optimising for search engines.
10. Having a look at how other sites look and feel can help a lot. A great starting point is our Portfolio of recent sites to help get some ideas and form a starting point for your own site.

Andreas Web Site Development Accessibility, Flash, Marketing, Tips