Want to learn how to leverage the Internet to grow your business? Student Connects @ Wilfred Laurier University and The Brantford BRC is running a 4 day e-biz bootcamp to help educate business owners on how the Internet can help their business.
There are a total of 4 workshops, and the price is $50 per workshop or $150 for all four.
Day 1 (March 3rd, 2009)
Building a Plan: Web Essentials for Success
Day 2 (March 10th, 2009)
Practical Steps to Establishing an Effective Web Presence
Day 3 (March 24th, 2009) - I am guest speaking at this workshop
Profiting from the Web and Successful Selling Online
Day 4 (March 31, 2009)
Driving Traffic and Marketing on the Internet
You can find additional information and a sign-up form by clicking here
See you there!
Our own David Saraiva’s opinion was sought in Wednesday, October 14th’s National Post for an article discussing the impact of the web on politicians:
“David Saraiva, a Brantford, Ontario based Web site designer, has studied each party’s official site and is surprised by their lack of sophistication.
Citing a 2007 study that considered how people used the Internet, Mr. Saraiva said the parties are likely to lose voters voters each time they must click to a separate page for the information they seek.
‘Statistically, every time you add a click between a process that you want a Web user to go through you’re going to lose a percentage of the people who you’re trying to get to do it,” he said.
‘On the NDP site, you have to click through four different items to get through to a page deep on their site where you can finally request a sign.’”
As far fetched as it may sound, this issue potentially cost the NDP votes this election. Since users had to click through 4 different pages to request a sign for their yard, some visitors who would have requested a sign, had it been on the homepage of their site like the Liberal and Conservative homepages, likely did not. This directly resulted in fewer signs on yards and less exposure. Less exposure can result in fewer votes.
Click on the picture above or here to view the whole article.
With the election just around the corner, I thought it might be fun to impartially analyze the websites of the parties we’ll be voting for in just a few short days. We’re not going to discuss economic policies, the green shift, or anything else remotely political, just a completely subjective review of the websites themselves by a member of the industry. The sites will be judged on three criteria: Design / Aesthetics , Usability, and Technology . Please keep in mind, we’re just having a bit of fun here, feel free to disagree with my conclusions in the comments section, but let’s keep it light and fun.
Conservative Party of Canada - Conservative.ca
Unfortunately, this one is going to hurt a little… I tend to lean to the right in the political spectrum, but I have to be impartial here and there are some fairly significant issues with the site. So Let’s take a look at our first candidate.
Design:
One of my biggest pet peeves with the Conservative website design and graphic structure is their overuse of the “shrugging Dion” as I like to call it:
At one point in September, this image was the central focus of 3 - 4 different banner boxes on their homepage. They’ve taken an effective image and used it so much that its effect has been lost and now I groan every time I see it. Toning down the usage overall is a dramatic improvement for the site.
Overall the conservative site doesn’t look terrible, but it lacks polish and the little touches that really make a site design stand out. When it comes to the design of a website, it’s the small details that move it from the realm of a decent looking website to one that will be memorable for your visitors… I don’t think we need to present the case of how important making a memorable impression on visitors in this case! Consider the navigation on the Conservative website:
versus the navigation of a recent client of ours:
The Conservative website navigation isn’t horrible, but the wide spacing between navigation looks awkward and their navigation links consist of just black text, and don’t even incorporate a simple mouse-over. The end result: navigation that looks okay, but is completely unmemorable. The design is full of issues like this, resulting in a design that isn’t hideous, but borders on boring and forgettable.
Usability:
It doesn’t get much better here, unfortunately. Navigating the site, we discover that the menu items have what I like to call “shy drop-downs”. Basically, if you’re a little slow moving the mouse down from the main navigational item to the actual drop-down (think an older, less experienced computer user), then the drop-down menu disappears before your mouse cursor gets to it. Fortunately this issue only happens in Firefox, and isn’t an issue in Internet Explorer. That being said, this is a fairly significant usability issue as it can exasperate a user while they try to navigate through a site and can cause them to leave in frustration. The fact that this wasn’t caught and fixed (15 - 30 minutes tops) shows a bit of laziness or lacking understanding of the need for cross-browser testing. To put it in perspective, do you think a candidate would ignore setting up clear communication between around 30% (the approximate market share currently held by Firefox) of his or her riding because it would take an extra 10 - 15 minutes? I think not!
A less significant issue is the file size of the header banners on the site. They are unoptimized jpeg files that are all pushing 10o kilobytes of storage space. This is bad for a plethora of reasons… users on slower connections may have to wait even longer to load the page, and the site ends up eating more bandwidth (2/3rds more from the banners alone) than it should. The more bandwidth used, the higher the cost of maintaining the site. I optimized one of the banner files in about 5 seconds as I wrote this article and I managed to reduce the file size to 1/3rd of the original file size without any noticeable difference to the image itself. If the larger files aren’t optimized, then it’s likely that none of the files are optimized, which results in longer loading times and significant amounts of bandwidth (and therefore money) being wasted.
What I do like is the inclusion of all the videos and tv ads on their homepage. The Internet and webpages in general are becoming more and more about video, so by including many (if not all) of the video right on the website, they’ve done the right thing. By using flash video, they’ve chosen a technology that will be accessible to most everyone on the Internet.
I also like that they’ve added a “Virtual Campaign Office” for visitors to join. Not only does this allow them to leverage the efforts of supporters around the country to promote the Conservative campaign, but they can help build their mailing list of Canadians who support them. Depending on the response from visitors to their site, this feature could be a huge boon to the Conservative campaign. Also, the added feature of a simple form to allow someone to easily order a support sign from their riding representative is a really great tool that makes lives of visitors to the site easier, which should be one of the primary goals of any website.
The integration with social media is fairly forward thinking, but I question the use of some of the social sites. One such site is Twitter, a service that seems a bit juvenile, while another is digg.com - a site that is largely made up of American users. The chance of successfully leveraging of its user base are slim to none.
Technology:
My biggest gripes with the site are things that are under the hood, so to speak, and not seen by your typical user. The site is built on tables rather than CSS, and since that probably means absolutely nothing to you, let’s see if we can come up with an analogy that will put it into perspective… Tables are like a 85 clunker and CSS is the latest 09 model before it’s rolled off the dealers lot. Think of tables used to build the structure of your website as mold in your walls: you don’t necessarily see it, but it’s still very bad.
Conclusion:
While the website isn’t terrible, it doesn’t really live up to the standards that should be maintained for a nationally recognized political party. It’s likely that the design of the site was either built in-house by an internal jack-of-all-trades IT team who can make a website but don’t really have a full grasp of everything, or it was developed by a company with a firm grasp of programming but a lack of direction in the design department.
Liberal Party of Canada - Liberal.ca
Things are looking up! I may not be a fan of their political agenda, but while their website isn’t perfect, I’ll have a lot more nice things to say than I did about the Conservative site.
Design:
While I wouldn’t say the Liberal party website knocks my socks off, it’s definitely more polished than the Conservative site. Basically, the site is more or less your average, large corporate website. Fairly spartan, and not much to draw the eye, but polished and appropriately arranged content. I don’t really have anything to complain about, but at the same time there’s nothing that I really like about the design either.
For me, the most “exciting” part about the design is the light Flash powered homepage content that loads boxes in the middle of the content area on the fly, based on what you mouse over. It’s a neat effect, but it seems like it should be in a more aesthetically pleasing site, and almost feels out of place in the minimalist Liberal layout.
Usability:
The benefit of the site being so light on graphics is that it loads very quickly for just about anyone, and the few images they do have are optimized properly. There are no glaring cross-browser issues, and the site seems to operate well in both Internet Explorer and Firefox .
Almost everything is easily accessible and they have also included prominent links to forms for requesting a lawn sign, donating, or joining the Liberal party. I really like the latest headlines section, as it allows them to highlight their most recent news, I just wish it was more prominent and not hidden all the way at the bottom. Again, I’m not a huge fan of the Twitter usage, it’s just too kitschy, but thumbs up on the other social media / networking integration and on the video. However, I’m slightly disappointed I can’t play an embedded video right on the homepage.
The RSS page is quite slick, but it’s another one of those great features that they’ve hidden away with just a tiny link to it in the footer, and another link at the bottom of the newsroom menu item that you don’t see unless you’ve moused over the newsroom text. It doesn’t take a lot of space to place a RSS icon on the homepage and there is definitely room. Another small issue I’m not a big fan of is forcing users to click on e-news to be presented with a two field e-newsletter signup page. Statistically, with every click you add to a website process you will lose visitors who would have taken the action you want (in this case, to sign up for the newsletter). The two fields could have easily been incorporated somewhere on the homepage to eliminate that click-through.
My final complaint is the usage of space. There is a big chunk of white space in the main column, just below the green notice about their copyright agreement with GreenShift Inc., that doesn’t add to the design. This space could be filled with more content for visitors, along with a number of other options. One choice could be having the main graphic area moved down to make room for a subscription form for the newsletter and a more prominent RSS link. That’s just one example off the top of my head. While the space may not seem that big, there’s a lot that could be done with it and right now it’s just wasted space.
Technology:
The site’s structure is laid out with CSS and contains no tables. It warms my heart to know that at least one of the major political parties has built their website on current technology. Compared to the design, what’s under the hood of this website is fairly impressive. Not only have they implemented AJAX (which allows for smooth transitions between content to decrease interruption of the user experience, among other things), but they’ve incorporated dynamically-generated related videos and stories for almost every page on the site.
Conclusion:
The reliable family Sedan. It’s not flashy or expensive, and it most certainly won’t win any prizes, but you can rely on it to do an adequate job. My guess is that this site was put together by a team / individual with a solid grasp of standards and the latest code, but a less masterful (but acceptable) handle on the design portion .
New Democratic Party of Canada - NDP.ca
We’re making strides in the design department, but it looks like we’ll be taking a few steps back on usability and the technical side of things.
Design:
Leaps and bounds ahead of both the Conservative and Liberal websites, the site is both pleasing to the eye and uses space fairly well. There is a bit of white space at the bottom of the left and right columns, but filling that space could potentially make the site look too busy. When comparing this site to the previous two, it’s blatantly obvious that more thought and effort was put into the design of the NDP site. The icons and graphics all flow together and fit in nicely with the overall design.
The only minor issue is the mouse-over on the top Navigation. The mouse-over graphic doesn’t in all cases cover the grey lines that separate the navigation, and it looks almost like a website error when it sticks out the side of the mouse-over colour.
Usability:
The Good: An e-newsletter sign-up box right on the homepage, removing the need to click through to another page to subscribe. A simple and easy-to-operate video player that lets you watch most , if not all, of the NDP videos right from the homepage. I’m a big fan of how the news stories are prominently displayed in the left column.
The Bad: Here’s where things start to go south. I had to click 4 pages deep into the navigation to get to a page that would allow me to request a sign for my yard. Since we know that every click you add between the homepage and the desired action you want the user to take decreases the amount of users who continue the process, this will directly result in fewer NDP signs on yards. For the party, this should be a significant concern. I really question why they didn’t create a link right from the homepage, such as the ones we saw on the Liberal and Conservative websites.
A minor issue in the Top News Stories section, users must click on “read more” to get to the full story. Why can’t they click on the actual text of the story to get there, too? Remember: always make it as easy as possible for your users. They’ve also hidden away the RSS and French site links in tiny text to the left of the navigation. Some visitors will not even see these links, and if someone they happens to prefer to view their sites in French, they may leave with a bad taste in their mouth.
Technology:
Unfortunately, even though the NDP site is appealing to look at, a glance behind the curtain reveals a design structured by tables. From a technical standpoint, this washes away a lot of the things they did right. It’s always disappointing to see a site with such a nice design that uses obsolete technology behind the scenes.
Conclusion:
A really nice-looking site that is plagued by some serious usability issues and outdated technology under the hood. In very simple terms, we can split a website into two parts: the design and the code. Unfortunately, most of the time only one is done properly while the other suffers, and we’ve seen this in every site we’ve reviewed here.
The Winners!
Best Design:
Hands down, the NDP website is tonight’s belle of the ball. It’s unfortunate that it came up short in some other crucial areas which are arguably more significant than design.
Best Usability:
The Liberal Party website inched ahead of the Conservatives due to a few major issues. For the most part, the issues with the Liberal site were all relatively minor, so they pulled into the lead.
Best Technology:
This wasn’t even close, as it is the only site built with CSS and not Tables: the Liberal Party site started with a huge lead, and only increased from there. Slick AJAX implementation and solid structure secured the Liberal victory in the technology catalog.
Overall:
Winning two out of the three categories and having a decent (albeit nothing special) design has secured the Liberal Party of Canada’s site with the gold ribbon of this independent, non-partisan comparison. If only we could look at traffic and usage data for their websites to compare the effect they had on the campaign… That would make things even more interesting.
Have you had a bad experience with a web design company in the past? Maybe your project started out very well, but your contracted company slowly got less responsive, until it got to the point where it was like pulling teeth to get anything done. Or maybe you didn’t even make it that far and the company just disappeared after you paid them. Or maybe you were given a price, but were charged for minute details like email support, resulting in an end cost higher than expected.
We’ve grown tired of other companies giving our industry a bad name, and we’ve being putting a stop to it one client at a time. We have a new policy that you will be hard-pressed to find a match for anywhere else. The Reality Hosting team is 100% committed to making sure you are completely satisfied with any programing project we develop - and we’re putting our money where our mouth is.
If you are unhappy with the end result of your project with us for any reason (or even no specific reason at all) and we can’t make you happy, then you can simply return the website and you will receive a complete refund (no hidden processing fees, or charges).
What are you waiting for? Request a quote today!
“We were extremely impressed by the work Reality Hosting did in re-launching our “danthewindowman.com” website. Their creativity, knowledge, and expertise are first class. They understood our needs, developed effective solutions on a timely basis, and are always available for consultation.” - Gil Coates, Production Manager
“David has been great to work with, always available whenever I needed to discuss design or code changes and nothing ever seems too much trouble.” - Adrian Cooke
“Reality Hosting has done a really great job with designing and developing my blog, WoW PvP Blog. They were extremely attentive to detail and worked diligently with me through the entire process. I never felt like I was left in the dark — as many web design companies leave you — but rather constantly informed with their progress. I would recommend Reality Hosting to anyone looking for a web designer to work with you rather than just for you.” - Chris
“Karl and I would like to thank you so very much for all your hard work, attention to detail, professionalism, working to tight deadlines and delivering to us exactly what we wanted in a website, especially the flexibility of being able to control and update our site with so much ease. We would not hesitate to recommend you to any other business that are looking for website design and hosting services, we wish you all the success for many years to come” - Karl and Andrea
The web design world has taken a massive leap forward in the past few years, as companies have started shifting the focus from building static websites where customers have to contact the developer every time they want to update the site, to a new type of site driven by what’s called a “content management system”, or CMS for short. This is an excellent step forward for anyone who needs a website, as it allows a user to instantly update their website with the most relevant information, instead of calling the developer and paying them to put it up when they have the time.
As a result of this shift, almost every website development company has jumped on the bandwagon to make sure they are offering their clients CMS systems with their website development, in order to stay competitive. At Reality Hosting, we decided to develop a proprietary CMS system that was designed from the ground up to be extremely powerful, yet user friendly. This is not the only way to go, but in our opinion it’s the optimal way to provide a client with the best possible solution.
That being said, we’ve noticed an alarming trend among developers in the area and all across the web. For some reason, a very large number of companies are embracing an open-source CMS system called Joomla! for the back end of their websites. While I’ll be the first one to step up and support open-source software, there are appropriate and inappropriate applications of any software package. Joomla! has some serious problems that can cause you much heartache down the road, and for this reason is best avoided.
Why is Joomla! so bad?
1. Usability
The administration section of Joomla! is a usability nightmare. It’s extremely counter-intuitive and difficult to use. So, not only does it take a lot of training and practice to get up to speed with updating and changing the content on your site using Joomla!, but if you have a change in staff (I know, this never happens! heh heh), the new staff member will have to go through that steep learning curve all over again. In the long run, this costs your organization lots of lost time, which results in lost money paid in wages.
A CMS system should be intuitive and very easy to operate without sacrificing powerful functionality. A user should be able to sit down and have a basic understanding of the CMS system in 5 - 10 minutes maximum. This is a completely realistic goal with some careful forethought and planning.
2. Search Engine Friendly URLs
As the Internet becomes more prevalent in our society, consumers will increasingly turn to search engines to find companies. More and more users are looking for businesses in their local area ( i.e. “Flower Shop in Brantford Ontario”) on search engines, and making sure your business shows up on page one of those results is very important.
By default, Joomla! has ugly URLs that aren’t very search engine friendly - if you look at the address bar in your browser when on a Joomla! site, you’ll see something like this “index.php?option=com_content&task=section&id=1&Itemid=2″ , when ideally you want a much cleaner URL structure, something that looks like “Home/53/0″. If you can control the keywords that show up in the URL, all the better, as this will help to better optimize your site for top search engine rankings.
3. Extending Joomla! is a nightmare
If you need to add functionality to your website that isn’t included in Joomla! by default, prepare yourself to break every major software engineering rule. This can result in lengthy debug sessions to track down issues with the code that are difficult to find. What does this mean to you as an end user? All the extra hours your developer spends wrestling with Joomla! will end up on the bill you pay at the end of the day, inflating the price you pay.
When using a proprietary system, the company developing your site has built the CMS system from scratch themselves, and therefore they know the software inside and out and can easily extend the functionality to meet your needs.
4. You can’t own Joomla!
The Joomla! CMS system is basically open-source software that’s freely distributed by the GNU GPL - basically, that’s a fancy acronym that means the system is freely distributed and will always be free no matter how much you customize or change it. This is bad for developers, as any work they put into the Joomla! system to develop a site for a client becomes completely open-source and can be distributed or sold by anyone who has purchased a copy of the software.
As a site owner, this can be bad for you as well. If a developer ads some functionality to Joomla! that you have envisioned, they can turn around and release it as a free add-on to Joomla! to allow anyone to download and incorporate that functionality into their website. You can do nothing legally to stop this, due to the nature of the license that Joomla! is released under. Edit Note: This is inaccurate, please see Elin’s comments below for a full explanation.
5. Poorly Coded
Any competent web developer who is familiar with the language Joomla! is written in will tell you that the source code (or the instructions that make up the program) is what’s called “Spaghetti Code“. On a large scale, poorly written code like that which is found in Joomla! can cause a lot of issues… It can slow the operation of your site down, as it won’t run as efficiently as it should, and if you have problems with your current developer and move to a new one who isn’t extremely familiar with the Joomla! system, it will take them much longer to sort through the code.
If a car dealer tried to sell you a car containing a poorly built engine with lousy efficiency by saying “Eh, it runs…doesn’t it?”, you probably wouldn’t be convinced. Joomla!’s “guts” are the equivalent of that poorly built engine.
“Reality Hosting is the first company I’ve dealt with for hosting my website. I’m extremely happy with the quality of service and price.” - Jesse Senko
“Reliability and support are the two most important things to me when it comes to hosting my web site, Reality Hosting provides great server up time along with friendly helpful support.” - Cory Armstrong-Smith
“As a business owner, I appreciate dependability and good service. I have found both at Reality Hosting. Their servers are top notch and their customer service is second to none.” - Scott Pipe
“I have been very satisfied with not only Reality Hosting’s web hosting service, but the web site they designed for me was perfect.” - Jason Seib
“What makes Reality Hosting stand out from the rest is their professionalism, their commitment to quality customer service and truly caring about their clients goes above and beyond the competition.” - Tyler Cruz
“Reality Hosting has faithfully hosted our site for well over 7 years now. They are creative, helpful and flexible. Especially for those who don’t speak the language of website creation.” - Rev. David J. Kingston
“David created our website for Mid-America Data Vault and we couldn’t have been more pleased with the results. He was available every step of the process and designed an easy to use, navigate and update website for our company. We highly recommend his work and refer him to our own clients when they are looking for excellent web services.” - Jon Parks
Categories
Top Posts
Web Design In