Finding a web design company in Perth

Finding a web design company in Perth

Choosing a web design company to create your companies presence on the web can be a daunting task.  There are so many design companies out there and once you have selected a company to represent your business there are a lot of design considerations to think of not to mention the need to come up with material to put on the website.

Questions for your prospective web developer

Firstly when selecting a web designer there are a few questions you should be asking, one of the most important ones is.....

1. What technology are you using to create my website?

There are a number of ways a website can be created and many backend systems that these websites run on. If you are going to invest in a website these days it should be based on a CMS (Content Management System). A CMS allows you to make changes to your own websites content quickly and easily with little to no technical knowledge. The CMS is generally web based so you don't need special software to manage your content. All you need is a web browser and the login details for your website backend. This leads us to the next question....

2. Is the CMS open source?

Not all CMS's are created equal and not all CMS's are open and freely available. This is an important consideration because the last thing you want is to own a website that is created on a proprietary CMS. Basically if the website runs on a proprietary CMS you don't really own the website. If at some stage you want to move hosting providers or would like someone else to manage your website you will have to get the website redeveloped otherwise you are stuck with the one company.

There are many Open source CMS's available with some of the most popular being Wordpress, Joomla and Drupal. If your website is developed in one of these systems you truly own your website. You can move it to just about any hosting provider that supports PHP and MySQL (which most do) and there are thousands of developers that are familiar with these systems who can maintain and update your website.

3. What about support?

Make sure the web development company you choose uses Australian hosting and Perth based developers. There are many companies using offshore hosting providers that can make getting support a nightmare should your website ever run into problems. There are also many development companies that outsource their development to cheep firms in India. Supporting local business is a great way to ensure you have direct access to your developers and there is no middle man to interpret and translate your requirements.

Questions you should be asking your self

Below are some of the things you should be thinking about in the lead up to beginning a web design project.

Website Appearance

Think about the image and personality you want your website to portray. This could be an image of prestige, fun, simplicity, corporate or value for example. List a few websites you have seen that you like and point out some of the things you like and don't like about them. This will help your website designer get a feel for what you want the website to look like. If you have any existing logos or colour schemes you like let the web development company know.

Website Content

At the heart of your website will be the menu structure, think about the information you would like to present and the pages you would like on your website. Common pages are home, about us, photo galleries, products, services, price lists, contact us etc. You can also have sub menus, for example the services menu may contain a sub menu that leads to a separate menu item and page for each service you provide.

Pictures

People are visual creatures and pictures play an important role in your website. Generic stock images can be used where appropriate but its best to use pictures of your work. Using your own pictures gives the website a personal feel that relates more closely to your business and shows off your talents. Take a look through your library of photos and pick your favourites to be showcased on the website. These pictures should be high resolution and of good quality.

Text

Each page should have a good amount of text on it. Think about the text you are going to put on these pages, keep your language simple with short sentences and most importantly keep it interesting. If you are targeting Google search you will want a minimum of 300 words on your key pages that you want Google to rank highly for. Your website designer should discuss which keywords to target for Google so think about the types of things people might search for on Google when looking for your products or services.

The following topics are the sorts of things you might like to add in your text where appropriate - 

1. How long have you been in business?
2. How many years experience do you have in your field?
3. How many employees/ outlets/ centers do you have?
4. Do you have any high profile clients you can list?
5. Do you have any partners or use any high profile products you can include?
6. Do you have any testimonials you can include?
7. Do you have any certifications or accreditations?
8. What do you specialise in?
9. What makes your business stand out from the rest?
10. Are there any common questions you get asked that could be answered on your site?
11. Would you like any special offers or pricing information displayed on your website?
12. Is there any general helpful or interesting information about your field you could provide on your website?

Website Functionality

A broad range of functionality can be incorporated into your website. Some of these include mailing systems, contact forms, CRM (Customer Relations Management), invoicing systems, ticket tracking systems, blogs, Facebook and social media integration, scheduling systems and many more. Have a talk to your web design firm about any additional functionality you would like from the website that would aid in your business process.

Website Maintainence

Think about who will maintain the website and update the content. CMS websites are easy to maintain with very little computer knowledge and you should receive some training in the use of the system. Your other option is to purchase a website maintenance package from the developer and have them do any updates for you.

Website Launch

Launching a website can be a great excuse to contact and interact with your past clients. If you already have a Facebook following or a mailing list discuss a website launch with your developer to get people to look at your new website. If your budget permits a competition or special offer may be a great way to increase brand awareness or even pickup some business in the short term.

Paid Advertising

Do you want any paid Internet advertising? You can run a paid Facebook advertising campaign or Google Adwords campaign to target specific people and attract them to your website. These paid advertising services are generally pay per click so you only pay when someone actually clicks on the link and visits your website. Getting organic search traffic from Google can take some time so this is a great way to get visitors to your website in the short term.

Hopefully this will give you some idea of whats involved in getting your website up and running. FX Web Design Perth specialise in Wordpress website design and provide local hosting with the kind of personal support that is second to none. Make sure you give them a call when shopping around.

Hikashop Mini Review

Hikashop is a shopping cart plugin for Joomla, as a website designer when looking for a shopping cart plug in for my websites the criteria was simple. It had to be easy to manage, have a good backend to let my clients manage their products, easy setup and configuration, support for Joomla 1.6, cost effective and easily customised to individual website needs. I was pleased to find Hikashop had me covered on all bases.

Configuration

Installation was straight forward with most of the default parameters sufficient to get things up and running in a flash. From there setting up the shop was intuitive with everything where you would expect it. I did come across a few little issues for example in regard to wording in the checkout process and notification emails. As we use GST in Australia the VAT reference had to be changed. A quick search on the Hikashop forums lead me to the languages file and i was off with a smile as was the case with most things that weren't immediately obvious.

Functionality

For a cart that is so easy to set up i found Hikashop to be quite fully featured. It comes with a number of payment gateway plugins pre installed, the PayPal plugin was ever so simple to configure and works flawlessly. Another great plugin in Hikashop i found was the Australia Post shipping calculator which will calculate postage costs automatically based on the products size, weight and dispatch and delivery area codes. Once a customer has registered and placed an order there is a nice customer control panel to allow editing of details, view order status and invoices etc.

At the backend the shop owner logs into the Joomla administrator web console and opens the Hikashop component which brings up a nice control centre to manage products, customers and orders. Invoices and picking slips can also be automatically generated by the system at the click of a button and automatic email notifications can be configured to be sent whenever an order status changes.

Conclusion

There are quite a few options for Joomla shopping carts along with some stand alone carts that have bridging plugins to integrate more closely to Joomla. Hikashop has proven to be a great choice for most small to medium sized implementations especially if you require Joomla 1.6 compatibility, business with very specific requirements or complex product ranges will probably want to look at some of the stand alone shopping cart systems. Hikashop is great value with the free Starter edition being suitable for small implementations looking to sell in their home country. The Business edition costs around $165AU giving you a range of additional features such as automatic currency updates, Acymailing integration, email support, Geo Location information of customers and orders and enhanced sales tracking to name a few. If you're looking for a shopping cart for small to medium implementations that just works id recommend you take a close look at Hikashop.

Welcome!

Welcome

Hi and welcome to the 10FX website design blog. We will be updating this page regularly with information about general website design and will also post interesting I.T. tidbits. As we specialise in Joomla website design many of the posts here will relate to Joomla extensions that we review. There are many great resources on Joomla extensions though it can be a difficult to find what your looking for unless you know what's available! So keep an eye on this blog for our latest reviews, this is also be a great place for customers to learn about the latest extensions that can be integrated into their website. 10FX is based in Gidgegannup servicing the Swan, Mundaring, Midland and Perth Hills area.

So to start off with lets answer the question what is Joomla and what is an extension?

Joomla is the leading open source website portal/ content management system, it allows website designers to create highly customised websites that can be customised to an almost infinite number of configurations. Being a content management system or CMS it allows every page or article to have an owner, this allows the website designer to give the business or website owner a username and password to easily edit content directly from the website it self. There is no need to call the web designer or use any special software to make a change for example if you want to add or remove a product or want to change a contact phone number on your website.

Extensions are modules that can be install into Joomla, these allow you to do a range of wonderful things. There are extensions to allow people to sign up to a news letter that the website will automatically distribute, media showcase extensions to show a slide show, song or video on your website, forum extensions and e-commerce extensions which allow you to have a full online store just to name a few.