Web Site Redesign

Making it do more for you!

Is your site "all that it can be"?

Over the past two years we have gotten more and more feedback and calls from web site owners that are truly disappointed in their web sites. There are many reasons for this, but most of the reasons have a few common causes. We will discuss the causes and what can be done about them here.

Most "Webmasters" are self-taught, and do not work to established standards.

The truth of the matter is that it is VERY EASY to learn to put up a web site. At the same time, it is VERY HARD to put up a quality web site that meets the standards and "best practices" established by the W3C and other governing bodies. Anyone with a head for graphics and a few basic tools can throw together a site that will look like the greatest thing since sliced bread. But many, if not most, of these amateurs are not aware that the ability to post beautiful artwork to a web page does not make it a good web site. That takes professional training, study, and practice. As we have spoken with so many of these webmasters over the past few years we have come to realize that most of them are not even aware of such things as standards and best practices. They honestly beleive that what they are doing is as good as it gets.

The trouble comes when you, the client, want to change your site, or make it do more for you, they are lost. Many build beautiful pages in Photoshop, then slice them up into a table layout for perfect positioning on a specific display or browser. Then, when you want to change something, they have to go through the whole process again. The content and information are part and parcel with the graphics, and neither can be changed without impacting the other. Even if you never want to change the page, you run into problems when the visually-impaired visitors click their ctrl-+ buttons to increase the text size, and suddenly nothing makes sense.

Modern web design seperates content from presentation, or in other words information from artwork and display. The web is quickly moving off the desktop and into cell phones, PDAs, and other devices. The well-designed web site is aware of the user's device, and displays its information (or speaks it in the case of the blind) in the way that makes the most sense for that device. The governing bodies have been condemning the practice of using tables to layout graphics for years now, yet the majority of home-grown webmasters still use it. Here at NeetSites we use XHTML to mark up content, and CSS to display it. This is the agreed upon best practice, and it works very well.

Many web masters are not aware of new technologies.

When the client asks them for forms that change right in the middle of filling them out, they will tell you it can't be done. That means they do not know DHTML and AJAX, two technologies that allow forms to be dynamic. With AJAX a form can fill in parts of itself automatically, and add or subtract sections based on the information a visitor enters in real time. We use these technologies to great advantage, and our clients love it!

Many sites do not have chat rooms or forums or back office tools, simply because the web master does not know how to make them work.

We are a Teaching Company!

Our core staff is trained and educated with many years in the field. Not just in web development, but business technology as a whole. We often know far more about how much more effective and useful a web site can be than the client does. At the same time, we hire graduating students and recent graduates in the field to make sure we are on top of the latest developments. Together, the team brings cutting edge technology together with the wisdom of ages to bring our clients the very best technology has to offer.

With over 25 years programming in the aerospace and defense industry, we are uniquely qualified to build or upgrade whatever type of web site or application you need, and have indeed done that for several of our clients. If you have an idea of how you could use the web to do more for your company than present pretty pictures to your visitors, please give us a call or visit our office and let us help you develop that.