It's hard for small businesses and non-profit organizations to keep up with the latest web technology or to even create a website in the first place. Small businesses and non-profit organizations need to compete with bigger companies that have many dynamic features on their websites. That's why we started Affordable Web Design and Graphics Solutions. We wanted to help provide web design and development along with dynamic features for small businesses and non-profits to help them stay competitive and lower their costs in today's web driven society. Having a website can actually lower operating costs for some organizations when they utilize the web as a central communication tool for their members.
Web Site Content
Affordable Web Design prefers that clients provide content as it should appear on their web site. Content is preferred in soft copy format. Written material, graphics and photos may be sent via email. Content provided in hard copy form such as manuscripts, brochures, literature, photos, graphics, etc., incur additional fees for processing.
Web Hosting
As a convenience to our clients, Affordable Web Design recommends hosting with ICDsoft.com (see link on the left). Customers also enjoy outstanding value and services with either of these companies.
Our customers also free to choose any web host. We can help pick on that will meet the needs of your site. At no additional charge, the web site is uploaded to selected host; however, the host must be able to grant FTP access.
Domain Name Registration
We are happy to complete this step at no set up charge; the client pays only the registration fee. You may choose to use any Domain Name Registration service that you choose.
Site Maintenance, Updates & Support
If a client wishes to have Affordable Web Design maintain the site, making changes or updates will be quick and easy. In most cases, all that is needed is a simple email exchange, and the web site will be updated within a matter of hours. We guarantee updates to be completed within 48 hours of receipt of email from client requesting a change(s).
Very often with volunteer organizations, small businesses and non-profit organizations - maintaining the website can be hectic, unreliable and inconsistent. Affordable Web Design offers a service to your business that is guaranteed to be reliable, consistent, and supportive of your goals.
E-Commerce
To sell products or services on the internet, clients will have to accept payments. This is a growth area and there are a number of different payment processing solutions. The right on depends upon your predicted sales volume as well as value of each sale.
When setting up an e-commerce store you will need a Merchant bank account that allows you to accept credit card payemnts.
In designing a website, people tend to get overly obsessed with the graphics and how to make the site look nice. Of course, the way a website looks had a huge impact on conversion rates especially on ecommerce sites. Even with personal websites, the site design says a lot about the brand; people will have a first impression of the site based on how it is presented.
Web design is tricky business. You will have to play with colors and color themes based on what kind of site it is. There are a lot of predesigned themes, even premium ones which caters different kinds websites such as for business, photography, arts, writing, amongst many others. There has to be a balance of graphics and functionality of the site. You have to play with div layers and CSS to achieve the look you want without compromising certain user functions.
In searching the web, I have encountered an optin box in a slider on a home page of a certain site. If you know website development, you would also know that these homepage sliders are just a series of featured posts which are set to come up on page in the slider. Most featured posts contains just written content and a picture that best describes the content. With this certain website, an optin box and a video post came up in the slider, and ever since, I have been trying to learn how to do this as well.
If you lack the time to fully design your website’s graphics, you can just use a clean minimalist theme like what I did here on my website about outdoor swing sets for kids. Put up the most basic functions you want like the search box, and the ability to sort out post into categories, and you’re set. You can always improve your site and add graphics later on – it’s the content that needs to be up there as soon as possible. This is good for search engine optimization as well.
If you want an ecommerce site, it is better if you get an ecommerce theme from the get go. That way, you know that it does indeed have all the functionality you want that is needed for an ecommerce site.
It's hard for small businesses and non-profit organizations to keep up with the latest web technology or to even create a website in the first place. Small businesses and non-profit organizations need to compete with bigger companies that have many dynamic features on their websites. That's why we started Affordable Web Design and Graphics Solutions. We wanted to help provide web design and development along with dynamic features for small businesses and non-profits to help them stay competitive and lower their costs in today's web driven society. Having a website can actually lower operating costs for some organizations when they utilize the web as a central communication tool for their members.
Web Site Content
Affordable Web Design prefers that clients provide content as it should appear on their web site. Content is preferred in soft copy format. Written material, graphics and photos may be sent via email. Content provided in hard copy form such as manuscripts, brochures, literature, photos, graphics, etc., incur additional fees for processing.
Web Hosting
As a convenience to our clients, Affordable Web Design recommends hosting with ICDsoft.com (see link on the left). Customers also enjoy outstanding value and services with either of these companies.
Our customers also free to choose any web host. We can help pick on that will meet the needs of your site. At no additional charge, the web site is uploaded to selected host; however, the host must be able to grant FTP access.
Domain Name Registration
We are happy to complete this step at no set up charge; the client pays only the registration fee. You may choose to use any Domain Name Registration service that you choose.
Site Maintenance, Updates & Support
If a client wishes to have Affordable Web Design maintain the site, making changes or updates will be quick and easy. In most cases, all that is needed is a simple email exchange, and the web site will be updated within a matter of hours. We guarantee updates to be completed within 48 hours of receipt of email from client requesting a change(s).
Very often with volunteer organizations, small businesses and non-profit organizations - maintaining the website can be hectic, unreliable and inconsistent. Affordable Web Design offers a service to your business that is guaranteed to be reliable, consistent, and supportive of your goals.
E-Commerce
To sell products or services on the internet, clients will have to accept payments. This is a growth area and there are a number of different payment processing solutions. The right on depends upon your predicted sales volume as well as value of each sale.
When setting up an e-commerce store you will need a Merchant bank account that allows you to accept credit card payemnts.
If you have website it is worth looking into your conversion rates. This is easy to find out – simply divide the number of hits you have in a week by the number of money making clicks you get. If you are running an Amazon affiliate website you should expect a conversion rate of 5% or more (Amazon nicely tells you the conversion rate). With an adsense site the click through rate (another name for conversion rate) should be higher – about 6%. If you are running a travel website with booking affiliates you should feel happy if you convert 2% of visitors to money.
The worry is that a website doesn’t have enough bells and whistles like shopping carts, social media plug-ins, forums, flash movies etc. Website owners tend to think that the more interactive a website is, the more money it will make. That is not always the case. Sometimes the interactive elements of a website can distract the browser from clicking through. Instead they end up playing with the map feature, or other cool gizomo you have on the site and lose the impetus to make a booking.
The trick is to use good graphics. Good graphic design on a site gives the website authority. It also makes the site look attractive. I have a very a simple website about Koh Samui accommodation. I found I improved my conversion rate dramatically by just using simple graphics in a flash movie at the top of the screen. I also use a subtle shading effect. The gizomo is tucked out of eyesight but subliminally works on the viewer. Since adding the graphic, my conversion rate has gone from under 1% to 2.5%.
People often say that just changing the color of the text in ads can dramatically increase revenue. They are right in highlighting the importance of graphic design. To the untrained eye it might not seem anything special, but these small graphic alternations have a profound impact on revenue.
It's hard for small businesses and non-profit organizations to keep up with the latest web technology or to even create a website in the first place. Small businesses and non-profit organizations need to compete with bigger companies that have many dynamic features on their websites. That's why we started Affordable Web Design and Graphics Solutions. We wanted to help provide web design and development along with dynamic features for small businesses and non-profits to help them stay competitive and lower their costs in today's web driven society. Having a website can actually lower operating costs for some organizations when they utilize the web as a central communication tool for their members.
Web Site Content
Affordable Web Design prefers that clients provide content as it should appear on their web site. Content is preferred in soft copy format. Written material, graphics and photos may be sent via email. Content provided in hard copy form such as manuscripts, brochures, literature, photos, graphics, etc., incur additional fees for processing.
Web Hosting
As a convenience to our clients, Affordable Web Design recommends hosting with ICDsoft.com (see link on the left). Customers also enjoy outstanding value and services with either of these companies.
Our customers also free to choose any web host. We can help pick on that will meet the needs of your site. At no additional charge, the web site is uploaded to selected host; however, the host must be able to grant FTP access.
Domain Name Registration
We are happy to complete this step at no set up charge; the client pays only the registration fee. You may choose to use any Domain Name Registration service that you choose.
Site Maintenance, Updates & Support
If a client wishes to have Affordable Web Design maintain the site, making changes or updates will be quick and easy. In most cases, all that is needed is a simple email exchange, and the web site will be updated within a matter of hours. We guarantee updates to be completed within 48 hours of receipt of email from client requesting a change(s).
Very often with volunteer organizations, small businesses and non-profit organizations - maintaining the website can be hectic, unreliable and inconsistent. Affordable Web Design offers a service to your business that is guaranteed to be reliable, consistent, and supportive of your goals.
E-Commerce
To sell products or services on the internet, clients will have to accept payments. This is a growth area and there are a number of different payment processing solutions. The right on depends upon your predicted sales volume as well as value of each sale.
When setting up an e-commerce store you will need a Merchant bank account that allows you to accept credit card payemnts.
It seems we use computers for pretty much everything nowadays – they control out cars, our homes, our offices, and even the design of most everyday objects we use. The initial concept still has to come from a human being of course, but once an original design has been programmed into the humble computer, it becomes infinitely easier to tweak and improve on the design.
One area that has benefited immensely in this area is the design of electric shavers. Until relatively recently, most electric shavers took on the form of a cigarette packet with shaved edges (no pun intended). The designs were practical and functional, but they were never going to win any awards for innovation. In practice though their lack of aesthetics didn’t affect the quality of the shave in any way, but there’s no doubt the sleek designs we see today sell more shavers.
Many companies aspire to make the best electric shaver, but when you go above a certain price point there is little to choose between the best models available. The manufacturers are only too well aware of this, so attempt to differentiate their products by making them look as sharp as possible and by adding a host of new features that were unheard of a decade ago.
The new kid on the block as far as features are concerned is the self cleaning unit which also doubles as a charging station for the shaver. There’s a lot of debate whether or not this feature is worth the extra money you pay for it, but from a pure design standpoint, it makes the most up to date shavers seem a million miles away from the modified cigarette packs I mentioned before.
It's hard for small businesses and non-profit organizations to keep up with the latest web technology or to even create a website in the first place. Small businesses and non-profit organizations need to compete with bigger companies that have many dynamic features on their websites. That's why we started Affordable Web Design and Graphics Solutions. We wanted to help provide web design and development along with dynamic features for small businesses and non-profits to help them stay competitive and lower their costs in today's web driven society. Having a website can actually lower operating costs for some organizations when they utilize the web as a central communication tool for their members.
Web Site Content
Affordable Web Design prefers that clients provide content as it should appear on their web site. Content is preferred in soft copy format. Written material, graphics and photos may be sent via email. Content provided in hard copy form such as manuscripts, brochures, literature, photos, graphics, etc., incur additional fees for processing.
Web Hosting
As a convenience to our clients, Affordable Web Design recommends hosting with ICDsoft.com (see link on the left). Customers also enjoy outstanding value and services with either of these companies.
Our customers also free to choose any web host. We can help pick on that will meet the needs of your site. At no additional charge, the web site is uploaded to selected host; however, the host must be able to grant FTP access.
Domain Name Registration
We are happy to complete this step at no set up charge; the client pays only the registration fee. You may choose to use any Domain Name Registration service that you choose.
Site Maintenance, Updates & Support
If a client wishes to have Affordable Web Design maintain the site, making changes or updates will be quick and easy. In most cases, all that is needed is a simple email exchange, and the web site will be updated within a matter of hours. We guarantee updates to be completed within 48 hours of receipt of email from client requesting a change(s).
Very often with volunteer organizations, small businesses and non-profit organizations - maintaining the website can be hectic, unreliable and inconsistent. Affordable Web Design offers a service to your business that is guaranteed to be reliable, consistent, and supportive of your goals.
E-Commerce
To sell products or services on the internet, clients will have to accept payments. This is a growth area and there are a number of different payment processing solutions. The right on depends upon your predicted sales volume as well as value of each sale.
When setting up an e-commerce store you will need a Merchant bank account that allows you to accept credit card payemnts.
One of the great advantages of computers over the last few years has been to allow us to make better models of the world. It is by making models of the world that we come to better understand it. Computer modelling has become so advanced that it can now be used as a tool to predict the future. We input the data and we can see how things like climate warming will unfold in the future. It is compelling, if sad viewing.
More mundane, but no less important is the ability of computers to help us design more economical spaces to live in. We can now measure accurately how increased insulation can reduce heat loss in the winter and can stop heat entering a home in the summer. The same for awnings over south facing windows. The cost of materials and labour can like never before be weighed up against potential savings in energy bills to decide whether a course of action is profitable or not.
Computers have consistently shown that using an Energy Star recommended programmable thermostat such as those made by Honeywell, Lux or Hunter can reduce heating and cooling bills by as much as a third in a year. The variables involved are geographic location and the settings used. It is assumed that a person doesn’t have the thermostat turned ’way up high’ in the winter and ’way down low’ in the summer. Reasonable settings combined with accurate programming to match schedules to on and off times can make savings that quickly pay for the programmable thermostat and soon go on to make a profit for the home owner.
In such ways we can design our homes to save money and resources as well as reduce carbon emissions. That makes complete sense to me.
