What a CMS Can Do for Your Website

Posted on March 15, 2013 by dzineit

A CMS or content management system is a great tool for many businesses and their websites. It allows you to manage what’s on your site’s pages by providing simple tools to create the content and publish it.

Content management systems offer easy to use administration that helps you to manage the content of your website when it suits you.  You can edit, maintain and extend content when you need to. A CMS allows you to get content changes live on your website quickly. It provides you with the ability to quickly react to changes in the market place.  If you want to create future content – a CMS will allow you to do that as well. You can prepare material to publish for a specific date, e.g. new offers, sales, marketing campaigns and PR. It’s easy to write content and then save this as a draft.  With a CMS, it is possible to control who can write and who can approve content. It ensures that only content that is approved beforehand is being posted on your website.

A CMS makes it simple to keep track of all the pages on your website regardless of how many you add. Additionally, you can publish the same content with different themes, which can be tailored for desktop, tablet and mobile. You can run marketing campaigns and create landing pages for your site.

Content management systems are also a good way to support your e-commerce activities.  Combining a CMS system with an e-commerce store allows you to create keyword rich, SEO friendly product content and reviews to support your online marketing and enhance sales.

Updating your own website allows you to lower your costs. The ability to change content yourself saves the cost of going through an agency to make changes each and every time your website needs tweaking.

Overall, a CMS gives you better control over your website. Using one will help all kinds of businesses with the need to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver data on their websites in a practical, efficient and cost effective manner.  Content management systems offer many advantages.  If you are considering a new site – or updating an existing one – you should consider a CMS to facilitate your efforts to manage your online presence.

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Peter Crisafi (Peter Crisafi dzineit)
dzine it, inc. +1.212.989.0813
26 West 23 Street
New York, NY, 10010 U.S.A
Specialty:
News; Software Development; Web Development; Web Programming

Behind Your Site’s Brain –Good Navigation

Posted on February 5, 2013 by dzineit

The brain of every website is its navigation.  Navigation on all websites is the key to a website’s functioning and access to its contents.  Traditional publications usually have a “table of contents” and an “index” that guide you through them. Since you can’t hold a website in your hands, a website’s navigation functions as its “table of context” or “index” and guides the user through a site to find the content they are searching for. The importance of navigation cannot be overstated, especially when working with large quantities of content. If you can’t find the content – it can’t be read.  If content can’t be found or read – it is of no value either for informational purposes or revenue.

Think of designing navigation as though you were designing a road map. The goal of navigation is much like the goal of a map or road signs – to help get the user somewhere.  Web readers move quickly. Therefore navigation design should always be simple and direct with the overriding objective of helping reader get to where they want to go.

Navigation should be planned.  Most web users are impatient people.  If a site is hard to understand because the links aren’t clear, they will immediately click away. You navigate a website one screen at a time. A reader who gets lost or confused in is likely to hit the “Back” button. Therefore, creating a navigation system that makes the reader feel comfortable, and allows them to find the content they want quickly, is critical to the success of any website. Website navigation is a key element for determining a website’s effectiveness. In our next blog we take a look at some of the fundamental principles of good navigation design.

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Peter Crisafi (Peter Crisafi dzineit)
dzine it, inc. +1.212.989.0813
26 West 23 Street
New York, NY, 10010 U.S.A
Specialty:
Web Design Info; Web Programming

E-Commerce is for You

Posted on October 26, 2012 by dzineit

Most people think an e-commerce site is only for selling physical products on line.  They think of the internet as a place to offer books, DVD’s, fashion items, etc. and that all products and services of an e-commerce site are only available on line. While this is true for a lot of e-commerce sites, not every e-commerce site involves selling physical products.  E-commerce can be an important part of every business.  If you are running a business based on services rather than actual physical products – e-commerce can be relevant to your business as well.

Businesses that are selling services need to understand that e-commerce transcends physical goods.  Service oriented companies can use the online community as a payment channel for things such as exercise classes, beauty services and tickets that will be consumed in a separate physical location.  By offering on-line promotions and sales opportunities to potential customers, businesses like these can reach a broader sales base and facilitate the purchase of their services.  Using an on-line payment system opens up an entire new way to offer and sell your services.

Selling your services on-line for future consumption can also be a market research tool.  Selling your services on-line can help you collect information on your most loyal customers and reach out to them.  You can use the information gained from on-line analytic sales tools to enhance your business as well as enhance the customer experience.  This information allows you to offer a different kind of personalized customer service.

Lastly, in today’s world the ability to purchase services on-line offers convenience.
Not having to run to the store to buy a subscription or gift certificate is a time saving way to increase revenue.

So whether you are selling beauty services or exercise classes, consider e-commerce for your site.  If you are not doing so – you may be missing a valuable sales and marketing tool.

 

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Peter Crisafi (Peter Crisafi dzineit)
dzine it, inc. +1.212.989.0813
26 West 23 Street
New York, NY, 10010 U.S.A
Specialty:
News; Web Programming

Is Your Website Mobile Friendly?

Posted on October 5, 2012 by dzineit

The mobile web is growing at a phenomenal pace.  Chances are you are reading this on a handheld device such as a tablet or smart phone.   Just a few short years ago, it was a good bet that you would read articles like this one on your PC or laptop.  More and more people are accessing the internet on a wireless mobile device – so it is vital that your website be mobile friendly. So what ARE the things you can do to optimize your website for mobile devices?

1. Have a fast-loading site. Many mobile-web users who are using their phones to access the Internet are using a slower 3G connection. You can help these users out by making sure your website code is clean, which will not only make for a faster-loading site, but faster downloads as well.

2. Don’t use flash. Not all mobile devices can see flash. Make sure you have an alternate HTML version of your site as well.

3. Have simple navigation.  Mobile users are viewing your site on a small screen. In addition, there is no mouse and not all mobile devices are equipped with a touch screen. Keep the number of links to a minimum and make overall navigation easy and intuitive. Links are not always easy to “click” on a smart phone, so a cluttered navigation scheme may be frustrating.  Mobile users typically won’t browse for more than a few minutes. Most just want a specific piece of information. Make sure major services, major products, phone numbers, addresses are easy to find and view.

4. Don’t use too many images.Images are important for a website but when you have too many they can overwhelm and slow up loading on a small screen. So use images, but be selective about what you use.

Lastly, be sure to check out your site on a number of devices. Never assume your site looks great or works well across multiple platforms and devices, because it may not — and if it doesn’t, you may lose potential customers.

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Peter Crisafi (Peter Crisafi dzineit)
dzine it, inc. +1.212.989.0813
26 West 23 Street
New York, NY, 10010 U.S.A
Specialty:
IT Technology; News; Web Design Info; Web Programming

WordPress: Is it the right solutions for your website?

Posted on September 20, 2012 by dzineit

You’ve decided to create a website or blog for your new business.  The developer and everything you read suggests using WordPress.  Should you listen to them? Depending on what you are looking to do, it may or may not be the best solution.

Word Press is a free and open source content management system (CMS) and blogging tool.  It is a very popular software used for web design and development and can be beneficial in saving time and cost. It has a reliable framework that has been around for a good amount of time.

As with many content management systems WordPress is simple and easy to use.  If you can create a Word document, you can publish a new article to your WordPress website. Once it is set up, you can update it any time you want.

WordPress sites can be customized by most web development professionals.  Many features such as newsletters, contact forms, and music players can be added to WordPress sites.  However, WordPress while good for some features is not necessarily for others. If you are developing an e-commerce site or sell products, WordPress would not be recommended. There are many inexperienced webmasters and novice programmers that use the platform simply because they can just search plugins.  However, not all plugins are good. Many plugins created by developers are glitchy and do not work properly.

If you are on a limited budget and do not have much functionality or are truly creating a blog WordPress can be a great cost effective solution. We would not recommended developing any robust business applications in an open source platform unless budget really restricts you.  Your project requirements and the scope and functionality of your website should determine if you should use WordPress.  We have seen many projects where site owner was dead set on using WordPress and their project ultimately was a compete failure because the platform just was not good for what they wanted to do. You should find a knowledgeable reliable and trusted website consultant that can guide you in how you should develop your business concept and determine what is right for you.

 

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Peter Crisafi (Peter Crisafi dzineit)
dzine it, inc. +1.212.989.0813
26 West 23 Street
New York, NY, 10010 U.S.A
Specialty:
News; Web Programming

HTML5 : What It Means for Web Design & Your Website

Posted on September 14, 2012 by dzineit

Developers and web designers are talking alot these days about HTML5. Developing in HTML 5
HTML5 is the newest version of the standard language used to program websites and bring content to the web.  Versions of HTML have been around for years and have been largely been a subject reserved for those in web development.  It all sounds very technical and is probably not something that the average web user might think he needs to know about.  But the newest version of programming language when finalized will offer benefits to everyone and is something even those who are not programming websites might want to know about.

HTML5 will make it easier for developers to incorporate many important features such as video, audio and graphics to your site. For a long time, video, animations and graphics have relied on third party applications like Adobe Flash or QuickTime to be embedded into web pages to view them.  HTML5 now allows all of these visual elements to be incorporated into a website natively and removes these applications from the equation.

With HTML5 you as a web visitor will be able to view it in places where you might not have been able to in the past.  With the use of HTML5 when customers visit a website there is less of a chance that anyone will come across a black hole in the middle of the page or get a prompt to download a plug in.

The iPod Touch, iPhone and the iPad have been especially good at leaving black holes on the screen, because Apple’s late founder Steve Jobs, would not allow Flash to run on any of his iOS devices from the start.

HTML5 looks to benefit everyone.  Developers won’t need additional plug-ins and as long as you’re using an up-to-date browser once it officially launches, websites that use HTML5 will allow you a more seamless user experience, no matter what device you use to access the Web.

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Peter Crisafi (Peter Crisafi dzineit)
dzine it, inc. +1.212.989.0813
26 West 23 Street
New York, NY, 10010 U.S.A
Specialty:
News; Web Design Info; Web Programming
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