 What's the difference between a Web Designer and a Webmaster?
Synopsis / Bottom Line: Usually, if Search Engines can't find and index your Website and E-commerce store, the nicest design in the world probably doesn't matter. We redesign "beautiful websites" all the time because they can't be found on search engines. There are many downright ugly / amateurish looking websites out there (we've all seen them) that do a lot of business because more attention has been paid to the marketing strategy / functionality than the look and feel of the site. Functionality is normally more important than the design or "look and feel", even though a marriage of effective design and functionality is easily accomplished by a knowledgeable and experienced Webmaster.
1. There is much more to creating an effective search engine friendly web site and Ecommerce store than Dreamweaver, Flash and Photoshop only.
2. Just because there's a button on Dreamweaver or Flash that does (insert bells and whistles here) doesn't mean you SHOULD click it.
For more detailed differences between a Web Designer and a Webmaster, read on. Or if you've read enough already, go straight to our Website Redesign quote form now. Or read on ...
 The asthetics of your website is not your top priority!
Would you budget $50,000 for a cool looking car but only $5 for gas to drive it?
Engaging graphic design unquestionably enhances a well-defined / implemented marketing strategy. But the design does not replace the marketing strategy. All small and medium size website marketing strategies (especially e-commerce stores) should and can be implemented to provide the best possible chance for the website to be found listed high in organic search returns.
REPEAT: The visitor's website experience can absolutely be heightened by attractive graphic design but the experience itself is not about the design.
BOTTOM LINE:
Don't spend your entire web development budget on the design alone. The marketing strategy / functionality will 'make the cash register ring' much more than the design!
Choosing a Web Developer
No matter how nice a web design company's graphics and designs look, search for their related services on the major search engines. If their website can't be found on the 1st (or at the most 2nd) page of the search results, contact us for a Free Search Engine Optimized Web site design quote. If their site can't be found, yours probably won't be found either. If it can't be found, the design probably won't matter ...
Web Designers
The term "Web Designer" is a very broad one. It can encompass someone who purchased MS FrontPage last week and is now an official "Web Designer" to print designers who incorporate complete print designs into web pages using all graphics (see our "I have an expensive print catalog. Can I use the same exact design for my website?" FAQ below) and more.
Web Designers usually only know how to create pleasing graphics using an image editing program like Photoshop or Flash and a WYSIWYG HTML editor like Dreamweaver or FrontPage. Most Web Designers don't know (or want to know) anything about the code behind the pages or the Web server that the Web pages and Ecommerce store runs on - they just "create pretty pictures." Inexperienced Web designers often incorporate elaborate Flash splash pages, javascript rollover buttons, graphical links only to website pages etc. which while are pleasing to the eye, kill the website's chance of being found and indexed by search engines.
Inexperienced Web Designers believe that just because they CAN do some cool trick by clicking a button in Dreamweaver or Flash, they SHOULD do it. This is a major mistake unless the designer is showing off THEIR talents and not YOUR website. Making someone wait while your web designer shows off his or her Flash animation talent before the website visitor can access the content they're looking for is usually detrimental to your business. Not to mention annoying! If your Web designer insists that you have a cool Flash animation splash page, link to it - don't make it your homepage! If a website designer's site showcases more examples of print than live functioning websites that you can search for and find, contact us for a Free Search Engine Optimized Web site design quote.
Webmasters
Webmasters will not only know how to create pleasing graphics using an image editor like Photoshop, they understand the importance of and know how to write clean optimized code by hand. (no Webmaster will use FrontPage)
They know when to use header tags (h1, h2, etc), accurate page titles, CSS, (cascading stylesheets) image alt tags and text links effectively. Knowing how and why to call external javascript, css etc. from an external file, thus eliminating many lines of unnecessary search engine killing code / extra loading time from Web pages while retaining the look and feel of the design is very important. Webmasters will design your website to benefit YOUR business - not theirs.
Webmasters will ahve an understanding of web servers and be able to implement SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques like web server rewriting using mod_rewrite and htaccess. Using mod_rewrite to remove database URL characters like &, ? and = and automatically redirect these (using a 301 permanent redirect) to "your-product-name.html" increases your website and Ecommerce store's ability to be indexed and found on search engines. The search engines themselves tell us that they won't follow or index database URLs! We don't use any "magic wands" for SEO - we just follow the search engines' guidelines, available to anyone who wants to take the time and effort to read them on every major search engines' website. It's all common sense ...
Web Designer Blues Solution
If your website / Ecommerce store is suffering from the "Web Designer Blues" outlined above, contact us for a Free Search Engine Optimized Web site design quote. We can provide many high organic search engine listing examples. (many number one listings out of tens of millions of websites) You probably found our website listed high in the main listings when searching Google, Yahoo or MSN already.
How do I Email text content to you for use on my Web Site?
The easiest way for us to transfer the text you send us into HTML for your Web Site is by sending it in an eMail in plain ASCII text. Plain text attachments are also acceptable. (i.e. Note Pad .txt document) If you are sending copy for several Web Pages at the same time, please send the text in separate eMails with the respective eMail's subject referencing the Web Page that the text is to go on. And please make sure that all your text has been spellchecked before sending!
MS Word and Word Perfect NOTE:
MS Word and Word Perfect use priority code that is not ASCII compliant. This means that some characters do not translate well from Word or Word Perfect to HTML and additional time may be required to sort out the code errors. Please do not send the copy for your Web Site in a Word or Word Perfect document or paste text from a Word or Word Perfect document into an email. If your text is in Word or Word Perfect, save the document as TEXT and paste that into an eMail to us. Easy!
How do I Email multiple images to you for use on my Web Site?
Attaching multiple images to an email is like sending a multi-page letter to someone in the mail, except with a stamp on each page with no envelope! You hope all the pages arrive and make the receiver hunt around to make sure he received them all and then put them in order!
Please send multiple images to us as an archive (.zip, .sit, .sitx, .tar, .gz or any archive format you choose) instead of attaching individual images to emails. It's Easy!
 To create an archive on a PC:
1. Put the images you want to email into a folder.
2. Right click on your images folder and select "Send To Compressed (zipped) folder." (The zip archive will be created with the same name in the same location as the folder)
3. Once you've created your images zip archive, simply attach your archive file to an email to us. Easy!
 To create an archive on a Mac:
1. Put the images you want to email into a folder.
2. Select your images folder, go to "File" and select "Create archive of 'your folder'". (The archive will be created with the same name in the same location as the folder)
3. Once you've created your images archive, simply attach your archive file to an email to us. Easy!
How do I take a Screenshot and send it to you?
To take a screenshot on a PC:
1. Open whatever you want to take a screenshot of
2. Hold the [Ctrl] key and type the [Prt Scr] key (stands for Print Screen - top row next to [F12] )
3. Open the program Paint (probably under Programs/Accessories/Paint
4. Do Edit/Paste
5. Do "Save As" and save the file somewhere where you know where it went (file type doesn't matter but a JPG would be best)
6. Open an email to us
7. Attach the screenshot image you just created
8. Send us the email
To take a screenshot on a Mac:
1. Open whatever you want to take a screenshot of
2. Hold the [cmnd] (apple key) and [option] key and type 3
3. The screenshot image you just took should be on your desktop and named something like 'Picture1.jpg' depending on how you Mac's preferences are set up
4. Open an email to us
5. Attach the screenshot image you just created
6. Send us the email. Easy!
Why can't I see the changes you made to my website?
Back in the old days of extremely slow Internet connections, the web browser cache was invented to store visited web pages and images on your hard drive. The next time you accessed the same web page on the internet, it came up much faster because it was actually loading from your local hard drive and not from the Web server. The only problem with that was that if any of the web page content had changed since your previous visit, you would not see it because you are viewing the cached or saved files on your hard drive instead of the actual Web server files.
To force reload a web page without setting the cache to 0, hold down the [shift] key and click 'reload' or 'refresh' on your web browser to see updated web content. (View/Reload)
In Internet Explorer on PC, simply hit [F5] to force reload your browser.
In Firefox on PC, simply hit [Ctrl+R] to force reload your browser.
In Netscape on PC, simply hit [Ctrl+R] to force reload your browser..
In AOL on PC, simply hold down the [Ctrl] key and click the AOL browser Reload icon to force reload your browser.
On Macs, simply hit [Cmd+R] to force reload any Mac browser. ([Cmd] is the Apple key located on either side of the keyboard space bar)
As broadband Internet access (DSL, cable, etc.) becomes available to everyone, the browser cache becomes more useless every day. And not only do Web browsers still have a cache, the default setting is to save many MB of files to your hard drive! Set your Web browser cache to 0 or as low as possible on PC!
If we are building a website for you and you can't see new changes, set your Web browser cache low by selecting Tools/Internet Options/Temporary Internet Files/Settings in your web browser's settings. Set the 'Amount of disk space to use' as low as possible and click OK. Also, in the field that says "Check for newer versions of stored pages", check "Every visit to the page." You will now always see fresh content when you visit any website, including the changes we make to your site.
I have an expensive print catalog. Can I use the same exact design for my website?
Maybe. Many print designs don't work that well for web pages without making the whole page a graphical image exactly like the printed page. Large full page graphics take a long time to come up for someone connected to the Internet via a dialup modem. Plus search engines index websites by looking at the text on their pages will not index the web page with a full page graphic because its text will be in the image itself and not actual HTML text on the web page. Main elements from a print design can normally be incorporated into a website design with no problem but many times, additional elements like a well designed and thought out navigational interface adds interactivity to a website that no print document can posses. It has been our experience that it is usually easier and more cost effective for our clients if we create a website based on their print catalog (for example) instead of trying to create a design exactly like the printed piece. And creating a website from a print design involving different illustration and print documents, fonts, etc will incur additional conversion charges to make the content Web ready.
Can I put 20 or 30 large images on the same web page?
You can but it is generally not in your best interest. Loading many large images (or many many small ones) on the same web page takes more time than the average site visitor will spend when accessing your site via a dialup internet connection. DSL and cable internet connections are becoming more prevalent as time passes but more people still access the internet with a dialup account than any other method. Design your site for the lowest common denominator and spread images out over several Web pages when possible for fast loading.
If LA Servers creates a Miva Shopping Cart for me, can my cart look exactly like the website I already have?
Probably. This varies depending on the original design of your website. Custom Miva designs can be incorporated into a Miva Shopping Cart, accomplished through the Miva interface using HTML coding. If your website was originally well designed, we can probably carry that design through in your cart design as well. If we design your website from the start, we can make your Miva shopping cart looks exactly like your website. See our eCommerce clients list for samples of basic and advanced Miva Shopping Cart layouts.
How easy is it to create a Miva Shopping Cart? Can I design it myself?
It really is easy! Yes! If you can create and optimize your product images (thumbnails and larger view images) in a graphics program and save them as either .JPG or .GIF files, you can set up your own Miva Shopping Cart! Large images exported directly from digital cameras don't work on websites because they are usually at a high resolution (300 to 600 dpi) and are too large in physical size to fit on a webpage. You can create your own custom navigation buttons or use one of the template button sets that come preiinstalled on Miva. All your custom buttons, as well as your product thumbnails and larger view images are uploaded to the secure server via your web browser or FTP. It really is easy!
If you don't know HTML and want to be able to use Miva's built in category creation, custom navigation buttons, and many other standard Miva features, you can still create the cart yourself. Just stick with a basic layout on your shopping cart. Many LA Servers eCommerce clients create their own stores, including graphics.
Are all the updates I'll ever want to make to my site included in your "free website updates" policy?
It's possible! Obviously no one can spend hours completely redesigning your website for free. But if we originally designed your website/store, we will make minor bi-monthly updates to your site for free*. (*See examples below) If your website/online store update request doesn't qualify as a "free update", we will notify you in advance, along with an estimate of time the update will require.
* Example 1 of acceptable request for free updates:
"On (paste in full URL of specific page) replace the current paragraph 3 with the following text." (paste exact spellchecked text into email to us)
* Example 1 of unacceptable request for free updates:
" We need to add something about (topic) to our website."
* Example 2 of acceptable request for free updates:
"Attached is 1 72 dpi JPG of our new company CFO 'Fred' - it goes on (paste in full URL of specific page). Put his bio (paste exact spellchecked text into email) and his picture right under 'Wilma' using the same formatting as the rest of the directors on this page."
* Example 2 of unacceptable request for free updates:
"I need to add Fred to the website."
LA Servers decides what website updates constitute as "free". Free updates are normally added within minutes of request.
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