What Kind of Website Do You Need?

There are several different types of sites that will have a significant impact on cost, platform, and vendor selection.

• Brochure Site. A brochure site is used to push information about products, events, and the organization. It is important to consider the call to action on each page: purchase a product, contact us, or fill out a form.
• Content Management System. A content management system can be used for sites that need frequent updating, such as blogs, news, videos, and messaging. Luminys hosts many WordPress blogs. Other popular Content Management Systems are Drupal and Joomla.
• eCommerce. We see two basic types of eCommerce sites: simple ones that rely on an external service to handle purchasing (e.g., buy concert tickets through PayPal), and full-blown eCommerce systems with real-time credit card processing. Luminys will do simple eCommerce sites, but we generally avoid full-blown sites and suggest you look at hosting providers that specialize in eCommerce platform.

Designing Your Web Site

• Audience. Identifying your target audience is sometimes straightforward and sometimes challenging. Your audience may include customers, board members, press, and so on. Tying audience to navigation, feel, and imagery and current information is key to a long term successful web program.
• Navigation. Clean navigation through primary and secondary menubars are essential. Primary navigation is usually at the top; secondary navigation is typically implemented as a sidebar or dropdown menus. Cleanly structuring your navigation will allow your site to grow over time without breaking the intuitive logic or desired destination that visitors have in their mind when they visit your site.
• Feel. Color, sharpness, squared or rounded edges, shadow or glow effects, glassy images -these are all things that affect the feel of a site.
• Maintenance. Designing your site for ease of maintenance ensures that you will keep your site up to date so that it becomes a primary tool for your business. People should not call you if the information is available online. Luminys offers maintenance as part of web hosting.
• Web Tools. Luminys will configure Google Analytics, calendars, and maps for you through your own personal Google account so that everything runs on autopilot.
• Forms and Interaction. Luminys will work with you to create newsletter subscription pages for online email services like iContact and ConstantContact.
• Search Engine Optimization. As part of your website design, Luminys will help you identify all the key elements for SEO up front: page titles, descriptions, keywords, and so on, and design your site so it can be easily indexed by search engines. If your site already has numerous inbound links to the home page, then your home page will quickly rise in the rankings. If you are a commercial site looking to attract new business from the internet, then you will likely need to hire an SEO specialist to update your site no less than once a month to keep active with the search engines.