Top 20 Must-have Website Design Factors

1. Ideally, your site's URL should contain your most important keyword.
2. Your website should run on a content management system. Free open-source content management systems like Joomla would do a fantastic job supporting 90% of all websites, including some very complex ones.
3. The style of your website should reflect the type of business you are in (check the leading companies/organizations in your field and model your site after them)
4. Your site should be compatible with all major browsers two generations back
5. Your site needs to be highly responsive, i.e. resize and rescale itself on all major mobile phones and tablet devices
6. Page load time should be under 2-4 seconds
7. All external links should open a 'New Window'; all internal links should be set for the 'This/Same Frame'
8. All hyperlinks should have 'Titles' defined.
9. All images should have 'alt' tags describing their content.
10. Your website needs to have pleasant images and an easy-to-read typography (font) style as well as spacious and not cluttered formatting. 
11. Your contact information needs to contain your full physical address, phone number and email, and it should be easily accessible
12. Your website's navigation should be hierarchical (a tree-like structure)
13. Your website's navigation should be arranged logically, starting with the broadest category and progressing down to more specific sub-categories.
14. Your website must have a Breadcrumb element and a Site Map element
15. Your website must contain a site-wide Search element (Google search is the best option)
16. Your website needs to have a Registration form or other means of gathering users' contacts.
17. Your website needs to incorporate Social Media buttons (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn)
18. Your website needs to have a Blog with user comments
19. Your website needs to have a custom 404 error page and 301 redirect setup
20. Above all, your website should offer free and useful information for your visitors, presented in an easy-to-read format (text arranged in short paragraphs, using headers, sub-headers, bulleted lists and other web page formatting principles).

There are standard web design practices that are the norm in modern web design. However, in real life organizations often rely on opinions of individual team members who often have limited experience and lack formal training. If you'd like to discuss your website design or redesign project, call Joomla Bliss at 613.231.6308

Your website is representative of your business, its reputation and even credibility. When getting ready to build a website, consider the following factors:

• Your website needs to have a modern look and feel, appropriate for your type of business (e.g. social networking website versus financial planning firm; alternative energy provider versus HR software developer)
• Your website needs to offer a good amount of free and interesting information to its visitors (links to quality websites in your industry, free PDFs, demos, etc.)
• Your website's content needs to be written in a simple language and presented in an easy-to-read format (suitable for visual scanning)
• Your website needs to have clear and visible calls to action (buy, order, download, register - links, banners, and buttons)
• You webiste needs to collect emails of your visitors or other contact information (newsletter signup, registration form, free download, free demo)
• You need to conduct a thorough keyword research as well as competitive analysis
• You need to SEO your site's design, content, and formatting by incorporating your main keywords in all structural elements
• You need to build as many incoming (back) links as you can from sites and blogs in your industry
• Your need to learn about online PR and Social Media Marketing (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, and Pinterest)
• Your need to participate in your industry's reputable forums and blogs and offer your professional advice

You need to enrol in Google AdWords; you need to create custom landing pages for each ad group (one per each ad group, keep them orphan)

You need to collect your website statistics and analyze it on a regular basis (Google Analytics is a must; remember to set goals)

In summary, you need to be constantly creating content: on your website's blog and on the leading social sites, as well as posting comments on forums and blogs with links back to your site where possible. The key is to create meanignful and useful content for your visitors and for the general public; re-writing your press releases and posting them on all social sites will be counter productive.

Above all, you need to entice your users to clicking on Social Media buttons: "like" and "plus" and "share" your pages as well as posting comments on your site. Those comments should ideally contain your most important keywords. Comments are key. Simply clicking the buttons is not enough, or you need hundreds of those clicks. But comments, if you can get 40 social media "likes" with keyword-relevant comments, you site will move up in ranking on Google very significantly. Being on the first page on Google will drive traffic to your site. Your next objective is to retain this traffic by earning its interest.

If you'd like to talk about your website marketing objectives call Joomla Bliss at 613.231.6308

Selecting a Content Management System (CMS)

When selecting a Content Management System (CMS) for your website, consider the following:

1. Will your website have a significant affect on your business? For example, a restaurant business is not going to be severely affected by a poorly designed website. 
2. Do you have a very specific, highly custom and very large-scale plan for your website? For example, are you thinking of setting up a social networking community website similar to Facebook? Are you developing an Online auction?
3. Will you offer a significant amount of content? Will your website have more than 50 pages?
4. Will your website have a blog where people can post comments?
5. Will your website offer a newsletter subscription?
6. Will you be selling anything via your website? One item or multiple items? Locally or Internationally
7. Will you offer free downloads of PDF, Word, Excel files?
8. Will you have a lot of visual elements, such as product image galleries, photos, videos, etc?
9. Will there be restricted areas on your website that would require users to login?
10. Will you have a lot of social interaction on your site (posting comments, uploading photos, exchanging messages, etc.)?
11. Do you have plans to grow and enhance your website gradually, i.e. adding polls, surveys, quizzes, adding e-commerce, etc.?
12. Will you be changing the look and feel of your site frequently, i.e. once every 2 years? 

If you answer 'Yes' to 5 of any of these questions, your choice of a CMS should be Joomla. If your website is largely driven by a blog or simple text - it is safe to select WordPress. If you answer 'Yes' with an strong emphasis to question #2 - select Drupal or Magento.

One of the benefits of selecting Joomla for your website back-end administration is ability to chose from over 8000 third party Joomla off-the-shelf components and plugins. A Using quality extensions a Joomla developer can "assemble" a highly complex and sophisticated site in a matter of days. Customizing the flow and adding granularity to the features can be later enhanced and completed in phases, adjusting the requirements to real user behqaviour.

Whatever you do, make sure to test drive your CMS. Do not solely rely on sales presentations or word of advice. Consider the following CMS comparison article. And if you are still uncertain and would like to talk to us about a website CMS, call Joomla Bliss at 613.231.6308. 

The CMS Advantage

There is a long discussion going on about which one of the three leading open-source web content management systems (CMS) is better: Joomla, Drupal or Wordpress. Here is our view on the topic.

Season's Greetings from Joomla Bliss in Ottawa!

The Joomla Development Team has just released Joomla version 3.4.8! Unlike the last few patches which are more urgent, this is mainly a bug-fix patch, so the team agreed that this can wait until after the holidays :) We do recommmended every one to update to 3.4.8 as soon as they can though, just to stay up-to-date.

You can update your site in your Joomla! admin panel or download the packages on the Joomla! site.

If you need any assistances with Joomla design upgrades or need to restore a hacked Joomla website, we at Joomla Bliss are happy to help. Just give us a call!

Hi from Joomla Bliss web design firm in Ottawa,

The Joomla! Development Team has just released version 3.4.7! This is a security patch that, as before, requires immediate attention, but only for a smaller target group. The fix this time follows up on the 3.4.6 fix, and patch a vulnerability on Joomla websites that are running on the older PHP 5.3. It is recommmended every one updates to 3.4.7 though, just to stay up-to-date.

Version 3.4.7 only contains security-related fixes, so in general, it shouldn't affect templates or frontend experience.

If you are using Joomla! 3 (which we recommend all our clients do, as Joomla 1.5 and J2 are no longer supported), you can update your site in your Joomla admin panel, or download the packages on the Joomla! site. Since Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 2 are no longer officially supported, you will have to download the hotfix here, then apply the patch manually.

If you need any assistances with Joomla! upgrades or need to restore a hacked Joomla website, we at Joomla Bliss are ready to help you. Give us a call!

Hi from Ottawa,

Designing websites is always fun, but it is also important to stay abreast web design industry news. The Joomla! Development Team has just released version 3.4.6! Like Joomla 3.4.5, this is a security-only patch. This time around, the vulnerability discovered affects even broader - anyone using Joomla 1.5, 2.X and 3.X for their websites, are at risk of being compromised, and need to update immediately.

Version 3.4.6 only contains security-related fixes, so in general, it shouldn't affect templates or frontend experience.

If you are using Joomla! 3 (which we recommend to all our clients, because J1.5 and J2 are no longer supported), you can update your site in your Joomla! admin panel, or download the packages on the Joomla! site. Since Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 2 are no longer officially supported, you will have to download the hotfix here, then apply the patch manually.

If you need any assistances with Joomla upgrades or need to restore a hacked Joomla site, we at Joomla Bliss are ready to help you. Give us a call!

Hello from Joomla Bliss, a web design agency in Ottawa

This post is a review of one of our favourite website template providers Rockettheme. The company is based in Denver, Colorado and run by a team of experienced web designers and developers. They build templates for Joomla, Worpress and Magento.

We love them almost as much as we love Joomlart. Their website templates come loaded useful extensions and neat modules. And their templates are very well suited for any type of business in any country. 

They stay in synch with times and add new templates often. Rocketheme has a vast network of partners who offer signigicant discounts on their products via Rocketthem

The prices are very reasonable in the web design industry. We love how clean their code it, how scalable it is and how rich with extensions their website templates are. 

If you are interested in finding out more, contact Joomla Bliss via this site or give us a call at 613.231.6308.

Hi from Ottawa,

Designing websites and following industry news here, which we want to share with you. The Joomla! Development Team has just released version 3.4.5! This is a very important security patch, everyone using Joomla 3 for their websites need to upgrade immediately. The security holes in question exist in the Joomla! core codes, meaning every unpatched Joomla! 3 website, regardless of setup and configurations, are at risk of being compromised. Publishing the patch and security vulnerabilties on the web would also have the undesirable side-effect of making the exploit more well-known - so it is imperative that everyone update asap.

Version 3.4.5 only contains security-related fixes, so in general, it shouldn't affect templates or frontend experience.

You can update your site in your Joomla admin panel, or download the packages on the Joomla! site.

If you need any assistances with Joomla upgrades or need to restore compromised Joomla site, we at Joomla Bliss are ready to help you. Give us a call!

Hi from Joomla Bliss, a web design agency in Ottawa

This post is a review of one of our favourite website template designers Yootheme. The company is based in Hamburg, Germany and run by a team of young designers and developers. They build their templates using Warp framework . 

We like their style. Their website templates come loaded with a suite of neat widgets. We find that for North American business environment their templates are best suited for small businesses and consultants, and not for medium or large corporations.

They stay in synch with times and add new templates often. The demo site is very easy to use, each site comes in several color schemes. Their website templates are designed for Joomla and Wordpress. 

The prices are higher than average and the Euro conversion makes their templates adn subscription almost double of those of Rockettheme or Joomlart.

If you are interested in finding out more, contact Joomla Bliss via this site or give us a call at 613.231.6308.