Acclaimed Web Development & Online Marketing Blog

Content management systems are quickly becoming a necessity for medium-sized and large businesses.  Small businesses with basic websites can still get away with paying for maintenance, but larger companies need more maintenance and need to rely on employees, such as office managers, secretaries and receptionists to do some of the basic maintenance.  They also need to be able to strictly enforce website standards among all their sites and pages on those sites.  The easier way to do that is to use templates within a content management system because a good cms will not allow basic users to change the websites look and feel (the templates), but it will allow them to update the content.

Some of the content management systems you may have heard about are Drupal, Geeklog, Joomla 1.5, Mambo, PHP-Nuke, phpWCMS, phpWebSite, Siteframe, TYPO3, Xoops and Zikula.  Those content management systems are open source, so they are free to use if you know how to install and customize them.

Evaluating Content Management Systems

These points will help you evaluate cms and decide which one is right for your business.

1. Support
In our opinion, this is the most important factor in deciding between content management systems.  Not all open source applications are widely used or supported.  Is there are website for the cms?  Does it contain a knowledge base and support forums?  Is the support up-to-date?  Are their new releases and bug fixes made available to the public on a regular basis?

2. Add-on, Plugins and/or Modules
What kind of extensions are available for the cms?  If it doesn’t come with all the features you need, will it be easy to upgrade in the future without having to hire a programmer to custom code changes to the software?

3. How widely used and accepted is the software?
Are there tons of articles when you search google for that cms or are articles on the cms “few and far between”?  If not a lot of people are using the cms, there is either one of two reasons – either the system is so new you might want to wait for others to test it and for some of the early bugs to be worked out or no one is using it for a good reason – either it has a lot of bugs, it doesn’t have great support or there are just better cms out there.

4. How often are the same old bugs being found without any real solutions?
For example, our experience with php-nuke is that when it has errors in the code it produces blank pages because the code simply stop without finishing loading.  Php-nuke 8.1 is the newest release and it’s still producing blank pages without good error messages to tell you what the underlying issues might be.  Do your research or have your web developer do it for you.  There are loads of articles in google about blank pages in php-nuke.  Php-nuke also seems to have sketchy support, so it is not our cms of choice and not the one we recommend to customers.

5. Have security issues been reported?
Do your research or ask your web developer about reported security issues?  The last thing you want is a cms that isn’t secure or has security holes.  If there is a specific security hole in a piece of software and there is no patch to fix it, your web developer more than likely can not fix it and having an SSL certificate will not fix it either.

Our Pick

For our money, Joomla, Drupal and Zikula have the best support, a huge variety of great extensions and are the easiest to use, but do your own research and follow the advise of your web developer.

Acclaimed Web Development & Online Marketing offers all of these content management systems, as well as, custom-designed content management systems that are offered to larger businesses with a bigger budget and special business needs.  Contact us for a free presentation!

Request a quote to get started today!

Website applications are a necessity in today’s world.  Hotel and resort websites need to have a booking engine.  Real estate agents and realtors need to have real estate listings on their websites.  Non-profit organizations need to have ways to collect donations and sell merchandise to help their cause.  Other applications can help facilitate communication and add functionality and features to websites, such as

• Online Auctions
• Classifieds
• Discussion Boards
• Photo Galleries
• Polls & Surveys
• Calendars
• Mailing Lists
• Advertising Banner Systems
• Links Directories
• Live chat

Other online applications can be used internally, as part of a company intranet or a password-protected, membership-only website to help improve project management, customer relationship management, documentation and support.  These applications can make sure businesses run more smoothly and give you a way to make money online if you password protect an online product that consumers would be willing to pay for.  Some examples of website applications that can be used internally by businesses are :

• Project Management Applications like dotProject
• Wikis for documentation
• Online Course Software like Moodle
• Support Ticket Systems like osTicket and PHP Support Tickets
• Online Help Desk Systems like Help Center Live and PerlDesk

Having an online project management system that all employees can log in to with their own username and password can change the way you do business.  For service companies this can be a great way to make sure everyone knows what is expected of them and when and does their part.  Wikis are becoming a great way to put documentation online and allow more than one employee to contribute.  This makes it easier to transition to new system and between employees.  Online courses and support and help desk systems can be used to provide support to employees or clients and customers to make life a lot easier for businesses that have a lot of support issues. Certainly software and hosting companies have already been taking advantage of these applications for years, but they can be useful in any service industry.

Of course, there are also the basic e-commerce shopping cart applications that every retail website should have and content management systems that are becoming a mainstay for every business.  Content management systems (cms) are fast becoming a business necessity because they relieve the average business of having to outsource website maintenance or pay for employee training and higher wages.  A content management system makes it possible for any Internet-savvy employee to update the website.

Acclaimed Web Development & Online Marketing offers all of these website applications and more.  We offer content management systems that range from less-expensive, open source applications, such as Joomla, Drupal and php-nuke to more customized systems for our larger clients that include customized programming and database development to handle their unique business needs.

Request a quote to get started today!

I’m still surprised by the number of small businesses today that still don’t have a website. A recent research study released two days ago from the UK showed that 46% of Britain’s small businesses are still without a website. Even more alarming is that 47% of firms that were still off-line believed that a website could NOT benefit their business. This errant thinking was in direct contrast with a further study that showed that 80% of similar businesses with websites gain revenue from those sites.

It feels a lot like the whole ostrich/sand analogy. I’m not sure how companies of any size these days can justify not having an online presence. Even without going as far as eCommerce applications or social media marketing, having a website seems to be the most elementary of requirements for doing business these days.

Having a small brochure-type website truly is better than having no website at all.  If you aren’t on the web, potential customers are currently using your competition because they can’t remember you phone number or email address and they can’t find your non-existent website.  Social media marketing has quickly become another alternative to having your own website.  Facebook, for example, is a great way to connect with customers and potential customers and allow them to share your message with their friends.  Retaurants, retailers and many other businesses are now using facebook to keep their message current and in front of customers.

Phone books are very quickly being completely replaced by internet searches.  Without an online presence, many customers will never be able to find out.  Do you feel like websites just don’t work in your industry? Have you had a website that just didn’t work and you’re fearful of trying again?  A basic website should be a part of every companies successful marketing plan, but having a website is not enough.  You have to use internet marketing to put your website in from of potential customers.  That includes, not only social media marketing, but email marketing and search engine optimization and paid search marketing.

Acclaimed Web Development & Online Marketing can help you develop and brand your new website and marketing it on the internet and bring targeted traffic to your website.  We can also design print marketing materials to advertise your business.  Request a quote to get started today!

One of the most important aspects of setting up a website for many companies is making sure they get a professional-looking, consistent design for their website. In house print graphic designers are often unfamiliar with how to design for the web. Who do you trust to create a professional website for your brand, especially if you’re setting up your first site or your redesign with a small budget?

What if you could search through hundreds of websites and pick the perfect layout knowing the colors and images could be changed to match your company’s colors and branding? Maybe you know exactly what the site should look like, but you’re having trouble describing it to others or maybe you have no idea what the layout should look like but you’ll know it when you see it. Looking through a gallery of templates might just be the perfect place to find what you are looking for in a new website design.

Acclaimed Web Development & Online Marketing offers hundreds of pre-made photoshop templates and themes to choose from. Among our professional website templates are corporate identity templates, Wordpress themes, logo templates and icon sets. For content management systems, we have joomla templates, mambo tempates, php-nuke templates and drupal templates. We offer professional shopping cart templates for oscommerce, zencart, magento and CRE loaded.  We also offer flash website templates and flash intro templates.

There are many benefits to using a pre-made template.  Among them is receiving all of the development files and having to ability to setup a professional website yourself if you have the necessary Adobe software to edit the photoshop and flash files.  Another benefit is the ability to get a website completed and launched faster than if you were to have a website custom designed.

Once you purchase a template you like, request a quote to have us customize the entire template for you including logos and other images and all the colors and text. If you prefer a package that includes your own domain name, hosting, email and a shopping cart, blog or static site with maintenance services, order now.

Has your site been up and running for a few years and now it’s looking a little old and in need of a fresh look? Have sales or donations started to dwindle and now you’re wondering why your website is no longer converting visitors into buyers? Maybe your site needs a website review from a professional.

A website review includes design, usability and accessibility reviews, as well as, an on-page search engine optimization review from a third-party web design company. A review of an e-commerce site should include going all the way through the shopping cart checkout process and making recommendations about how to make the buying process as little work as possible for the buyer.

Your Intended Audience

A website review should be done with your intended audience in mind, whether they are buyers, students, sponsors or researchers. We will also look at whether your intended audience is mostly made up of a specific gender, where they live, income and any other factors that you know to be specific to the majority of your audience.

Acclaimed Web Development & Online Marketing can do a free website review of your existing website and send you the results within three business days.  We can also make suggestions about how you can start marketing your website online or improve and enhance your existing internet marketing efforts.  Contact us for more information. Acclaimed Web Development & Online Marketing will be here if you need help making the recommended changes, redesigning your website or improving your Internet Marketing programs.

What happens if you get traffic to your site, but visitors aren’t converting to buyers?

It may be time to consider whether your website has usability issues and do some testing.  Usability testing is something that can be done and should be done on all websites, especially if you find that a large percentage of customers are leaving your site at the same stage of the buying process.  It may be that they are all leaving from the homepage because they can not find what they are looking for or there may be leaving at a certain step in your shopping cart that is causing them concern or confusing them.

At the very least basic A/b testing should be done.  A/b or split testing is testing changes in one variable against the control or starting variable.  Multivariate testing or multi-variable testing is testing of more than one component of a website.  Multivariate testing is recommended over a/b testing for testing a live, fully-functional website, but both types of usability testing can be useful and help eliminate detrimental usability issues.

Google Analytics is a free website statistics program that comes with Google Optimizer.  Google Optimizer is an inexpensive way to tset your website.  If you need help with your usability testing, we will be happy to do it for you.