There any many features of a website that are not essential, but add to the overall impression that the site gives to visitors. We have listed some of these below.

EMail at your domain.

Listing an email address from of the free email providers on a website is not very professional. People expect to see sales@yourdomain.com not fred324@yahoo.com.

Visitor Tracking

You need to know how many visitors you are getting and what pages are being viewed. Comprehensive reporting will help you fine-tune your content.

Security

Security is often overlooked by new website owners. The hosting environment and software must take every precaution necessary to try and prevent something going wrong. Additionally, if something does go wrong, there should be a mechanism in place to restore the site as quickly as possible.

Collaboration

Cloud computing is not just for major corporations. You can now store all your major documents in a hosted environment and use online tools for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations. The latest documents are available online to all approved collaborators.

Animation and Special Effects

There are an almost infinite amount of special effects that can be implemented on a website. Some of the more popular ones include bouncing menus, graphic animations, roll over animations and changing pictures with fade effects. They can be implemented in JavaScript, Flash, Java and many other ways. Some are very easily implemented; others can be very tricky and therefore expensive. Generally, the more common an effect is, the easier and cheaper it will be to produce. The only sure way to price an effect you have in mind is to ask a developer. We would be pleased to help you price any effects.

Maps

A location map can be added to your site relatively easily. This shows visitors your location and lets them zoom in and out to see where you are in relation to them.

Photo Galleries

Many websites need to put up collections of pictures. This can vary from a few pictures that never change to a school needing to put up pictures of events at regular intervals. There are many solutions to providing photo galleries. Some need each photo to be resized and then uploaded individually. If you will be uploading a lot of photographs, make sure that your gallery can upload a whole folder, create the thumbnails for you and place the photos. It will save you a lot of time.

Restricted Access

You may be posting material to your website that you want your clients to access, but do not want it to be seen by the general public. The easiest solution is to have a logon facility for access to the restricted area. Many of the Content Management Systems provide this facility.

Online Shopping

To provide online shopping you need some software on your website to maintain the products, prices and handle customers. There are many packages available to meet this demand. The need an additional database in your hosting package and after installation you will have access to a control panel to maintain the products. It is often simpler to have the shopping application in a separate sub-domain of your domain, e.g. http://shop.yourdomain.com, with links to the shop from your main site.

You will also need a Paypal account, a Google Checkout account or a similar facility with another supplier, to handle transactions. The transaction handler will charge a commission of a few percent on each sale, so build this into your pricing.

Finally

Your website is a valuable promotional marketing tool. It should be professional without being too flash, unless your market demands it. We take pride in creating websites that the owners are proud to show potential clients. Give us a call and let us help you reach your customers.