10 Characteristics To Look For When Choosing A Web Designer

Hiring a web designer is a crucial decision and there are a number of factors that should be considered while choosing a web designer for your website design projects. Here are 10 characteristics to look for when choosing someone to design your website.

Experience

Find out how long their website developer has been in business and what type of projects they have worked on. There are many models for websites, and often someone whose past experience with a similar client type will be an advantage to you. Past experiences with similar business types should lead to quicker discovery because that website designer knows what options there are and what questions to ask.
Also, make sure that your developer is working with modern technologies and best industry practices, no matter if they know your business model or not. Modern practices lead to better search engine results and good usability across multiple browser types and operating systems.

Development Skillset

Ask your website developer about their skill set and attention to best and industry standards. Ask if they are using most modern HTML coding, high quality CSS for best cross browser compatibility, smart basic search engine optimization practices, and a site that is foundational in that you can add more pages or content down the line. You may want to ask how far their technical strengths are in custom programming, ecommerce, content management system development, or other skills if you know you may need them.

Website Portfolio

A website company's work will most often speak for itself. Decide if you like their website design portfolio. A design portfolio will show you what styles a website company can deliver and what type of features to expect in their page designs. When you look at a website design portfolio, you can form questions about those designs that may lead to a better design for you. If you see something you really like, you can point out what you like about it, what you want, and what you do not want.

Client References

Ask for your website designer's client references. Who better to talk to than current and past clients? One should not feel strange about asking for this. A website is often not a small investment and one should be sure he or she knows what the website developer's customers are saying.

Strategy

A website project requires proper preparation, attention to detail, collaboration, and more. Organization becomes as important as any of these items. You will want a website designer who can effectively communicate with you and your personnel, from project start to project completion. If you need a hand holder, hire a hand holder. If you want someone who will come in for planning meetings once a week as part of the project, hire someone who can commit to that.

A website developer needs to have organizational tools in place to keep the project on time and can get all involved to meet deadlines in order to meet time goals. Ask your website developer how a project process will go and see that you can agree to meeting times and other requirements for good outcome.

Availability

If you know when you need your website to go live, make sure your website developer will be able to make him or herself available to meet your deadline. If they have many projects at once, make sure they will make your project as important and will meet your time requirements.

Flexibility

On the other hand, if you require a designer who can be more flexible and accommodate you when you can make time, see that this can be done. If you know you want many designs or may change your mind in the middle of the project as to what direction you want to go, make sure you developer knows this and can work with you.

Developers may require more or less money depending on the flexibility you need. If you need the flexibility, however, the change in price may be an easier decision that if you did not.
Location

Website designers have the luxury and flexibility to work wherever they have a computer with their website design software tools and utilities. A website client must determine what type of communication is required, especially when considering websites will need updates. Your website designer will probably be someone you will work with for quite a while if all goes well.

If your business is in Los Angeles, California for example, and you require someone to visit your office once a month, you should probably hire a website designer who lives in Los Angeles or nearby.

Education

Many website designers teach themselves or take specific courses in school to be able to do what they can do. A degree is not a requirement, as nothing speaks for itself like a good website design portfolio, but a degree in a related field does add credibility. Degrees in Marketing, Graphic Design, Business (with emphasis in e-business), Communication, Programming, Sociology, and Psychology are additional assets.

Personality

Make sure you feel comfortable with the website designer you choose because you will most likely work with this person for a long time. Websites need updates and website trends change. You will want a website developer who will communicate with you about all of the things you can or should be doing with your website. Again, do you like the people you are about to hire?

Source: based on work by David Ephraim from a Los Angeles Web Design.

Remembering 9-11

This, the 9th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, offers a time to remember, to reflect about this unforgettable moment in history, and to reconsider the effect that September 11 has had on our country and the world.

Are You Using One of these Passwords?

Identity theft is on the rise and it's no wonder. Security firm, Imperva, says that even though theft of personal information and hacking are more technologically advanced than ever, computer users are not. Internet security studies by Unix in 1990 and studies by Imperva in 2009 show that users have the same, simple, and easily hacked passwords as they did 20 years ago.

Understanding How Passwords are Stolen
Passwords are usually stolen one of two ways. First, you may have a real person trying to hack your accounts. If this is the case, they will start with the most common, and worst, passwords.
If the person knows you, they'll start with obvious information like your birth date, anniversary dates, names of your kids, or street address. If the person doesn't know you, most likely, they've skimmed this information off your social networking sites.
The second and probably most dangerous way thieves steal your passwords is through automation. Bots troll sites and automatically use the most common passwords first. The 20 worst passwords listed below are the most easily cracked passwords.

20 Worst Passwords
In 2010, RockYou.com had a security breach that leaked 32 million passwords. Imperva used this opportunity to analyze the passwords and came up with the 20 most common and worst passwords possible.
Password -- Number of Users with Password
1. 123456 -- 290,731
2. 12345 -- 79,078
3. 123456789 -- 76,790
4. Password -- 61,958
5. iloveyou -- 51,622
6. princess -- 35,231
7. rockyou, facebook, or twitter -- 22,588
8. 1234567 -- 21,756
9. 12345678 -- 20,533
10. abc123 -- 17,542 11. Nicole -- 17,168
12. Daniel -- 16,409
13. babygirl -- 16,094
14. monkey -- 15,294
15. Jessica -- 15,162
16. Lovely -- 14,950
17. Michael -- 14,898
18. Ashley -- 14,329
19. 654321 -- 13,984
20. Qwerty -- 13,856

Tips for Creating Safe Passwords
To keep your identity safe, follow these tips for creating safe passwords:
Do's:Keep your passwords random
Mix up numbers, letters, and capitalization
Change your passwords several times each year
Use a different password for every site
Make a password from a sentence - ex: I love my dog and 4 kids = ilmda4k
Don'ts:Don't use letter or number sequences - ex: 123abc
Don't use the same password on all of your sites
Don't use actual words for passwords
Don't use the name of the service in your password ex: Twitter123

Let's Learn from Our Mistakes
You have a choice. You can keep using the same passwords, make thieves happy, and risk identity theft. Or, you can learn from past mistakes others have made, follow these tips, and create safe passwords. Avoiding identity theft isn't that difficult. Follow safe practices online, install anti-virus software, keep security patches updated, and be aware of the latest identity theft information by visiting this site.

Source: scambusters.org #394

Seven Deadly Sins of Social Networking Security

To users of LinkedIn, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter or all of the above: Are you guilty of one of these security oversights? Some of you are using all of the above, and using them hard, even IT security practitioners who know better. While it's impossible to escape every social networking threat out there, there are steps one can take to significantly reduce the risks. CSO, a provider of news, analysis and research on a broad range of security and risk management topics (CSOonline.com) recently* checked in with dozens of IT security professionals (ironically, using more than one social networking platform to do so) to pinpoint seven typical security mistakes people make; and how to avoid them.

1. Over-sharing company activities
This is a sin of pride, when someone gets excited about something their company is working on and simply must tell everyone about it. Maybe you work for a drug company that is on the verge of developing the cure for cancer. Maybe the company is developing a new car that runs on curbside trash -- in other words, something everyone will want.

By sharing too much about you or your employer's intellectual property, you threaten to put it out of business by tipping off a competitor who could then find a way to duplicate the effort or find a way to spoil what they can't have by hiring a hacker to penetrate the network or by sneaking a spy into the building. To reign in the urge to share too much, it might be useful to repeat this saying, which has started to appear in the public domain: "Loose Tweets Sink Fleets."

2. Mixing personal with professional
This sin is closely related to the first, but extends beyond the mere disclosure of proprietary data. This is the case where someone uses a social network for both business and pleasure, most commonly on Facebook, where one's friends include business associates, family members and friends.
The problem is that the language and images one shares with friends and family may be entirely inappropriate on the professional side. A prospective employer may choose to skip to the next candidate after seeing pictures of you drunk or showing off a little too much leg at someone's birthday party. In sharing such things, you also stand a good chance of making the company you represent look bad. You have to understand what the objective of your presence on any given social network is. If it is for work, keep it for work only. If it is for personal/fun use, keep it for personal use only.

3. Engaging in Tweet (or Facebook/LinkedIn/Myspace) rage
For the person who has just been laid off or had their professional integrity called into question online, the urge to fire back with a stream of vitriol can be irresistible. Call this a sin of wrath.

Be mindful of what you say; any and all parties are listening, including your boss, spouse or future employer. Posting any content when angry is about as dangerous as sending flaming emails, if not more so. Think twice about clicking 'submit' because the world may be looking at your angry, immature rant for years.

4. Believing he/she who dies with the most connections wins
For some social networkers, it's all about accumulating as many connections as possible. Folks on LinkedIn are notorious for doing this, especially those in such LinkedIn groups as TopLinked and LION. This may seem harmless enough or, at the worst, just annoying. But when the name of the game is quantity over quality, it's easy to link or "friend" a scam artist, terrorist or identity thief.

Always verify the person who wants to get in contact with you. If you do not know the person, why are they trying to connect with you? Check if the profile of the other person is secured. If you can't retrieve a list of that person's connections, you have to ask yourself if you really want to go down that road. It is far better and safer to have 50 relevant contacts than 500 unknowns.

5. Password sloth
Another common sin is one of laziness, in this case picking passwords for your social networks that you're least likely to forget. In many cases, that means using the same password for LinkedIn and Facebook that you're using for your online bank account or work machine. If someone with malicious intent figures out the password for one social network, that person can now go and access everything else.

Using the same password on several sites is like trusting the weakest link in a chain to carry the same weight. Every site has vulnerabilities, plan for them to be exploited.

6. Trigger finger (clicking everything, especially on Facebook)
Facebook in particular is notorious as a place where inboxes are stuffed with everything from drink requests to cause requests. For some social networkers, clicking on such requests is as natural as breathing. Unfortunately, the bad guys know this and will send you links that appear to be from legitimate friends. Open the link and you're inviting a piece of malware to infect your machine. You should not click any link unless you're ready to deal with drive-by downloads and zero-day attacks.

7. Endangering yourself and others
All of the above tie into the seventh and perhaps most serious sin, which is that reckless social networking can literally put someone's life in danger. It could be a relative or co-worker. Or it could be yourself. Security experts advise extreme caution when posting birthday information, too much detail on your spouse and children, etc. Otherwise, they could become the target of an identity thief or even a kidnapper.

At the CSO Executive Seminar on Data Loss Prevention in Chicago, last month, Motorola CSO Bill Boni expressed his reservations about using Twitter, calling it a great way to get one's self kidnapped. "Don't be a twit," Boni said to those who might feel the need to divulge every detail about their location and what they're doing.

* adapted from an article by Bill Brenner, Senior Editor, CSO June 30, 2009

And lest we forget…

On this day, 234 years ago, yes July 4th, 1776 this great nation, the United States of America, struggling for what was right and free, was proudly born.
May we celebrate that precious freedom for which our forbears fought and young men and women today continue to fight so bravely for...
the freedom that is inherent in the Stars and Stripes, our revered flag...

Celebrate Freedom this Fourth of July!

and remember

Freedom Is Never Free!

5 STEPS TO EFFECTIVELY REDESIGN YOUR WEBSITE

If it has been a while since you designed your website, or the site doesn’t seem to be attracting the same level of interest among customers and prospects, it may be time to refresh it. The following 5-step plan may help.

1. Determine who will lead the redesign effort. Look beyond your in-house Internet/Web technicians and/or consultants to advise you about your next redesign. For a redesign you may want to consider some more independent ideas from others in the field to get different and fresh ideas, not burdened with the ties to the past.

2. Consult Stakeholders. Your redesign should start by asking questions of others, especially customers, about how they would change the website if they could. By gathering ideas of others up front, you will have better insight in to what changes will benefit current as well as future stakeholders.

3. Set measurable and realistic goal. Because a single website can not be all things to all people, it is important to first determine what the primary purpose of the website is. Knowing this will help in setting appropriate goals for your redesigns.

Determine what you want the redesign of your website to accomplish. For example, do you want to improve the site’s stickiness (how long viewers stay on the site before clicking off)? Improve the site’s searchability (ranking with major search engines)? Add functionality (map and directions, printable coupons, contact forms, etc.)?

Once you have goals in mind, write them down. Undocumented, ill-defined goals provide no focus or direction for the redesign effort. You need enough detail for the effort to get started, allowing your web developers to bring their creativity and expertise to the task.

4. Get the talent from either in-house or an outside vendor. Graphics, web development, quality assurance, end-user interface, search optimization, and other factors should be considered. You need to ensure that the web development team has the skills necessary to accomplish your redesign goals.

5. Understand the latest technologies and how they can help. Technology is constantly changing. The current rage seems to be social networking, flash, audio, and video. None of these technologies were in the forefront two years ago and you can bet there will be other technologies on the back-burner that will be the buzz a year or two from now. Remember that there is accost to employing the latest technologies; costs involving money, time and performance. While your website may not need to employ expensive, top-of-the-line technologies, be sure it doesn’t appear to customers that your website is stagnant or outdated while your competitors’ sites are zooming past.

Know when not to redesign. If your stakeholders say your website is fine the way it is, you have had few if any complaints, and it is cost-effective and functional as is, then a redesign probably isn’t needed at this time. You should however, periodically check with key clients to determine the effectiveness of your website.

Usual Costs. As noted in a recent Info-Tech Research Group (an IT research and consulting company) report, an effective website redesign can cost upwards of $5,000 or more. Costs however vary widely depending on the type of redesign and technologies used. The report also noted to be wary of redesign bids that sound completely unreasonable for your requirements.

For many companies, their websites are their store windows and it is important that their websites convey the brand image desired. If it doesn’t, consider a well defined and expertly developed redesign, and reap the rewards.

Based on an 6/14/10 Phila. Inquirer article

PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH

Back in April of 2009, I posted an article entitled “Spring Cleaning Your Website” on this Blog. Well, I am here to say that I am finally practicing what I preach. When I started APT Web Design (AWD), one of the first websites that I produced was one for my own business (apt-webdesign.com); the site was launched in September of 2006. Well, that was three and a half years ago and only now have I finally gotten around to updating that website.

Since APT Web Design has been in business, about 50% of our clients had existing websites and for various reasons wanted a do-over. Interestingly, two clients actually wanted to drop eCommerce from their sites because they said it was more hassle than it was worth. Of the clients desiring a facelift for their websites, the look-and-feel of their sites had not been updated for an average of three to four years. That puts me right on average for a do-over.

It was not that I was unhappy with the look and feel of the AWD website, I just knew it was time to make some changes and in doing so, provide, as minimal as it is, a somewhat different look and feel. I retained the same basic color scheme, but went from a rounded-corner layout to a bordered-box format. Since I started thinking about a website refresh, other changes came to mind. I also broke out my blog-link and affiliate links from being buried on the About Us page to a link in the main menu on every page. And, I added an FAQ page to hopefully make more information about websites and how AWD operates to both current and prospective clients.

So now, having completed my modest website make, I have both a sense of accomplishment as well as the satisfaction that I indeed have practices what I’ve preached.

Take a look: apt-webdesign.com

      :~) Les..