Web Design 101

Are you ready for a presence on the World Wide Web?
Over the last few years many businesses have taken their storefront one step further by putting themselves on the World Wide Web. Imagine doing business across the country, or through out the world, by inviting people to shop with you on-line, all the time.

Define the Design Process | Designing the site | What we can do for you and your business site
Site completion Process | Site content Disclaimer | Want FLASH on your Website? Here's a few good reasons not to.

Tombigbee.Net is committed to delivering a Web presence that reflects your company, and your style. A well-designed Website goes to work for you after we submit your site to search engines so visitors can find you, that's why at Tombigbee. Net our Business Website packages come with one free site submission to over 1,300 search engines. We also stress that our websites, while aesthetically pleasing, will focus on your business or your content and remain functional and clean with quick load times not bogged down with useless fireworks.
For a list of our current clients please tap here -> TEC client Websites

Need site maintenance? Talk to us about our website management packages -- including ongoing promotion and regular updates.

Kay Marshall, is our Internet Projects Coordinator. She can help you with all of your Website needs including the following:

1. Complete Website design and development.
2. Shopping cart setup for your online storefront.
3. Search Engine submissions - first time free if we develop your site.
4. Website Optimization - meta tags, and other site development methods to get your Website noticed.
5. Domain registrations, renewals, transfers.
6. Web hosting packages and plans to fit your needs.
7. Email set-up, including forwarding, alias's and multiple logins.
8. Internet Marketing consultations for your completed Website.
9. Tutorials for those wishing to manage their own Tombigbee.Net designed and developed Websites.
10. Website maintenance plans to suit your needs. We do the updates so you don't have to.
    
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Define Design Process

The first phase in the Web site design process is also the most valuable and important:

Working closely with you to help identify your goals and objectives for your Web site
Learning about your organization in order to provide a solution that is appropriate for your needs
Identifying the users of your Web site and what they want to be able to accomplish when visiting your site
Establish the foundation for your site by helping you select an appropriate domain name and hosting service

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Design

With this information, we design a solution that will fit your needs

1. Establish a site structure that is logical and organized
2. Create a graphical user interface (Navigation structure)that enables your users to find what they want quickly and easily
3. Review the site with you to ensure your needs have been met
4. Revise as necessary
5. Finalize the site
6. Deploy, or launch the site

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Site Finalization

Once we have developed your Web site, we will:

1. upload your site to the selected hosting service and ensure that it is working properly
2. submit your site to search engines to increase your site traffic
3. Maintain

After deployment, we can work with you in an ongoing manner to:

1. help you analyze your Web site traffic statistics
2. manage, update, and revise your Web site in anticipation of, or in response to, changing circumstances.

At Tombigbee.Net we have your online Website needs covered. If you're unsure what type of site you need call us for a FREE consultation. Remember too that we specialize in small business and municipal Web Development. We can help put your business or community on the world wide map!

For a look at some of our site templates or to read our FAQ please visit Tombigbee's sample design site located at:
www.yourbusiness-here.com.

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Flash; the good, the bad, the mostly ugly.
Flash, is intrinsically inaccessible to anyone who cannot see properly and is very often inaccessible to a deaf or hard-of-hearing person. It’s also completely inaccessible on slow computers or any machine that lacks the Flash plug-in, rendering those viewers more functionally disabled than they actually are.
We now see a rise in the use of Flash intros that have an obnoxious effect. They delay users' ability to get what they came for. On the upside, most Flash intros feature a "skip intro" button. However, their very existence encourages design abuse in several ways.
First, flash encourages gratuitous animation: Since we can make things move, why not make things move?
Second, one of the Web's most powerful features is that it lets users control their own destiny. Users go where they want, when they want. This quality is what makes the Web so usable, despite its many usability problems. Unfortunately, many Flash sites force users to sit through sequences of most often useless content, purely for looks.
Bottom line: Flash tends to degrade websites for three reasons: it encourages design abuse, it breaks with the Web's fundamental interaction principles, and it distracts attention from the site's core value.

Other known and published issues involving the use of Flash Accessibility revolves around words.
1) To be accessible, a picture requires words, if not a thousand of them. The words might be written or spoken.
2) Where there’s audio or some kind of narrative soundtrack (e.g., a dance film), you need to render the soundtrack in visible (or at least capturable) words.
3) Words in one language may need to be translated – in speech or in writing.

The second set of issues relates to the very notion of using a plug-in rather than standard Web technology.
In the future, multimedia features may well be better integrated with browsers and thus these problems will be solved. For now, though, the fact that Flash is not standard HTML creates a host of nasty usability issues:
-- The "Back" button does not work.
If you navigate within a Flash object, the standard backtracking method takes you out of the multimedia object and not, as expected, to the previous state.
Link colors don't work. Given this, you cannot easily see where you've been and which links you've yet to visit. This lack of orientation creates navigational confusion.
-- The "Make text bigger/smaller" button does not work.
Users are thus forced to read text in the designer-specified font size, which is almost always too small since designers tend to have excellent vision.
-- Flash reduces accessibility for users with disabilities.
-- The "Find in page" feature does not work.
In general, Flash integrates poorly with search.
-- Internationalization and localization is complicated.
Local websites must enlist a Flash professional to translate content. Also, text that moves is harder to read for users who lack fluency in the language.
-- Distracts from a Site's Core Values.
Perhaps the worst problem with Flash is that its use consumes resources that would be better spent enhancing the website's core value by:
Frequently updating content (Flash content tends to be created once and then left alone).
Providing informative content that answers users' key questions at all depth levels (Flash content is typically superficial).
Identifying better ways to support customers by task analyzing their real problems (Flash is typically created by outside agents who don't understand the business).

Want Flash?...It ain't cheap.
If Flash was cheap to produce and if all content creators could make a Flash object as easily as they write a standard Web page, then perhaps many of these problems would be alleviated. For now, they remain serious issues. Thus, we recommend that Web designers interested in enhancing usability and their site's overall business presence use Flash sparingly.
Can we do it for clients who want to use Flash anyway? yes, but we don't encourage its usage.

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Client List

www.1800.Unique.com - site under development by TEC

www.49CountyNews.com - site developed by client

www.AlabamaLawOffice.com - site developed by client

www.AlabamaLawOffice.biz - site developed by client

www.Alabama-Properties.com - site originally developed by TEC

www.BurlesonFlooring.com - site under development by TEC

www.BuckingBull.com - site developed by Marshall Arts Web Design (private client)

www.CBRNow.com - site developed by Marshall Arts Web Design (private client)

www.CountryShopOnline.com - site developed by TEC

www.CustomCreekRocks.com - site under development by TEC

www.DardenRealEstate.com - site under development by TEC

www.EdwardsTruss.com - site originally developed by TEC

www.FayetteAL.org - site under development by TEC

www.FingersandWings.com - site originally developed by Marshall Arts Web Design (private client)

www.FultonBridgeBaptist.org - site developed by Hamilton BASE

www.GilmerDairyFarm.com - site developed by client

www.GuinAL.org - site developed by TEC

http://webraiders.guinal.org - site hosted by TEC and developed by Marshall Arts Web Design and the WebRaider Class of Marion County High School, Guin, AL.

www.GuinIDB.org - site developed by TEC

www.HamiltonBASE.com - site developed by Hamilton BASE

www.HamiltonCarb.com - site developed by Hamilton BASE

www.HamiltonFuneralHome.net - site developed by TEC

www.HamiltonVision.com - site developed by Marshall Arts Web Design

www.Hawkins5791.com - site developed by client

www.HonorMikeSpann.org - a community service site hosted byTombigbee.Net and developed and maintained by Marshall Arts Web Design.

www.JacksonProductions.com - coming in March 2004 and developed by TEC for local TV 8

www.JBAF.org - site developed by Marshall Arts Web Design (community service project)

www.JerryBrownPottery.com - site developed by TEC

www.KayMarshall.com - site developed by Marshall Arts Web Design

www.KeepTuberville.com - site developed by TEC

www.MCHabitat.org - a community service site hosted byTombigbee.Net and developed and maintained by Marshall Arts Web Design.

www.MasterlineSpecialties.com - site under development by TEC

www.Millbranch.com - site developed by client

www.MinterCourtReporting.com - site developed by TEC

www.Narci.info - site developed by TEC

www.NorwoodFuneralHome.com - site developed by client

www.Sole2Soul.org - a community service site hosted byTombigbee.Net and developed and maintained by Marshall Arts Web Design. - coming soon -

www.SpaJaponika.com - site developed by TEC

www.StitchesInDesign.com - site developed by TEC

www.SunsetCare.org - site under development by TEC

www.TaylorMemorialFund.org - no longer extant | community service site

www.ThunderValleySpeedway.net - site under development by TEC

www.TimAaron.com - site developed / designed by Marshall Arts Web Design

www.Tombigbee.net - site developed by TEC

Tombigbee Community Forum - site developed by TEC

www.Tombigbee.com - site under development by TEC for online appliance purchases (early Summer 2004)

www.WestAlabamaEDA.org - site developed by TEC

www.WinfieldBottling.com - site developed by client

www.WMTY.tv - site originally developed by TEC

www.YourBusiness-Here.com - a service site from Tombigbee.Net

We're here to help make your online business experience the best it can be.  

Call us if you would like to schedule a consultation, or if you have any questions regarding our services.

Phone:  Tombigbee.Net | 205.468.3325 X24
Email: Kay Marshall or Buell Harris
Post: Tombigbee.Net | POB 610 | Guin, AL 35563