Business & the Web
Considering how long we have had the internet for, it is taking a long time for it to establish its potential in many parts of Australia. Not because there isn't a need for it to be established better, because search terms are proving otherwise. Discussions with clients regarding their delay in making the decision to include a website in their business indicate that many regarded it as an expensive outlay rather than a necessity for their business. This attitude is often developed from the intangibility of the Web and it previously being regarded as more entertainment value. After twelve years of using the Internet in all it's entirety, I still hear users described as "playing on the Internet".
However, while the greater majority stagnated in their opinion of the importance of having a web presence, the web evolved to cater to those that were using it to its full potential. Previous webmasters had encountered a decade of pitfalls, scams, breakages & invention, and had been learning the virtues of web standards, and they and the web evolved together. New inductees to owning websites knew little to nothing of this & were ready to trust anyone who hung their shingles declaring they were a "web designer" and were offering the cheapest or the flashiest looking websites.
So what are the important things to keep in mind?
BROWSER COMPATABILITY:
While many inexperienced users still use a pre-packaged browser like Internet Explorer, many have ventured further & found better browsers like Firefox & Opera. Many websites do not view the same in each browser, often breaking in one or more of them.
MONITOR SIZES:
Instead of web pages being viewed on resolutions from 700 pixels to 1024 pixels on a flat screen, they are now viewed on 21" plus wide screens on resolutions of 1920x.
MOBILE WEB:
People are now on the move with the web. PDA's, Blackberry's & Web Ready Mobile Phones are now used regularly. Can your website be viewed quickly & easily on them?
ACCESSIBILITY:
A law suit was successfully brought against Sydney organizers (SOCOG) for their site www.olympics.com. A private citizen succeeded in winning $20,000 (Aus) in damages, on 6 November, 2001, after a ruling that the Olympics portal caused "unjustifiable hardship" in failing to meet accessibility standards. Since then Target and many others have suffered the wraith of the courts for having inaccessible websites. Is your designer designing accessible websites?
PERFORMANCE:
People in remote areas often rely heavily on the web for purchases, booking holidays, etc. Often they are on slow dialup connections. Large image files, animated Flash designs & web pages thrown together in many page maker programs load very slow for dial-up users, often timing out before they reach the website, so they go on to the next businesses website.
CLIMATE CHANGE:
Website's will reduce the need for catalogues, bulky brochures and mountains of junk mail. They reduce the need for Transport. People will be able to work from home. Banking and bill paying can be done from home and conducting business online will minimize waste, pollution and energy consumption. Cities can become decentralized meaning that people will not need to travel as far and pollution from cars will be reduced. The need for formal office space will diminish. Already there has been a high increase in the amount of home based businesses. Online communications and ecommerce minimize the pollution to the environment caused by unnecessary travel. Our websites are built 100% GREEN POWERED! No fossil fuels are used to power our studio.
Just as you can have a performance vehicle, so too can you have a performance website. Attitude e-media only produce "performance" websites. Our websites are custom built to run secure, fast & be compatible with static & mobile devices, and the software that runs them. We develop our sites with small files sizes that will consume the least possible bandwidth and will load quickly, without restricting aesthetic appearances. One of the things that make us different from many other designers is that we build to 'standards' and with the future in mind. We achieve this by hand coding to internationally recognized W3C standards.
