Ft Lauderdale Web Design Professional

Developing a website for international traffic was daunting at first. I had looked at some of the online translators available, and was sadly disappointed. Typically free translators, will try to include their brand into the translation service that they offer. This would be either by changing the URL, or by including an I Frame or some other nuisance.

I had settled on Babelfish, a free service from Yahoo, and easy to say, that this was not a good solution. Translations were inconsistent at best. As I was new to this, I tried to incorporate Google Translator, which led me to JQuery Translate. When I say led me to, I mean that Google was not independently offering the service for large amounts of text. Remember the goal was to dynamically translate an entire page. Needless to say I “googled” Jquery translate, and arrived here: http://code.google.com/p/jquery-translate/.

Needless to say, I cut my development time in half using this option. Let me know if you need some help setting this up. It should take about a half an hour or so to implement.

Greetings from Fort Lauderdale. I have been working with another company in the Fort Lauderdale area providing programming services for a few projects. The company I am currently contracted to is primarily a Graphic Design House. The Art Director at the Graphics Studio, which will remain un named for now, has many years experience developing concepts for some major corporations.

There are in house designers who are responsible for the great designs that this house is known for. I am blessed to be able to rub shoulders with the caliber of graphics that the guys are capable of. I have seen this as exactly what web design is all about. Web Design is the marriage of form and function. Great designs will encourage visitors to click through, great programming knows what to do with the clicks, and handle the customers visit appropriately. Web programmers are responsible for making sure that the path to conversion is clear and easy to navigate. This is of course cemented together by the desires of the website owner and the overall goal of the website. It takes a clear understanding of the objective in order to formulate a logical, intuitive interface that is attractive to a broad range of tastes.

For experienced web design professionals in Fort Lauderdale, you have come to the right place. Contact me through the sgprofl.net contact page.

FT LAUDERDALE WEB DESIGN

Greetings, just fixed the first fresh cup of coffee…after tinkering with a new domain. I have just taken some time to start tinkering with the JQuery Plugin, JQuery UI. Simply put, is a set of components that can be easily plugged in to typical user interface situations. In my quest to find a new Date Picker utility for a project( soon to be mentioned…) I was happy to re-discover JQuery UI. If you can program a Javascript popup, you should have no problem implementing this plugin.

One of the main reason that web designers utilize these plugins is to save development time on a project. Why reinvent the wheel for something as simple as a date picker. It would take at least an hour or two to program the time conversions ( all the possible time formats..etc…) compared to the minutes it took to download, install, implement, and upload. The documentation is very easy to read, with some neat features to customize your implementation. The nice folks at JQuery UI have even developed a page that allows you to style your download before you download it, to save a little more time…lol..nice work. http://jqueryui.com/themeroller/ is the link to the Customizer.

I will walk through the steps of the process and share a link to the live page for you to check out. I download the zip file, and extract to another folder. The page I was working on was already using Jquery, so I did not have to use the file provided with the download, I then copied the js file from the js folder to the js folder on my website. The next step is the css, I copied the custom-theme folder (contents are the css file and images folder) to my css directory on the website. The most important part of this process is remembering the paths to the appropriate files.

After you include the appropriate files in the [head] section of the webpage, there is some coding to include as well. You can copy from the index file in the download. This code is a javascript function that executes when the page is fully loaded into the browser. It simply assigns the appropriate components to the appropriate element(div or whatever container you choose).

Rather than past the code here, You can view source of the demo page for the code, feel free to comment or ask questions. Demo Link. Hope this post was helpful. If you need more help with a side project for your website, feel free to contact me through my web design website. I am local to Ft Lauderdale. Web Design Ft Lauderdale.

Search Engine Optimization has become, I wont call it an obsession, but a drive from within. I am constantly reading about different experiences and new updates in search engine trends. I have accumulated some seo success stories.  I have a great deal of success optimizing websites for clients. In particular, I have helped a few companies in Fort Lauderdale, achieve improved results in organic search results as a direct result of my efforts. Along the way I have learned what to do and what not to do. So what? You thought this article was about Web Design in Ft Lauderdale? Well, dear reader, the targeted local search for web design has been elusive since I first began to pursue this key phrase.

As a web designer in the Ft Lauderale area, I have been unable to get above the fifth page of organic search results for this popular key phrase, in Google. I was initially “obsessed” by this, but I decided to use some other keyword tools to find other key phrases with the same amount of search volume. So while I have not given up the fight, I have managed to find a way to wear down the opponent by striking from the side by using similar key phrases. If only placement in organic search results were a boxing opponent, this theory would , maybe, might work.

If you are interested in finding a reputable and professional web developer in the Fort Lauderale area, feel free to contact us using the contact page on our website, www.sgprofl.net. Here is the link to our site if you need it. I have been building sites and programming for other web design companies in Fort Lauderdale for the past 7 years. I have experience building websites for individuals and small businesses. I have also developed social networking applications, facebook and google, as well as our own community networking site with public free membership and uploads. We are currently testing some new interface web designs integrating JQuery and other new technologies. Our goal is to provide a feature rich interface for your web site. Thanks for reading and feel free to give us a ring here: 954.857.9312

Screenshot of JayLenoShow.com before Jay Leno.

A few days ago, the Boston Herald reported that a domain squatter from Katy, Texas, owned the domain name “thejaylenoshow.com”. Former domain owner, Guadalupe Zambrano was using the url to redirect traffic to his real estate website.

I can’t imagine how this would help conversions. Hard to see how people searching for Jay Leno,  would be interested in going to a real estate website. The website at the url was not a typical domain landing page with links related to the search term (Jay Leno in this case). It was actually a full fledged real estate website.

When I first heard about this situation, I immediately thought the guy was a domain squattter who was trying to sell the url to the NBC show. Mr. Zambrano was acutally quite content doing business through this url and had no interest to sell the name, or at least, this was not reported. Judging by the website under the jaylenoshow.com url, I would tend to believe that the real estate genius from Katy, Texas, was not after money.

According to the Boston Herald report, The UN, World Intellectual Property Organization says the domain will have to be transferred to the comedian, Jay Leno.

Just  a note to anyone interested in starting an online business, and you are considering what domain name to buy, talk to a trusted web developer with regards to issues like domain name selection. I will write another article soon about using brand names in your domains. Contact me for more at http://www.sgprofl.net/.

I have been parusing the Google I/O videos and found this gem. How hard is it to get an objective site review from those closest to us. Here is an interesting insight into how google looks at your site. enjoy.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecI_hCBGEIM&hl=en&fs=1&]

So you have done the right thing, optimized your content, and now your website is on page one of Organic Search Results. Great, just sit back and wait for the cash to start streaming in. Well, not quite.

After SEO, then comes conversion. There are plenty of metrics to consider when trying to optimize rate of conversion. Interface appeal is probably the most important. Second would be the call to action. Is your message clear. Are you driving traffic to, product details page, for example? It is important to evaluate website stats at this point, if you haven’t been monitoring them already. Important information comes from the landing pages, entry and exit pages, as well as the keywords that brought the visitors to your site.

To help with this, I made a custom counter, then developed an interface that would drill down to each visitor. The interface also allows for you to view the entire path a visitor took that made it to checkout. This has proved very helpful for optimizing decisions as well as link structure.  This is just one of the many tools I use to help evaluate the overall performance of a website. This should not take the place of evaluating actual server log files. I have found evaluating log files, while time consuming, proves to be the most accurate source of website traffic information. Server log files have helped resolve many pay per click issues.

There will be more on the topic of converting site visitors next. Visit www.sgprofl.net.

Greetings folks,

Yesterday, I was sitting in with my employer, talking to a client about the copy he had brought with him for the new Website we are building for him. Everything was organized, all the copy was in folders, and the client was very proud of finally putting together all the copy for his new site.

I couldn’t believe it when my boss, decided to start offering new features for the website, that were outside of the scope of the quote for the site. AAargh. I am always warning clients about this as we get midway through the process, they decide they may want to include different features from the quote. Now the boss wants to increase the amount of time the project will take, without an increase in fees for the additional work. I have nothing against giving a little, especially with clients who come to a meeting with the check for the deposit. The issue with this incident is that the extra work would in no way enhance the website, other than offering more pages of content for spiders to crawl.

I understand the motivation behind it, but it was still overkill. The content provided by the client was so keyword rich, it was un necessary to create fluff pages to try to increase relevancy. Having some experience with SEO, duh, I couldn’t wait for the client to leave to have a heart to heart with the boss. SEO Content is best optimized for readers as well as Spiders. I have found the best results on copy that is sprinkled with keywords, but is a logical read for visitors.

Luckily the client was aware of what the boss was trying to do, and opted not to force a commitment from us to complete the new proposed task. That reason alone was enough to make me want to do it, because the client was so gracious. I was so glad to hear that the client and I were on the same page, when “Joe client” admitted that he was interested in providing content to the visitors that would encourage a phone call, rather than have them read 16 pages of fluff content that would in no way promote the business of the website.

Client satisfaction is always the main priority. No matter what, the client has to be happy. However, if they are already happy, then you can rest easy that you have done your job as a professional. Relax.

Interesting discussion with “R” on the phone today. We were discussing the potential for a brand new website to acheive good position in organic search, immediately after launch. We were really engaged talking about saturated business categories, and unique niche businesses.

My friend “R” had recently developed, (designed, built, and optimized) a website for a real estate client. We were discussing how the client, after being live for two weeks, was disappointed he was not showing up in the search results. Puzzled, “R” asked the client what keyphrase they were using. Yes, the client expected to show up on the first page of organic search results for the phrase “real estate”. The client had to be reminded that the optimization for his site was for a local targeted search. This is not an uncommon occurance, especially with clients new to the web. Even seasoned website owners (clients)  do not have a clear understanding of targeting keywords and popular search phrases. A solid seo firm like SGPRO, (shameless plug) will invest some time into finding the keywords that advertisers are competing for. Services like Google Adwords, can be used to determine the most competitive keywords and key phrases for a particular subject matter. This information can then be used to determine if the keyword usage is increasing in popularity or decreasing in popularity. Strategy by definition is a plan. Take the time to strategize, determine what your users are doing, in order to reach them.

Remember, all things are possible, they just take a little extra effort.

Greetings.

Welcome to the new Blog by SGPRO. We will discuss topics related to websites, design, functionality and last but not least optimization.

Build it and they will come is great for the movies. Getting visitors to your online presence is not as easy as that unfortunately. I am a freelance web developer in the Fort Lauderdale area. I have been experimenting with different trends and techniques as it pertains to web design and search optimization.

I have been building websites for clients for over 8 years now. I can remember in the early days, how protective I was of my code and not willing to reveal my “secrets”. Ok. First, there are no secrets. If you don’t know, try to keep an open minded approach to seeking out the information desired. Its out there, you just haven’t used the right keywords in your search. I learned a great deal from online tutorials who freely share code and encourage creativity and growth of the internet. I have decided to give back some of what was given to me.

I hope the information you find here will be helpful and useful.

Blessing and Prosperity.