Melody Oshiro approached Opto with the momunental task of developing a site with an interface which would be clean and easy to use for people with learning disabilities. Melody’s organization is the Learning Disabilities Association Fraser South, and after 8 months of intensive development their new website can be seen at ldafs.org.
LDAFS provided Opto with valuable information to assist in the design of the interface. This information was the result of obtained studies for users with learning disabilities such as what typeface and size is best read by users with learning disabilities, which colours provide a warm and comfortable user experience, and specific functionality such as increasing or decreasing text size to ease reading.
With the content management system, The folks at LDAFS can now update the entire website by themselves.
Both OptoDesign and LDAFS wish the best of luck to those who will benefit the most from this project: children with learning disabilities and their parents.
What is a Learning Disability?
Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD/ADHD)
Success Stories
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February 10th, 2009
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Though web success stories still occur today, the www market has settled down compared to 10 years ago when it seemed like any web idea was a lottery ticket to financial freedom. After the bubble popped, the market crashed then stabilized. Technologies got more sophisticated and the web development industry matured, so building a proper site became more expensive.
The result? There is a lot more competition than in the past. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for new ideas, there is just less vacancy than there used to be. With more competition out there, there is more of a chance to get eaten by the big fish of the sea. That’s why, after all of the time and effort it takes to build a quality website, a lot of e-business ideas can go bust.
So this means that developing an e-business today is pretty much the same as developing a conventional business in terms of time, money, and effort. You need to build it up orgranically, over time, with a real clientel base.
Avoid the abstract
While dealing with the abstract will get you far as an artist, it can be disasterous in the practical world of business. One of the most common mistakes of websites that flop is that they do not have a concrete target market. They are not talking to real people. Their owners simply had this great global idea, thought they would put it online, and that as soon as the site was launched, the entire web community would flock to check it out. Well guess what? They open the doors and nobody comes? Why? Not because they have a bad idea necessarily, but because nobody knows it’s there.
On the other hand, a local community centre may post a new section on their site with half the graphics and no cool multimedia, but that section alone may get quadruple the traffic. Success! And it’s because the community centre is addressing real people who already know the organization.
This holds true even with blogs. If you have a blog, don’t blindly post articles based on the possibility that passers-by may read, maybe they will. But if you want sustainability, you need to talk to real people; you need to build a community.
Leave the abstract for art critics of the Louvre.
Word of Mouth
After all the technology and means of advertising options at our disposal today, word of mouth is still hands down the best marketing tool. But how does word of mouth translate to the internet?
The answers is blogs, forums, email, and recommendations by satisfied customers via these internet means.
Join a blog or a forum community and discuss the matters related to your area of business. Make e-buddies and refer to content on your site here and there (in a non-soliciting manner) to prove the point of your arguments.
With word of mouth comes respect for you as a person and your e-business. You end up building community roots. And you’re not just a faceless company, but a person who has something to say with a reputable opinion.
When you build your site organically, it’s not a quick ticket to the top, but it will make your e-business sustainable, and this will pay off over time. It’s kind of like an investment in real estate or an RRSP.
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February 4th, 2008
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It is the concern of almost every client: “How do I get my site to rank higher on the search engines so people can find me”.
There are a few fundamentals to take into consideration when addressing this question.
Limited Flash
Flash is good here and there, like a sprinkling of salt and pepper (the odd banner or menu), but never build an entire site in Flash if SEO is one of your primary concerns. A Flash file is like a shell the search engine cannot penetrate. Search engines look for HTML, text, and above all meaningful links. So make sure you have ample amounts of those.
Lots of Text
Ever noticed that when you search for something specific, a whole lot of forums and blog articles tend to come up? There’s a reason for that. Search engines crawl through text. They love ‘chewing’ on it. The more descriptive text you have, the more keywords you are indirectly adding to the mix. From a design perspective, sites meaty in text can look cluttered and may actually turn away web surfers. But if you’re concerned about SEO, try to add as much descriptive text as possible to your site within the limits of a clean design.
Links links links
The good and honest way to build up your rating on the search engines is to have a healthy supply of links on each web page, and to have those links actually trafficked by unique visitors (unique i.p. addresses). When there is a steady follow of horizontal traffic on your site (that is, visitors entering and existing off other sites), you will eventually start climbing the rankings naturally.
Proper coding
There are many html ‘tricks’ your web programmer can do to aid in search engine optimization. Though these are too technical to outline, you might want to ask your programmer for a list of what will be done on your site, and research some of these techniques on the net. Good SEO coding should start from the very first line of code on the site.
Remember that these are general concepts, if we knew the exact science of how to outsmart a search engine, we’d be Google! Nobody except those companies knows the details of how they author their own code.
In the next article, we will look at how to market and build up your site organically.
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January 14th, 2008
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Posted by: George Under: E-business
Like the initial branding and logo of a company, an appropriate domain name is a very import aspect of starting an e-business.
Your domain name is your first keyword that gets integrated into your website for the search engines to find. It also may determine how easily potential users will access your site. Further, it is a key ingredient in your company’s brand, image, and identity.
Here are some tips to consider when choosing an appropriate domain name:
Keep it brief 1 or 2 words is best. You can get away with three words if you use really short, one syllable words or if you are using an expression. (eg. ataboy.com )
Have easy spelling Try to avoid words that are commonly misspelled, have double letters, non-phonetic vowels, etc. Users may give up trying to write the domain name or accidentally end up on a competitor’s website. Instead of searchengineoptimization.com, try topranks.com.
Decide on an appropriate domain ending Should you use .ca or .com? .edu or .org? .com is global and stands for commercial, but not many .coms are available these days. Sometimes the ending .com may diminish credibility, like in the case of an organization or institution, making them sound too commercial. If you only plan to do business in Europe, why not go with .eu? Or .ca for Canada?
Get creative cars.com may be taken, but you can sometimes find catchy alternatives that are easy for people to remember such as fuzzydice.ca, mywheels.ca, or bestride.ca. Try and go for words that stick in people’s mind like a jingle, even if your company name is something as bland as Jo’s Cars.
Check the competition a little research into similar existing domain names, and their sites can inspire you with some ideas, as well as give you a sense of what your competition will be.
Finding the right domain name can be tricky, but with a little thought even the most generic of business names can claim its corner on the internet.
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January 7th, 2008
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It’s not uncommon that clients who approach me needing a web site or application have no idea what’s involved in creating their particular project. This can often to lead to a bit of embarrassment on behalf of the client because he or she may not want to show a lack of technical knowledge (for fear of looking stupid).
It’s really important to get past that hang up because proper assessment of a project ensures that it’s lifespan will run smoothly. This saves the client money, and the programmer a lot of extra hours of unneeded coding.
When it comes to site development, almost anything is possible from the outset in terms of functionality and technology; however, the more you devote yourself to a particular path when developing the site, the more stringent the parametres become. This is intensified even more when budgets are taken into consideration.
Not to get to philosophical, but it’s kind of like life itself. When you are 20, single, and fresh out of high school, life’s paths are virtually unlimited. You could go to college, or travel, or start your own business. You could party, or get into a relationship, or stay single, or be in many relationships! Essentially, if you choose a particular path and don’t like it, it’s fairly easy to change gears again at 24. But the older you get and the more you devote yourself to a particular path, then the harder it becomes to undo what you have done. It’s not impossible (though in fact some things actually are impossible by that point), but it is definitely a lot more difficult.
Site development always has a project life span. The more you devote to particular method of building the site, and the farther along you go in the project, the more difficult it becomes to make major structural changes late in the game without hours and hours of programming and designing, or just starting from scratch altogether. Later in the project, you may have less options regarding what the site can do technically or in its functionality. Asking your developer what is or is not possible at that stage never hurts either.
Essentially, this is where project assessment becomes vital. If you and your developer plan correctly and have a clear idea of what the site is to do in the beginning stages, you can really minimize this particular type of stress, which usually surfaces after the midway point of the project.
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January 2nd, 2008
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