Getting a web design project launched down the right track is really about half of the entire project.  As different as one website is from the next, one thing stays static for all different kinds of web design projects—big and small, simple and complex—better planning always equates to better end results.

Here are 6 questions you’ll want to give some serious thought to (and discuss with your designer) before proceeding with the production phases of the website design project:

1. What’s the difference when it comes to pro vs. amateur web designers?

It’s always a good idea to go through the vetting process with each of the designers you’re considering working with.  You might get a few lowball bids by developers that would seem to have some knowledge of web development, but when push comes to shove, simply don’t have the experience or professionalism to ensure a smooth project from start to finish.  Ask all of the right questions to weed out the amateurs from those experienced in producing better-than-satisfactory results for projects similar in caliber to yours.

2. What is the price and how do payments work?

If you think a web designer is being a little bit forward by wanting to discuss payment details and amounts quite early in the process, please know that they’re just trying to keep you up to speed in that department so there’s no sticker shock or surprises later on.  Experienced developers can usually get really spot-on when it comes to estimating the scope and price of a project, but there needs to be a contingency plan in place if the scope should need to be escalated along the way.  Make sure you’re on the exact same page as your web pros when it comes to pricing and payments before ever thinking about beginning production.

3. What is the purpose of the site?

You’ll want to really think about this one and ensure your designer grasps it very well too.  Unfortunately, it happens all too often that an organization decides to create a new website just for the sake of needing a new website.  But what goals should the site encompass?  Who should it attract, how will it bring visitors in, and what will the site do for the visitors once they are there?  By nailing out these essentials before going any further in the design process, the site can be custom-developed to accomplish these extremely important goals—rather than trying to address the concerns and retrofit the site once it’s too late.

4. What features and content will the website offer?

Once goals of the site have been carefully planned out, the next step is understanding and setting up a precise plan of action to accomplish them.  This is where the site’s features and content come in.  What needs to happen in order to achieve all of the goals set forth?  It might be writing a well thought-out section of quality, SEO-optimized content; it might be adding relevant maps, databases, or subscription forms.  It’s all about fully understanding the feature set required to make your site perform the way it should.  Working with your knowledgeable, experienced designer, really sit down and get these aspects of the site right…right from the beginning.

5. How will you bring in your visitors?

Every site has its own unique approach to visitor acquisition.  Some sites will be more like online brochures that serve as a place for offline referrals from phonebooks, offline advertising, and similar sources to land.  Other websites will be developed around a philosophy of attracting a ready-to-purchase, niche-oriented audience from the search engines.  Whatever the case may be for you, just be sure to figure it out upfront.  This way, the developer can work in all of the necessary components from the ground up.

6. How does ongoing site maintenance work?

Maintenance is sometimes the very last thing you want to think about before the website is even designed to begin with.  But it’s still important to ask the question here.  After all, maintenance can play a huge role in how you’ll want to create your site.  For example, if you’re building a new e-commerce enabled site, would you want to have the ability to go in and manage your portfolio of products yourself…or will it be necessary to pay your web developer to add, edit, or remove products from your online shopping system?  Same goes for adding or editing website content—do you want to pay hourly developer fees just to add a new article; or would it be better to integrate a content management system (CMS) in to the site’s structure right from the beginning, so you can make your own updates and changes with no additional developer fees required?

Getting these details, along with all potential wrinkles, completely ironed out at the conceptual phases of the project always makes for a more efficient and more smoothly-implemented project.  Remember, it’s inevitable that better planning can only lead to one thing—a better website for you!

From start to finish, there’s a lot more that goes into building a complete website than meets the eye!  To say that web design is simply a matter of designing a website leaves out a lot of the important facts.  It’s really a multi-faceted process—one that takes quality planning and expert implementation to get right.  Let’s take a look at the major components of a comprehensive web development project…

One:  Planning

First things first, every website must be carefully planned.  Here at Sleepless Media, we usually start right away when receiving a quote request.  We’ll look at all of the information provided and conceptualize a better feel for how the overall project will flow and what details will entail.  As we evaluate projects, we maintain an ongoing dialogue with our customers to ensure we completely understand the goals and gather all of the right information.

Two:  Project Management

Once the details are all rounded up and put in order, the next step is sending over a detailed formal proposal.  After an agreement is reached and the deal is inked, then it’s time to start taking care of business.  This is where it’s integral to have an efficient, organized project management system in place—without proactive project management to track and guide the web development project over each phase through realization of its full scope, there’s really very little chance of putting all of the pieces together so they actually form a desirable, high-performance finished product.  Project management is just that vital.

Three:  Copywriting

It’s always a good idea to know going into a new web development project that copywriting is one of the most essential components of a good website.  It truly is the lifeblood of the site when it comes to SEO and drawing visitors’ attention.  The thing is, it’s not automatically a part of web design (even though the best websites are designed to work hand-in-hand with their copy).  Many folks choose to supply their own site copy—we can work with this and will even be happy to give you some pointers.  We can also help you produce compelling optimized copy; just ask us about our copy and content process.

Four:  Creating The Look & Feel

This phase is the artistic process—the graphic design, if you will.  Usually done by expert professional graphic designers using industry-standard software like Photoshop, the look and feel must be both attractive and thematically appropriate for the subject of the website being designed.  The look and feel can make or break a website.

Five:  Production & Development

Once the visual design of the site is complete and agreed upon, then the next phase of the web development process is to “slice” the design.  This is kind of a reverse engineering process where the visual and style elements are broken down into optimized pieces and tied together through standards-compliant web code.  Doing this right is really an art of its own!

Six:  Web Programming

With the front-end of the website in place now, the next phase of the web development process is building the systems on the back-end that make it work.  The cogs of the machinery include E-Commerce systems, dynamic databases, and content management systems (CMS), along with other detailed programming work.

Seven:  Testing

After the programming phase is complete, all of the components are put together in their intended final form and the quality assurance phase kicks into full gear.  Extensive testing for standards, functionality, and compatibility are very important to making sure full satisfaction is met.  After all, all of the prior phases of development would go to waste if the finished product simply didn’t work right.

Eight:  Launch

Only once comprehensive testing and debugging is complete will the site be ready to launch.  But once it is, this is the most exciting part…putting your new website creation on to the web after extensive planning, development, and testing.

So, would you agree that building a great website is a little bit more detailed than just patching together some code and content and calling it finished?  It’s true—quality web development requires significant planning and preparation; but as the project wraps up, it becomes very evident that the attention to detail is definitely worth all of the effort!

We’ve all seen websites that are immediate turn-offs.  Sometimes, the horror-factor is a little bit more on the subtle side (but still a viable threat).  It doesn’t really matter whether they’re built by the pros or by the determined do-it-yourselfer—either way, here are 7 surefire ways to make sure your website comes out terrible.  Avoid them at all costs!

1. Skipping the planning.

Sometimes it’s tempting to want to jump right in and start the development of a new website without proper planning.  Having a big-picture vision of how things might come out is really great—but it’s not enough to create a site that works well (and oftentimes only leads to an endless game of scope-creep when the plan isn’t well thought-out and implemented).

2. Forgetting to focus.

A website shouldn’t be just a carbon copy of your “all-about-us” print brochure.  Just like a tuned and targeted direct marketing sales letter, it can and should have a specific focus and goal in mind in order to be most effective.  Keyword and content play a big role here.  In other words, it’s not just about the design, but also about what’s behind the design.

3. Overwhelming your visitor.

This is a very broad category of odds and ends to avoid—things like a clashing color scheme, the use of flashy animated graphics, putting too much information in front of the visitor all at once, and so on.  Another thing that many forget about is that the text of the site’s content itself can often be quite overwhelming; maintaining whitespace (room for the eyes to breathe) is very important.  Questioning the overwhelming-factor of your site?  Just remember, 99% of the time, clean & simple is better.

4. Using sub-par images.

Let’s face it, the stock photography that your organization has had on file for 25 years now just won’t cut it on the new website; it’s time to update.  Same goes for the boring old stock photos that are widely overused on the web—you know, the images like a team of business-suited professionals holding hands around a globe.  File size, quality, and even quantity also play a role here.  To stand out and make a good, lasting impression, avoid imagery faux pas.

5. Relying on gimmicky navigation.

Perfect navigation is vital not only to the look and feel of a website, but also when it comes to accessibility, functionality, and even SEO.  To be on the safe side, always stick to standards-compliant, traditional navigation elements.  Avoid navigation that isn’t at the top or on the side—leave the experimental or artistic navigation up to the trendsetters to prove on their websites first.

6. Neglecting to stand out.

Blending in and looking just like all of the other corporate websites out there accomplishes just one thing…mediocrity.  Your website needs to custom-designed to fit your message and your own unique brand (yes, everyone should have a vision of “brand” in mind).  Unless you want to be treated like just another lackluster big corporation, avoid copying their bland web design strategies.

7. Being elusive.

A website that neglects to provide any substantial trust-ability might receive some degree of use on the surface, but visitor interaction almost always drops off significantly at the more critical stages of the process.  How to avoid this situation altogether?  Provide your full story on your about page; provide a complete contact page and reply to inquiries faithfully; make sure the website’s security certificate is up-to-date and working flawlessly.  It’s all about building trust with your visitors and customers—hiding behind a veil of transparency ultimately gives terrible results.

Ensure your website turns out to be successful and attractive by avoiding these 7 visitor turn-offs.  And remember, more usable and functional websites always produce better results!

Have you been keeping up with the latest news regarding Google and the persistent hacking coming from China?  It’s a big deal and certainly at the forefront of web and computer security in the news right now.  In fact, as of today, it looks like the U.S. government might even be providing some help from the NSA.  Google has even considered pulling out of China in a dramatic way.

Here’s the deal—if a company as big and well-protected as Google can be hacked, it really is just a matter of time before your open-source powered website could meet the same fate.

And who knows what the purpose will be.  It’s not likely that your website is going to be harboring any classified government secrets or anything, but that’s not the only thing hackers are after.

Your business might have proprietary information that you need to keep prying eyes away from.  A crazy, but hacking-proficient someone might be out there who wants to turn your website upside down for some reason or another.  Hackers might just want to install spyware on your website to steal private information or perform identity theft of your hard-earned customers.  Who knows.

Whatever the case may be though, one thing we can all agree on is that getting hacked is just not a very pleasant situation at all.

But What’s So Bad About Open Source Web Software?

Well, technically there’s really nothing wrong with open source software in general.  Some is coded quite securely for that matter.  But the bottom line is that if hackers can get away with repeatedly attacking Google’s systems for a good part of December, they can certainly get through the open source software you’re running, no matter how well it’s been written and implemented.

That said, there are a few solid reasons why running open source can put you at risk:

First of all, open source is just that…open.

Hackers practically have access to a complete encyclopedia worth of information on how it works and what security flaws have been identified and patched (as well as those that are still ripe and available for exploiting).

Secondly, open source software is a BIG target because it’s so widely used.

Let’s face it, if a hacker has the opportunity to exploit hundreds of thousands of sites with one “hack,” the chances are pretty big that they’re going to seize this opportunity rather than go after a single little website somewhere that’s running its own secure proprietary software.

And then there’s the updating issue.

We know for a fact that hackers go after open-source software so frequency because it’s such a large target market—and one that’s full of readily available information.  There are even communities of hackers that dedicate their efforts exclusively towards just one open source platform or another.  But even the sense of security that updates and patches provide is really just another falsehood—by the time the latest patch comes out (and if it ever actually gets installed…which is another huge issue), the hackers have already long since moved on to the next opportunity.  Retroactive open source software updates are simply too little, too late for eager hackers.

Here at Sleepless Media, we strongly encourage the use of custom-built software to run our clients’ websites and web applications.

Of course we’re proficient at developing incredibly secure software, but beyond this fact alone, it’s been proven time and time again that hackers simply ignore one-off professionally developed sites like this.  They’d rather achieve notoriety within their software-specific communities or go big time by targeting the widely deployed open-source software that so many websites are using these days.  Being a small fish in a really big pond has its benefits!

Let’s cut right to the point today.  Unlike opening up your word processing software or graphic design program and creating exactly what you have in mind, selecting from a plethora of hundreds of different attractive fonts to use, the way fonts work for your website is quite bit different.  In order to maintain compatibility across the widest variety of web browsers and devices possible, there are strict standards, rules, and guidelines that must be followed on the web.

This Current Practice Is Here To Stay.

Basically, even though new technologies for using different fonts in web design are on the brim of reality, for the near future, best practices will still demand the use of just one of a few web-safe fonts.  While the list is slightly different depending on PC vs. Mac use, the most commonly utilized web safe fonts include:

• Arial
• Helvetica
• Courier
• Georgia
• Lucida
• Tahoma
• Times
• Times New Roman
• Verdana
• And a few more…

Again, it’s slim pickin’s, but these fonts are considered to be universally safe to use in web design—meaning that they’ll render reliably (or at least similarly to how they’re supposed to appear) on almost all web browsers and devices.

The Upcoming Promise Of CSS3

There are some cool new features and capabilities coming forward with the advent of CSS3, including the ability to use a wide variety of fonts; the future of fonts in web design looks bright indeed!  But again, there’s a catch.  It’s great technology, but until it goes completely mainstream, which could take years and years, it’s not really all that reliable.

Of course, there are also a few other tools and techniques that can be used to “implant” a certain font you’d like to use onto a website.  The thing is, they’re just not going to work for everyone—in fact, they very well might not work for most.  For the time being, in order to be compatible with mainstream web browsers, it’s important to specify and design around the standardized list of fonts.

This isn’t to say that it’s not impossible to present new fonts on the latest compatible web browsers, it’s just that you’ve still got to use backup.  A designer doing so will have to plan, design, and fully test the compatibility of using a cutting-edge modern font option with ensuring scaled-back compatibility with older generation browsers.  It’s more work, more time, and naturally, more money.

Isn’t There A Better Way?

Unfortunately, right now there really isn’t.  Some will use graphics to present the fonts of their choice—and appearance-wise, this works great.  However, even though it’s perfectly okay to do in some circumstances, there are also several caveats to using graphic-based text components on a website.  Two of the main fallbacks include causing significant problems with Usability and SEO.

Fonts are important.  Typography has been a staple of graphic design (and the field’s ancestors) for hundreds of years.  Make it attractive and don’t clash by overusing fonts in your design, but also, keep it as simple as possible to be on the safe side.

WordPress seems to have become all the rage over the last year or so.  More and more businesses and organizations are turning to the open source web software platform to power their blogs and websites, and some are even using it as a full-fledged CMS (content management system).  And this is where the problem begins…

Now first things first, let’s make it clear that WordPress is pretty cool blogging software.  In fact, the blog you’re reading right this moment is powered on the back-end by WordPress.  The software was designed for blogs and it’s quite good at powering a blog with all of the right tools and features built right in.

But to use WordPress as a CMS to power an entire website—can this possibly be a good idea?  Unfortunately, the answer is, “No it’s not a very good idea at all!”

WordPress was designed to be blogging software, not CMS software.  Here are three specific examples:

1. WordPress is awfully “heavy.”

In other words, the software is loaded up with a feature set that is great for blogging.  But these features just kind of add extra baggage when it comes to using the system for CMS—they can really make a site sluggish.  Also, because of the extensive blogging feature set, the user interface is full of options and features that will only serve to confuse a CMS user whose primary goal is to add or update website content.  On the other hand, a well-designed CMS system is very clean, simple, and straightforward to use for even the novice user.

2. CMS requires more plug-ins.

To effectively use WordPress as a CMS requires the use of numerous plug-ins.  While using a couple of plug-ins is okay every once in awhile, the fact is that each different plug-in developed by different programmers with different skill sets interfaces in a different way with the blogging software and with other plug-ins that are installed.  The end result can be a compatibility nightmare—especially when a new release or update to WordPress comes out and all of the plug-in developers must scramble to get a new plug-in version together to be compatible.  We won’t even mention the plethora of potential security issues that arise from this scenario.

3. It’s not designed to organize large amounts of information.

Because WordPress was designed primarily to be blog software, it does great with categories and tags—the foundation of blog organization.  The problem with using it as a CMS for a larger website lies in the fact that it depends on the installed theme to establish a proper website navigation structure, and most available CMS themes just don’t handle the task very well at all.  Although it’s the standard for blogs, using time-based content presentation (where newest content forces older content down the list into obscurity) is not a good way to organize most website content.

Sure, go ahead and use WordPress to power your blog (or the blog portion of your website).  This is exactly what it was designed to do, and it works great for this purpose.  But be aware of its pitfalls and limitations before planning to deploy the popular blogging software as a full-fledged CMS.

SEO – The commonly used acronym for “Search Engine Optimization.”  Most often used to describe the practice of optimizing a website, through both on-site and external supporting factors, in order to increase the site’s ranking and prevalence in organic search engine listings for specified keywords and keyword phrase searches.

Organic Search – Organic search results refer to the search engine listings that are essentially free.  These are usually the main body of search results shown for any given search query, excluding the paid search results (PPC ads) shown on the side and/or above and below the main body of organic listings.

PPC – Stands for “Pay Per Click.”  This is a method of paid search engine advertising, wherein a website owner bids on ads pointing to their site that are to be shown within the search engine results pages (SERPs) when a certain term is searched for.  Each time a searcher clicks through via the ad, the bid-for or pre-specified amount is charged to the site owner’s PPC account balance.

CPC – This means “Cost Per Click.” CPC refers to the bid or specified cost for each time a visitor clicks through on a PPC ad to the website.

CTR – Stands for “Click Through Rate.”  Basically, CTR is the percentage or ratio of how many times a PPC ad is clicked on by searchers, compared to how many times it is shown or displayed.

SEM – Stands for “Search Engine Marketing.”  Basically, SEM is the practice of using SEO, PPC, and other forms of online search engine advertising and promotion to attract visitors to a website via the search engines.

Backlink – When another site links to your website, this incoming link to your site is referred to as a backlink.  Having quality backlinks that are both relevant and on-topic helps a website achieve better search engine rankings.

Link Popularity – This is basically a relative score of how many incoming backlinks a website has from other sites around the web.  Google PageRank is one popular and reliable measure of link popularity—although it does take into account additional relevancy factors beyond the sheer number of backlinks a site has.

Anchor Text – This is a word or phrase that is highlighted and selected to be linked to another web page or website.  In other words, when you link to another site or page, these are the words that a visitor would click on to visit that site or page.

Meta-tags – These are markups within the code of a website that include components such as title tags, header tags, descriptions, keywords, image titles, and so on.  Correct use of Meta-tags can effectively support a website’s search optimization strategy by providing helpful background details and clues to the search engines about what a web page is about and which parts of the page are intended to be most important.

SERP – Acronym standing for “Search Engine Results Page.”  When you perform a search on one of the search engines, the listings page that comes up for your search query is a SERP.

Search Engine Spiders – Search spiders—commonly referred to as search bots and sometimes as robots—are the programs that the search engines use to analyze and review your website to determine what it is about and how well it should be ranked within the search index.

Black Hat – Black hat is a term commonly used to describe using SEO tricks and techniques that are against the policies of the search engines or are in some other way against the best interest of the visitor (and are simply used to “trick” a searcher into visiting a site).  A few common black hat practices include doorway pages, cloaking, keyword stuffing, and spamdexing.  The bottom line is to steer clear of any of these SEO methods—while they might work for a short-term boost of traffic, they are unethical and will eventually get a site banned or substantially penalized by the search engines.

White Hat – The polar opposite of black hat SEO is what we would call “white hat SEO.”  It is the practice of following the guidelines, policies, suggestions, and terms of service set forth by the search engine companies to maximize a website’s search performance by providing the search engines with exactly the information they want to see in a helpful, organized manner.  Using white hat SEO puts the interests of the search engines and their visitors first and foremost—it helps search engines provide more accurate, helpful, and relevant results to their visitors.  It’s a win-win proposition for all involved.

You’ve probably run across several web designers who insist on using Flash to create websites.  Most have good intentions, but are just not fully aware of the pitfalls that come along with relying too heavily on Flash web design.  Others are probably just really bad web designers altogether.  Enough said about that.

But one thing is true.  Regardless of what you’ve heard, using Flash on the web has some really great applications and some that are, well, just not very good at all.

For example, a couple of good possible uses might include:

• Using Flash for video. Flash-based video has more or less become the iron-clad standard for streaming video on the web.  It works very well.
• Using Flash for image libraries or other “widgets” or “apps.” Flash works nicely as a sub-component in many photo sharing slash portfolio types of website applications.

That said, it’s still probably best to use Flash components on your website as sparingly as possible.  And it’s all for very good reason.  In fact, Google themselves has even laid forth the shortcomings of using Flash on websites.  They spell it out very concisely and clearly here on their Webmaster Central Blog:

As many of you already know, Flash is inherently a visual medium, and Googlebot doesn’t have eyes. Googlebot can typically read Flash files and extract the text and links in them, but the structure and context are missing. Moreover, textual contents are sometimes stored in Flash as graphics, and since Googlebot doesn’t currently have the algorithmic eyes needed to read these graphics, these important keywords can be missed entirely. All of this means that even if your Flash content is in our index, it might be missing some text, content, or links. Worse, while Googlebot can understand some Flash files, not all Internet spiders can.

Now when talking about ranking well in the search engines, it’s hard to argue that Google’s position on Flash isn’t pretty much definitive.  The more you use Flash as a component on a website, the less the search engines are even able to recognize it—let alone effectively rank it.  Search spiders are getting better at understanding Flash, but there are still severe repercussions that can be completely avoided in entirety by choosing to use a more universal web design platform.

In Summary

Even though many web designers insist on using Flash-based websites, it’s just not a good idea if you plan on attracting organic traffic from the search engines.

• Flash effectively prevents search engine spiders from recognizing and understanding your site correctly.
• Without being able to understand your website, the search engines are not able to rank or list it appropriately within their search indexes.
• Flash can also be non-compatible with certain web browsers and mobile browsers (meaning visitors using these browsers will see a blank space or error message instead of the site as intended).

Don’t become overly afraid of using a small Flash component or two on your site.  But just don’t fall into the trap of using it for the entire site…unless you’re trying to prevent visitors.

It’s hard to believe that 2009 is drawing to a close already.  Time flys, and so do plans to grow and improve websites and online marketing plans.  The good news is that with the fresh start of a new year, you can start anew with making improvements to your websites at the same time and not have to feel overwhelmed.  Keeping this in mind, here are just a few small—but effective—ways to improve your website in 2010.

Upgrade to more professional web hosting. Few realize it before making the upgrade, but the bargain-rate shared hosting services that many sites utilize can really adversely effect site performance and search engine performance.  Moving your site to a better web hosting package can be just the performance boost you’ve been seeking—and the price could possibly even be less than you’re paying now.

Continue to expand your social networking efforts. If 2009 was the year of Facebook and Twitter really going mainstream, then just imagine what 2010 will bring for social networking!  The benefits of using social networking to drive traffic to your website are undeniable.  If you’ve already begun, then by all means—keep it up!  And if not, don’t worry…it’s not too late to get started now.  Just try not to put it off until the next new year rolls around.

Integrate CMS into your website. Have a great website already, but beginning to get tired of having to pay the pros every time there’s a small content update to make to the site?  If this sounds all-too-familiar, adding a CMS (content management system) will be the improvement of the year for you.  It’s simply a system that enables you to log in and make content edits and additions with a few simple clicks.  Cost savings and time savings from CMS really add up quickly!

Improve your existing website copy. Speaking of adding and editing your website’s copy, have you given this much thought since first developing your website?  It’s important to keep your website’s written content fresh, accurate, and up-to-date.  After all, visitors and search engines alike practically demand it.

Beef up your site’s security. With a seemingly ever-growing onslaught of security exploits to worry about, web users these days are becoming more and more conscious and wary about what sites they visit and how they transmit information on the web.  Regardless of if your website is e-Commerce enabled or not, you still need to do frequent security audits on your site to make sure your visitors are receiving a safe experience.  Making sure your security certificates are all up to date is just one such example in this department.

Develop an organic SEO development plan. Ready to start improving your website’s organic SEO so you don’t have to spend so much on PPC and other costly paid online marketing promotions in 2010?  Well, the good news here is that it’s simpler than ever to improve your site with quality organic search optimization.  Here are a few SEO pointers to help you get started.  And by laying out a solid plan at the beginning of the year, and working diligently to implement it accordingly, you might even be surprised at how simple, affordable, and downright effective it can be!

Let 2010 be the year that you take your website and your business to the next level (and know that we’re here to help you when you need it).  Wishing you all of the best in the New Year!

Providing a safe, secure, and reliable e-commerce experience for your customers is vital at a time when online competition is just downright fierce.  The last thing you want to do is work hard to attain a new customer online, only to lose them because of a security problem…even if it is just a “glitch” and not a real exploit.  Thankfully, securing your e-commerce website really isn’t all that difficult; it just requires competent experience by those putting together the system.

SSL Security Certificate Encryption

This is the baseline level of providing security between your visitors and your website—it’s an absolute must for any e-commerce site for sure.  Using SSL encryption means that all private data provided and transmitted in a transaction is completely locked down to any and all would-be prying eyes out there along the stream of transmitted information.

Getting such a security certificate does require the authentication of your website first; in other words, the issuer does a check before the certificate is issued to make sure you are who you say you are.  Providing this standard level of security can also involve the need for a dedicated IP address on your web hosting.  This is also a good thing for e-commerce website owners, as web hosting with a dedicated IP is much more professional than potentially sharing an IP address with bad neighbors on shared hosting.

Use A Respectable E-Commerce System

It’s simply going to work better, be better and more thoroughly tested, and come across as more professional to your website’s customers than one that’s hacked together by an amateur.  Also, when you’re using professional e-commerce software, like open-source osCommerce for example, the developers of the system will usually work hard to release updates and security fixes any time a potential problem is exposed.  In an age where hackers are often several steps ahead of the curve, it’s good to know that experts are right there alongside as well, keeping the software safe and secure on your behalf.

Ensure Custom-Developed E-Commerce Software Is Secure

Using widely available open-source e-commerce software such as osCommerce is a popular and safe way to go for many websites.  However, sometimes something a little bit more custom is necessary to meet your website’s objectives.  If this is the case, it’s no problem at all—in fact, in some cases, custom e-commerce software can actually be more secure because it’s not a “popular” target for the bad guys.

Now at the same time, you’ve definitely got to make absolutely certain that the custom software your website uses has been built by true experts with years of experience developing security-focused commerce software applications, not just some kid down the block that knows how to make websites.  At Sleepless Media, custom secure platforms are actually one of our specialties.

Putting All The Pieces Together…

Naturally, there are additional steps that should be taken to really ensure an enterprise-level secure e-commerce experience for your website’s visitors—and we’ll be more than happy to discuss these ideas with you at any time.  Just give us a call!