Web Design

LWEBG is a web design firm founded in Louisville, KY providing quality web design services through our nationwide network of developers.

If this isn’t your first experience with working with an e-commerce web design firm, you’ll notice a lot of differences when you work with LwebG and it begins with service. When you work with LWEBG, you’ll always speak with a real person and if you ever have questions, all you have to do is call us. We really do answer our telephone and we answer it 24/7/365. You’re never in the dark with LWEBG.

Another difference is in the actual programming techniques we employ. We like to build websites that our users can edit and so we can develop websites in any popular Content Management System, including Joomla, Wordpress and, of course, Drupal.

Our lead programmers are expert at developing custom desktop and web based applications.

Need something that will function on smartphones? Our mobile development capabilities are unmatched and our SEO team can make sure your customers can find you online.

The Importance of Good Web Design
Proper user experience incorporates a number of disciplines to impact the overall experience a person has when viewing the work your web designer has created. It involves a sequence of interactions between you, through your web design, and a web site visitor. When you design a website, you have a series of objectives you wish to accomplish and it is your web design company’s job to apply the proper web design elements to effectively communicate those goals and maximize the effectiveness of your message.

It’s also your web design firm’s job to satisfy the needs of your web site’s visitors quickly and efficiently. People like to click, but they don’t like to have to click more than 2-3 times to find the information they seek.

User Experience Elements in Web Design Include:

An aesthetically pleasing web design, applying the right amount of visuals, including graphics, photography and videos where appropriate
Proper use of text to describe your company and establish reasons a person should do business with your company
Clean and accurate navigation to enable viewers to quickly find the information they seek
Our web design team specialize in creating stimulating artwork that inspires viewers and motivates them to become customers utilizing CSS Web Standards programming and html.

The History of Web Design
Tim Berners-Lee published what is considered to be the first web design in August 1991. Berners-Lee was the first to combine Internet  communication  with hypertext. Web design companies develop websites in a markup language called HTML, and early versions of HTML were very basic, only giving a website’s basic structure, and the ability to link using hypertext. Web design using HTML made it so users could easily navigate to other pages by following hyperlinks  from page to page.

As web design progressed, the markup language changed to become more complex and flexible, giving the ability to add objects like images and tables to a page. Web design features like tables, which were originally intended to be used to display tabular information, were soon subverted for use as invisible layout devices. With the advent of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), table-based layout is now considered very outdated. Database integration technologies such as server-side scripting and design standards like W3C further changed and enhanced the way web design is done.

With the progression of the Web, many web design companies have been formed to serve the growing worldwide demand. As with much of the information technology industry, many web design companies have been established in technology parks in the developing world to take advantage of the relatively lower labor rates found “offshore”.

Web Design that’s Accessible
To be accessible, Web pages and sites must conform to certain accessibility principles. These accessibility principles are known as the WCAG when talking about content. These can be grouped into the following main areas.

Use semantic markup that provides a meaningful structure to the document (i.e. Web page)
Semantic markup also refers to semantically organizing the web page structure and publishing web services description accordingly so that they can be recognized by other web services on different web pages. Standards for semantic Web are set by IEEE
Use a valid markup language that conforms to a published DTD or Schema
Provide text equivalents for any non-text components (e.g. images, multimedia)
Use hyperlinks that make sense when read out of context. (e.g. avoid “Click Here”)
Don’t use frames
Use CSS rather than HTML tables for layout
Author the page so that when the source code is read line-by-line by user agents (such as screen readers) it remains intelligible. (Using tables for design will often result in information that is not.) However, W3C permits an exception where tables for layout either make sense when linearized or an alternate version (perhaps linearized) is made available. Website accessibility is also changing as it is impacted by Content Management Systems that allow changes to be made to webpages without the need of obtaining programming language knowledge.
It is very important that several different components work together in order for the Web to be accessible to people with disabilities. These components include:

Content – the information in a Web page or Web application, including natural information such as text, images, and sounds; and code or markup that defines structure, presentation, etc.
Web browsers, media players, and other “user agents”
Assistive technology, in some cases – screen readers, alternative keyboards, switches, scanning software, etc.
Users’ knowledge, experiences, and in some cases, adaptive strategies using the Web
Developers – designers, coders, authors, etc., including developers with disabilities and users who contribute content
Authoring tools – software that creates Web sites
Evaluation tools – Web accessibility evaluation tools, HTML validators, CSS validators, etc
E-Commerce Web Design Since 1998

LWEBG has been developing e-commerce solutions since 1998 and we’ve worked with virtually every end use application applying virtually every “open source” e-commerce mechanism available including Magento, OsCommerce, X-Cart, Zen Cart, VirtueMart, Lite Commerce, DashCommerce, and more.

Here is an example of a simple and inexpensive open source ecommerce solution that we’ve developed, Scentsational Candles. Our first ecommerce web design solution for built for Office Time Savers in LiteCommerce. We’ve built this site for Gun Holsters Unlimited in Magento.  Another more intricate e-commerce development solution in OsCommerce is Century Beauty Supply. We’ve recently done work for the world’s largest e-tailer, Swiss Colony.

Drupal Commerce is built on Drupal and fully integrated with Drupal’s core systems. Some folks may be wondering, though… why use Drupal for an e-commerce website at all? Since we made the decision when developing Ubercart to use Drupal for all our future e-commerce sites, let me give you a little bit of our rationale:

Drupal is very search engine friendly. URL optimization, smart .htaccess, and a host of contributed modules to make your site more friendly and noticeable to Google make Drupal the ideal platform for an e-commerce website. After all, if customers never find your site, they probably won’t be buying your product!
Drupal is a secure application framework. Developers who are much more security savvy than us have worked hard to eliminate security risks and make it easy for developers to write secure code. This ensures your store’s and your customers’ information is kept securely and safely out of the reach of hackers and prying eyes.
Drupal is a powerful and versatile content management system. An e-commerce site needs to do more than just take orders. Customers are growing accustomed to full community sites built around products or product markets. Blogs, forums, product reviews, and articles are becoming essential to attracting and keeping customers in your store. These features are all easy to add and administer to your e-commerce site when it is integrated with a system like Drupal out of the box.
Drupal and the Ubercart project have an ever growing community of developers. This means anyone looking to start up an e-commerce site using Drupal who needs custom code done will be able to find help. There is a growing market for such work, and companies are even beginning to offer specific Ubercart services to clients.
Drupal has a growing list of themes available for download and consultants offering theming services. Whether you have a design on hand that needs to be converted to a store theme or need one made from scratch, you will be able to find the help you need. Furthermore, there is a large list of themes ready made and available for download from Drupal.org.
So, why use Drupal for e-commerce? Your customers will find your site more often, experience a secure shopping experience, and hopefully hang around your site longer browsing the content and other customer retention sections of your site. As a store owner, you can be sure that if someone hasn’t already developed a module to do what you want on your site, there will be someone around with the knowledge to get it done.

Our web site design team specialize in creating stimulating artwork that inspires viewers and motivates them to become customers through the use of front end applications like CSS and XHTML. Our e-commerce web design team creates e-commerce systems that are rock solid, secure and easy to use through the use of PHP and ASP.NET in concert with SQL or Access databases.

There’s nothing we enjoy more than chatting about the Web and how it can benefit your business, so if you’d like a quote or you’d just like to dream a little, call us today at 502-749-4131 or send us an e-mail. Estimates are always free.

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