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AI (Artificial Intelligence) in Web Design

AI has the potential to revolutionize web design by providing personalized experiences, automating content creation, enhancing website security, and improving website testing.

How to use AI in Web Design

In today’s digital age, a strong online presence is crucial for any business to thrive. A company’s website is often the first point of contact with potential customers, and a well-designed website can make a significant impact on a user’s perception of the company. With the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI), web design companies can now leverage this technology to create even more effective and personalized websites. In this article, we will explore how web design companies are using AI to enhance their services and provide more value to their clients.

  1. Personalized user experiences AI allows web designers to create personalized user experiences by analyzing a user’s behavior on the website. By tracking how users interact with a website, AI algorithms can provide insights into the user’s preferences, interests, and behavior patterns. This information can then be used to tailor the user experience, such as presenting relevant content, offering personalized recommendations, and even adapting the website layout and design to suit the user’s preferences.

For example, an AI-powered website can automatically adjust the font size and color scheme based on a user’s browsing history. If a user frequently visits websites with dark color schemes, the website can adjust its color scheme to match the user’s preference. This level of personalization can greatly enhance the user experience and increase engagement on the website.

  1. Automated content creation AI-powered content creation tools can analyze data and create unique, high-quality content for websites. These tools can generate product descriptions, blog posts, and even entire websites based on a set of parameters defined by the web design company.

For example, an AI-powered tool can analyze a company’s brand guidelines, target audience, and marketing goals to create a website that is tailored to the company’s needs. This can save web designers a significant amount of time and effort while ensuring that the content is high-quality and effective.

  1. Intelligent chatbots Chatbots are becoming increasingly popular on websites as they can provide instant support and assistance to users. AI-powered chatbots can provide a more intelligent and personalized experience by analyzing the user’s behavior and providing tailored responses.

For example, a chatbot on a website selling shoes can analyze a user’s browsing history and recommend shoes that match their style and preferences. The chatbot can also provide instant answers to frequently asked questions, reducing the workload on customer support teams.

  1. Enhanced website security AI can also be used to enhance website security by detecting and preventing cyber attacks. AI algorithms can analyze website traffic and detect suspicious behavior, such as unusual login attempts or unusual patterns of data access. This can help prevent data breaches and protect sensitive user information.
  2. Automated website testing Testing a website for bugs and errors can be a time-consuming process. AI-powered testing tools can automate this process, making it faster and more efficient. These tools can analyze a website’s code and identify potential issues, such as broken links, slow page load times, and compatibility issues with different browsers and devices.

For example, an AI-powered testing tool can automatically test a website’s responsiveness across different screen sizes and resolutions. This can help ensure that the website looks and functions correctly on all devices, including smartphones, tablets, and desktops.

AI has the potential to revolutionize web design by providing personalized experiences, automating content creation, enhancing website security, and improving website testing. Web design companies that leverage AI can provide more value to their clients by creating more effective and engaging websites. As AI technology continues to evolve, we can expect to see even more innovative use cases for AI in web design in the future.

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Advantages of Custom Web Design versus Templates

Custom Web Design in Los Angeles

Advantages of Custom Web Design

Whether you’re designing a website, creating an app or building an online store, it’s essential that your design looks professional and conveys the right message. There are plenty of tools available to help you create a website, but most of them come with limitations—and often cost more than they should. Custom web design is the best option for getting exactly what you want – it allows professionals to create your entire site from scratch based on your specific needs. Here are just a few reasons why custom web design is the way to go:

Custom site design is unique.

Custom site design is unique. It’s a better fit for your business, as it was custom-made for you. In addition to being more memorable than a template, it also conveys that you’re an individual who cares about what their website looks like and how it functions.

Custom site design is flexible.

A custom site design is flexible. If you want to change the look and feel of your site, or add or remove features, pages, content or layout—you can do it all. You might need help from a web designer at first because they understand the code behind your site and can help you make changes quickly.

But when it comes time for you to manage your own website, there are some things that are easy for any user:

  • Changing colors or fonts—This is something most people know how to do whether they have experience with websites or not! It’s just a matter of knowing what colors work well together and where best place them on your page (if using multiple)
  • Adding/removing pages—If something isn’t working out like planned then removing pages is easier than adding them! Most CMS systems allow users the ability edit existing ones but if someone has made an error in creating even one page then simply deleting means starting over again with only one issue instead of two…or three…or four…etc etc etc

Custom websites are responsive.

Responsive website design is a technique that allows your site to adjust its layout based on the screen size of the device viewing it. If you have ever visited a website on your phone and found some of the text to be unreadable because it was so small or had to scroll horizontally for more than one page, then you know what we mean by this.

In order for a site to be responsive, the code behind it must change depending on how much space is available. For example: if you have an image in your header that takes up 50% of the screen width when viewed from desktop computers but only 30% when viewed from smartphones or tablets (which typically have smaller screens), then your custom-made code should automatically resize that image so that it fills 30% of each section regardless what kind of device someone might be using.

This saves time because instead of having multiple versions of each page (one for desktop computer users, one for tablet users, etc.), only one needs to be created and all others are automatically generated based on user information such as browser size and screen resolution.

Custom website design can help with SEO.

  • Custom web design is unique.
  • Custom websites are flexible and responsive, which can help with SEO.
  • Custom website design can also be more affordable than you think!
  • Custom website design gives businesses an edge over their competition, so they will be able to stand out from the crowd and thrive in today’s digital world!

Custom site design can be more affordable than you think.

You might be surprised to learn that it can be more affordable to have a custom website built than to use a template. That’s because with a template, you’ll have the same design as everyone else who uses that particular template. If you want something unique, it will cost more—even if your site is simple and doesn’t require any customization whatsoever.

If you go with a custom web design service like ours at the Los Angeles Web Design Company, we can build your custom site on top of a WordPress platform so that no one else has the same design as yours.

Custom website design gives businesses an edge over their competition.

Custom web design is more personal. It can be customized with your specific colors, fonts and imagery. A custom website will match your brand’s style and feel, making it more unique than a template that everyone uses.

Custom web design is more flexible. A template may not allow for certain features that you need in order to do business online—which means you may need to adjust your site constantly as things change over time (think: new products or services). With a custom web design, this can be avoided because the designer has already designed how everything will look on screen—so it’s easier for them to add new features later on without having to worry about changing anything else!

Having a custom website makes your business grow

Having a custom website makes your business grow. It helps you stand out from the competition, be more attractive to customers, and increases your chances of success.

Custom web design is more flexible and responsive than templates or template-based platforms are. You can easily make changes or add new content as needed because it’s all custom-built for you—not pre-made for anyone else.

A custom website gives you an edge over your competition because it’s unique to your brand, making it easier for people searching online to find what they need from you. It also provides a better user experience with features that make sense for how they want to interact with the site (elements like forms that auto-fill customer information based on their previous orders).

Conclusion

As you can see, there are many benefits to having a custom website. It will help your business stand out from the competition and give it an edge over others. It’s also important to note that designing your own site doesn’t have to be expensive. In fact, by using our easy-to-use template builder tool, it can even be affordable!

Contact the Los Angeles Web Design Company >

Why We Develop WordPress Websites

WordPress Developers

WordPress is the most popular content management system of all time, and it’s not hard to see why.

With over 60 million websites developed WordPress, there are plenty of reasons for you to consider using it too. Here are just a few:

  • It has a huge community of users and developers who contribute to the project through free plugins, themes and other tools
  • The website platform itself is open source which means that any developer can view or alter its code
  • Developers can get started with a WordPress website quickly because you don’t have to worry about buying expensive licenses or installing third-party apps that may not work well together

Developing on WordPress is easy and flexible enough to be used for any type of website imaginable.

The platform has been developed for millions of websites, from simple blogs and brochure sites to full-blown e-commerce stores with thousands of products.

WordPress’s versatility comes from its ease of use as well as its open source nature. Developers can build sophisticated websites on WordPress using third-party plugins or custom. And because these extensions are available publicly, they can be adapted and customized to fit nearly any type of project or client workflow (users can also contribute code back into the community).

WordPress websites are customizable.

WordPress is an open source software that any developer can use for free. Open source means that the software’s code is open to the public, so any developer can look at it and even modify it. WordPress is a free and open source content management system (CMS) based on PHP and MySQL.

As of 2022, WordPress powers over 43% of all websites on the internet, making it the most widely used Content Management Systems available today – making it significantly more popular than other options like Joomla or Drupal.

Custom WordPress Web Design >

The popularity of WordPress as a CMS can be directly attributed to the fact that it provides users with a significant degree of flexibility, ease-of-use, and practically limitless customization capabilities.

In addition to being easy to use, WordPress also gives developers complete control over how things look on your site by allowing users to upload custom themes from thousands available online (or design their own). A theme allows you to change all aspects of your site including colors and images throughout the site itself so that it matches what people expect based off what they see at first glance. Themes control how your site looks, while plugins allow you to add features like an eCommerce store or contact form builder without writing any code yourself (or paying any money).

WordPress has a vast community of developers.

  • There is a large community of developers that work on WordPress
  • WordPress is open source, which means that it is free to use and edit.
  • The WordPress community is one of the largest and most active in the world.

This means that if you have a problem with your website, there will be many developers who can help you.

The WordPress selection of plugins is rich.

If you’re looking to take your WordPress website to the next level, plugins are a great way to do it. There are thousands of plugins available for free that can be used to add features such as e-commerce integration, social media integration and more.

Plugins also help make your website faster and more secure. Most of them are developed in PHP or JavaScript, which is much faster than HTML/CSS code because PHP and JavaScript code is interpreted by the server instead of being downloaded by your browser like HTML/CSS files are. This means that it takes less time for visitors on slow connections like mobile phones or internet speeds with bandwidth caps (like cable modems) to load pages on your WordPress site when using a plugin vs not using any plugins at all

WordPress websites are friendly to those who aren’t technically proficient.

WordPress is a very friendly platform for developers and non-technical users. For one thing, it’s easy to learn how to use WordPress and maintain your site once it’s built. There are countless tutorials, frequently asked questions pages, and other resources that make learning how to build a blog or website with WordPress easy for any developer.

Developers also don’t have to worry about keeping up with “the latest” version of your software; since all updates happen automatically in the background (with no extra work from you), you don’t have to worry about installing new versions or keeping track of what’s compatible with what anymore. And if there’s ever an issue with a plugin or theme update, our development team can help troubleshoot it for you.

WordPress administrative backend has a rich UI that integrates seamlessly into the frontend.

You can rest assured that your website will be easy to manage and update. The administrative backend has a rich UI that integrates seamlessly into the frontend. It’s clear, easy-to-use and looks great.

WordPress development process.

  1. Website Discovery & Planning
    We conduct a detailed appraisal of existing website content, analyze technical requirements, clarify roles and responsibilities. We define marketing objectives, target audiences and desired outcomes. Assets created include a functionality document, user profiles, assignments and sitemap.
  2. Look and Feel
    We start with simple wireframes that show the approximate position and weight of text, images, videos and other required elements on each web page. From here, we employ our secret sauce and create the actual design layouts, showcasing the actual colors, graphics, and text.
  3. Web Coding & Development
    From our Photoshop designs, we code responsive css and html. When using a content management system like WordPress, we will tie-in the html with an admin and database. Then we populate the content.
  4. Testing and Website Launch
    We never launch a website before thoroughly testing it on all devices and platforms. We make sure layouts are optimized and functioning properly on smartphones, tablets and desktops—Android and iOS, Windows and MacOS, all the leading browsers, and more. We also set up sophisticated security measures to help protect your site, your company, and your customers. Once the final website design is approved, we handle all the technical challenges of setting up the host and pointing your domain (DNS).
  5. Web Design Training
    We develop a document with everything you need to know to update your website quickly and efficiently. We include screen sharing sessions to ensure your team is comfortable and proficient with making changes and additions. We also update WordPress, plugins, and more. Contact us anytime via phone or email to make sure your website keeps working perfectly.

WordPress is a great choice.

While we are capable of developing on any platform, WordPress is a great choice. It’s easy to use, customizable and free. If you need any help with your WordPress site, feel free to contact us!

Contact the Los Angeles Web Design Company >

The Web Design Process

Web Design Process

There are several steps in the web design process. The first step is to create a website strategy, which defines the target audience and customer personas. Then you can create wireframes and sitemaps, followed by creating a user experience (UX) design in order to make sure that users can find what they need on your site easily and efficiently. After that, you can begin developing a prototype until your website is complete. After testing and a successful website launch, it’s time to start digital marketing.

1. Define Scope & Goals for Web Design
The first step in the web design process is to define your scope and goals. Before you can create a solution, you must know what your problem is.

By defining the problem before starting on a solution, you will make sure that everyone involved has the same understanding of what their role is and how it relates to other parts of the web design process.

2. Research for Web Design
One of the most overlooked steps in web design is research. The process should include user research, market research and competitor research. User testing is also crucial to this stage of the design process because it allows you to get real feedback from your target audience.

This step can be broken down into three different parts: knowledge gathering (define what problem you’re solving and who you need to solve it for), exploratory research (identify any gaps in knowledge) and evaluation and refinement (create a solid plan).

3. Sitemap
A sitemap is a map of your website. It should include all of the pages, images, videos and other content that you have on your website. The goal of the sitemap is to make it easier for visitors to navigate through your site without getting lost or frustrated.

A good sitemap will also help users understand how each area of your site relates to other areas, so they can find what they’re looking for more easily!

4. Content Creation for Web Design
As you plan your content creation, there are a few things to keep in mind. Your content should be:

  • Relevant to the target audience
  • Easy to understand and navigate
  • Written in an engaging style that piques the reader’s interest
  • Highly relevant, easy to understand and navigate, and written in an engaging style are all important qualities of any piece of web design content.

5. Wireframe for Web Design
A wireframe is a diagram showing the structure of a web page. It’s used to communicate the design of a web page, but it isn’t finished in terms of design or interactive elements. Wireframes are usually just sketches, with simple shapes representing different elements on the screen.

Wireframes can also be used to show how multiple pages fit together and interact with each other.

This process will help you design and develop more efficiently because it reduces confusion when people start working together and they all understand their roles clearly.

6. Layout & Design
This is where you design the look, feel and functionality of your website. For mobile devices, this would include how your site looks on a smartphone or tablet. To do this properly, you will need to consider what elements should be included on each page and their placement within the layout. Reference your wireframe design for each page to help visualize where everything goes before moving onto development.

As part of the design process you will need to have multiple versions ready for testing when developing begins so that we know which one works best for your users. This is a crucial part of the process, as it determines what your website will look like and how users interact with it.

7. Responsive Coding for Web Design
Responsive web design is a way to create a website that can be viewed on any device, such as a phone, tablet, or desktop computer. Responsive design is based on fluid grids and flexible images.

Responsive web design means creating one site that can adapt its layout and content to look good across all devices (from phones to tablets to desktop computers). This approach has many advantages over creating multiple sites for each screen size—it’s more efficient because you create only one version of the page rather than several; it makes your content easier to manage because you don’t have to maintain multiple versions of it; it improves search engine optimization since people can find your site from keywords no matter what device they use; and it allows you greater flexibility in accommodating visitors with disabilities who rely on assistive technology like Javascript-based screen readers.

8. Web Design Testing
Before launch, we need to make sure the dev server is up and running properly. It’s important to test your website on different devices. You should also ensure that it’s accessible and optimized for search engines and mobile devices. Finally, make sure your new site has been optimized for social media—this can mean using SEO friendly plugins or manually setting up Open Graph tags.

A/B testing refers to testing whether two versions of the same page have a better time on site metrics. For example, you might want to see which version of your conversion funnel has a higher conversion rate: one image at the top or no images at all?

You can also test new web design features on yourself first before launching them for real users (known as “Firsthand Testing”).

A/B testing is a great way to see if your web design changes are helping or hurting your website. You can also use A/B testing for new features or pages, like how many images should you have on one page? Should they be in the middle or at the top? You can also test two different versions of a page that has similar content but different design elements like color, layout and copy.

9. Website Launch
Launch the new website.

  • Make sure it’s live and working properly.
  • Update your social media channels and other marketing platforms to reflect the change.
  • Create a plan for follow-up activities, including how you’ll measure success, how often you’ll repeat them, and what changes might be needed if they aren’t working.

10. Digital Marketing
Marketing is the process of communicating your brand to your customers. This means that you’re developing a consistent strategy that will help build relationships with them and keep them coming back for more.

It’s not something that can be done in a few months or even years, but rather it’s an ongoing effort to create content and reach out to the people who matter most: your customers!

The first step in developing a content marketing strategy is to figure out who your audience is and what they want. This will help you focus on creating content that appeals to them and helps build relationships with potential customers.

The next step is to begin the process of creating new content for your website. It’s time to get busy with a pen, paper or keyboard and start writing! Tie in great design graphics to communicate to your audience

Web Design Process Conclusion
We hope this article has helped you understand the web design process. There are several steps that get your website from inception to delivery.

Contact the Los Angeles Web Design Company >

WooCommerce Web Design

WooCommerce is the most popular e-commerce web design solution for WordPress, and it’s easy to see why. With WooCommerce, you get all the tools you need to sell products online and in-person with a single solution that’s built specifically for web designers. You can customize every aspect of your store to create a unique shopping experience for your customers, including:

WooCommerce is a free plugin that can be installed on almost any existing WordPress website.

WooCommerce is a free plugin that can be installed on almost any existing WordPress website. It’s one of the most popular e-commerce plugins available, and it’s developed by many large companies.

The WooCommerce plugin is not just for selling physical products: it can also be used to sell virtual goods such as digital downloads or subscriptions.

WooCommerce was designed to integrate seamlessly with WordPress, making it the obvious e-commerce choice for existing WordPress users and connecting you with the fast-growing WordPress ecosystem.

You’re in good company if you chose WordPress as your website platform. It’s the most popular content management system (CMS) in the world, used on over 43% of all websites and behind some of the largest online stores. That’s why WooCommerce integrates seamlessly with WordPress websites, making it the obvious e-commerce choice for existing WordPress designers and developers, connecting you with the fast-growing WordPress ecosystem.

WooCommerce is an open source shopping cart plugin for WordPress that allows designers and dvelopers to set up an online store quickly and easily on their own self-hosted website or blog. The plugin comes with dozens of features like product categories and attributes, product reviews, payment gateway integration, coupons/discounts/promotions and more.

WooCommerce was designed specifically for designers and developers, taking advantage of the latest web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3, jQuery, Ajax and the REST API.

This means that it’s easy to create your own themes and extensions.

WooCommerce can be used to design and develop an ecommerce site in WordPress with all the features you need to run an online business or sell from your own website. Websites designed on WordPress are open source!

WooCommerce websites are used by a lot of stores that have already been built in WordPress.

WooCommerce is the most popular e-commerce plugin for WordPress. It’s used by many stores that have already been built in WordPress, and it allows you to integrate your existing store with WooCommerce. It also has a lot of design and developer features out of the box:

  • Product pages with customizable layouts, images and text
  • Customized checkout pages with multiple payment options (including recurring billing)
  • Payment gateways including Stripe, PayPal Standard/Express Checkout and AuthorizeNet

You can custom design every aspect of your website to create a unique shopping experience for your customers.

WooCommerce is an easy-to-use ecommerce platform that allows you to design a store and start selling your products online.

You can custom design every aspect of your store to create a unique shopping experience for your customers.

From the color scheme, fonts and images down to the product descriptions, images and videos – everything can be custom designed with ease. The same goes for adding reviews from previous customers so customers know what other shoppers think about each product before they buy it!

WooCommerce websites with a wide range of payment options including PayPal, Square, Authorize and Stripe.

With WooCommerce, you have access to all of the features you need in one place: store management, product display and configuration options, customer accounts, inventory control and more.

You can design custom shipping costs by country and state or region, flat rate shipping fees, or even by weight.

In WooCommerce websites, you can custom design shipping costs by country and state or region, flat rate shipping fees, or even by weight. You can also set up multiple shipping options to automatically charge different rates for different types of customers.

WooCommerce web design process.

  1. Website Discovery & Planning
    We conduct a detailed appraisal of existing website content, analyze technical requirements, clarify roles and responsibilities. We define marketing objectives, target audiences and desired outcomes. Assets created include a functionality document, user profiles, assignments and sitemap.
  2. Look and Feel
    We start with simple wireframes that show the approximate position and weight of text, images, videos and other required elements on each web page. From here, we employ our secret sauce and create the actual design layouts, showcasing the actual colors, graphics, and text.
  3. Web Coding & Development
    From our Photoshop designs, we code responsive css and html. When using a content management system like WordPress, we will tie-in the html with an admin and database. Then we populate the content.
  4. Testing and Website Launch
    We never launch a website before thoroughly testing it on all devices and platforms. We make sure layouts are optimized and functioning properly on smartphones, tablets and desktops—Android and iOS, Windows and MacOS, all the leading browsers, and more. We also set up sophisticated security measures to help protect your site, your company, and your customers. Once the final website design is approved, we handle all the technical challenges of setting up the host and pointing your domain (DNS).
  5. Web Design Training
    We develop a document with everything you need to know to update your website quickly and efficiently. We include screen sharing sessions to ensure your team is comfortable and proficient with making changes and additions. We also update WordPress, plugins, and more. Contact us anytime via phone or email to make sure your website keeps working perfectly.

There are many reasons to consider designing WooCommerce websites.

As you can see, there are many reasons to consider using WooCommerce for your e-commerce site. It is easy to install, customize and manage. There are no limits on how far you take it and it comes with a wide range of support options if you need help along the way.

Contact the Los Angeles Web Design Company >

Designing Inclusive Websites

hands on keyboard

Did you know that 15% of the population may not be able to access your website? Approximately 1 billion people have a type of handicap which prevents them from navigating some websites.

Understanding accessibility is the first step in creating inclusive design. Accessibility design is about removing barriers that may impair all users to fully access websites. In today’s technologically driven world, every person benefits from inclusivity.

Inclusive design makes every web site visitor comfortable regardless of their needs and abilities. L.A. Design Studio not only creates web sites for people with permanent disabilities but for situational and temporary disabilities as well.

Inclusive considerations:

Gender –
First of all, what is the reason for asking a person’s gender? If it’s for marketing purposes, asking a person to state their gender is risking losing a viewer. It’s understandable why users don’t want to share their personal information online. If the gender button is necessary, offer an “other” or “rather not say” option. This is a good choice if a person’s gender is different from the basic genders normally stated.

Images –
Have you heard the saying “A picture is worth a thousand words”? The images displayed on a web page should be as relevant as possible towards your target audience. The images should also be diverse trying to stay away from the norm. For example, instead of having the mother holding the child, the father can be holding the child. A person in a wheelchair can be throwing a frisbee with a dog on his lap. Two women can be playing football. The list goes on.

Inclusive User Interface-
Create an interface that works with a keyboard first using a non-touch, non-mouse, and non-visual approach. The screen reader should be able to access the entire website and then, visual effects are added.

Color-
Color is another important element to consider when developing a web site. Administering a good color contrast is the key to developing an easily viewed page by all persons. Color should be implemented to enhance the usability of a page. It should not be used to understand the flow of the design. Design elements are added to increase the visibility of important features of the web page such as adding color to charts and buttons and underlining links.

Less is More –
Do not overcrowd the screen with useless text and imagery. There is nothing wrong with negative space and it can enhance the messaging. Web pages that are too busy are difficult to navigate and there is risk of losing a potential customer.

Don’t generalize –
Don’t make assumptions based on the way the general public views things. It’s important to remember that not every body thinks the same way. Try to consider how others may be impacted. The idea is to include as many people as possible.

It makes sense to follow an inclusive web design, because the more people you reach, the more potential customers you can connect with. Design products for as many people as possible. Great inclusive design makes the world wide web better for everyone.

508 / ADA Compliant Web Design

Have you recently heard about web sites needing to be 508 / ADA compliant?

Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act (508) are made up of laws requiring information to be made available to all members of the public including those with disabilities.

ADA protects the civil rights of individuals with disabilities participating in interstate commerce. Title III of the ADA prohibits discrimination against disabled people in “places of public accommodation”. Public accommodations include private entities that provide commercial services to the public. Steps should be taken to make certain that no disabled person is segregated or denied services. Title III not only includes brick and mortar accommodations but website accessibility as well.

Section 508 guidelines mandate that all federal agencies make their electronic and information technology accessible to individuals with disabilities. January of 2017, a final rule was published updating requirements for information and communication technology covered by Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. All companies under 508 guidelines must have all digital communications 508 compliant. This includes all website content, emails, computer software, gaming systems, apps, and PDF’s. PDF’s are not accessible by screen readers. Screen readers are used by those individuals who cannot read a website.

The 508 compliance law has expanded to any company that does business with the federal government, such as, legal organizations, private contractors, healthcare providers, service-oriented companies, financial industries, public service providers and many others.

There has been a sudden increase in web site accessibility lawsuits, although courts have not yet reached a consensus on whether the ADA applies to web sites. Neither Congress or the Supreme Court has established a set of standards for web site accessibility.

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 defines how to make Web content more accessible to people of all ages and with all types of disabilities.

The WCAG has provided guidelines for website accessibility.

WCAG 2.1 Guidelines:

Principle 1: Perceivable – Information and user interface components must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive.
Guideline 1.1 Text Alternatives: Provide text alternatives for any non-text content so that it can be changed into other forms people need, such as large print, braille, speech, symbols or simpler language.
Guideline 1.2 Time-based Media: Provide alternatives for time-based media.
Guideline 1.3 Adaptable: Create content that can be presented in different ways (for example simpler layout) without losing information or structure.
Guideline 1.4 Distinguishable: Make it easier for users to see and hear content including separating foreground from background.

Principle 2: Operable – User interface components and navigation must be operable.
Guideline 2.1 Keyboard Accessible: Make all functionality available from a keyboard.
Guideline 2.2 Enough Time: Provide users enough time to read and use content.
Guideline 2.3 Seizures: Do not design content in a way that is known to cause seizures or physical reactions.
Guideline 2.4 Navigable: Provide ways to help users navigate, find content, and determine where they are.
Guideline 2.5 Input Modalities – Make it easier for users to operate functionality through various inputs beyond keyboard.

Principle 3: Understandable – Information and the operation of user interface must be understandable.
Guideline 3.1 Readable: Make text content readable and understandable.
Guideline 3.2 Predictable: Make Web pages appear and operate in predictable ways.
Guideline 3.3 Input Assistance: Help users avoid and correct mistakes.

Principle 4: Robust – Content must be robust enough that it can be interpreted by by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies.
Guideline 4.1 Compatible: Maximize compatibility with current and future user agents, including assistive technologies.
Conformance Claims (Optional)

As stated in the WCAG website, no website will be 100% compliant as there are many different needs to fill. L.A. Design Studio will do their best to make each website as compliant as  possible.

Please do your own due diligence.
For further reading –

Section 508
https://www.section508.gov/manage/laws-and-policies

United States Access Board Guidelines
https://www.access-board.gov/guidelines-and-standards/communications-and-it/about-the-ict-refresh

WCAG
https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/

Want more info, ADA Web Design Consultants

 

Award Winning Web Design

Photo for Award Winning Web Design

The Municipal Water District of Orange County (MWDOC) was awarded the 2018 #INSPIRED PROTOS Award of Excellence for Website Development for its outstanding efforts to rebuild and modernize the District’s website, MWDOC.com. This valuable resource serves as the primary water information hub for all of Orange County. The award was presented by the Orange County Public Relations Society of America (OCPRSA) at the 43rd annual OCPRSA PROTOS Awards Gala on September 27, 2018.

“MWDOC’s digital footprint continues to grow,” says MWDOC Board President Brett R. Barbre. “The District worked closely with the highly skilled and professional L.A. Design Studios to create a uniform, visually appealing, and user-friendly tool for all website visitors. The revamped website effectively tells the Orange County water story, while enhancing user experience, engaging the regional community, and elevating MWDOC’s visibility.”

In addition, this website also won the Gold Marcom for Digital Media, in the website category Municipality.

 

The 5 Best Techniques for eCommerce Websites in 2018

1. Harnessing the Power of Up-Sells and Cross-Sells on Your Website

If a particular product grabs the attention of a prospective customer, obviously it never hurts to let them know what other products they might also be interested in. Promoting a more expensive model of the same product a customer is looking at (or promoting accessories or special features that go with that product) is called upselling, while promoting a related, complementary product is called cross-selling. If the customer is looking at a laptop, suggesting that they add more RAM or a bigger hard drive would be an example of upselling, whereas suggesting that they also buy a printer would be cross-selling.

A robust platform like WooCommerce can facilitate upselling and cross-selling on your ecommerce site through the use of categories and tags. WooCommerce also gives you fine-grained control by allowing you to pick which product(s) should be promoted as up-sells for a particular product and which should be promoted as cross-sales. If you want up-sells in the form of more expensive features for the current product, WooCommerce has you covered there too through its product options system.

2. Helping the Website Customer Find Their Product via Searching, Filtering and Sorting

It’s important to help the customer find just what they’re looking for on your ecommerce site through a dynamic system that offers keyword search, filtering by product attributes (size, color, manufacturer, etc.) and sorting by things like price, top-rated, etc. This system would ideally be single-page (i.e., no page reloads are involved) for the smoothest customer experience. For keyword search, all words associated with products (categories, tags, metadata, etc.) should be considered, not just names and descriptions. For filtering, some options should be automatically disabled depending on the results so that the customer isn’t frustrated by selecting an option only to see the same results appear.

3. Giving the Website Customer a Good Look at the Products with Image Galleries

Being able to see multiple angles of a product, or see the parts/accessories that come with that product, makes for a richer customer experience on an ecommerce site. In particular, being able to see such images at high resolutions is more likely to convince them to make a purchase. A lightbox gallery is the best approach for displaying high-resolution images without directing the customer away from the product page. By default the lightbox should not overflow the display and should shrink the full-size image if necessary, but the customer should have the option to override this if they want to see the highest resolution possible.

4. Mass Website Importing Your Products Through Spreadsheets

Individually adding and editing every product you have for sale on your ecommerce site is probably woefully inefficient, especially if you have hundreds or thousands of products. Instead, it’s better to collate your data in a spreadsheet file and run it through a program that will update or insert your products accordingly. A generic product importer can do the job, but will probably require you to use special syntax in your column headers for complex things like product options, metadata, etc. A custom-coded importer, one that’s especially made for your store, can simplify things for you by allowing you to use whatever column headers make sense to you. Our programmers are ready to build such a solution for you!

5. Offering Website Customers Multiple Shipping Services

Not all shipping services are created equal, especially not if you’re selling overseas. Depending on the customer’s location, UPS might be the best choice for them, or it might be FedEx. Consider offering more than one shipping service on your ecommerce site even if you’re only selling in the U.S. Your customers will appreciate having more options to choose from, and will more likely be satisfied that they got the best deal.

The Top 5 Reasons WordPress Is the Best CMS in 2018

why wordpress is the best cms

1. WordPress websites are friendly to those who aren’t technically proficient

Installation is a snap: Just unzip the core package in the target web directory, navigate to that directory in a web browser, follow the step-by-step instructions and you’ll have a site going in minutes. WordPress websites administrative backend makes it simple to do all kinds of tasks. Need to install a plugin or theme? In most cases all you have to do is search for the theme/plugin using the appropriate admin search tool and you can then install what you’re looking for right from the search results. There’s usually no need to manually upload theme/plugin files, but just in case (say, if you’re using a premium theme/plugin that is not hosted at wordpress.org) the admin provides a way for you to do just that from your browser. You don’t even need to use an FTP client. The WordPress admin also notifies you when themes, plugins or WordPress itself have updates, and makes it easy to apply updates with the click of a button. The WordPress core even updates itself automatically for minor bug-fix updates.

2. Those who are technically-minded will find it useful, too

Writing your own plugins and themes and activating them in the admin is as easy as dropping the right files into place. The key to using WordPress’s programming framework is learning its system of hooks and callbacks. The core defines its own set of named hooks, and distinguishes between hooks that are actions (the callback code is expected to perform some action(s) without returning a value) and those that are filters (the callback code is expected to return a value). In addition, plugins and themes can define their own hooks. These custom hooks can be useful for outside developers who want to alter the behavior of a theme/plugin in some way, or they can be useful internally for modularizing code. For example, if there’s a point in the execution of your code where various actions could happen, you can make that point a custom action hook and define different callbacks that hook into it. If you need to apply various transformations to a piece of data, that’s where defining a custom filter hook would come in handy: all the transformations can be separated into callback functions, each of which hooks into the filter.

3. WordPress has a vast community of developers, it’s selection of plugins is rich

Currently there are over 50,000 plugins on WordPress.org alone, and even more on third-party websites. Some of the most popular include Akismet (an anti-spam tool), WooCommerce (an e-commerce platform), Yoast SEO (for all your search engine optimization needs), W3 Total Cache (a complete caching solution) and Gravity Forms (build powerful forms to stay in touch with your users).

4. It’s administrative backend has a rich UI that integrates seamlessly into the frontend

When logged in as an admin, a handy toolbar at the top of the page follows you wherever you go, even on frontend pages. If you’re on a frontend page (or post) and want to edit it, you can jump to editing in the admin by clicking a button in the toolbar. While editing, you can preview your changes on the frontend before saving them. In addition, the WordPress Appearance Customizer allows you to edit certain parts of the site (widgets, nav menus, site logos, etc.) right on the site, with your changes immediately available to preview before saving.

5. Adding images and other media to WordPress could not be easier

WordPress’s Media Manager allows you to add images, videos and documents through a drag-and-drop interface. If you’re editing a page or post and need to add media to it, the Add Media button brings up this same drag-and-drop interface while also giving you the ability to search existing media. You can even build a gallery with this same interface just by selecting multiple media items. WordPress automatically generates various resolutions (thumbnail, medium, large, full-size) for each image uploaded. You can then select from one of these resolutions when adding to the post/page. Videos are also a snap to embed, even if they’re hosted on platforms like YouTube or Vimeo. You don’t need to bother with embed code, just click the video icon and enter the URL of the video, WordPress takes care of the rest automatically.


L.A. Design Studio® is a 1-stop shop for all our web needs – creative design concepts, website development, photography, video production, ecommerce, custom wordpress and digital marketing. Contact us today for free website consultation.