Web Site Hosting       

 An important factor in every online project is hosting. Gecko Studio understands the importance of keeping  your site or application online even  when a sudden increase in visitors occurs. We also understand that not every site or application has to be able to complete thousands of transactions per second. Therefore we offer all our clients scalable hosting solutions, fit to their individual needs. You don't have to look for an external hosting partner when working with us; we can manage the complete process from development to hosting.

Planning your Web Site 

Your Audience 

Whether you are building a web site for a small firm or an international manufacturing organisation, before you dive into the details of creating your Web site, you need to develop a sound plan that encompasses your objectives and your target audience - you should consider the following:

Identify the aims of your web site

It's one thing to realise you need a web site, but do you know why you need one? Before you start designing your site, you need to have a clear set of aims in mind. Create a list of objectives (stepping stones enabling you to achieve your aims) that define your web site plans - they might read as follows:

Provide core information about my business

Provide in-depth, pre-sales information about my products or services

Reinforce my branding messages

Help my customers find and contact me

Function as a landing page for e-marketing

Enable my customers to purchase via telephone or mail-order

Allow my customers to purchase directly online

Help new customers find me via search engines or other online directories

Once you have mapped out everything you want your site to accomplish, you can begin thinking about how your design and content will support these objectives. At this point, you should also decide whether or not you will be engaging in actual e-commerce  - selling your products on your Web site. If you do plan to build an e-commerce site, you'll have an additional set of tasks outside of planning and building the site itself. Be prepared to figure out pricing, taxes, shipping logistics, credit card or other payment capabilities, inventory communication, and other merchandising issues before you begin creating the e-commerce site. Many web site hosting providers can help you resolve these logistics.

 The demographics of your audience will affect the way you design your web site. If your web site audience is very computer-savvy and will most likely be accessing your site with a high-speed connection, you can load up your site with graphics and multimedia. If your audience will most likely have minimal computer experience and a slow connection, your site design should emphasize clear navigation and be primarily text-based. A good rule of thumb is to keep your Web site as simple and easy-to-use as possible while still using enough graphic elements to create a compelling, brand-distinguishing design.

You should also consider how your target audience will dictate your design theme. If you have a conservative, serious audience, stick with classic design themes and straightforward information. If your audience is young and energetic, you may be more successful with brighter themes and more multimedia.

Content Management or not?

  Depending on your level of expertise, you may decide to manage the site yourself or retain your web design company to manage your site. (Notice that it is assumed as a given that your web site will need to be managed!) If your site is fairly simple, you may find it most cost-effective to manage it yourself. You can choose from a variety of Web layout programs that let you edit a Web site without ever touching a line of HTML code. We can assist you with this if necessary.

A Content management System (CMS) is a facility which allows the owner or manager of a web site to login to an administration area of their web site with a username and password and edit the web site "behind the scenes". A good content management system allows you to upload images from your own computer to your web site, create new pages, update news items, upload documents for visitors to download and generally make all the changes required by a modern business or organisation. As a CMS is actually tow web site, one public, one private, it costs more to create initially but depending on your requirements the benefits of you or your staff having direct access to you web site will be obvious.

 Content Management       

The following outline the basic features of any good quality content management solution. Our CMS solutions offer include all of these and many more:

 WYSIWYG Document Editing

Create and edit your web pages just like you were writing a document in a word-processor.Add tables, images and formatted text without any knowledge of HTML. 

Security

Worried about security? Don't be. Our CMS provides access permissions so that you retain total control over which users have access to which parts of your web site.

 Scheduled Publishing

Schedule your documents to be published and unpublished to and from your website at given dates, which you configure.

 Modern & Intuitive Interface

The Content Management System has been designed from the start to be user-friendly and easy to navigate.

 Support & Training

Training and support is included with all our content management solutions.

 Unlimited Functionality

Our Content Management system allows you to add your web based applications which are enclosed within the structure of the site The scope for growth and future development if necessary is literally unlimited.

 Template Driven

Templates in this context doesn't mean "generic" it refers to the ability to apply different variants of the core "template" to different sections of the site.