Website Development
Circuit
Riders builds practical websites and online stores that are
visually appealing, clear, and easy to use. Our work lays
solid foundations that are easy to maintain and expand,
greatly reducing your long-term costs of ownership.
Website development projects can be confusing and intimidating for even the most technically savvy users. Circuit Riders has years of experience in Web development, and can work with you to avoid common website project pitfalls, technical headaches, and hidden escalating costs.
Whether you want to maintain the site yourself or hire us to do it for you, we always clearly explain what we're doing and why. We make sure that all of our clients understand the basic Who, What, When, Where, and Why of their websites and online stores. All of our projects include some level of custom documentation and training.
Why the Source Code Matters
Unlike a print brochure or a magazine ad, a website is never "done". Ever.
So the way a website is built will make an enormous difference in how much it will cost to maintain and expand over time. A site that has been developed with valid, well-formed HTML code and a site developed with invalid, sloppy HTML code may look identical in a browser, but their impact on the bottom line (not to mention your SEO) will be completely different. We have seen more than one business fail as a direct result of the ever-increasing costs incurred from trying to maintain poorly written source code and bad technical processes.
Two Source Code Examples
The following examples show the HTML source code for the navigation links on two different websites (click to view full size):
Dense Navigation Links in HTML Source
Code
Clear Navigation Links in HTML Source Code
Which set of navigation links above would you rather update? More importantly, which set do you think costs more to maintain?
Dense Link Code
The dense navigation links in the first example were probably created using Dreamweaver by someone who never saw what the code looked like underneath. What's worse, this code is on every page of its website. In order to update these navigation links, it will be necessary for someone to update this code... on every page of the site. Even if it's maintained in a Dreamweaver template (which this example is not), doing so is still a multi-step process. You need to update the template, then update all the pages that use it, then upload all the edited pages to the site. If your website has just a handful of visitors every day, that's not a big deal. If your website is an online store with 400,000 products doing tens of thousands of dollars of global business daily, you have a major, expensive problem.
Clear Link Code
The clear navigation links example comes from the source file of this web page, and were done by hand. The styles are controlled with the website's Cascading Style Sheet, and the links are maintained in a separate "include" file, which is inserted into every page on the Circuit Riders website by a short line of PHP script. To update the navigation links for the Circuit Riders website is a simple matter of updating that one file and uploading it to the live site.
Working smart takes a little more time because you need to take more care with your code, so it costs more up-front. However, the payoff is immediate. The work pays for it self quickly, and is amortized over time; the savings will continue through the life span of the website and the business.
Reduce Your Risk Now
If you want a website that you – and your budget – can live with, Contact Us without obligation. Call (412) 422-1611. We're on Eastern time.