Web Strategies

So we just wrapped up our second website for an Indianapolis-based restaurant and night life entertainment holding company - AES Group.  For those of your familiar with the market, AES Group is the proud owner of Lulu’s Restaurant & Cocktails on Indianapolis northside and has just opened a club in the Broad Ripple area called Buckwildz.  Intero Design Group is their proud web designer!

You can check out their new site online at http://www.Buckwildz.com/, and we welcome your feedback.

Why this site rocks:

1. Thematically on the nose.  The owners and management of AES Group came to us with a vision that dictated a tastefully raunchy, free spirited honkytonk look and feel.  Note the small attention to detail like the denim look and jean rivets in the menu bar, splattered paint and hardwood floors that match that found in the actual bar.
2. Pliable.  We built in our easy to use, content management system and trained the staff at Buckwildz on how to add photos, change the menu and generally perform all routine maintenance to the site in a matter of minutes per week.  Now they can have an up to date, good looking website without paying loads per month in costly management and maintenance or waiting around for things to be changed on their behalf.
3. Leads.  Shh!  Don’t tell the users, but we knew (from past experience) that the #1 destination on this site would be the photo galleries - chock full of tell all images from the night before.  We decided to tie this with a very short, very simple registration form that allows management to communicate with their raving fans and die hard party goers whenever they see fit.  We’re capturing names, email addresses, cell phone numbers and city/state on an opt-in basis.  Next up: An email and SMS text messaging marketing campaign.

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This week, I want to intoduce a not so new concept that’s finally taking hold - CSS.  CSS is Short for Cascading Style Sheets, a new feature being added to HTML that gives both Web Site Developers and users more control over how pages are displayed.  With CSS, designers and users can create “style sheets” that define how different elements, such as headers and links on your website appear.  These style sheets can then be applied to any Web page.

The term cascading derives from the fact that multiple style sheets can be applied to the same Web page.

Style sheets are a very powerful tool for the web site developer and owner.  They give you the chance to be completely consistent with the look and feel of your pages, while giving you much more control over the layout and design than straight HTML ever did.  Invented in 1997, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are just now starting to be widely used among browsers and Web developers are learning to be more comfortable with them.  They are eventually going to take the place of tags such as <FONT>, which have been deprecated in HTML 4.0.A few benefits of CSS:

• make your pages load faster
• lower your hosting costs
• make your designs and redesigns more efficient and less expensive
• help you maintain visual consistency throughout your sites
• get you better search engine results
• make your sites more accessible to all viewers and user agents
• give competitive edge as more of the world moves to using Web standards

When you’re consulting with a professional web development company, be sure and ask about CSS!

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