Simple Steps for Website Relaunch

1. Collect Materials

2. Prioritize Web Contents

3. Look & Feel

4. SEO & Content Optimization

5. Build & Test

6. Re-Launch

Explanations to To-Do's: http://files.pr2020.com/A_Marketers_Guide_To_Website_Redesign.pdf

3-Month Schedule Download: http://files.pr2020.gethifi.com/Website_Redesign_Process_Checklist.xls

Other Helpful Tips: 

- Minimize the change of important contents and of their URL's. 

- If haven't, try using Google's Webmaster Tools for audience demographics, traffics, and development strategies for the future.  

Top Seven Mistakes in Building Website

Are you building a website that doesn't get viewers bored? Here are list of common mistakes for you to check through and fix your site before launching it officially. 

- No Call to Action: Are you asking for conversion without giving a taste to viewers? Webpage without call to action has nothing that activates the readers. Try seeing what the pages does for audience. Think of a clear purpose of what you want to achieve through that page. 

- No Address Bar: Unless your website is for simple product or a figure, audience wants to find what they want to find out about. Especially when your site has many articles to dig in, it is always convenient for viewers to have address bar on the website. 

- Passive Verbs: Is your website active or passive? Use active verbs and get rid of passive tense. 

- Long Passages: 260-600 words on a single webpage is known so that viwers can read easily. If longer than that, readers either would skip or not read at all. Visuals with short text welcomes viewers to stay longer and feel comfortable with your site. 

- Cluttered badges: Never emphasize too much on social media and other company banners that do not help promote your site but theirs. It tells the reader saying, "We don't have much to promote." 

- Portal Look: Do not clutter your website with unrelated topics, as it creates scattered attention to readers. Try focusing on top three things that you want your readers to get. More than that would rather divert readers to close the window. 

- No Compatibility: Make sure you test out your website in multiple devices and browsers. Try both on Mac and PC. Tablet and mobile. Firefox and Safari. This will optimize your traffic and avoid blunders. 

Except from my paper - Web application security

To build secure Web applications, Microsoft describes a holistic approach, which is to apply security at all three layers: network, host, and application.   The first layer is network, which involves protecting the network infrastructure which consists of routers, firewalls, and switches.  In the host layer, it is securing the host, whether it is your Web server, application server, or database server.

According to the WASC Web Application Security Statistics Project 2008, an initiative to pool together sanitized website vulnerability data and to gain a better understanding about the web application vulnerability landscape, more than 13% of 12186 reviewed sites can be compromised completely automatically.  The probability to detect a urgent or critical error in dynamic web application is about 49% by automatic scanning and 96% by comprehensive expert analysis (white box method).  Also, Analyst firm Gartner Inc. of IBM has stated that 75% of all attacks on web sites and web applications target the application level and not the infrastructure.

Knowing the threats and incorporating security into the applications’ life cycle are important measures essential to the application security.  Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) and Web Application Security Consortium (WASC) publish documents and initiates projects to raise awareness of application security by identifying some of the most critical risks. 




Here is link to the OWASP Top 10, which focuses on Top 10 Most Critical Web Application Security Risks to protect against these high risk problem areas. Be sure to check out the cheat sheet to prevent security vulnerability.