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 Data & Design: Essentials for web success.
By Wes L. Byrd
In the Gold Rush days of the pre dot.bomb economy, too many companies were in such a hurry to launch a web presence that they put little thought into the design and functionality of the vehicle representing them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year! By doing so, many companies have harmed their own reputation by publishing poorly designed web sites. This degrades the visitor's perception of those companies professionalism and in turn does more harm than good. Choosing to have no web presence is a mistake; having a poorly designed and executed web site is an even bigger one.
While design may be the first impression visitors get from your web site, the user interface is just as important. With all of the clutter found on the web today the concept of less is more is getting serious attention. Simplicity is the key! It doesn't matter if your web site looks great and has a huge and powerful database if you make it difficult to navigate. While artistic consideration is always welcome, a simple straightforward approach to your front-end interface is the best method.
On the other side of the coin, the most attractive design and user-friendly interface are worthless without providing the visitor with useful information. Many web sites today are dynamically generating content from records in a database. Take HomePlacers.com for instance, at any given time visitors can readily access over 5000 homes quickly and easily. The site also packs a very intelligent feature, the Registered user option, which guarantees repeat visitors. Once a visitor has become a registered user, their preferences are stored in the database. Every night, a process runs that gathers each registered users preferences. At the end of the process, an email is sent to each user providing all the listings that meet the requirements they have defined (location, type and price range). To accomplish all of this back-end magic, a complex database design is required.
The largest problem for these kinds of powerful options is database management. How do you keep up with 5000 listings from over a 1000 different agents covering 34 counties without managing it 24 hours a day? Enter REconnectTM by e-Synaptix. A web based application that makes data management simple and efficient.
REconnectTM provides clients like Homeplacers.com with an easy to use tool that practically does all the work for them. It manages data for orders, banners, agents, listings, and provides reports on all of them. It automatically cleans up after itself by deleting listings that have been expired for more than 15 days. Plus REconnect provides a report with warnings before the listings are deleted. For a more detailed list of features see the feature list side bar.
Right about now you're no doubt thinking "That sounds expensive!" Well, to have something like REconnectTM built for you from scratch would be very expensive. But e-Synaptix is now offering REconnectTM as an ASP (Application Service Provider) offering. What that means to you is a small monthly fee to license the product and all its' powerful features are at your disposal. Very little setup cost is involved and. its even cost effective to use for sites that may only manage 50 listings or less. Yet it's powerful enough to manage a database with over a million records.
To conclude, don't let your web site get you down. Make sure your web site portrays just how professional your company is. Insure that it is user friendly. Be sure your web site uses a reliable and powerful database and don't let your database manage you! Find a tool that lets you focus on what you do best and leave the details to REconnectTM.
To learn more about REconnectTM and its features, visit www.e-synaptix.com. | 
