Killer
Construction Web
Sites
Demystified: An Industry
Primer
While stellar e-commerce
site design once involved unending
tedious coding, the good news is that a
veritable slew of new software tools
have emerged to help greatly automate
the process. Heart-stopping
photography, audio/video streaming, 3D
imaging and hordes of other Web special
effects are now within the grasp of any
design-hungry PC user. Indeed, given
that every construction industry player
is continually seeking out ways to be
just a tad edgier, dazzling and more
magnetic than the competition, such
tools don’t come a nanosecond too
soon.
What follows is a
representative sampling to
tried-and-true programs that can
catapult an e-commerce site beyond the
everyday along with some members of the
construction industry that are using
them. Not surprisingly, you’ll
find most construction industry sites
are using at least some of these tools.
But there are a few construction
industry sites that have leveraged a
wide spectrum of design tools to create
a truly distinctive presence on the
Web. In either case, the best of the
sites portray the recognition that
e-commerce design involves much more
than posting a billboard in cyberspace.
Instead, these sites are designed to be
places of business, a first contact, an
interactive tool where prospective and
existing customers can learn about a
business and conduct business there, at
least on a limited scale.
General Web Site
Construction
If you’re serious
about building a Web site, Dreamweaver
3.0 ($299) by San Francisco-based
Macromedia is the industrial strength
package you’ll want to learn. It
is designed to let you build Web pages
using images rather than HTML text, and
integrates well with related tools,
such as Adobe PhotoShop. Other bonuses:
Dream Weaver enables you to ensure your
site can be downloaded by Net cruisers
using older browsers; can be optimized
to ensure it does not "overwrite" pages
you’ve created with other
programs and enables you to select and
resize images directly on the Web page
you’re creating. In short,
it’s a powerful pro level tool
that is also accessible to the
motivated beginner. Web:
www.macromedia.com. Voice: (415)
252-2000
A great industry example
of what can be achieved with a program
like Dream Weaver can be found at
Drywall Information Trust Fund
(www.drywallca.com), based in
Saratoga, CA. The Web site fires on all
cylinders with it’s uncluttered
interface, quick intuitive jumps to key
interest areas, and clear, crisp
eye-catching imagery. Here, less is
definitely more.
Another site featuring
overall design excellence can be found
at Northern Illinois Painting &
Drywall Institute
(www.nipdi.com), based in
Marengo, IL. NIPDI offers a
bird’s-eye view of its site on
its home page, a graphical data drill
visitors can use to find information
quickly and eye-catching shape and
color that creates interest without
clutter.
Generally available as a
programming option in any good Web
design package, interactivity enables
visitors to actually begin doing
business with your firm. Beckman &
Associates
(www.beckmanassociates.com),
based in Addison, IL, offers an
extremely easy to use home page
interface at its site, which visitors
can use to make quick jumps to the data
and info they seek. Visitors also can
take advantage of Beckman’s
quote-by-email service online.
If you’re already
sharp enough to create your own custom
Web site banners, backgrounds, buttons,
bullets and the like from scratch,
bless you. For the rest of us,
there’s NetStudio 2000 ($89) from
Palo Alto, CA-based NetStudio. This is
an easy-to-use program that enables you
to rocket crucial design elements of
your Web site from the dreary to the
dramatic. Its best feature is the
easy-to-grasp, no nonsense,
learn-by-doing tutorials.
Web Image Creation and
Management
Construction industry
Web site creators who need only
peripheral graphics can probably get
away with a less expensive program. But
for serious graphics aficionados
looking for industrial strength
performance, nothing but Photoshop 5.5
($544), by San Jose, CA-based Adobe,
will do. Chances are, virtually
everything you wished you could do with
an image-combine, paint, modify, go
crazy with filtering effects-can be
done with Photoshop. New features
include multiple levels of undo, text
that is extremely customizable, a
magnetic pen and a magnetic lasso.
Baker Drywall
(www.bakerdrywall.com), based in
Mesquite, TX, leverages Web photography
quite effectively at its size, sporting
crisp images of recent projects.
FL Crane and Sons
(www.flcrane.com/default.htm),
based in Fulton, MS, features a photo
image mosaic on its home page that is
impressive without being overdone.
ICR Drywall
(www.icrdrywall.com), based in
Tyngsboro, MA, offers an easily
cruisable "thumbnail photo" gallery of
recent projects. Thumbnail photos are
extremely user friendly, in that they
download much more quickly than
full-size photos, and yet can be
enlarged instantly with a mouse
click.
Adding Animated Images
to Your Site
Too often, animation
creation software seems designed by
digerati determined to make you "pay
your dues" before you can uncover its
secrets. Thankfully, this isn’t
the case with WebSpace Animations
($149), by Ridgefield, CT-based
DeMorgan Industries Corporation. Simply
pop in the CD-ROM, point-and-click four
or five times, and presto-you’ve
lifted the animation you want from this
program right to your construction
industry Web page. Really. Choose from
3D animated objects, letters, words,
buttons and arrows-and leave people
wondering how you became so gifted in
Web animation so quickly.
Amelco Construction
(www.amelcoconst.com), based in
Gardena, CA, uses an animated green
globe to add some imagistic panache to
its site.
Phase2Company
(www.phase2co.com), based in
Fort Collins, CO, uses an animated
American flag to river net
cruisers’ attention to its
site.
While considered fairly
sophisticated, panoramic virtual
reality is nevertheless being used by
some e-commerce sites create 360 degree
"walk-arounds" or "walk-throughs" of
products, company headquarters and the
like. The standard-bearer of panoramic
VR software is Quick Time VR ($399), by
Cupertino, CA-based Apple. Essentially,
users create panoramic VR experiences
by photographing a number of angles of
a scene or product, and then
"stitching" those scenes together with
the software to create a 360-degree,
navigable experience.
Audio/Video
Streaming
TV or not to TV, that is
the question.
Seattle-based
RealNetworks are pioneers and
audio/video streaming and are currently
considered the industry standard for
those who have no doubts. With its
RealAudio and RealVideo Pro Bundle
($399), you’ll be able to reach
115 million RealPlayer users.
Its video scaling
feature allows you to import video at
any size and scale it down for use on
the Web. And an optimal
bandwidth-programming feature enables
the presentation to adapt to the
specific bandwidth of the individual
user. In English: Users will enjoy the
experience whether they’re using
a paltry 28.8 modem, or a Ferrari-speed
T-3 Internet connection.
***
This article appears courtesy of
Construction
Dimensions
Was written By Joe Dysart and can be
seen in the August 2000 edition
***