Mission statement and purpose: DWS Marketing & Consulting works with clients at a variety of levels from single page web presence sites to complex PHP form entries and MySQL database driven sites. Many clients have retained our services to improve performance site, make minor modification or migrate their site to more affordable hosts. DWSMARK Marketing & Consulting often works as a team member to doing back-end coding of pages for graphic designers. Established in 1986, DWSMARK began as a computer consulting company training new users on computer basics and installing new computer systems for home and small businesses. In 1996 the focus changed to training and web development. Websites should be viewed as cost reduction tools. Callers asking for Fax or address information could have their questions answered easily on the web site. This reduced the cost to the caller and the inconvenience to the called. This does not de-personalize your relationship with your customer. They should be given a voice contact method when personal attention is needed. However, this is only the beginning of cost reduction possibilities. Automatic routing of email, sending email to multiple recipients and auto updating information in databases for high volume sites extends your companies accessibility to a 24/7 operation. Downsizing is only efficient when coupled with a realistic evaluation of employee work loads. Automation has long been accepted as a viable approach to cost reduction. When working with machinery, this approach is straight forward. When working with people, it is a process which must be closely monitored and often tweaked. The information examples on this page, the Windows 95/98 training manual and examples of completed projects listed at the bottom of this page are the best examples of what DWSMARK can do for you.

It goes without saying that all sites are under constant construction or reconstruction. Client needs change. Requirements of the net change The information you need to present to clients/viewer's is constantly changing

Most sites today are created using "quickie" editors to generate code. While this does create pages quickly, repeated editing can leave a lot of junk code buried in the page that results in slow loading pages. DWS Marketing & Consulting has dealt with numerous clients who have had these problems. The view taken by DWS Marketing & Consulting it that the client shouldn't have to know how to create a web page. Clients have an idea of what they want the page to look like or what they want to site to do. It is the job of the designer to make that vision a reality. Too often, after a site is "done", the clients starts noticing little problems. The site doesn't look the same when viewed on different computers. It's too slow to load. Often, after viewing the site for a while and receiving viewer's comments, the site needs some tweaking. It is during this phase that DWS Marketing & Consulting can be a valuable asset. We take your whole site thru rigorous testing to verify viewers can see all the important information. Code is verified to be fast and efficient. Next, your pages tested for cross browser compatibility. This is done using code verifier programs, carefully hand reading the code on each page and using several human viewers and a variety of equipment.

Here is some geek stuff you can try yourself to see how your site is viewed by others. Change the font: Unless your page specifically calls, (meaning hard codes or sets) the fonts (family of character) that are displayed on the screen, the browser's (that's the software that you use to view the page: Netscape or MS Explorer) default font takes over. Usually this isn't a disaster because the default is usually Helvetica or Times New Roman. However, If you have created the page and not explicitly coded the display font information, all bets are off on what the viewer is seeing. Click for instruction on how to change fonts in:  MS IE   Netscape   Opera

This page is set with the fonts specified for all areas except this paragraph. Try changing the fonts in your browser to see what happens. REMEMBER to write down the original settings before you start changing things.

The next problem is dealing with the viewers monitor Monitor resolution video card color settings hard coding oversights Important information out of the viewers field of vision

The final issue is coding, graphics and site security. You wouldn't want someone strolling thru your home, looking around and borrowing anything they wanted, but with an unprotected site, these casual strollers and internet pirates can steal you blind. Try this test Now try it on your own site by removing the file name (the part in the address line ending with .html, htm or something similar.)

Client "in-progress" work. In some cases, the work is original. In others, I have taken over existing sites to do the cleanup. In all cases the sites have a story and I have included a brief explanation. In the case of sites I have taken over, there are before and after sites. As a client of DWS Marketing & Consulting your site might be posted here for you to examine during the design process. This gives you the opportunity to run pages thru testing and know just what you will be getting when the pages "go live". C-B Advertising - this is a live site used primarily as a front end to a database of promotional items housed on a different URL. Bag Tags World - this is a site in progress. It is live on the web to allow the owner to watch the progress. When complete, it will be a database driven site written in PHP and MYSQL. The owner required an easy to navigate site but has over 1000 items that they want listed. To solve the problem I created 3 main framed pages. A dhtml menu which slides out of the way and up and down the screen. A popup menu of terms. A scrollable list of items to select from is database driven based on a customer "information request" form. A shopping cart will be used to save items for later review before purchase. If the client isn't ready to purchase, They are given the option to save the list to their computer in the form of a cookie and retrieve it when revisiting the site. TVS Mechanical - Another simple "web presence" page. The owner had 1 MB of free web space from their dial-up provider and wanted to make use of it. The attempt was to make the page to look like their cover letter, complete with ivory paper coloring. The logo was scanned from the cover-page and touched up with Paint Shop Pro and a letter from the president was included. At that time the company had been established for about 5 years and had a long, impressive list of clients. I used a dhtml auto scrolling list to display a partial clients and project list. The list went on for much longer than visitors would stay on the site. As their needs grew, so did the site. The most common phone questions were answered on the site. Requests for information were handled by an extensive PHP form page designed to target a meeting time, present a rough idea of the project outline and use faxed information to reduce mailing costs. TVS Template version  TVS Live version Chicago Waldorf School - The simplest form of web page, a contact page. The school had only one e-mail address and several recipients. They supplied me only with a business card which I scanned for the header logo and a digital picture of the school. Dale Carol Anderson, Ltd - I was brought on this project as a team member to make a couple of cosmetic changes. Once I started looking at the code I found a mountain of inconsistency in coding which resulted in the site looking far different from the intended appearance. There are several screen shots I used to show the client where the problem areas were, how changes could be made and what the end results would be. Nordent - I was part of a team for this project. My part was to create the contact page and write a JavaScript data entry verify routine to verify that the customer had entered required fields and received confirmation of their e-mail. (JavaScript has very limited checking capabilities, but it was all their budget would handle.) A template and CSS (cascading Style Sheet) was created to produce uniform formatting of 5 of the pages. The home page had a huge graphic and ImageReady was used to cut the graphic for faster loading. Millsart Chicago created much of the artwork. Hartford Loan - Here the job was fairly straight forward. Change the navigation buttons to something which would reduce site loading time, be visible at lower resolution, add a few password protected pages and clean a lot of messy code that was creating inconsistency when viewed at resolutions between 640 and 1024. Soon to be listed: Medwave - By far a very time consuming complex site containing 50+ pages. For this project I was again part of a team. The site was written by an unknown source using a quickie site builder program. After a massive rework the download time was reduced 60%. Many common sense items were added, such as how to contact customer support, hours of operation and automated RMAs   Are you looking for a web host?     Click on the link below. I have received excellent service and low rates from NOMONTHLYFEES.COM for over 5 years.