Development

1. Do you outsource your work or is it developed “in house”? If outsourced, what is the percentage of outsourced work?
   100% in house.

2. Would we have direct contact with developers?
   Yes. We hold formal meetings, informal standups, and real-time chats (e.g. Slack) with our developer team included.

3. Please describe any warranties provided by your development services.
   Digimix offers enterprise Service Level Agreements (SLAs) which provide comprehensive technical coverage of all software developed. Including:

– 24/7 tech support from our senior developers on pager duty
– Guaranteed response times
– Guaranteed functionality and device compatibility

Scalability

Have you provided development services to clients who’s websites receive more than 50 million page views per year?

Yes. Thanks to WordPress development by Digimix, our clients WordPress instances gracefully handles traffic spikes of over 150,000 visitors per day, and deliver over 50 million page view per year. Digimix can collaborate with your organization’s Production Team to optimize in-app caching mechanisms for their system architecture.
Plugins:

Please provide your opinion on the use of plugins in WordPress. Under what circumstances would you advocate using a plugin?

Plugins offer a tradeoff of enabling new features versus creating new vulnerabilities. At Digimix, we’ve spent years vetting a list of reliable plugins that are safe to use for high traffic WordPress sites. However, we do not use the core WordPress plugin system. Instead, Digimix WordPress sites are developed as 12 Factor Apps (the Heroku methodology for building web apps). Plugins are treated as application dependencies and managed by Composer.
Custom meta fields are controlled by Digimix’s private fork of CMB2, that includes proprietary development specifically for Digimix 12 Factor WordPress Apps. Overall, Digimix maintains private repositories of any WordPress plugins used on enterprise level projects and does not use anything we do not work on the development of ourselves.

Security

Please describe your philosophy and general security procedures utilized in performing client services.

Digital security is more important than ever. Digimix developers user military grade encryption tools even in their local development environments. We have comprehensive security procedures in place that cover all aspects of project touchpoint from the collection and storage of project assets, to client communications, to the delivery of software packages.

One of our hot points for WordPress apps is strictly controlling write permissions and functionality. This brings us back to why we treat plugins as dependencies, manage them with Composer, and completely disable the WordPress plugin management system. The fewer opportunities the application provides to write and execute, the less exposure it has to security risk.
All of our enterprise WordPress apps are tested for security purposes. We keep up to date with the latest WordPress and web developer security news. There’s even monitoring in place to alert our team if any security issues related to application decencies are published online.

QA

We collaborate with our clients to learn about their audience’s behavior and build a prioritized list of bowers and devices for guaranteed compatibility. Multiple users test a client approved features list on a client approved devices list and browsers. All errors are logged and resolved on private Git repositories. Device emulators are used in certain scenarios with client approval. All Q/A test results are delivered to the client. In short, we click every link and try out every use case scenario on all the devices and browsers required by the client, meticulously track the results, and resolve any errors.
We also provide Web Accessibility (WAI) compliance assurance and qualitative usability testing for UI/UX optimization.

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WordPress is…

Easy to Use

WordPress is super easy to use! If you can use Microsoft Word, then you’ll be able to update your WordPress website. It gives your the ability to easily update information, photos and videos.

Ultra Customizable

WordPress is flexible enough to do virtually anything you would ever need. If it makes sense to do using WordPress, we can develop it.

Search Engine Friendly

Google has publicly endorsed WordPress has being built with search engines in mind. With great content and the help of a few plugins, a WordPress website can be fully optimized for search engines.

Scalable and Adaptable

Our WordPress websites are built to scale and grow with your as your company does. New features can be added to the site at anytime.

Open Source

The WordPress community includes an active user base and support network with vast amount of resources, plugins, and open source technologies that are free to use.

Highly Reliable

WordPress is arguably the most well documented and reliable content management system (CMS) on the market. With a Digimix WordPress site, you can rest assured that your site will be fast and secure.

FAQ About WordPress

What is a CMS?

CMS is an abbreviation for content management system. A CMS let’s you add, update and edit content on your website without requiring any manual coding or programing. WordPress is the worlds leading content management system.

What is open source?

Open Source is a license making software (like WordPress) free to use and download. This encourages innovation and creates a helpful community of users and contributors willing to share their knowledge.

Can I move from WordPress to a different CMS?

Yes, if you decided you no longer wanted to use the WordPress CMS, all of the site content could be migrated to a different CMS. The system architecture of WordPress is modular, making it possible to move non-Wordpress sites into WordPress and visa-versa.

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As New York City builds it’s brand awareness across the internet with the .NYC domain name extension, attention has turned to the “.NYC Goldrush”. This year over 1,300 domain name extensions are being released to the public, and .NYC is one of the hottest on the market. A recent article from the Wall Street Journal, takes in depth look at how the .NYC domain name will affect city businesses and organizations.  The website for the Lower East Side’s Pickle Day is mentioned in the article as one founding website for the .NYC domain name extension. Digimix was selected by the Lower East Side Business Improvement District as the official web development company for PickleDay.NYC. The new Pickle Day site was launched in September and has been a huge success for the city in promoting awareness for one of their festivals that helps to build the community and support local commerce.

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UX design and a websites interface are a key factor for gaining the trust of your audience. Regardless of whether or not people would like to admit it, many make decisions about the truthfulness of the content of a website on appearance alone. Research has show that most viewers have already determined how they feel about the quality and truthfulness of the content for they read a word, just based on their visual impression of the design. The bottom line is that user experience design should be utilized to build trust.

Building trust through design…

Based on my experience as the Digital Strategy lead at DigiMix who’s role encompass everything from UX design to full stack web development, here 10 top tips for building trust through design.

1. Deliver as Promised

Breaking a promise is the easiest way to lose someone’s trust. If you promise something to happen when you interact with an object on the website, and that doesn’t happen, your audience will become suspicious and trust levels will drop. Have you ever click on a button to read an article, then been bombarded with a pop up add instead? This ad hijacking have become a common pattern amongst web publishers desperate to monetise every click. It’s a cause of frustration with end users and is not helping them to build their audiences. So when you promise something is going to happen on your site, make sure you deliver on it.

2. Keep it Consistent

Use a style guide to plan and implement consistent navigation and design elements throughout the sites. For example, color can be used to signify types of content. Call to action buttons should maintain a consistent look and feel when possible ever possible. Different colors can be used on different buttons, when the actions of the buttons full into specific interaction patterns. Documenting a design guide throughout the web design process is a helpful exercise maintaining consistency.

3. Clarity

Everything on your site should be crystal clear. Content should be easy to read and action sequences should be intuitive. If a user has to struggle to read content or is unsure what to do next, the site lacks clarity.

4. Consider the Context

Make your design decisions while considering the specific decision within the larger context of the project. As you plan different interaction points and placement of elements across a page, make sure they are laid out in a succinct fashion inline with the desired process for the site. A common mistake is to implement additional buttons or navigation elements that may make sense for some “what if” scenarios, but actually detract from the primary object of the page.

5. Use your Voice

Design reflecting a brand voice? This sounds a bit abstract right? It is to a certain degree, but its something that should will drive underlying UX design decision making. The brand voice should be considered through out the user experience design, not just in content writing. People inherently trust a confident voice, but that voice has to be your own. Being creative with the site copy and using typography as tool can help you to design your brand voice. Your website should have content your audience will love, but also be designed to reflect how your brand would tell it.

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Thanks to web design and development by DigiMix, residents and tourists have an exciting new online resource.

The Lower East Side of Manhattan, or LES, has a new home on the internet. LowerEastSide.org was created by New York’s Business Improvement District and recently revamped and relaunched by DigiMix, a New York-based digital marketing and web design firm.

The new website features a layout and infrastructure that is easily navigated by users. Whether they want to find out what events are being held in the area, check out the growing number of art galleries, shop the independent boutique and designer fashion scene, grab something to eat from a dizzying array of national cuisines or what train to take or where to park, LowerEastSide.org gives users a clean interface to find what they are looking for.

“We could not be more thrilled with how lowereastside.org turned out. The ease at which users can navigate the site has increased triple fold, and information is now segmented in a way that is simple, sleek, and distinctly user-friendly. ”
-Natalie Raben, Marketing Director, Lower East Side Business Improvement District

From grabbing one of the famous mile-high sandwiches from Katz’s Deli, or sitting down for a tasty brunch at the Clinton Street Baking Company or even taking a walking tour to discover the Lower East Side’s diverse historical heritage, DigiMix made sure that users’ could find what they are looking for quickly and easily. The website is rich in content and can be viewed optimally on mobile devices and tablets.

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Digimix is proud to announce its recent award from 10BestDesign.com as one of the top 10 best new web design firms in the United States. We are very excited about the award and as a fast growing web design and development firm based in the city of New York, we are grateful for the recognition of our work.

The 10 Best Design website explains, “In an effort to continually add amazing companies to our rankings and reviews, 10 Best Design actively searches for web design agencies to be included in our publication. As a result, we have developed this category for the Best New Web Design Firms, which recognizes great companies who have only just made it onto 10BD. These firms stand out for amazing websites and high standards for client work.”

10BestDesign.com is the number one site on the internet that reviews, ranks and awards companies. It has an extensive experience and a knowledgeable team of experts in the sector. Its ‘Website Design Awards’ and ‘Best Web Design Firms’ categories are growing at a very fast rate.

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Omega

This robust multipurpose WordPress theme really checks off all of the boxes we recommend. The demo site will show you tons of page configurations. It’s built on bootstrap, so you know it’s framework is rock solid. For developers like me the visual composer is actually more of a nuisance than a help, but for designers and those just learning the ropes, it offers a great platform for page composition, testing designs and figure our what works best. It supports some important plugins like Woo-commerce if you need an eCommerce shop or Gravity Forms for your lead generating contact forms. Overall it has a clean look and feel, fast load times, and seems to be coded well enough to make your set up time investment worth while.

Willow

Here’s another single page parallax WordPress theme worth checking out. The full screen video landing page is pretty powerful. However the scrolling is not as smooth as it could be. I think its funny that the theme developers often show the content of a fake digital agency as their example. If you are a digital agency using an off the shelf theme for your own site, you should probably rethink your business model. This would be a nice design for a service based business that has a badge style logo. It’s multilingual ready, so you are all good if international sites with multiple language versions of content.

Mhiam

Solid CSS3 Parallax animations to slide in page titles from either side of screen.

The post Best Responsive Parallax WordPress Themes June 2014 appeared first on Digimix Web Design New York.

Web design is a constantly evolving subject fueled by some of the worlds most innovative and creative minds. Although a new wave web design trends emerge every year, it’s important to stay on top of the latest. Making sure your website is on trend will help make the difference for communicating a professional and smart brand image. In this article, we’ll review trends in terms of both user experience and style of design.

1. Easy to Use

Put yourself in the shoes of your audience. These are your potential customers and they are the most important people to accommodate. Your goal should be to create a site that is completely intuitive. One way of achieving this, is through the use of minimalistic design (aka minimalism). Despite what some people may tell you, that does not mean there should be a blank page. The idea of minimalism is to offer a single method of completing an objective. The method you select should be the most logical and effective. Everything should look the way it does for a good reason. Avoid using dark black backgrounds with white text in body areas where the paragraph text belongs. White letters reflect too much light making the letters more difficult to read. By the same token a stark white background with a dark black text can also be hard on the eyes. For full paragraphs of text, try an ever so light shade of gray with an almost black color font. It’s much easier to read.

Buttons should be obvious and navigation should never require instruction. The webpage is essentially a series of slide, much like a keynote, connected these a sequence of stunning visual, motion graphics and animation effects. The end result is more effective communication. Think about it. It’s much easier to keep the visitors attention when they are reading short bits of information broken up within visual effects, then it is to have then try to read paragraphs on a screen. Unless of course they are reading an article. What I am assuming here is that we are on a homepage, landing page or product advertisement that could link to articles, case studies and more robust content.

2. Storytelling

Every website should tell a story. The trend is story telling through the use of animation and user interaction. If you’ve visited the Apple MacBook Pro or Google Nexus 5 web sites, you may have noticed a common theme. Both sites tell a story that unfolds in animated sequences as the user scrolls down. This style is referred to as parallax web design.

3. Responsive Design

Over the past few years, Responsive Web Design (RWD) has become the fastest growing trend in the industry next to mobile. The basic idea behind RWD is for the website to shift to fit the size of the screen on which they’re being viewed. This means that web designers and developers need to think and create modular layouts that can stack and shift between a screen that can fit in the palm of your hand, on a screen that spans across your desk, or living room wall.

Mobile web browsing is set to overtake desktop browsing in the next few years. With that in mind, responsive web design is a discipline that is building the Internet of the future. As we design and develop sites to be responsive now, we’ll get to take advantage of all of the different form factors (e.g. tablets, laptops, etc.) people around the world are using to browse websites. Thanks to open source web frameworks like Twitter Bootstrap, there are some amazing building blocks to set the foundation for your responsive website.

Up and coming web design trends

4. Video Backgrounds
Full screen hero boxes that quickly load short YouTube videos that loop.
5. Geometric Shapes, Patterns and Vectors
A great way of adding creative elements and style that can also serve functionality for UI and UX.
6. Full screen color slides with white text.
This plays into the whole flat ui / parallax web design movement which was really big last year, but it’s still worth mentioning.
7. Clean High Contrast Typography Fonts.
Dramatic font weights like thin to black, overlaid on a very blurry landscape photo.
9. Parallax
Animations initiated by scrolling. More often than not, once section of the page will move, revealing a stunning photo leading the way to another section as the user continues to scroll.
10. CSS3 Animations

Leveraging the full scope of CSS3 to create light weight animation sequences. From animation events to simply making buttons look they are being pushed in when touched, through out this year we’ll see more designers unlocking the true power of CSS3.

Michael leads the designer, developer and digital strategy teams at DigiMix, a full-service web design and development agency, which specializes in Responsive Web Design, WordPress, Magento and Ruby on Rails app development. If you found this article interesting, you can also follow Michael on Twitter @michaelsalafia or Google +MichaelSalafia.

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