Tufuga Media

My Zen Garden Design

As part of my web programming class, I was introduced to the CSS Zen Garden.  The concept is this: you take an existing HTML file with no styling, and by using CSS only, turn it into a completely styled website.  Take a look at how I did for my first CSS website! (more…)

Its always seemed to be a bit of an oddity to me the way that people comment on blogs, photos, product reviews, and any other site which allows user comments.  In the past, I haven’t been one to comment, and have had to force myself to do so in order to understand it better.  Now that I’m trying to build my blog, I’m trying to encourage more people to comment!  So now the big question: why DO people comment on things?  A journal article I read recently suggested the following reasons based on their research. (more…)

Developing online customer loyalty is much more difficult than customer loyalty in traditional stores.  The internet allows your customer base to be worldwide, but also puts you head to head with a larger number of competing businesses.  I’ve noticed there are many different approaches and theories as to why customers develop loyalty to particular online businesses.  Here is yet another one.  Its important to remember that these theories are not just simple observations, but are developed academic studies.  Here is the reference to the article I’m writing about today: Srinivasan et al. Customer loyalty in e-commerce: an exploration of its antecedents and consequences. Journal of Retailing (2002) vol. 78 (1) pp. 41-50. Studies have shown that without a base of loyal customers, any company will struggle financially. (more…)

This is an excerpt taken from a journal on web loyalty –  Otim and Grover. An empirical study on Web-based services and customer loyalty. European Journal of Information Systems (2006) vol. 15 (6) pp. 527.  The journal studied pre-purchase, purchase process, and post purchase factors which impacted customer loyalty.  In short, they found that pre-purchase factors, such has web design, had little impact on customer loyalty when compared to post purchase factors, such as delivery time.  Here are a few of their findings. (more…)

Although I am relatively new to the world of web design, I am painfully aware of the issues of browser compatibility.  I was working on the envisionlaie.com website, everything looked great.  Then I got a call saying something was messed up.  Turns out, internet explorer was not recognizing a background image because of the way I coded the CSS.  I use a Mac, so I had all sorts of trouble trying to fix the problem as I didn’t have a Windows machine to test on.  But no more!  Adobe BrowserLab allows you to test webpages in different web browsers on different operating systems.  I played around with it, and it seems pretty good! (more…)

Usually, people would credit a great web design, nice photos, or other more obvious pieces of a website with generating customer trust.  While each of these factors may contribute to the generation of trust, they are probably not the most significant factors. Listed are some new insights I gained today regarding the gaining the trust of online customers. (more…)

After nearly 7 months of using Joomla! as my content management system (CMS) or web platform, I decided to change to WordPress.  I’m a firm believer that its important to fit the tool to the job, and not the other way around.  I have decided to change the focus of my website a bit.  I believe that WordPress is better equipped to help me do that. (more…)

Over the last 9 months, I have been working as a part of our university’s web team. We have just rolled out a new design/structure of our website. This project was way overdue, and we’ve had to work through some difficult challenges, but we have created a great product.

My “title” in this project was “project manager”. I was involved in the conception, planning, and marketing of the site. I also created the design for the page. Randy, our graphic designer, then modified the design and really made it shine! Here are some of the rapid prototypes that I created. You can probably tell which one was used for the final design! (more…)

Those of you who are frequent visitors of the website will observe that I have redesigned the website.  I have changed platforms as well.  I am moving away from Joomla! to WordPress.  I will update this blog soon with more details as to why.  For now, leave comments as to how you like this website.  Mahalo! (more…)

I never found a step by step video tutorial on how to install Joomla, a popular content management system (CMS).  I design web pages, but I am not savvy when it comes to coding, servers and the like.  So in this tutorial I step you through how to install Joomla.  I show how to do a local installation on a Mac computer using MAMP, a free utility you can download from their site.  The steps I show are nearly identical for those hosting their websites on webservers.  Just be sure to have access to a CPanel or a way to create a database, and add users to it.  You will need the username and password, so keep them handy. (more…)