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6 Questions to Ask Yourself When Designing a Website

When designing a website it’s always a good idea to understand your business’s demographic as well as new website design trends. To help with this do some research on your customers and see what they like as well as what your competition is doing in website design. After finding some information on your target demographic jot down some questions that will help you stay on target when designing the website. Keep these questions in the back of your mind at all times, because it is very easy to find some cool unrelated design and get totally off subject. If it is either adding a new widget, menu, call to action, or slider continually ask yourself these questions to see if your design fits with your criteria. Our Orlando website design firm has put together some basic questions to ask yourself when designing a website.

Is my website easy to read?

Make sure the font size is easy to read and has the appropriate size for each H1, H2, H3, and P tag.
Stick with a dark font on a light background. White text on a black background can be much harder to read.
It’s usually best to left align all of your text, especially for large paragraphs.
Use typefaces such as serif (Times) and standard sans-serif (Arial or Helvetica).
Only change your font style when you want to make something important or standout. Stay away from always using italic or condensed font styles.
If you have ads on your site separate it from your content.

Is my website easy to navigate?

Your navigation structure should include the most important pages that you want your visitors to navigate through.
Think how the flow of PR works when creating link structure. Create a chart beforehand with all of your pages.
Visitors should be able to find what they are looking for within 3 clicks.
Again, separate your content and your ads.
For ecommerce or blogging sites, a search box is a must along with tagging.

Is the layout and design consistent throughout my website?

A consistent design helps with branding.
Stick with the same layout when it comes to rounded corners, boxes, drop shadows, bullets, colors, or navigation.

Is my call to action working?

Make sure it is easy to read, find, and click.
Create a call to action that gets people’s attention and want to click it.
Look at your analytics and see where people are clicking.

Is my website social worthy?

Today’s websites are created with social interaction in mind and not just information.
Include icons for all of your social media profile .
Add Facebook like, tweet, Linkedin share, and Google +1 buttons through your site.

Will my website rank in the major search engines?

Stay away from Flash as much as you can! Anything in flash will not count as content for your page and will not help you rank.
Stay away from too much external linking as this will only give your flow of PR to other sites
Keep everything on the same domain.

If you have questions regarding designing or creating a website please feel free to contact us, use the live help, or include a comment underneath. Our designers and developers will be happy to take your questions.

Posted in SEO, Social Media, Web Development, Web Site Design | Leave a comment

Top 10 Web Site Design Trends

Thoughts and predictions for 2011 web site design trends.

Approaching month four of this year, 2011. Our 10 thoughts and predictions for this years web trends.

Web Site Design Trend # 1
Going Mobile - With the increase of smart phones and tablets, going mobile will be essential. Apple has recently released version 2 of the Ipad, while Motorola has announced a tablet featuring the Android OS. It’s not just a fashion statement, this is real numbers – millions. With the use of CSS3, this will help mobile sites dramatically in the design arena.

Web Site Design Trend # 2
Going Social - Social media is becoming if not already a part of our day to day activities. Hundreds of millions of people have accounts on social networks including and not limited to; Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In, You tube and Myspace. Daily youtube videos receive millions of hits, users of millions of followers on Twitter and so on. Social media should be a part of every web marketing plan. If you aren’t reaching out to your clients via social media, your missing out on one of the largest and most easy to access markets.

Web Site Design Trend #3
CSS3 and HTML5 - The standard shifted a few years back to Web 2.0. Many were left in the dust while others capitalized on the change. Don’t let this occur again! Be part of the crowd who jumps on the bandwagon with CSS3 and HTML5. These are the future!

Web Site Design Trend # 4
Going Simple- Simple is better. Remember this phrase. The standards haven’t changed, utilizing easy navigation, appealing color schemes and utilizing shades will go along way.

Web Site Design Trend # 5
Going dimensional- A New trend we see emerging are dimensional layouts. Adding some depth to the designs. This “3d” effect is a hit or miss. I’ve seen some really bad sites attempting to utilize the effect, while others have hit grand slams with it.

Web Site Design Trend # 6
Going Larger- Ever notice how sites such as Bing, have a large, beautiful image? Well this trend is going to dominate 2011-2012. With the advancement in home cameras, compression and high-speed internet we see more and more designers utilizing this feature. After all, having some eye candy can be good.

Web Site Design Trend # 7
Going away from .com- We see extensions such as .info, .me, .co etc taking a huge leap in sells. Now, Matt Cutts (Google) has released recent video’s and statements stating they will be taking a look at “Spammy domains”. The king of spammy domains hands down are .info. This may be because they are priced so low. Or are they priced so low because they are known as the spammy extension? Other extensions are becoming more popular. Partially due to the fact that all the .com’s and .net’s for competitive keywords are taken. Keep an eye out for those niche domains utilizing .cm, .co etc. Although .com and .net are the standards, when competition is low start seeing an increase in alternatives.

Web Site Design Trend # 8
Going towards Typography- Typography has always been an issue. Many designers not knowing how or when to use it. This is becoming a huge issue with the advancement in smart phones and tablet usage. We predict a greater use of typography, not only for design but for use of SEO (appropriate header tags etc).

Web Site Design Trend # 9
Going away from flash- Flash will never disappear, this we can be honest about. With Apple taking a large chunk of internet users however, other alternative means will be taken. The advancement of HTML5 and CSS3 has us covered! We see a huge move towards these new technologies.

Web Site Design Trend # 10
Go for Content- Content is king. With all the latest ban hammers that Google has released, including the Panda / Farmer update having original and useful content will be a smart idea. We see more web specialist focusing more on content and limiting the amount of duplicate text.

Posted in Social Media Marketing, Web Development News | 2 Comments