Web Design & Development: You Need Both

You can be a jack of all trades, master of nothing. That being said, it is  impossible to find a single person capable of mastering web design and web development at the highest level, it just doesn’t exist. What does exist are strong teams with members specializing in each area, this is what you want to find.

Below is a review of each of these core areas and what the various team members of your to-be web development design & development company should be able to deliver.

Development:

Evaluating a web development company can be hard, especially when you have three or more choices in front of you. To make it even harder, you are essentially assuming the companies you are interviewing will write ‘good code’, (and you’re thinking… “what does that even mean?”).

Below is a simple check list of items you should expect a quality Buffalo, NY Web Design & Development Company, like Graphic Lux, to deliver:

1 – Cross Browser Compatibility: This simply means that the developer will write code in such a manner that it will properly display your website in all major web browsers. The current industry standard is to support all modern versions of Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Internet Explore version 9 and beyond.

2 – W3C Compliant CSS: W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) is the major organization that sets web development standards and CSS (cascading style sheets) is the method which all modern websites should use to style any website. In plain English, you want a web company that states they follow the W3C standards for CSS. This proves that your design will render correctly on all modern browsers and most mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones.

3 – Table-less HTML: As web standards evolve to improve stability and security, so does your web development team. Unfortunately, some teams get stuck in the past and have refuse to adopt new industry standards. In the past, developers would use tables (basically a spreadsheet) to structure website pages. This has long been past as industry practice and should not be followed any longer. Any good web development company structures and styles website pages with CSS now. The moral of the story? Do not hire a web developer who codes your entire website with HTML tables.

4 – Responsive Design: Over the past few years smartphones and tablet devices have been widely adopted by consumers and this trend will continue. While we all love our mobile devices, it presents a particular challenge for developers due to varying screen resolutions. Having a responsive web design solves this problem by allowing your website to automatically adjust to different screen resolutions. Having a responsive design will become more and more important and market penetration for smartphones and tablets continue to grow. However, note that most web design companies do charge extra for responsive designs because of the extra time involved in creating extra designs and code for these various screen designs. To recap, make sure you have a team who will ensure your website is cross browser compatible, is W3C compliant, uses table-less HTML and who can offer you responsive web design if it is within your budget.

Design:

There are two major things that the team you choose must be able to master.

  1. Being able to craft a web design with visual aesthetics and creativity.
  2. Ensuring the design is user centric for you, the client.

First and foremost, you should be proud of your new website and how brilliant it looks. It is your online store front and furthermore, it is essential representation of you and your company. Your website serves as the catalysts to all practical purposes within your business. It is your virtual replacement in the online world. Since you can’t physically talk to a person while on your website, your design (and content) is the one who will be doing all the talking. Additionally, having a stellar web design helps build user confidence and desire. It is like the difference between walking into a second hand computer store to buy a new home computer versus stepping into a sexy, exhilarating Apple retail store. The ‘experience’ of your website, in large, is created by design.

So, we arrive at the conclusion that a smart web design is worth it’s weight in gold (or a sizable check). Hire a web design company that has an excellent past portfolio which is similar in taste to what you expect for your company or organization. Second, design is more than a pretty face, it is about usability. By usability, I mean a website this is highly functional and easy to navigate, where a user can quickly find the answer to his or her questions. Keep in mind every user that enters a google search and thus stumbles upon your website, is searching for the answer to a problem. While they might take an extra second to window shop if your website design looks fancy, it will not hold them there long. More to the point, it is highly valuable to have a sexy looking site (a pretty face so to speak), but that value drops nearly to zero, instantly most times in the eye of a user if he/she can not find the information (solve the problem) being sought after.

For this very reason, I would argue that if you had to choose between the two, err on the side of having a website that is slightly more functional than it is sexy. Furthermore, your company should put a reasonable amount of time and resources into the generation, organization and upkeep of your company’s content.

Conclusions:

The market, as it has always been, if full of above average, average and below average vendors. Hopefully, by implementing some of the topics we have discussed thus far, you can find and select the above average vendor to become your company’s long-term web design & development company of choice.

/by

4 Things To Know Before You Choose A Web Design Team

If you are in the market to hire a web design/web development team for your upcoming project, you should know a few things so that you end up finding a team that best fits your needs. In today’s digital world, it’s a practically a requirement to have a website or mobile app, which is why you’ll need the best web design team possible. But some web companies aren’t always up to the task even though they might say they are. You don’t want to hire the wrong team for your project, so it’s important that you take the following tips into consideration before making a final decision on a web design/web development team:

Clear Goals

In order to get back work that fits the scope of the project you have in mind, you have to relay clear goals to them. If you don’t provide them a clear description of what you want or envision, you’ll end up getting something totally different than what you expected. To help a web design team deliver what you want, you have to let them know what that is. And before you hire a web design team, ask if they can provide you with results that you want. If they seem hesitant, they probably won’t be able to deliver what you have in mind.

Listens To You

You’ll want to look for someone that will actually listen to you and your ideas. A web design team should take a consultative approach and should meet with you to learn exactly what your goals and requirements are, as well as the budget that you have in mind. You’re the one that is providing them work and they should take the time out to meet and work with you. Graphic Lux is one such team that will listen to your needs.

Experience Is Key

Do take into account how much experience the web design team you are looking to hire has. They should have a proven track record and provide you with examples of previous work they’ve either designed or developed for the web. And if you can, ask for any testimonials from other people who hired them to really get a feel for the type of work they do. Also ask for any awards, accolades or achievements they’ve received to help you figure out if they’re cut out for the job.

Vast Knowledge

A great website should provide a multimedia experience that will wow users and to do that, they’ll need to really use lots of flash, video, audio or other advanced tools. So make sure to ask about the type of knowledge they have and if they know how to use cutting-edge technologies that will help your site stand out from others.

A stellar web design/web development like the Graphic Lux team in Buffalo, NY can really take an ordinary website and make it an extraordinary site that will wow users and help ensure online success so it’s important to really make sure that the company in Western New York is a good fit.

/by

Tips on How to Use the Power of YouTube to Build Traffic

If you’ve been on the internet for any length of time or even if you’re a complete newbie you should know the importance of traffic to your business. You may also know that it’s not the wisest thing to “buy” traffic, because once the money runs out, so will the traffic. So how do you get traffic that is so integral to your business? Traffic that’s continuous and best of all free? YouTube can help you with this.

YouTube offers many opportunities for promotion and getting traffic to your site as it has the power to increase your rankings considerably. Just take a look at any Google page and you’ll notice that most times the videos are usually ranked at the top of the page. Here’s why. One, YouTube is owned by Google and they work together. Two, YouTube is the second largest search engine next only to Google. That should be enough motivation to make you want go and create your own YouTube channel and upload videos to it.

But don’t go rushing off to create just yet. Let’s make sure you’re doing this the right way first so you don’t waste your time. Take note of these tips:

Make your profile interesting

YouTube is just like any other social site. So you want to create an interesting profile for networking purposes. People will want to know more about you if they like your videos. This can help build trust among your audience, thus giving you greater traffic. Try to make your profile interesting enough to get across to everyone. Professionally it shouldn’t be too boring or too stuffy. But informally it shouldn’t be too hyped either.

Promote your videos

You won’t get much traffic without viewers. You can’t just post your videos and expect that viewers will automatically find them no matter how good you think they are. You have to promote them. You can put them on your blog or on any of your other social sites.

Use your keyword in the title of your videos

People find your videos when they do searches via the search engines and on Youtube so you should make it as easy as possible for them to find you. I mean you do want to get traffic right? Okay, you should include your major keyword or keyword phrase in the title and in the description. Don’t just put it there though, it should feel natural and make sense. And don’t forget to put them in the tags either.

Know when to post your videos

On the internet timing is everything, you need to know when to do what. So with YouTube it’s no different, it has its peak and off-peak times for traffic. Thursday mornings or early afternoons US time is considered the best day and time to post a video of general interest. Wednesdays is said to be another good day. You need to pay attention to the loading times of your videos as well. Start early for those with internet connectivity issues and for large videos if you want them uploaded in the prime time slots.

There’s approximately an hour of video being uploaded to YouTube every second. This makes it a valuable resource to drive traffic to your site and promote it. However despite the obvious competition, if you consistently produce quality videos with time you’ll reap the benefits of your effort which is to build traffic.

By Tom Denton

/by

10 Web Design Definitions You Need to Know

When looking for a new site or even a new redesign, you as a client may feel alienated by all the “techie” terms that are being used today.  Below are 10 web design definitions you will need to know.

404 Page

A 404 page is the page you come to when you have an old, or bad link within a site.  Each site should have it’s own custom 404 page that allows the user to find an easy way to navigation or search the site for the content they need.

301 Permanent Redirect

A 301 permanent redirect page is often used when a website is updated and the content is no longer at the same URL.  Let’s say you had a website up online for years.  Each of your pages should have been indexed by a major search engine.  When you update your site and the URL structure changes those indexed pages are no longer correct and when a user clicks on those old indexed pages it should at least come to a 404 page (see above), but ideally a 301 redirect to the new URL for the same content.

Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs are crucial on a website if you have multiple layers of pages and sub-pages.  These are the little menu items usually above the content that help navigate to previous pages/sections of a site.

CMS

CMS stands for content management system.  Most websites developed today will have a CMS integrated allowing the client/owner of the site, to update content, images, etc…  The major CMS’s today are W0rdpress, Joomla, and Drupal.

CSS

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets.  Basically CSS is used by web developers to stylize a site.  For example if you have a navigation link on your site that is white and you want it to be a grey color the web developer would use css to update this.

Code example – Before

.menu li a {
color: #fff
}

Code example – After

.menu li a {
color: #ccc
}

Responsive Design

Responsive web design (RWD) is an approach to web design aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from desktop computer monitors to mobile phones).

Retina Ready

In the most basic of terms, it means a high definition display. Also, Apple products are not excusive to this type of display. Retina Display is simply Apple’s term for is but other phones, tablets and monitors too have higher quality displays. But, because these displays are being widely implemented and used, it is more than ever important to create websites and apps that support these displays.

SEO

SEO stands for Search engine optimization. SEO is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s “natural” or un-paid (“organic”) search results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine’s users. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search, academic search, news search and industry-specific vertical search engines.

SMM

Social media marketing is the process of gaining website traffic or attention through social media sites.

WYSIWYG

WYSIWYG stands for What You See Is What You Get.  WYSIWYG is the editor that you use to update content in you CMS (Content Management System).

Knowing the terms above will help you understand all the “geek” speak that may be going on when reviewing your website needs with your web design & development company.

/by