Blog posts

In my last post, I talked about what it takes to be a good client. These guidelines apply whether hiring a web designer to create your business website or a painter to recolor your living space. You know how you want for the desired end result and you know what you can afford to spend. Good communication with a contractor means letting them in on those expectations.

I write about this as much to remind myself as I hire contractors as it is to share my insights for you when you hire one.
Define the desired end result
“We can hit the target,…

I love my clients and it is my primary goal to have them thrilled when their website is complete. That isn’t possible without identifying expectations and meeting them. I start with terrific clients (most of the time) who have a good understanding of what they want. The biggest challenge in any relationship based on delivery of a product or service is expectation management.
Contractors Have Expectations Too
Good contractors clearly state their expectations of what the client needs to do or provide, when and how. My clients receive a proposal with pages of information intended to manage and clarify expectations. I ask hundreds of questions of…

A website is very much like an iceberg in that what you see is only a (small) part of the whole, and it’s the part you don’t see that can really hurt you.

A Professional Web Designer spends hundreds of hours to learn

With all the modern technologies, anyone can throw up a website, but that is like saying anyone can paint. Just because you can put paint on a canvas, doesn’t mean you will create a great painting. Creating a great painting (or a great website) will mean hundreds of hours of time and learning.  And that doesn’t address whether you…

Accessibility. What does that mean in terms of a website and why do you care?  Accessibility means that visually or physically challenged individuals can access the content on your website.  Do you know the visually impaired (yes even totally blind) can surf the web? You may not have thought about it, but it’s pretty cool when if you do.  But visual challenges are not limited to blindness.  As people age it becomes harder to read small text font and text with less contrast. Accessibility is not limited to visual challenges. Some individuals have trouble with mouse control, so the placement…

Security is a huge deal these days. If Amazon and Google can be hacked, anyone can. Hackers can always get at you. But there is no reason to make it easy for them.

Quite often, clients will ask me why we put a contact form on a website rather than an email address. I also often get asked if a Captcha code is necessary. This post answers those questions.
Why no email addresses or links on the site?
There are two main reasons you don’t want your email address openly visible on your website: First is SPAM.

In HTML, your email looks like this…

While many clients are aware that security is very important for their site, few understand the importance of web hosting security. The web host is a company that provides server space for your website to live.
Your website is only as secure as the place it lives.
I still today have clients who need to be educated on why they don’t want their website on their own servers. Simple answer: are you spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to protect your servers from the latest cyber attacks and malicious code and  back them up in different locations? Also, do you…

The most important rule in web design is the Martian Rule:

Can a Martian tell in 4 seconds

Who you are
What you do
Where you are?

And in less than 8 seconds

What makes you the answer to their problem or need?

Martian Rule Content
First, the name of your company should be absolutely clear, and preferably in a way the visitor will remember. No point in selling them on a product if they don’t remember your name.

Second, it is wrong to think that visitors to your site know what you do. They may have stumbled on your site accidentally and may,…

The different ways browsers present a website has been an issue since there was more than one browser. All browsers have the job of interpreting the web page code and displaying it to the user, but no two browsers display all code the same way. What that means is that a website may look fine to one person and not to another, depending on what browser, and what version of the browser, each is using. For example, if I create a website in Internet Explorer , it probably will not look exactly the same in Chrome or Mozilla Firefox or…

Responsive Web Design is the new version of mobile website design. Ideally it takes into account the variation of sizes on which a site can be viewed as well as the difference in processing capability to view it. The goal of responsive web design is to have the website transition gracefully between different sized devices as seamlessly as possible. This can be a challenge. Here is how it usually works-

code on the site determines on what size device the site is being viewed
depending on the size, it will call on a different style sheet and possibly a different…

I have several clients who have a good visual eye, knew what they wanted and wouldn’t take no for an answer. I am very happy with the final product of their sites. Clients like this push me to stretch my vision and talents to meet theirs, so that the site moves from good to great. I first need to stress that these clients have a good visual eye. Without that, they would merely have been difficult clients. I am proud that I have several clients who, either by vocation or avocation, are highly visual people.

With Wordpress websites, it’s sometimes easy to install a…