In working with clients as a web designer, I often do more than just create layouts and make things beautiful. Mainly I help my clients figure out how to position themselves through their site so that they can meet the goals they have for their business. There are so many ways to go about creating a website, and deciding what to include and what to leave out is critical to a successful planning process.

On top of that, there’s a decision to be made about what voice you want your website to have. Along with the aesthetic of your site, this will communicate your brand. For example, should your website be casual and approachable, but still professional? Or maybe authoritative and more formal, but not prohibitively so?

Whatever you decide, your site users will be looking for one primary thing (and quickly) when visiting your site (more…)

Unlike a print publication, the web is fluid. This is one of its many charms & can be embraced when it comes to launching and maintaining your website. Of course the launch of a new site is a big deal and you want to make sure you’ve dotted your i’s and crossed your t’s before sending it out into the world, but are you better off sending it out into the world knowing it’s a living thing or waiting until it’s perfect in every way? My advice is to send it out into the world, imperfections and all, and here’s why… (more…)

Because I live in Portland, Oregon one type of project I regularly work on is for local Portland small businesses like Classic Sash & Door. I love working on local projects because helping great companies in my home town succeed also helps me & my community. And something nice about small business websites (regardless of where you’re located) is that good ones act as a 24/7 sales person working for you on the internet.

Simply, your goals (online and off) as a small business owner are to raise positive awareness of your services/products and increase the number of people who contact you and then hire you, or purchase your product(s).

On the internet, this means the desired result is being on the front page of Google results for your search terms, but also strategic placement of links to your site in places that list services contextually (eg: Angie’s List).

So how do you achieve this holy grail of searchability and being listed in the right place? Here are some pointers… (more…)

Many of the websites that I create are for authors and books. And while every project is different, and each project is tailored to the author or book in question, there are some similar elements I almost always recommend people include on their site Home pages – the most important landing page of the site. I’ll break it down by author sites and book sites… (more…)

With so much competition for attention, how do you make sure your website rises above to make a great first impression? More than anything else, making strategic decisions for your brand by asking the right questions will ensure that decisions about design or messaging are made with your overall goals in mind. The result being not only the lasting impression you’re looking for, but cohesion between your company values and the website that represents them.

So what are these questions? Here’s a brief list to help get you started:

1. What’s unique about your company?
2. How would you briefly describe what your company does?
3. What’s your vision for your company’s future?
4. Who is your biggest competition?
5. Who is your target audience?
6. What’s the most important decision your customers make when it comes to choosing your company?
7. How do you think your company is perceived today, and what do you like and dislike about that?
8. Why do you want to have a new website, or have your current website redesigned?
9. Why will people visit your company’s website?
10. What do you want people to come away with after visiting your company’s website?

By answering these questions you’ll have lots of information to help inform the decisions you’ll make regarding your website, whether you’re building it yourself or hiring someone to do it for you. As you think about the messaging you’ll include on the site and how it will be designed, refer back to your answers to help guide your plans to make sure you’re serving your company well!

There comes a time in the creation of every website where large files need to be shared among stakeholders. This might be when the website owner is sending content for the website to the web designer, or it might be when the web designer is sending mockups back to their client. Either way, email isn’t always the best way, and you don’t always want your work-in-progress mockups on the internet for all to discover. Plus, email software will often reject emails with huge attachments, and they can be unwieldy for all involved.

If you haven’t heard of it yet, there’s a wonderful service called YouSendIt.com. They allow you to send single files up to 100MB to people, who can then download the file using a link in an email they receive from the service for free. The recipient can download using the link in the email they receive for a handful of days, and then it expires.

It’s a wonderful, easy-to-use service.

If you need to send lots of files to someone, just zip them up and use YouSendIt to send the single zip file. This is a wonderful way to not only compress the size of the transfer, but to make it easy for the recipient to work with lots of files pertaining to one project.

Your operating system may already have an easy way for you to zip up files (Mac comes with one automatically), usually by selecting multiple files in your Explorer (PC) or Finder (Mac), then right-clicking and accessing the “Archive” or “Compress” or “ZIP” function. If you don’t have a ZIP program on your PC, 7-ZIP (http://www.7-zip.org/) is a great, free program for the PC.

You’ve assembled a great team to build your new website: Congrats – that’s huge! Besides providing content & monitoring their progress, what should you be doing to help the site succeed? (more…)