Web Designer Miami

The saying ‘God is in the details’ simply means that it’s the perfecting of the fine, sometimes unseen, details that make can make or break your website.

Symmetry and Equality:

It’s the little things like too much (or too little) spacing and odd sized buttons that impact hugely on the overall design of a website.  What’s the sense of great content and photographs when the website looks like it’s been hit by an earthquake?

Attention to detail:

It is integral to really try to give highest priority to the small details. This refers to the items that tend to be overlooked by most people. This means going the extra mile to notice that extra 1pixel, the color of that line, or the font size.

Never underestimate the power of details.

The first step of the design process is likely the most technical and creative part of website development. There are sketch, layout, color and content decisions and at times it seems to be just too many things to track and yet there seems to be important aspects that seemed to escape you in the final layout.   These are the design aspects that you, being a first class web developer, should give the highest priority to; the ones that can make (or break) a website.

You definitely don’t learn these from a book.  They are learned by exploration and grasping.  This is also known as the ‘look and feel’ of the website - the first impression. Hinging on your personal style and your personal work ethic, you will note the points which you consider to be the most important in your designs - in accordance with your experiences with clients, user trends and feedback.

Finding the right key is THE task on which web developers need to zero in.

“The customer is always right” - this is true…to a point.  What if we are working for a client that has no idea of web design or usability?  What if he/she has seen things that they like on other sites but really no idea of how to apply them, they will need the help of the web designer, and a good one at that.

It is up to the website designer to show the user what good user interface is.   They may insist on drop down menus which are harmless and are functional - mostly.   These have to work when applied to the client’s site and we should be prepped to offer other functions for similar effect. For example:

(i)   Drop down menus should not layer over another block on the site.

(ii)  Drop down navigation also should not be wide.

(iii) Navigation would not work if there is a flash banner clouding it.

Therefore, it is up to the web designer to ‘educate’ the client, showing him what will work to benefit the usability of the site and what will not.

You most likely will want your website to be one of the most visited, one of the highest ranked and one of the most successful.

This does not happen without a good website design plan from a top class website company.  You probably have no idea where to find one of those.  A great website company will give the best shot to the best website.  A company with a trusted record is your key.

Do your research, visit the websites built by the company of your choice.  Note the layout and the design of these websites.  Websites designed properly will catch your eye.

It may seem like rocket science to you, but great web design is second nature to the right website company and taking the time to research and zero in on that company will be worth your time.

Often clients will want a website ‘next week’ and hurry in trying to nail down a look and feel. So we fill our mugs with java and pull all-nighters on designing a template - cutting out ‘non-critical’ processes and tasks. We present the standard three custom designed template only to find that the client who originally thought they didn’t know what they wanted and asked us to come up with ‘anything’ now has a very strong opinion about the design.

So the question becomes, how does one design a website quickly while ensuring minimal rework.

1. Find a sample - try to get your client to give you at least three sample sites that he likes. This will really go a long way in understanding the style, colors and level of detail the client requires. If they are too busy then find three yourself and ask the client to pick one. I had a client recently who had a ‘general idea’ of what they wanted but couldn’t quite pin it down. I found a competitor site as well as two sites that were completely outside of his industry and he was able to select the style he liked.

2. Wire frame it each page - You don’t have to do a fancy wire frame. Even a black marker on paper would do (if you are lucky enough to be sitting in front of the client) or a mock up in Photoshop or Fireworks. I’ve even used PowerPoint to do wire frames. Keep it simple - boxes and dummy text to get an idea of where content should go and to also help the client in deciding how much content to write for each page.

3. Collaborate with the client - I say this with hesitancy because it may not always work. It depends on the client so use discretion. If you’ve got a design that you’re happy with and are going back and forth about colors (which happens sometimes), I’ve found that it is faster and more efficient to either nail down a color palette in advance or if the client does not want some specific colors but does not like the ones you chose, to just sit with the client (or share your desktop) and change colors on the fly. Again, this depends on if your client has time, the inclination and ‘good taste’.

4. Document Fixes - while some clients WILL take the time to take screenshots of each web page and note down their fixes, often very busy clients will just want to speak to you over the phone. If this is the case, I strongly suggest documenting the fixes and then either emailing it back to the client for confirmation OR reading it back to them over the phone. Explain to them that if the site is to be launched in a couple of days no more fixes will be entertained prior to launch unless they are mistakes or bugs on your end.

5. Ask for the client’s help - explain to the client that you will need her to respond to email or return calls quickly if they truly want the website launched that quickly. Emphasize the fact that the quicker and more complete the communication the more probable it is that the site will get launched on time.

I sometimes wonder what did we do before the invention of the wondrous search engine.  The internet surely is the greatest invention of our time and subsequently the search engine has to be THE best use of the internet ever.

Just think of it.  We need information on a particular topic.  We type in a word or phrase related to that topic in the search bar of the search engine.  We then hit ‘enter’ and within seconds, loads of information pop up before our eyes, each ranked by their popularity on the worldwide web.  We can refine and super refine our search by choosing our words very carefully and by not using unnecessary words.

On the flip side, the search engine holds a different meaning for the website owner.  The website owner depends on his website design team to tweak the keywords and key phrases of his website and to tactfully write content so that the when you or I do a search, the website owner’s website will rank high int he SERPs - that is the Search Engine Results Pages.

While many smaller e-commerce stores try to copy the look and feel of big giant online merchants like Amazon.com and Overstock.com, smaller websites should try to create a look and feel that is unique to them and their own story.

Yes, you need to have a website that is usable and SEO-friendly but that doesn’t necessarily mean that your e-commerce store has to be the usual stark white / grid pattern with a small logo on the top left corner.

Create a look that is unique to your business – if your product is hand made cards, you can introduce some details in the logo, the color and the borders that suggest a ‘hand made, recycled paper’ effect. The details don’t have to be big like you might expect on a brochure website but they can be part of the header of your website or integrated into the navigation.

Choose some good quality photos – invest some money and get some good quality photos. They’ll make a huge difference to your site. Stock photo sites like istockphoto.com have some very reasonable options so there’s no excuse that stock photos cost too much. A photo can take a website from poor to professional with just the addition of just the right shot.

Get inspired - Finally, if you need some inspiration, take a look at some other websites that have a distinctive look and feel to their e-commerce stores. Vandalay Design has a great post about 50 Inspirational E-Commerce Website Designs. Me & Mommy to be as well as Habitat Shoes are a good example of having a style that complements your product line.

So I thought the current buzz was interactive gaming. It’s so in-your-face advertising, it’s hard to miss.

But truly, with the oh-so-real-[cliché] phrase “hard economic times”, I have been doing my reading. Online reading that is. Who buys books anymore when everything you need to know can be located via an online search? Who wouldn’t think that the best invention is the search engine? Type your word or phrase and ta-da! You have loads and loads [and mega loads] of information on that particular subject that you need. Sometimes it’s a LOT of unwanted information also. I quickly realized that my being very specific with my search term is of extreme priority.

Back to my point of… (what was it…?)… the economy being as tough as ever, I read online that I can drive online traffic to my site by just having the right keywords and key phrases within my website. But of course I am clueless as how to go about doing this.

So I called my fantastic webdesign company (they designed and consistently redesign my website to ‘keep up with the competition out there) and I discussed with him what I read about: search engine optimization. He basically said [in layman’s terms] that it means that I can tweak the content of my website, so when a random user does a search using a keyword or key phrase that can be found within the content of my website, my site will rank higher in the results page THUS increasing the chances of my website being visited. (Whew!)

And the beauty of this - I never left my office in Miami. Everything was done virtually with by my webdesign company in South Florida with convenience.