It's not hard to see that the internet has a lot going on these days and nothing is as straight forward as we'd like it to be. There is an endless amount of reasons why a particular website could be functioning incorrectly or contrary to the way it is supposed to on the web. Everything from the website design & development to what you are doing to market the site could be having a negative impact on your online brand. There's also the possibility that nobody wants what you are offering which is a whole other issue. Chicago Web Design online needs quality and a certain element of uniqueness to them.
Here are 20 reasons your website needs revamping:1. The user experience you've created is bad and people are simply leaving your website.2. Your content and Navigation links are broken or missing.3. Your website loads so slowly the user closes the window before you can even get your message across!4. Bad Web Design and Development. Time to hire a new Chicago Web Designer!5. Lack of conversion needs built in (lead form, phone number, email, etc…)6. Not enough personality to the brand.7. Too much personality spewing out of the brand.8. Web Design and Content catered to the wrong demographic.9. Poorly written website content.10. Too much SEO efforts.11. Too many Google ads throughout the site.12. Too many affiliate links all over the place blinking up a storm.13. Poor use of website images.14. Abandoned or blank company blog. ALWAYS blog!15. Lack of website updates. Content is King.16. Poor URL structures throughout the site. If people can't get back to the home page...something is wrong.17. Frequent server hosting crashes. If this is happening, get a new host.18. Site dynamics causing web browser crashing.19. No attention to detail anywhere.20. No social interaction attempts with your audience. Use Facebook, Twitter, and a Blog to let people know there's a person behind that beautiful website.The list can really go on and on and it is important your chicago web design and content does not fall prey to any of these elements on this list.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Why Web Design Clients Don't Care About Standards
Web Design standards should be the guiding light behind the work of any web design or web development professional. Web Design standards provide a template against which you measure the quality, structure, syntax and methodology of any web design project.
To explain the benefits of web standards, visit this post to see what we're talking about. Questions related to multiple browser compliance and the need for testing extensively before launching still haunt most web developers, but the standardization of HTML, CSS and a few other technologies has made the web world a more predictable place to design.
When coding a standards-compliant website, we can be very sure that it will render the same in Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, and perhaps even IE (version 7 and up). Inconsistencies are bound to crop up, and do, but anyone who stands on either side of the past decade of web design in Chicago and web development will recognize the golden value of web design and development standards.
As a community of developers, we welcome standards and encourage others to embrace them as well. We write validated, semantic code, and occasionally have in-depth discussions (Tom and Shakeel can attest to this) about how we should and shouldn't format our CSS and HTML. The UGLY truth is that the average client doesn't care. Remember this. Joe client is not looking for a compliant website, but for an effective and money-making website. The web designers at Integraphix, a Chicago web design company, cringe at this.
There are exceptions to every rule, and you might be lucky enough to get a client who demands that their website is standardized to the point that it will work in every browser on every platform and device - lucky you! They've probably overheard it from somewhere else, but it's all the same.
For the most part though, this client is not looking to hire a designer that can meet all W3C recommended standards. Chances are...they don't know what W3C is. Rather, your client is looking for a website designer that helps him achieve his main objective to either sell more products, share information about his company or bring people with a common interest together. He'll certainly be more concerned with that than having a website than having a compliant website design. As for us here in Chicago, we like our web design compliant. But that's just us.
The ultimate problem: Do we throw away all standards to give the client what he wants? NO! Standards are a critical aspect of web design in chicago and the world and should be a large part of the web design we do for clients, even if they dont necessarily care about them.
The Benefits of W3C Compliant Website Design:
Accessibility
This is about creating website that can be used and navigated by users with disabilities. The most common finding is making content recognizable to screen reading software or text-to-braille hardware. This poses a great benefit to clients. Most clients won't or can't understand that such technologies essentially parse the HTML document and return the content in a format that can be easily understood by the disabled user. Compliant code will make the document structure function properly and make the client's website more accessible.
Future-Proofing
While the web is constantly changing, clients usually will not want to pay for an entirely new website design and coding after a couple of years because of outdated code. Big browsers will typically do their best to make their rendering engines compatible to backwards code (HTML5 has the concept built into it actually!!) the future-proofing methods of web design and code standards WILL appeal to clients. It saves them money in the long run and their website will continue to look good 5, 10, 15 years from now.
Improved Performance
Even the most non-tech or internet savvy client will recognize how a slow website can damage their business. Utilizing web standards will help this! The guideline to separate content and presentation (HTML and CSS) was not established by purists out of snobbery. It IS the best way to create a good website. Embedding style mark-up on every page creates a lot of slag and drives page sizes up - including the amount of information users need to download in order to look at your website. Not Good.
By moving style code to a cache-able CSS file and getting rid of TABLES and other useless mark-up, you will make the website responsive and user-friendly. Something no client can complain about. Doing this also reduces bandwidth.
Simple Maintenance
The benefits that come with having a website that is standards compliant (and the most appealing to clients) is that it requires less maintenance and therefore less time billed to the developer. A messy website requires a lot of upkeep, especially when things break due to bad code and structuring. A compliant website can be tweaked and live in a much shorter amount of time than a non-compliant website.
Search Engine Optimization
Currently there is no real consensus on how compliant coding helps or hinders SEO - but standards certainly don't hinder. A messy website is not easily readable by spider bots, and therefore, any SEO that's gone into the website. Practicing web design and development standards will potentially help SEO efforts because the site structure is clean, readable, and easy for the search engines to index. If you don't believe us, take a look at Aaron Walter's suggestions from "Findability and SEO Cheat Sheet: a Guide to Web Standards SEO".
Aaron says:
When coding a standards-compliant website, we can be very sure that it will render the same in Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, and perhaps even IE (version 7 and up). Inconsistencies are bound to crop up, and do, but anyone who stands on either side of the past decade of web design in Chicago and web development will recognize the golden value of web design and development standards.
As a community of developers, we welcome standards and encourage others to embrace them as well. We write validated, semantic code, and occasionally have in-depth discussions (Tom and Shakeel can attest to this) about how we should and shouldn't format our CSS and HTML. The UGLY truth is that the average client doesn't care. Remember this. Joe client is not looking for a compliant website, but for an effective and money-making website. The web designers at Integraphix, a Chicago web design company, cringe at this.
There are exceptions to every rule, and you might be lucky enough to get a client who demands that their website is standardized to the point that it will work in every browser on every platform and device - lucky you! They've probably overheard it from somewhere else, but it's all the same.
For the most part though, this client is not looking to hire a designer that can meet all W3C recommended standards. Chances are...they don't know what W3C is. Rather, your client is looking for a website designer that helps him achieve his main objective to either sell more products, share information about his company or bring people with a common interest together. He'll certainly be more concerned with that than having a website than having a compliant website design. As for us here in Chicago, we like our web design compliant. But that's just us.
The ultimate problem: Do we throw away all standards to give the client what he wants? NO! Standards are a critical aspect of web design in chicago and the world and should be a large part of the web design we do for clients, even if they dont necessarily care about them.
The Benefits of W3C Compliant Website Design:
Accessibility
This is about creating website that can be used and navigated by users with disabilities. The most common finding is making content recognizable to screen reading software or text-to-braille hardware. This poses a great benefit to clients. Most clients won't or can't understand that such technologies essentially parse the HTML document and return the content in a format that can be easily understood by the disabled user. Compliant code will make the document structure function properly and make the client's website more accessible.
Future-Proofing
While the web is constantly changing, clients usually will not want to pay for an entirely new website design and coding after a couple of years because of outdated code. Big browsers will typically do their best to make their rendering engines compatible to backwards code (HTML5 has the concept built into it actually!!) the future-proofing methods of web design and code standards WILL appeal to clients. It saves them money in the long run and their website will continue to look good 5, 10, 15 years from now.
Improved Performance
Even the most non-tech or internet savvy client will recognize how a slow website can damage their business. Utilizing web standards will help this! The guideline to separate content and presentation (HTML and CSS) was not established by purists out of snobbery. It IS the best way to create a good website. Embedding style mark-up on every page creates a lot of slag and drives page sizes up - including the amount of information users need to download in order to look at your website. Not Good.
By moving style code to a cache-able CSS file and getting rid of TABLES and other useless mark-up, you will make the website responsive and user-friendly. Something no client can complain about. Doing this also reduces bandwidth.
Simple Maintenance
The benefits that come with having a website that is standards compliant (and the most appealing to clients) is that it requires less maintenance and therefore less time billed to the developer. A messy website requires a lot of upkeep, especially when things break due to bad code and structuring. A compliant website can be tweaked and live in a much shorter amount of time than a non-compliant website.
Search Engine Optimization
Currently there is no real consensus on how compliant coding helps or hinders SEO - but standards certainly don't hinder. A messy website is not easily readable by spider bots, and therefore, any SEO that's gone into the website. Practicing web design and development standards will potentially help SEO efforts because the site structure is clean, readable, and easy for the search engines to index. If you don't believe us, take a look at Aaron Walter's suggestions from "Findability and SEO Cheat Sheet: a Guide to Web Standards SEO".
Aaron says:
- Your mark-up should not contain errors that make the web page difficult for a search engine to index. Validate your mark-up with W3C's validation tool.
- Write semantically meaningful mark-up. This means using tags as they were intended and in a way that reflects the content rather than their style.
- Write intelligible title tags beginning with the page name, then the website name, then a short keyword rich phrase that describes the website.
- Use heading tags with relevant keywords to identify the key sections of your pages. Put heading tags in order of importance starting with H1 (for example - the website or organization name.)
It is reasonable that compliance to standards would help a website's SEO for the same reasons that it would make it future-proof. As search algorithms improve, compliant website will naturally remain readable and messy website, no matter how much SEO, will become unreadable.
Make sure your clients know that SEO should not be done at the expense of website design and coding standards. Anything that breaks standards is little more than a quick fix for somewhat fleeting results - not a forward thinking strategy to maintain visibility.
Conclusion
While your special client doesn't care about standards in the end, he will be receptive to many concrete benefits it would bring to his business. You are the one that has to explain those to him. You must explain that adhering to web standards will make his website faster, more accessible and easier to keep up. It will also make it 'future-proof' and naturally more findable. If you can help your client to understand these things, they'll be more excited about W3C standardizing than you!
For more information on Web Design in Chicago and Internet Marketing in Chicago, visit Integraphix's website and see what a real Chicago Marketing Company can do for you.
You should also follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
- Integraphix, a Chicago Marketing Company
Why Web Design Standards are There!
Marketing Company in Chicago
When Integraphix first started working in the Chicago web design and development industry, we had no idea that it would become so lucrative. The first site we ever remember creating was this truly horrid networking page about the BNI Wildfire Networking group we're a part of (which, incidentally, we have just recently re-designed). To check out the redesign visit our portfolio for Integraphix, a Chicago Marketing Company - here --> http://www.chicagomarketingcompany.co
When Integraphix first started working in the Chicago web design and development industry, we had no idea that it would become so lucrative. The first site we ever remember creating was this truly horrid networking page about the BNI Wildfire Networking group we're a part of (which, incidentally, we have just recently re-designed). To check out the redesign visit our portfolio for Integraphix, a Chicago Marketing Company - here --> http://www.chicagomarketingcompany.co
As far as the boss can recall, that would probably have been at some point around 1999. Now, here we are in 2011 and we are designing websites for a living (along with Branding and Identity, Search Engine Optimization, Logos, and some CMS development work). If you want to know more about it, check out our website at http://www.integraphix.com for our amazing graphic design company in Chicago portfolio.
Anyhoo, all of that brings us to the more relevant point that Integraphix has had their fingers in the web design world for a long time now (probably since before some readers could even really use a computer). However, back when we started with that first website, we really knew nothing about the Web and had never even heard of the whole concept of web design standards.
Realistically, we don’t think many people had thought about it. Even the browsers of the time did not seem to be swayed all that strongly by standards and, as Microsoft released Internet Explorer as a competitor to Netscape, the first barrage of the browser wars began. New versions of software were being released almost as quickly as Google Chrome is today, and by the time we got to about 1996/1997, there were a ton of variations of Netscape and IE out there, with each variation offering its own take on the standard features. Those variations even included basic HTML rendering!
There were some things that you could do in Netscape that you simply couldn’t do in Internet Explorer, and vice versa – many of which were probably things that we wouldn’t even dream of doing today, or which we could do with much more elegance.
Scripting is a great example. Netscape was the first one to introduce JavaScript, causing Internet Explorer to follow suit by creating their own version of the same language (called jScript to get around trademark issues). But they really weren’t the same. The core and the syntax was pretty much identical, but each had functions, methods and properties that did not exist in the other. In some cases, these elements actually did the same things! They just had different names.
Oh, and did you know that there was actually something called VBScript too? It could be used in Internet Explorer, and we believe that we did implement it once as part of a browser checking routine.
Regardless, even though we were only peripherally involved in web design at the time, dabbling a bit here and there and working on them alongside our Graphic Design projects, the differences drove us absolutely bonkers. The web designers at Integraphix can only imagine what the other professionals that were working in the field every day were feeling. We knew a few people who started to get into the web design field at the time, but who quickly abandoned the idea because there were just too many variables to contend with when it came to browser compatibility and testing.
Today, one of these people likes to remark “if you could spell HTML back in 1997, you were a web designer”. Actually, based on some of the sub-par sites that we have seen (and that people have paid for), there is probably still some truth to this.
The point is that the writing was on the wall. If this thing we call the Web was going to continue to grow and become truly usable into the future, something was going to have to change. Things were needed to become more universal!
This is where Web Standards played such a significant role.
Now, Integraphix is not here to trace the history of the Web Standards crusade. We should probably know more about that history, and will make a point of trying to learn about it over time, but we're certainly not well-versed enough to be able to provide a comprehensive or accurate picture of how the standards movement has progressed. What we do know, however, is that we have certainly seen the incredible impact of that movement.
Over the course of what could very well prove to be the most important decade in the history of the Web, we have moved from chaotic and entirely unpredictably fragmented landscape and into something far more universal. Yes, there are still variations to deal with and extensive browser testing to be undertaken (especially with the growing popularity of mobile devices). However, the great front-end triumvirate – HTML, CSS and JavaScript – have ultimately provided us with a solid, universal vocabulary through which to create, evolve and expand the Web.
The real beauty of it all is that, even as the languages and technologies that we are using continue to grow and expand, the actual act of designing and developing is becoming easier because clients (or browsers) are actually becoming increasingly consistent in the way they render things. About 90% of the time, if something looks right in Firefox, it will also look right in Safari and Chrome (both built on Webkit). Generally speaking it will also look right in most recent versions of Opera, though that particular browser does tend to be somewhat less forgiving (many strange behaviours in Opera can be remedied by simply validating your code!).
Of course, Internet Explorer does still tend to be the odd one out, especially if we have to support IE6 for whatever reason, but we’ve even found that the more standards compliant we make our code (which includes using strict modes), the less work we actually have to do trying to fix all the weird IE rendering problems that seem to crop up.
In fact, a few months ago we were getting ready to launch a new site for a client and had set aside an entire evening just to deal with IE issues. We had done all our design and development with Firefox and Safari and saved IE for last (standard procedure for us). We were expecting to take several hours to get everything working and were pleasantly surprised when almost everything rendered perfectly in IE7.
Then we were done. It took less than an hour of work and freed up the rest of our day!
While there is certainly much, much more that can be written about Web Standards, we view all of what we have looked at in this article as further evidence to support the need for standards. Even more importantly, it gives us a greater sense of hope for the future. With the increasing popularity of mobile devices, it can be easy to feel as though we are moving towards a situation similar to the browser wars of the mid-to-late nineties, seemingly designing for two different incompatible media. Back then it was Netscape and Internet Explorer; today it may seem to be the computer and the mobile device.
We don’t think that’s the case, though. Standard and mobile browsing are both built around the same core. They both make use primary of standardized HTML, CSS and JavaScript, which makes them far more compatible than Netscape and Internet Explorer used to be. As such, and given what we have considered through the course of this article, we have every confidence that Web Standards will help bridge this apparent gap and keep us moving continuously forward into an increasingly mobile Web.
- Integraphix, a Chicago Marketing Company and Chicago Web Design Company
Monday, February 14, 2011
Visit us on Google Maps!
Do you like what you've been reading? Visit our Google Maps page or visit our website to see what we offer!
Marketing Company in Chicago
Integraphix Place Page - Integraphix, a Chicago Marketing Company
Our Website - Integraphix - Check us out!!
If you've got marketing, graphic design, web design, or internet marketing needs - give us a call!
847.537.0067 for a free marketing analysis.
If you're more of an emailer - contact us here!
Marketing Company in Chicago
Integraphix Place Page - Integraphix, a Chicago Marketing Company
Our Website - Integraphix - Check us out!!
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| Chicago Marketing Graphic Design Company |
If you've got marketing, graphic design, web design, or internet marketing needs - give us a call!
847.537.0067 for a free marketing analysis.
If you're more of an emailer - contact us here!
Friday, February 11, 2011
We Love Graphic Design!
Here are some perty photos for you to look at while you're sitting at work bored and in need of some brain stimulation. We think they're amazing examples of great graphic design. Our own Graphic Design Company, Integraphix, creates some pretty awesome artwork, but I believe in plugging artists too. Enjoy!
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| Chicago Graphic Design Firm Broken Glass |
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| Chicago Graphic Design Firm Ink Lady |
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| Chicago Graphic Design Firm Face Off! |
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| Chicago Graphic Design Firm Octopus Invasion |
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| Chicago Graphic Design Firm Beauty and the Beast |
Most of these images are examples of some pretty cool photo-manipulation done by great artists, and some of them are actual ads we found that tickled our fancy. Enjoy them at your leisure!
Graphic Designers! Attract Better Clients: Know your worth, Graphic Design is a Business.
Lower-quality clients stink, but are an unfortunate part of the Graphic Design business. Even here at Integraphix, we get some demanding clients, but like I said before, that's part of the business. These types of clients focus on how little they can get away with paying you. They make outrageous demands about the amount of work they want you to do and how quickly the turnaround should be.
Sound familiar? Chances are you, and many other graphic designers, have suffered from working for clients like these. We all have at some point, especially when only starting out.
So how do you avoid working for clients like this? You attract higher-quality ones. Easier said than done though right? Well, you’re in luck! I have 3 simple ways to attract better clients who not only appreciate your work, but are fun to work with. They'll also pay you.
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| Chicago Graphic Designer Integraphix |
There are no tricks involved. It has to do with adjusting your attitude and approach towards clients and the Graphic Design business in general. You MUST stand your ground and not compromise on what you’re worth and who you’re willing to work with. This attitude alone will help and you’ll be well on your way to attracting higher-quality clients that you actually want to work with.
1. Don't be desperate. Make THEM need YOU!
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| Chicago Graphic Designer Integraphix |
You know why the desperate people in high school always dated each other? It's because they didn't care about the quality of their relationship, and didn't pay attention to their feelings of attraction and mutual commonalities. This applies to Graphic Designers and Clients. The absolute #1 way to get low-quality clients is to appear desperate. If you're taking anyone you can get, you'd better bet they're gonna want the world from you for about $20. As a freelancer or business, when you scrape for the bottom of the barrel, that’s what you’ll get. Low quality clients exhibit these traits:
- • Focused on low price
- • Unreasonably demanding the quantity of work and time to deliver it
- • Wanting to make a million changes without paying you the extra amount of time to make changes.
- * They also don't see your time as a billable product: only the end result.
Don’t be desperate – instead, make the clients need you.
When you turn the tables like this, you get to be selective about who you work for. And when you’re picky with who you work for, you end up working with higher-quality clients who:
- • Pay you what you’re actually worth
- • Agree to the quantity of work and time it’ll take to deliver it
- • Know the value of a graphic designer's time and see their design as a process and not an end-product.
Don’t be desperate. Make the client need you. Do not listen to that awful “what if I can’t get any clients” voice in your head, stand your ground, and don’t settle. Sooner than later you’ll start getting the clients that want you for you.
2. Don't undervalue yourself: Offer a lower-priced trial but NOT lower costs overall.
This is the #1 problem start-ups and freelancers get themselves into. Don’t cave in to reducing rates. When you stand your ground, the client will decide either that they can't afford you, or that you're worth the price. You can hope that they'd realize that THEY are worth the price, but we can't have everything. Remember: lesser graphic designers would’ve been more desperate and worked for whatever price they could get.
When pitching to clients, don’t tell them that you can reduce rates. Say what rate you work for and leave it at that. Let the client decide if they can afford that or not – otherwise, you’ll get the lower-quality clients that chase the lowest price and nothing else.
When talking to clients, if they say that the price is too high, use wording like “I’m probably too expensive for you, so you’re better off looking for cheaper graphic designers elsewhere”. Not only will you not settle for lesser pay, but you might actually provoke the client in a friendly way into paying you. They’ll think, hey, I’m good enough of a client, what does this graphic designer mean I can’t afford it? And they just might end up paying you.
That’s good and all, but very few clients will pay full price for unproven talent. So if needed, you should offer a lower-cost trial. If the client is unsure, tell them that you’re wiling to do the first task or project or whatever at a lower rate. Then if the client is happy with the work, they agree to pay full price for subsequent work. This way, you reduce the risk for the client while still standing your ground price-wise and attracting higher-quality clients.
3. Focus your message on the clients you really wantIf you don’t make it clear how you can help, then you won’t be able to attract higher-quality clients who are specifically looking for that solution. So you need to crystal-clearly focus your message on the benefits that clients really want.
For example:
• When you simply say that you are a chicago web designer, you’ll attract amateur clients who are looking for someone to design their website.
• But when you say that you’ll impress the client’s customers that are in this key demographic (and the client has had trouble reaching) and make them more likely to convert by buying/joining or whatnot, you’ll attract the high-quality clients specifically looking for that.
See the difference?
Focus your message on the benefits the higher-quality clients would want:
• Decide who your ideal clients are
• Find out what problems they have that really need solving
• Clearly say that you can help with that in your emails, website, conversations, and any other messages
By focusing your message on the benefits, you’ll increase the chances of those higher-quality clients paying you to do work for them. More more tips, subscribe to the Integraphix blog!
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Showcase of the 10 Best Website Designs of 2010
I want to start showcasing my favourite website designs findings in the Integraphix Best of the Best roundups. This special beginning of the year post showcases the best of the best, bringing together the most awesomest designs from all of 2010 into one showcase of super cool websites.
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A Modern Eden is an online App store for children. It has apps for the iPhone that are geared towards learning and development rather than pure addictive play (coughangrybirdscough). The web design is kind of rough, but also clean, playful, kid and parent friendly.
This website is most definitely geared towards the fairer sex. It has shades of gray, white and black with pops of color like red, blue, and green. The website and Society is meant to raise awareness about abuse towards all women regardless of color, creed, economic status or education. You go girls! The website is simple and beautifully designed with delicate features that the untrained eye might not even notice, but add to the elegance of the design. Bravo.
This website has a very...I want to say rustic birdsnest feel. Perhaps it's the Robin's Egg Blue background or the corkboard tan color, but it just feels so natural. There are signs of Swiss influence, from the + signs to the very simplistic web design. The design is almost non-existent, except for the grid and color. Frankly a pleasure to look at.
This beautifully designed website has little secrets all over the place. When you hover over their links, the typeface changes. And the lack of color except for Red really makes a statement. They're staying true to their branding with the use of red everywhere. Their typeface is also quite unique in the web world. Where most web designers resign themselves to Arial, Georgia, and Times New Roman, these guys said 'N. O. and went with the pretty stuff. Unfortunately, that's not very SEO friendly since their keyword text is an image, but it sure does look nice.
Feed Stitch
This website design has a very playful, very colorful attitued. It's easy to read, with lots of great typography and not a lot of fluff.
Carsonified
These guys have typography mastered. If you could tell from their website home page, their entire We Love the Web design is wonderful typography. Also the talk bubbles to the right are really nifty.
These guys have typography mastered. If you could tell from their website home page, their entire We Love the Web design is wonderful typography. Also the talk bubbles to the right are really nifty.
Conclusion
These are just a few of the greats. I'll get some of Integraphix beautiful web design up here soon! Remember, if you're in the marketing for a website and need a master web design company in Chicago, remember Integraphix has the best and the brightest. See you next time!
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