Web Design: Trends that Border on Convention

To expand on the notion of web design conventions, there is a broader set of techniques that aren’t mandatory but are inching their way towards being a standard. Here are a few website styles that have solidified into conventions and are holding on for the long haul.

Social Media Icons

Businesses using social media (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, LinkedIn, etc) are strongly encouraged to add links to each of their profiles on their website. The new convention, going by the trend, is to add these links as a set of style-matching icons to the header or footer of the site’s design. This trend has created a predictable place to find social media connection links, as well as established a pattern a set of small icons. You can find many sets of icons for the popular networks for free online in various styles and shapes (glossy, round, sketchy, etc).

The typical exceptions to the header/footer icon trend are sites with widgets & organizations with few social media outlets. Websites making use of the available widgets or API functionality will typically have a leaderboard of their Facebook friends or a ticker of their latest Twitter tweets. Friend/follower widgets are almost always used in the sidebar, whereas a Latest Tweets is slightly more flexible and can be styled to fit a variety of applications – though the default plug & play variety will also tend to be on a sidebar.

Single (or Social) Sign On

Single/Social Sign On allows users to perform logged-in activities on your website without having to create and remember a special account just for the site. SSO is extremely convenient for blog commenting since the user does not need to create a new account with the website to participate. They may have concerns about security or remembering a litany of username/password combinations, and with SSO systems such as Gravatar, Disqus, and Twitter Oauth they are far more likely to jump into the discussion. The added bonus of a SSO for blogs is that the user’s name, avatar image, and URL can be utilized. Your comment sections are instantly more personable!

Graceful Degradation

Web designers and developers can sometimes be heard grumbling about certain pieces of software that are long-outdated but just won’t die. You can help them wish Internet Explorer 6 a happy 10th birthday, and then start a conversation on how your website can degrade gracefully.

“Graceful degradation” describes the decline in quality (of design or user experience) for browsers that are substandard. There was a time when it was practical to expect your website to look basically the same on everybody’s computer, and designers and developers would use workarounds and certain techniques to ensure consistency. But today’s browsers are vastly superior and more consistent (compared to each other). We now have new ways to achieve the same effects that are faster, smarter, and more extensible. The new challenge is to make the experience GREAT for modern browser users and GOOD for those people who are unable to upgrade their systems (usually because of old infrastructure).

Real-world examples of graceful degradation:

• For Flash or video content, offer an explanation and descriptive image for non-Flash devices (or those incapable of seeing the video).
• Allow certain design features or non-critical functionality to be lost on older browsers.
• Be prepared for your preferred fonts to be unavailable, aliased (jagged), or the wrong size on some machines.

All of the above examples are within the lines of graceful degradation.

Scottsdale Web Design – Officially!

SPRISE MEDIA is proud to announce that we have officially moved to Scottsdale, Arizona! We are now designing websites in sunny North Scottsdale and look forward to this new transition.

If you are a Scottsdale business in need of a website or looking to revise (or revitalize) your existing web pages, please drop us a line or request a quote.

Sprise Media Joins Local First Arizona

In our ongoing efforts to support local business and show our commitment to spending locally, we are happy to announce our inclusion to Local First Arizona! LFA works to educate and enrich on the community level, celebrating local businesses and the benefits of working with them.

Sprise Builds Websites Locally in Scottsdale, Arizona

As a local Scottsdale business, we look forward to working with you on your next web project. Sprise is a fully local web design shop, we do not utilize contractors from the far corners of the world. By keeping our talent Arizona-based we are able to make a larger contribution back into the community that most directly impacts our lives.

“When you shop locally owned businesses, your money is re-circulated over and over and creates up to 75% more tax revenue to our community and state.”
- LFA

Contact Sprise Media today for your next creative project, freelance work inquiry, or website consultation. See special offer for new clients on our Local First Arizona listing!

Lessons Learned from Realtor & Real Estate Websites

It’s no secret that Arizona real estate is either in the toilet or ripe with opportunities – depending on your viewpoint and what assets you were holding when the bubble burst. Many fine people had to walk away from their now over-mortgaged homes and were subject to the black mark of bankruptcy. But what about the Realtors themselves, whose own homes and livelihood depend on selling properties to the (now dwindling) buyer base?

What’s happening now in Arizona’s real estate market is interesting to watch and learn from if you are able to do so. While some real estate professionals are going hungry and looking for other jobs, there are many who have turned up the dial on their websites and online marketing instead of backing down in the face of market conditions. They know that houses will always need to be bought and sold and they know that people are turning to the internet for everything, from cancer to condos.

Here are three lessons you can learn from the Realtors of Arizona and their web marketing strategies.

Choose a narrower target audience than you would have in prior years.

It’s not just local firms vying for keywords like “arizona real estate” – brokerages all over the world are trying to get a piece of the US and AZ real estate market! The most generic keywords in any industry are more challenging to rank for, and with the boom of interest in capitalizing on Arizona’s housing crisis, the competition makes general terms cost prohibitive. Similarly with so many firms to choose from it has become more important for the Realtor to appeal to a more niche market. While the broad-spectrum approach doesn’t alienate, it also doesn’t resonate deeply with buyers.

Examples of target markets for a real estate website:

• Canadians looking for winter condos
• Relocations
• Renovate and sell investors (“fix and flip”)
• Rental investors
• Horse properties

Use your website to provide a service first, and promote yourself second.

Providing a free online service to the world at large is a great way to put your name on the radar to folks who aren’t even interested or able to buy yet. They may not be at the stage of choosing a Realtor yet, just checking out the geographical area. Many Phoenix – Scottsdale Realtors have created blogs about the locale they serve and rather than reposting the same old MLS listings, they post about what’s new and hot in the city. They broaden their website’s visitor base by providing restaurant reviews, new business openings, city projects, and local news. They have their websites built in content management systems (e.g. WordPress) and do the updates themselves.

Case Study:

Who doesn’t like to chuckle and think they could have done it better? AZ Realtor Leif Swanson turned his everyday sea of sad MLS photos into a fun “fail blog” of real estate. Readers from around the world tune in to see Christmas trees up in July, million-dollar cluttered kitchens, and the occasional perfectly-preserved 50′s kitchen. The Ugly House Photos blog also has a nice series of posts about homebuilding trends in the Phoenix area throughout the decades. The website’s design is a tongue-in-cheek reflection of its contents.

Be aggressive with organic SEO and web marketing, especially in stiff competition.

It’s not enough in the real estate field to optimize a website and then leave it. Too many competitors are making frequent and targeted updates to their own sites, trying to get a piece of the action. A firm that doesn’t put time or money into their continued online success will become buried by more active competition in the search results.

Continually make additions and efforts with your target audience in mind. Remember at all times that the market has changed and no longer allows for complacency. The techniques that served your company well in the earlier part of the decade may no longer apply, and if you don’t adjust course there are many professionals who will gladly take your future business. Don’t try to sacrifice your advertising and marketing when business is slow – instead, push harder. If you can’t hire an expert, ask your web professional if they can create a site for you to update personally. Remember, your online competition is very hungry!

Hiring a Freelance Web Designer

Why hire a freelance webdesigner?

Cost Savings

Hiring a freelancer can save you money on your project! Think about it, there is no expensive office to furnish and maintain. Their business will be without many expenses that an agency or design studio would incur, and their own travel/commuting expenses will be lower. Work that would typically be billed $65-$100 per hour in an agency environment is significantly cheaper when you contract that job to a skilled freelancer whose operating costs are a fraction of the agency.

Having said that, there is one caveat. If your prospective web designer’s rates look too good to be true, then it probably is. Your freelance web designer still has to do his or her taxes, pay for insurance, meet their own bills, and do all the tasks usually delegated to a bookkeeper, salesman, and marketer in a traditional company. Certainly they will work hard for you, their client, but there is time set aside each day for these afore-mentioned “non-paying” tasks. You want to be able to call up your web professional to chat about your project and ask questions, don’t you? A good freelancer will be glad to assist you, while the underpaid one will be unable to break from their work to take your call (or worse yet they have farmed out the work to another country).

Hiring a web designer freelance (instead of employing an agency) can also be a great savings to you because the threshold for entry-level projects tends to be lower. Remember “No job too small”? Many agencies start their web pricing at $3,000 and up with no accommodations for smaller jobs. Your freelancer should be able to custom-fit their quote to your exact project needs, not the other way around.

Custom Packages to Suit Your Needs

Freelancers work with a variety of industries and types of clients. We know that one size rarely fits all, and a good webdesigner won’t try to force fit your project into a standard package that is over your budget or misses your needs. Most freelancers are happy to draft a quote uniquely tailored to your project and are more likely to make this-for-that substitutions so that the website you purchase is exactly the website you need.

Flexibility in general is greater with freelance web designers than with agencies, since you will be dealing with a person. One professional, knowledgeable, and pleasant person whose main objective is to bring your ideas to life. They know that all the success and prosperity they bring your way is a direct reflection on their expertise and abilities, and so they work hard for your success – not just your signature on the check.

Freelancers Have Many Friends

Since your freelance web designer has to wear many hats – sales, marketing, bookkeeping, courier, copywriter, proofreader, developer, photographer, consultant, to name a few of the possible many – they have to network with the graphic, creative, and technological communities in their area. They come to know professionals in different areas and with skillsets outside their own. When you need to find a professional in another field, ask your freelancer if they have contacts. If they do, you can review the pro’s they refer you to and enjoy the same benefits of a freelancer and promoting your local economy all over again.

By choosing a freelance designer or website professional you will save money and gain favorable terms and flexibility for your website project. You will be promoting the creative community and local business within your area, and can get access to a host of other types of freelance-rate service providers that you may need down the line. Your freelancer and their professional friends can save you money on this project and the next!

Website Design Conventions

What are web design conventions and why do they apply to my website?

Web design has evolved greatly from its early days, and in that time, a few patterns have solidified into convention. To follow these patterns is to give the user an easy experience, with the website’s elements roughly in the places they expect them to be. Breaking from these website conventions will make browsing and interacting with your site more difficult and – at worst case – turn away your customers.

Don’t make your website difficult.

For artistic or personal preference reasons, some website owners elect to ignore web convention and make their users think hard when they are on their site. Certainly there is a little bit of artistic license lost by following the norm, but the gains far outweigh the loss. Consider how the following tasks would be more arduous if conventions were not established:

• Getting around in a foreign airport
• Driving a rental car off the lot, of a model you have never sat in
• Taking a photograph for a stranger

In each example there are patterns established by builders and manufacturers that allow us to do the above tasks while hardly giving a second thought. Universal pictorial signage, standardization of car features, and a large button on the right side of the camera body have decreased the amount of thinking and guesswork that goes into our everyday life. Why wouldn’t we design our site to give users the same level of convenience?

Website Logo Position

The logo should go on the web page’s top left corner and when clicked, link back to the home page. Your company’s (or entitity’s) logo should always be among the first visual items on every page. This convention is perhaps the most important and when compared to traditional media (print), it is different because the logo-on-top web design rule really cannot be broken. Unlike the cover of a book, you will never be able to control what size your page is shown at. Did they see the whole page, or just the first 700 pixels? Occasionally there is a design where the logo is top center or top right – these are much less common but can be acceptable so long as the identity of the site is clear.

Navigation on your Website

The website’s main navigation should be clearly visible without scrolling down the page. The navigation typically occurs as a horizontal bar across the top or a vertical column of links on the left or right side of the webpage. It can be of whatever color and styling the designer likes, but it needs to be legible and in one of these places – visible immediately when the site loads.

A secondary navigation area of lesser-used links can occur away from the top of the site. This additional navigation could be placed in the footer, on a sidebar, or in another strategic place. It should be clear by the site design that this block of links plays a “supporting role” rather than the “lead role” in the page’s design.

Design Consistency Across the Site

Aim for consistency in design across the site, with deviations occurring as necessary for clarity. At no point should your user question if they’ve clicked off your site! Unlike multi-page printed materials (such as a booklet or annual report), your website should have a set of elements that remain constant throughout all pages. A common header, content layout, navigtation, and styling of text can be employed to make your site experience clear and memorable.

Designing a new site in accordance with these design conventions is just one more way you can provide an easy and enjoyable web experience for your users. You will give them the information they need, in the way that they are accustomed to receiving it. By sticking with the conventions of the web, your website will do its job more effectively and communicate more clearly.

The Costs of Owning a Website

What does it cost to own a website? What recurring charges does my company need to budget for when we set up our website?

If you or your company are going about creating/revising your site, you will want to be armed with the facts and be prepared for the numbers. Your website will be an invaluable tool and business asset, and you know it is worth spending the money on the extra features that your customers will appreciate. But how about a year after the project is completed, and your design studio is asking for another check?

Even after the site is built and launched there will be recurring fees, the most basic of which is simply keeping the site “live” and online every day.

Basic ‘Cost of Doing Business Online’ Services

There are two regular charges that every site will incur, which are domain name and web hosting.

Domain Name

Your company’s domain name is the custom URL that your visitors will use to reach your site, e.g., sprisemedia.com. You can also make use of your domain to create professional email addresses such as “info@sprisemedia.com” – this instead of using a freebie service like Hotmail or Gmail.

Necessary? A human-readable domain name that describes your business is essential.

Cost: Low, less than $30 per year, billed annually.

Web Hosting

This service is about giving your website files a 24/7 internet connection and a fast computer that can hand them out to all your users at a moment’s notice. This is a time of great choices for a hosting customer, it is a very competitive industry and the industry standard uptime is 99.99% for even the most basic accounts. Your host can provide you with email account tools, statistical data, FTP access (for transferring large files), and other perks at no extra charge.

Your website will be stored on professionally-maintained servers in a climate-controlled building, being backed up in the event of an emergency. While it is not impossible to host your own site on your own server, the low cost and stability of professional web hosting makes it the better choice for most sites.

Necessary: Completely necessary 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Cost: Less than $15 a month for small-medium sites. Larger sites may need more resources, on the order of $65 or so per month. The very largest of sites (e.g., Amazon) require considerably more resources.

When Your Web Hosting Obligations Will Increase

Expect to need more computer-power if your website:

1. Makes use of software that requires a lot  of computer resources to run. This could be highly functional software that performs many tasks per second, or it could also be a smaller but inefficiently designed system that is wasting resources.
2. Will be growing constantly due to user participation or increased user base. At the larger end of the scale would be the social networks, who create virtually no content themselves but give each user the ability to upload photos, content, video, etc. Each account adds another little slice to the hosting needs of the site.
3. Streams video or audio frequently. Today we have the ability for great video quality and instant playback, our computer downloading the video while we watch it. Video files are large however, and sometimes a hundred or more MB (megabytes) get passed from host to user as one person watches your content. Don’t shy away from video for this reason – the benefit far outshines the cost.
4. Is a really high-traffic place on the web. Why is the Craiglist.com design so boring? The answer is that the simple text-based design is highly efficient, which is very appropriate considering that 99% of Craigslist is free to all. They are able to keep expenses low by delivering some of the leanest pages out there, and support their site by charging a few dollars for job advertising only.

Ecommerce Expenses

If you’re selling online and taking credit cards, you’ll have a bank account set up for that purpose (merchant account) and will also need to have a payment gateway service.

The merchant account is the type of bank account needed to accept payment by credit or debit card (checks and cash also accepted, of course). You’ll want to get the merchant account first, because it will dictate what payment gateway services you’ll be able to  choose from.

The payment gateway is the quick, Accepted-Or-Denied piece of the selling puzzle. It takes the place of the regular credit card terminal to make the “virtual swipe of the card”. Your payment gateway should be chosen from the list allowed by your bank (to work with their accounts), and most allow you to process a credit card by hand if you’d like (for an offline transaction).

Cost: Varies but typically a monthly fee (often $30 or less) for the merchant bank account, plus a per-transaction fee of about $.30, and usually another percentage fee on the sale (1-3%).

The Bottom Line on Website Charges

To keep your site online and accessible, figure on twenty or so dollars per month in basic services used (domain name and hosting). If you know you’ll have lots of video, or an ever-expanding amount of content (such as from constant new users) then bring your budget up towards $65 per month. If you aren’t sure you fit the higher-needs category, start small and see how it goes. Do your pages load quickly and completely? Are you within your allotted share of server resources? If so, you’re fine at that service level.

When adding ecommerce to your site make sure your business model can support not only the standard credit card processing fees (around 3%), but also the added cost of the credit-/debit-accepting bank account (the merchant account) and the per-transaction “swipe fee”. You’d incur the same costs in a brick-and-mortar business, so just don’t forget about those expenses when planning your retail site (no out of site, out of mind).

Here’s to happy and profitable  site ownership!

Such a Thing as Bad Design?

In the art world there are a wide range of tastes and styles. Prefer Pollack to Manet? Like photography but could care less about watercolors? Throughout history great thinkers have tried to put a scale of “Good, Better, Best” on art, and while some of it sticks, art appeal still remains an individual affair. So doesn’t graphic design or web design depend on the eye of the beholder?

In reality there is a second category that  absolutely can be graded “Good, Better, Best”: I call it Commercial Art. So yes, there  is such a thing as bad design, and no amount of ‘beholding’ can justify these commercial art mistakes:

• Design doesn’t work for intended use, ie: Text too small on a bumper sticker
• Excessively deviating from client’s brand standards (however there is some leeway in adapting the print standards to a website)
• Color choice unsuited to subject. Ever see hospital with black or red interior?
• Design faux-pas like vertical text or Comic Sans. Wait is Avocado still a good color for a fridge?
• Details not wrapped up

And specifically relating to websites:

• Visual hierarchy not very clear. Site owners struggle with this one since each piece of the site seems really important, but the fact is this: Something has to be #1 on the page. If there is no clearly defined scale of “look-at-me-ness” then everything settles as Priority #10.
• Too many choices lead to no choice (a proven fact). Buying bananas is pretty easy right? Regular, possibly also the teeny red ones or organic. Bananas are a no-brainer. What about choosing between “About Us”, “Our Owners”, “Company History”, and “Executive Officers”?
• Overly unusual, trying to be innovative. Left-to-right scrolling on a designer’s site? Ok sure, they think outside the box and can be eccentric. But scrolling side-to-side to buy insurance?

If you’d really like to fine-tune your design’s success (particularly for ecommerce), you can do so by using a service that serves two versions of the same page and compares the resulting data.

If the strategy and concept behind the site design is solid and user-friendly, it ultimately does become an eye-of-the-beholder situation.

Baby blue or french blue? Textured look or smooth look? As long as you’re putting your users first and basing design decisions soundly, you should come out on top.

Company Blogs Bring Spice

Don’t let the words “Corporate Weblog” bring to mind a fulltime PR staff, veteran copywriters, or image-inventing publicists. That sounds so inaccessible and out-of-reach for small to medium sized companies! If you have ideas and can type, you can start a blog. One of the beautiful things about blogging is the RSS Feed. It stands for Really Simple Syndication, and the takeaway point is this: your users get alerted to your new blog posts as soon as you post them to your website. Do they use RSS on their smartphone? If so you are reaching them regardless of their proximity to a computer.

What the Company Blog IS

The company blog is a like your own newspaper column. You can use it for reporting news, giving an interesting writeup, detailing promotions, and any other type of information you’d like to include in your web ‘column’. Your audience will vary depending on your industry, so consider the type of person that will be interested in what you’ve got to say. Consider the following examples when coming up with ideas for your blog:

1. ‘JJ of JJ’s Custom Furniture’ writes his company blog in the first person and gives opinions on design, materials, and placement in the home. Who reads it? Designers and homeowners looking for insight. Why do it? Being that JJ writes in the first person on interesting topics and has a fun writing style, he enjoys a bit of celebrity status with his readers. And who doesn’t want to purchase from a personality they like?
2. ‘Family First Minivans’ uses a blog to promote their specials online and put out safety information on models they sell. Who reads it? Consumers, mostly those with families. Why do it: Instantly gets the word out on the sales vehicles and consumers want to make and informed buy.
3. ‘XYZ Water and Sewer’ uses their blog to post their most recent accomplishments and review what’s hot in their industry. Who reads it? Other industry professionals, city maintenance personnel. Why do it? This blog will build credibility for XYZ and possibly get them work in neighboring areas, since they will experience better search rankings. Oh, and they can probably say they have the #1 Wastewater Treatment blog!

What the Company Blog ISN’T

The main rule around the company blog is common sense. Bad grammar or spelling, plagiarism, unrelated topics, and overly personal details must be left out. Here are three bad mistakes, admittedly a little comical, that can never show up (Caveat: Except when detailing what not to do!):

1. “Just yesterday we delivered a bedroom set to a couple – and we had fought really hard with them on the design, and darn it was just so ugly. Say it with me: GET THE JACQUARD AWAY FROM THE WHITE WICKER.”
2. “XYZ has let go of Karen, systems administrator. Now Hiring for Systems Administrator, Candidate Must Be Able to Refrain From Inter-Office Relations.”
3. “And of 2010 minivans we have find this the safset because it has Airbags and  TWO POINT RESTRAINT SEATBELTS and traction control system on all levels of models This is are best selling car!”

Spicing Up Your Company’s Website

Write at least one post every week (or delegate the task) and each time, your site will gain fresh content and relevant material. You may be surprised at the interest your blog can generate! If you have a comments system in place your users can leave their own responses, adding another layer of participation and liveliness. What’s New? What’s Hot? What do the pro’s think? Hot off the press, it’s your blog!