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Our Web Design Philosophy We design web sites that are accessible and usable by the people who are looking for the information on the site. This philosophy translates into clear imperatives for design, yet different depending on who your users are. Accessible means "designed to be found." Search engines are the method of choice for the vast majority of users trying to find information on the web. Designing for search engines means focusing on the information, enriching the text on the opening page to quickly and clearly communicate the content and intent of the site. Flash is a wonderful tool for smooth animation, but search engines do not index Flash. So a site with a beautiful splash video for the opening page has been designed not to be found by search engines. Flash has a place on a well-designed site, but not as the first page. Accessible also means "designed for the connection speed of your users." We all love broadband connections, but high-speed connections are not utilized by the majority of Americans, even less by the rest of the world. We simply must continue to design pages for dial-up access if we hope to reach the largest number of users. If the people who visit your web site are all in large or technology related organizations, you can assume high-speed connections. But if you intend to communicate with small business, the general population, or the rest of the world, then the weight of the page is still an important issue. Usability means "designed to communicate, not to entertain." The vast majority of internet users view the web to be an information medium, not an entertainment venue. Web designers are understandably focused on the delivery, not the content of a web site; they expect the content to be provided by someone else. But designers should be focusing on communicating with the intended user, not impressing their fellow designers. Many sites are designed (perhaps "overdesigned") with technological wizardry intended to evoke the "wow" effect when viewed by other designers. The average user seeking information is more likely to bookmark your site because of its superior content than its impressive visual effects. Usability also means "easy to navigate." Automobiles are almost all designed so the basic controls are in the same place and function the same way from one car to the next. That's what makes it possible to get into any car and know how to operate it. The most usable web sites are those whose navigation works exactly the way visitors expect it to. We exit quickly the sites that have confusing navigation. A web site whose content can be modified without calling the designer will be a more usable site. Recognizing that there are limitations to the degree of control that can be given to non-programmers, we need to make web sites as "self-modifiable" as possible. If we are clear that a web site is an information distributor, we will design so the information may be easily changed and updated. A web site should protect the e-mail addresses from "harvester robots". It is sad that a beautifully simple HTML command (the 'mailto' tag) can no longer be used without exposing e-mail addresses to spam. Today's sites need communication more than ever, so sites must be designed so that e-mail is form-generated. We hope you will contact us if you need a web site, or need your current site to deliver more for your business. We really can make your site work as hard as you do. |
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