Tag: Web Design

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Things I Am Working On For the Future

Okay not the far off future, but for this summer specifically. There are some new technologies that are emerging and I want to learn more, so here is my laundry list of things that I am actively and aggressively going after to learn, implement on my own website, and am testing to use for clients.

Rich Snippets

When Google speaks I listen. Recently it was announced that Google was embracing Rich Snippets. There is a special syntax to use that is XML based for creating your snippets and embedding them in your source code and I want to review, try them on my own website, and see how the search engines really use the information. Will it help in anyway with what is shown in the results, does it give a website a bump over the others? Whatever I find out, I’ll make sure to share with you here. Learn more about Rich Snippets at Search Engine Land.

Spry Features

I moved to Dreamweaver and am now introducing several new XML technologies into my own website. Right now I am working on creating and XML feed to show my online web design Portfolio. Dreamweaver makes it pretty easy to do this stuff, but the applications for other content and sites may be really cool, so I am chinking away at learning more about the use of accordion panels and data sets. I am already heavily using the Spry drop down and fly out menus. They are nice and very search engine friendly, but I would like to skin them better with background graphics for a more custom look. I’ll point to my projects when I am ready to show them off.

Web Slices

This is another brand new technology introduced with Internet Explorer 8.  Web slices are little snippets that you can change and people can subscribe to to review in their browser favorites bar without visiting your site. Could be a very cool way to show discounts, feature products, or snippets of content that change regularly. I think that this will have really cool application for websites and want to understand them more. Here is some information from CoDe magazine on how to build a web slice.  I’m not sure what search engines are doing with the information yet, but just like RSS feeds this could be a huge new technology that will bloom in the months to years to come.

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We’re All A La Carte Baby!

I had a client tell me the other day that I needed to create a web design and AdWords package all rolled into one on top of offering my Quick Launch website pricing with all custom design features for his needs.  Well, packaging sometimes can be good, but every business person should evaluate what packages make sense for their business first.

For us, we are niche suppliers. My firm specializes in organic placement and the creation of Web Authority websites. That means, great website design full of SEO built from the ground up and content rich. You will pay for this kind of website truthfully, but with nearly nine years of experience we know our stuff! Our typical client will spend about $4,000 to $5,500 for the initial website and then continue to add content and enhancements to it over time. At around the end of one year, we typically will have excellent organic placement on Google and a marketing machine built for the client that is propelling their business forward.

Many clients will tie the original design work in with our blogging services, article marketing, and Google AdWords services after the website is launched. However initially rarely do we sell all items as a package together. I really feel that I want to see what is needed after the site is launched before we recommend the next step.

I have long felt that the best approach for businesses is to allow them to “cherry pick” our service offering based on what their needs are and their budget is. I have rarely created big packages as I feel that each client is different and each persons need is different. We want to help the client make great decisions not based on a package we sell, but based on where they can get the most “bang for their buck”.

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Is There Such a Thing as Too Technology Heavy?

Yes there is a situation where you can work to make your website so technology heavy that you get bogged down and lose the ability to be nimble or become prone to service outages or hostage to your programmer.

I have one large client whose site I occasionally webmaster who has had this happen to him. It crept up on him slowly, but now the tech bloat is really coming back to bite him. big time. The issue is that now his site is so dynamic in nature, pulls in fields from his database from many elements that  he is spending more time fixing things than he is spending growing his business. Right now his administrative control panel is down, broken when his developer added an interface to feed registrations to populate a store shopping cart. Then the developer broke the look and feel of the site when he set up a new password login. It is one problem after another.

Now if his database tied to his computer server in his business office has a hiccup, his website is impacted. It has become so sensitive and the problems now so fierce that he almost has had to set up a cot for his developer. All this for about 30 visitors a day to his website!

This is a situation where you don’t have to have everything fed into your website from a database. For a business this size they just don’t need this type of technological interface, in fact it is overkill.

At this point due to the nature of the problems, now the client is considering scrapping his entire site and all the technology that he has paid to be created and going back to a static site with an off-site place for certain transactions to keep the main site separate from the more dynamic problems. It is a shame that the client did not receive good guidance from the programmer to help scale his needs to his traffic and has ended up throwing money out the window. Technology is a good thing, but don’t let it drive your website before you really need it.

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Graphic Electric Website Launched

Graphic Electric
Graphic Electric

We’ve just finished this brand new website for Graphic Electric and wanted to share it with you. This site was built for an electrical contractor located in Maryland which serves Maryland, Virginia, Washington DC, and Delaware.

This is their first time on the Web. The business has been providing industrial electrician services since 1986 but just now putting up their first website.

Make sure to check out the Flash slide show on the Industrial Laundry services page as you will see some fabulous before and after shots of the warehouse before and after Graphic Electric has wired and installed all of the laundry equipment. It is very interesting.

This site was built with Dreamweaver’s AJAX navigation which is search engine friendly yet gives the look and feel of a typical drop down menu – in this case horizontal slide out menu.

The site has been well optimized and is full of client testimonials and project descriptions. Even if you are not looking for an electrical contractor, we invite you to click in and check out this new website.