Six Basic Web Design Reminders

Here's a summary of some web design reminders that all webmasters should know, yet sometimes get overlooked in all the haste and details of building a website.

1) Design sites so they look and work properly on all browsers.

2) Design sites so they look and work properly at any resolution.

3) Be sure your sites still function and look right if a css call fails.

4) Be sure your sites still work when security-conscious users disable Java, Flash, scripting, etc. in their browsers.

5) Be sure your sites still look and work right if embedded objects fail (or are blocked per point #4 above). Don’t rely too heavily on plug-ins and widgets. Use trinkets sparingly for highlights, not the majority of basic content.

6) Keep your clients focused on their customers, not themselves. Gently remind them that the website isn't being built for their own amusement or to impress their buddies or competitors, but for their customers, future prospects, the public, or whatever the case really is.

Top-Ranking Success: Graywood Sporting

This top-10 ranking web design is another site update. The company is a manufacturer's agent in Canada for sporting goods. (In other words, if you owned a sporting goods store and wanted to sell Winchester ammunition or SOG knives, you'd go through Graywood Sporting.)

The original website used detrimental text graphics in place of real text, the small amount of real text was Times Roman, every page was offset to the far left for no reason, everything was one shade of green upon green, and nothing was optimized for search engines to make any sense of.

Updates included centering pages, adding a custom background image, editing and formatting all the text, adding a plain text footer to every page, switching to plain text navigation links, SEO of every element from page titles to images, and updating the manufacturer, distributor, and sales contacts.

The redesign makes it cleaner, more colorful, and easier to read for visitors. And of course the real benefit to the client is a top-ranking website.

Top-Ranking Success: Heritage Cattle Company

This is one of our very rare web design make-overs; we don't normally do "SEO work" on existing sites, since it tends to be more of a hassle than just building a site correctly from scratch. You have to go through someone else's code and remove stuff, add stuff, and edit almost everything, which ends up being twice as much work. In this case I knew the owners and did them a big favor.

The result? We turned a site that literally couldn't be found into a top-ranking winner.

The existing site had been up for a few years, yet we spent a hilarious half an hour trying to FORCE it to appear in search results and failed! We tried the name of the company, the town, the owner's names, and all those things combined and in long-string quotes, and still the site wouldn't come up on Bing, Yahoo, or Google.

It seemed the site either wasn't indexed or had possibly been banned (although that would be unlikely across all three of the big search engines). But we did find it indexed in all of them. It was just such poor web design that search engines didn't see anything of value and didn't know how to categorize it.

The first change was a new header on every page, with the company name, address, and phone number in plain text. Next was editing the copy to immediately tell visitors and search engines "We are a cattle farm that sells natural beef", which could have been implied from the original site but wasn't obvious. Then a pile of photos were added, since there were few. After that, tweaking all page elements for clarity.

The intention was to get it ranking well for "natural beef" in the Peterborough and Keene regions of Ontario. But now it actually ranks in the top 5 for "natural beef Ontario", which is substantial. It's certainly a long way from spending half an hour unable to find a site you know exists.

Top-Ranking Success: Discovery Child Care

This is a fun and bright website using the client's selection of green and yellow to match their print material. There are many photos throughout the site, featuring parents and children at the day care.

The target audience is parents seeking child care in Peterborough, Ontario, so there are useful links and documents for them on the website. The parent handbook is one of several forms available to view or download, and links to regulatory and industry groups are prominent on the home page.

Top-10 ranking for this site was achieved by designing the site in the simplest possible way. Four pages with clean and obvious navigation; no ads, scripts, or embedded content; no css or other off-page or off-site calls. Nothing that doesn't directly describe the child care center. All content runs straight out of the root directory. Search engines and visitors have instant access to all content on the website within two clicks from anywhere.

Top-Ranking Success: Robin Walton

Another rewarding top-10 website we designed is RobinWalton.ca, for a freelance illustrator in Ontario Canada. Robin is a true freehand artist, using chalk and pencil. The world is overflowing with computer graphic designers, so it was a treat being able to build a top-ranking website for a traditional artist.

The site is simple, basically a bio of the artist and some of her sample illustrations and drawings.

In terms of the top-10 website ranking, there weren't a lot of elements to add to the site that would have been of value to visitors, so we merely optimized what we had. In her effort to gain new book publishing clients, it was important that we kept the site simple and focused: freehand illustrations by a freelance artist. Paying attention to the basics was all it took. (This site has a broader audience than our typical local sites, being the entire province of Ontario, yet the ranking work remained much the same.)

Top-Ranking Success: Cassel Entertainment

Cassel Entertainment is another of our top-10 ranking local websites, in the category of wedding DJs in the Peterborough, Ontario region.

This is a typical DJ service, providing music for indoor and outdoor events. Dan Cassel, owner and disc jockey, primarily provides music for wedding dinners, receptions, and dances. But he also does graduation dances, office parties, reunions, or any other type of get-together.

Dan wanted the site to be classy, and made a specific request for a vintage '57 Chevy. After several designs, the result was a prominent custom black & white graphic at the top left of each page. He was pleased with the addition of a couple dancing beside the car. His logo was also custom made, as were the spinning music notes in the navigation links.

In terms of ranking, other local DJ sites aren't built very well (many are "home-made"), so getting him ranked in the top-10 didn't require any special effort, other than sticking to the basics of proper web design. During research it was found that DJ websites rarely have backlinks, other than directory listings. DJs tend to serve one-shot clients who don't have their own websites. That could be something to consider in the future if necessary. In the meantime it's already a top-ranking site with good traffic.

Top-Ranking Success: Inside Security

This is an industry-specific site designed for security guards. The province of Ontario Canada has new training and testing requirements for all guards, private investigators, and bouncers, and everyone needs to learn what it's all about, both current employees and new applicants.

The site was designed to provide straightforward facts about the new training course and test, and has tons of specific links to important information (mostly government acts and regulations). The layout is simple, using solid neutral colors for extended reading without eye strain.

There's an Ontario security industry overview, specific security course and test information, and a page explaining private security work for new guards.

This site achieved top-10 ranking because of a huge amount of detailed 100% original information, a very targeted audience, and focused SEO elements. It's getting a ton of traffic. A top-ranking success.

One Major Prediction For 2011

I believe there will be one major sweeping change in 2011 that will drastically affect computers, similar to the disappearance of the floppy drive.

... the disappearance of hard disk drives with moving parts.

Already there are larger and larger USB thumb drives (also called jump drives, flash drives, USB keys, and memory sticks) available, yet they are very expensive. For instance, Tiger sells a 256GB model for $1000 (256GB Kensington flash drive).

Many netbooks have already eliminated hard drives, using flash memory similar to that of thumb drives. Prices will drop significantly in 2011 as more and more of this type of memory is manufactured and it becomes the new standard for more devices like cell phones, laptops, and external drives. It is smaller, faster, noiseless, shock resistant, not prone to wearing out, uses little power, and doesn't get hot. This type of memory will eventually replace today's hard disk drives, and I think 2011 will be the year it begins to be shipped in place of standard spinning drives.

We'll see how much a 256GB thumb drive costs in December of 2011.

P.S. This leads to other questions too, like whether today's HDD manufacturers will shift succesfully into this new media or be left in the dust of the current leaders in flash memory. And whether recordable DVDs will continue to have any purpose at all.

Other Solid State Drives:
- 480GB internal drive, PCIe mounted - $1637.99
- 256GB external flash drive - $749.99