Our Advice on Design and Development

The Importance of Design

Good design is critical.  It can attract, inspire, educate, sell and support. Poor design does just the opposite. Poor design repels, frustrates and makes it hard to find the information a site visitor is looking for.

The design process happens separately, but in cooperation with the development process. The best sites typically have a dedicated designer and a dedicated developer. Some of the most poorly designed sites on the web were created by technically proficient people who don't have a background in design. It is the rare person who is a stellar designer and developer.

Custom or Template Design

In a custom design, a graphic artist/designer will create a unique design that is specifically created for your company. This costs more than template designs but helps you avoid having a website that looks like someone else's on the web. A good designer will usually provide 2-3 design candidates for you to condsider.

There are reasons why you may wan't to consider starting with a template and the biggest one is cost. Templates can cost a fraction of a custom design. If the designer has purchased the template and has the right to modify it to meet your needs then this may be aviable alternative. It can also speed up the process. Be wary of anyone selling a template as a custom design. We have seen these sites littering the web. Usually the person has little or no design skill and limited development skill. This may make your new website hard to change and expensive to keep up to date.

Flash vs HTML websites

We have used our share of Adobe Flash to make high impact websites. You should be aware that although headway has been made, Flash still isn't as search engine friendly as HTML. Additionally, HTML based sites can be updated more easlily. See the next topic for more info.

We recommend sites be HTML with carefully placed Flash content that doesn't interfer with search engines.

Updating Your Site

Ask your developer if they provide a Content Management Sytem (CMS) so you can update things like text, pictures and photo gallery's on your website. This can help you save time and money. You should also find out if the CMS they are providing is open source or custom coded. If they have custom coded their own CMS, you may be tied to this developer for the life of your site. We prefer to utilize one of several top open source CMS systems. This gives you the most flexibility in determining the future of your website content should you ever become dissatisfied with your developer. We believe our clients should have full ownership and access to their site and code if ever needed.