Web Site Design Philosophy and Techniques

Our design philosophy is: clean and simple. Cut though the clutter and deliver the message.

A great web site not only informs but also increases sales, lowers customer support expenses while providing better service, and is easy to update and maintain. Easy-to-use navigation with clear, fast-loading, content is the hallmark of an effective site.

A well designed site starts with an understanding of your business and thorough knowledge of which technologies to use to achieve your objectives. Many of the makeovers we do involves re-aligning the web presence with the way a particular business functions as much as new design for the site.

Though we are located in Santa Barbara we have clients across the country. Contact us by calling at (805) 409-4300 or video conference via our AIM account: Or continue below to learn more about our web site design philosophy and techniques.

Understand your business

The first step in good web design is to understand the business needing the site. Much time and effort can be wasted making a site that does not fit how a business operates. Our education (MBA for our owner and head designer) and years of experience building web sites gives us what is needed to do your site right.

As outsiders to your business we bring a fresh new look at your web presence. We see your business the way your customers will see it, especially new customers. We ask questions and listen... then come up with great ideas for your web site. Ideas you may not have thought of or didn't have enough web experience to consider properly.

Focus on your selling process: Each company is different. By understanding your business we can focus your site on how YOU sell to YOUR customers. Provide them with just the information they need to make an informed purchasing decision. Overwhelming a customer with too much information is as bad as not providing enough. With the web you can have both; a clean presentation with additional information a click or scroll away.

Clean, uncluttered design

One glance of your home page is all it should take for your visitors to know about your core business and products. A clean, uncluttered design helps achieve that goal. A few other concepts we use include:

Above-the-fold: The most important items are toward the top of the page and will be viewed by a Windows IE6 browser on a 15 inch monitor (800 by 600) That generally means you have a space of 785 by 430 pixels to get your most important message across. Since most businesses have learned that larger monitors pay for themselves in increased productivity and larger monitors are even finding their way into home use we don't recommend limiting your entire site to only this size. However, placing the most important ideas within this space is crucial.

Clear navigation: Being able to get around your web site and know where you are without getting lost is important to keep users at your site long enough to make a purchasing decision. Structuring the site with definable topic areas goes a long way to creating great navigation.

Site structure: The structure of the site is created using a easily understandable framework. Since the site structure becomes the URL (in static web sites) a good structure could even improve search engine ranking. Though it may not seam important at first, from experience, a good site structure saves time when changes to the site are needed.

Standards-based code

The Internet is based on standards. Standards for mark-up, images, embedded content and more. We write all our HTML, CSS and JavaScript to adhere to the those sections of the standards that are implemented across all browsers and platforms. This way, you won't miss potential clients. Using the standards-based approach (as apposed to old-school HTML markup) brings the following benefits:

Faster page loads: Page size can be reduced by as much as 67% over old-school design. Pages load faster with much less code overhead.

Compatibility with all users: Whether using a standard PC, a modified Linux box, or a stylish Macintosh, no potential customer will be left out.

Government regulations: Government regulations concerning accessibility by those with disabilities is better and more easily adhered to using a standards-based design.

Cascading Style Sheets

Cascading style sheets (CSS) allow the design of the site to be separated from the content of the site. It is a key element in standards-based web site design. Your style sheet loads the with the first pages visited from your site, stays in the browser cache and doesn't need to be downloaded again, saving time and bandwidth. Unfortunately, not every browser adheres to all the CSS standards and knowing what can be used and what is unsupported has come with a lot of (sometimes painful) experience.

We design web sites using style sheets and this is what you gain:

Faster design and maintenance: Instead of having to keep track and change every instance of a tag, CSS allows us to change the whole site from one location. Don't like Arial and want to use Lucida Grande as your site's main text font... one change and the whole site is changed. Colors, backgrounds, sizes, borders, roll-over effects and more can all be changed from your main style sheet.

Improve content to HTML ratio: By removing mark-up and positioning tags from the page the readable content to total HTML ratio is increased. This ratio is one of the minor things considered by modern search engines when determining page ranking.

Non-webmaster updates: By having the site design not embedded in the HTML of the page you can more easily use one of your staff to update parts of your web site without danger of breaking your design. As long as simple tags are kept intact the design remains. Most hosts even have an HTML editor built-in which you can use to make minor changes. We'll even make a video for you to show you how to make those changes.

Search engine optimization

Good search engine optimization goes hand in hand with good web site design. You need to know how to do both to really succeed. We haven taken sites from nowhere to front page and we can do the same for you. It takes time; hand submission and careful web site organization and code design; plus a good deal of knowledge and experience. Our first "search engine war" was in 1996 and our last was, well... last week.

With the advent of "link popularity" ranking, as popularized by Google, most of the tricks used long ago became useless and some even damaging to your search engine ranking. No matter what some search engine optimization companies would have you believe, there is no 'instant answer' for getting great results. Google says to make the best web site you can with the most useful content and quality links to your pages will grow and your ranking will improve. But there are design and code rules that can be followed to improve your ranking. That is where we come in. We know and use all the "common sense" approaches with every design. From properly titled documents to proper use of tags and CSS, we add it all.