Virginia Web Design Company

1. Reinforces your brand image  

   I believe that a website should be designed around the brand identity and actually emphasize and draw attention to it (without just making it HUGE). 
    
2. User-friendly and easy to navigate 

   Navigation should be friendly and intuitive and should include pages that most web users have come to expect, including the Contact, About Us. 
    
3. Content is King 

   Provide useful, fresh information and update it frequently. Rich content, combined with an impressive presence will elevate your site above the myriad sites that offer nothing but regurgitated lists of stale information. 
    
4. Accessible 

   if visitors can’t access your website, then it’s not very useful. Some of the easiest ways to maximize your site’s accessibility is to make sure there are alt tags for every image, allow text to be resized by readers (and make a minimal amount of text graphic images) and by all means, avoid frames. 
    
5. Simple yet stunning design 

   Besides impressing your readers with fresh content, there’s also the subjective WOW factor that is rarely accomplished with an amateur-created site (if you know of any, please enlighten me)
    
6. Must display itself quickly 

   There are tons of sites out there competing for your viewers’ attention, and what is your reaction when your trying to view a site that’s taking a long time to download?
    
7. Well-organized and easy to read 

   Your site’s visitors will have varying reading styles and you need to cater to both the scanners (that’s me) and the “ravenous readers”.


    
8. Cross-platform compatible

   Your site must look great and perform well on a wide spectrum of screen sizes, resolutions and browsers, and a good web designer or developer will always test a new site thoroughly prior to launch.

• Web Design Glossary from Buzzle.com—A good short list of common terms and straightforward definitions—a really easy read
• Web Design Glossary from About.com—A longer list of terms, each of which links to a definition and additional resource articles from About.com
• The Motive Web Design Glossary—A very comprehensive, up-to-date list of terms, each of which links to a detailed definition, a list of related terms and additional information and references
• Web Design Industry Jargon: Glossary and Resources—From Smashing Magazine, this useful guide also provides links to in-depth information and additional resources from other authoritative sites (as a bonus, you might make a hit with your designer/developer by recommending this resource to them)

The #1 goal of our design firm is to make our clients look brilliant while also helping them keep their project costs under control, and I do mean that sincerely. I also believe that the single, most important way that you as a client can enhance their overall project project is to plan for the revisions and keep those those little buggers under control.

What is a Revision Cycle?
Let's look at the definition of “A Revision Cycle”, which is a set of requested client changes, including and resulting in editing time and presentation of a new comp or proof to the client.

Revisions are just a normal part of design projects, so we plan for a reasonable amount by including about 1-2 revision cycles in our estimates. Additional changes are billed at our hourly rate, in 15-minute increments. If requested changes fall outside of a project’s initial scope, we will provide you with a revised estimate for your approval.

Due to the nature of design projects, it’s almost always more cost efficient for client revisions to be made during one or two revision cycles, than it is to spread them out over multiple cycles. We totally understand that’s how you’re probably receiving input from your various team members, but excessive and unplanned revisions are the main cause for design projects to exceed their budgets.

Excessive and unplanned revisions are a common cause for project costs exceeding budgets.
You can prevent incidental changes by making critical decisions early in the life of a project, and by not proceeding without having finalized and accurate content.  It’s also very helpful to collect and consolidate all your revisions first, especially if you’re receiving input from multiple persons or groups.  There is also no substitute for thorough proofing and ensuring that all necessary parties are included in the reviews. But we will always guide you, and make helpful suggestions along the way. That's just how we are... always helpful.

Rushing a project may actually increase overall costs.
Over the 20+ years we’ve been in business, we’ve concluded that many rushed project timeliness actually end up over budget, due to some reactive decisions made along the way. If you allow the proper time for the creative process, you will be rewarded in the end with a tremendous product.

The creative process is energized through collaboration.
Creative projects thrive on client feedback and as much collaborative participation as they’re comfortable with. In the design projects that I get involved with, and particularly with web design projects, major revisions are usually minimized by a healthy collaborative relationship. (We'll discuss this in more detail with a future post.)

And we want nothing more than to make our clients shine.

With the arrival of Google Analytics, even the most hands-off Web site owner can readily track how visitors interact with the site—where they come from, what search terms they most favor, where they navigate to within the site, what they click on and so forth.

But, how do you figure out what visitors do on your site between mouse clicks? For example, what do they look at on your Home or About page? What parts capture their attention, what do they miss, what do they ignore altogether?

What Eye-Tracking Heat Maps Reveal
In 2006, Jakob Nielsen released an eye-tracking study that reported how 232 users viewed more than 1000 Web pages. Results of this study showed a decidedly F-shaped pattern to users’ viewing habits, as the following heat map presents. The red/orange areas reveal where users gazed most on the page, followed next by the yellow areas then the blue; the gray areas indicate no eye fixation.
 

Nielsen found that users' reading behavior was fairly consistent across many different sites and tasks and exhibited three key characteristics:

1. First, users read in a horizontal movement across the upper part of the content area, forming the top bar of the F.
2. Second, users move down the page then read across in a second horizontal movement, typically over a shorter distance than the previous movement. This action forms the lower bar of the F.
3. Third, users scan the left side of the content in a vertical movement. Sometimes this scan is slow and systematic (a solid vertical stripe on an eye-tracking heat map); other times users move faster, creating a spottier heat map. In either case, this final scan forms the stem of the F.

Since 2006, Nielsen and other eye-tracking researchers have further studied how visitors scan your Web pages. Their findings indicate that sometimes the scan flow is not as simple and straightforward as that of a text-based Web page.

For example, Enquiro, an independent research company and search marketing vendor out of British Columbia, has determined that a large image, a video or other rich media often can get in the way or act as a barrier to how visitors progress through a Web page.
 

As you can see on this Web page, the heat map clearly shows how visitors scan around the video, following the text on the page instead of homing in on the feature itself. This type of information is important to know, for example, if you had included a call-to-action within the video. Chances are, visitors would miss it entirely.

Takeaways for Your Web Site
Awareness of the results from eye-tracking and other usability studies can help you and your Web designer plan more visitor-focused pages that effectively channel visitors to your call-to-action and enable them to easily convert. Here are nine research-based takeaways to get you started:

1. Visitors look for information, and that most often means text vs. decorative or gratuitous graphics.
2. Content in the upper left corner of the page will receive initial—and often the most—eye fixation.
3. Sections most likely to be ignored are those that look like ads; oversized font treatments and special effects trigger visual associations with ads rather than information and cause viewers to skip over them.
4. Headlines attract and hold visitors’ attention.
5. Buttons and menus capture visitors’ eyes …
6. … as do bulleted and numbered lists.
7. Numbers expressed with digits (56) vs. words (fifty-six) attract attention.
8. Short paragraphs vs. large blocks of text capture interest.
9. Navigation tools work best across the top or down the left side of the page.

“What are you doing?” asks social-messaging/micro-blogging service Twitter. And you have 140 characters (max!) in which to answer and send a real-time update (called a tweet) to your followers and the Twitter community at large.

“What? Why would anyone care?” you might be tempted to ask in return. “How can such a tiny bit of information possibly help me market my business? I don’t get it!”

The KISS Principle at Work
Twitter is astonishingly simple to use, and perhaps that’s the fundamental reason why the service has caught on so well with consumers and business men and women alike (current statistics show that 4 to 5 million people are using Twitter). Of course, the fact that you can send and receive updates via your favorite browser, email, IM client and your cell phone doesn’t hurt either.

From wherever you are, 24/7, you can quickly reach out to your audience to direct attention to good news about your business in a casual—or official—way. It also means that you can monitor the conversations that are taking place about your company, products and services; respond to specific queries; solve customer problems and altogether put a very human face on your business.

How Much Is 140 Characters?
Surprisingly, 140 characters lets you report more than you might think! To put that character-count in perspective, here’s what 140 characters looks like in the context of some familiar messages:

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands: one Nation under God, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all. (Pledge of Allegiance)

Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. (Gettysburg Address)

My fellow citizens: I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. (President Obama’s inaugural address)

And if that’s not enough, to help you out with Web site addresses (which can be very long) for links you might include in your post, you can use a service such as TinyURL to free up more characters for your message.

What Can You Do in 140 Characters?
You might be surprised at the power 140 characters can give you. Since Twitter’s launch in July 2006, businesses have devised all types of uses for the service, working within the 140-character limit. For example, you might

1. Provide pointers to interesting articles you’ve read: “Found a great article on trends in Internet marketing, Washington DC, at www.somewebsite.com”
2. Answer a question: “Yes, we can help you redesign your Web site so you don’t lose your Google PageRank”
3. Ask a question of your audience: “What do you think are the advantages of working with local Maryland graphic designers?”
4. Announce an event: “ACS will speak at the Virginia Web Designers user group next Thursday—hope you can join us!”
5. Connect with people offering special skills that can help your business: “We’re looking for an experienced PHP programmer for a special project”
6. Test something: “I need your help! Check out www.somewebsite.com and let me know how it looks in your browser”
7. Respond to a dissatisfied customer: “Thanks for letting me know about this problem. I’ll direct-message you with more details about what to do next”

Convinced Enough to Give Twitter a Try?
If you’re intrigued enough to give Twitter a try, you’re in good company. Numerous businesses report excellent results from the time they’ve invested in developing a Twitter-driven community. Here’s how some well-known businesses use Twitter:

• H& R Block (@HRBlock)—provides lots of good tax information to all who follow them
• Zappos (@Zappos)—provides insights into one of the most customer-centric companies on the Web
• Comcast (@comcastcares)—a leader in providing customer service and support—they don’t post, but they listen deeply and respond immediately to customer concerns
• Baskin Robbins (@BaskinRobbins)—a favorite and open to customer suggestions
• Dell (@richardatdell)—puts a human face on one of the largest technology companies in the US
• JetBlue (@jetblue)—known to add flights when Twitter customers express the need

What do you have to lose? It costs you nothing (right now) to start a Twitter account, listen in, provide insights about your industry and start to build a community around you and your business.

Besides inviting your current customers to follow you, you can use Twitter’s search function to find like-minded people who will understand and value what your company has to offer. And who knows, maybe the relationships you build today through Twitter conversations will convert to valued customers who trust and evangelize your brand.

So, what are you doing—right this minute? In 5 minutes or less, you can let the world know. What are you waiting for?
 

con ver sa tion n. oral exchange of sentiments, observations, opinion, ideas

What Is Conversational Marketing?
At the heart of conversational marketing is (not surprising) conversation. And what that means to your company’s marketing strategy is simply this: People are exchanging sentiments, observations, opinions and ideas about your brand, your products and services, your competitors and their products and services independently of the “official word” you or they might be broadcasting through traditional marketing channels. Is that reason enough to join the conversation? You bet.

A Bit of Background
The term conversational marketing derives from The Cluetrain Manifesto, a Website (and later a book) put forth by Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searles and David Weinberger almost a decade ago to address the impact of the Internet on the marketplace and the way people and companies do business:

"A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies."

This collection of 95 theses (the first of which, Markets are conversations, coined the conversational marketing term) provided an outline of the way people expect to interact with brands and companies before, during and after they do business with them—if they do business with them at all—made possible by emerging new Web technologies. At the time, Cluetrain sounded a loud wake-up call to companies about how their marketing practices had to change to serve a new breed of customer.

Still Relevant Today?
Absolutely—if not more so. Pushing out messages in an anonymous, one-to-many manner (think advertising) simply isn’t enough. Your company must listen, learn and participate authentically and personally in the marketplace conversations about your products and services—in both the online and offline communities that your customers and potential customers frequent.

So, How Do You Jump In?
You don’t. Too many companies have taken a top-down approach of picking the conversational marketing activities they want to participate in only to find out (often too late) that their customers don’t go there. Instead, take the bottom-up approach: Find out first what types of social media (if any) resonate with your customer base, where the conversations happen and what the expectations are; then, dip your toe in the water rather than cannon-balling it your first time out.

Examples help, too. In A List of Social Media Marketing Examples, blogger Peter Kim provides a directory of 324 companies that have incorporated conversational marketing techniques into their marketing strategies. The variety of companies and examples in this list is a wonderful resource for witnessing new marketing techniques in action and accelerating your learning curve.

And last but not least, I invite you to interact with me here at Affordable Creative Services, as we add to the new marketing conversation through our Top of Mind blog. ACS Creative began as a creative group for Washington, D.C. customers 20+ years ago, so we understand traditional marketing pretty well. We grew up as a Virginia Web design company, and now we’re up to our elbows in conversational marketing. We welcome you to ride along as we work up to a full-blown plunge! Let us know how we’re doing.

What is good Website design? If you Google good website design, you’ll find 35,600,000 or so results that you can peruse for helpful—and in some cases entertaining—information about how to make your Website just that—good.

Well, here at Affordable Creative Services, we discuss and explore good website design all day - everyday.  Working with clients from start to finish to ensure that their web properties provide the best possible user experience.  But rather than start out by foisting our opinions on you, we thought it would be an interesting exercise to see what wisdom might turn up in that aforementioned Google search. So, my strategy for this introductory post about good Website design is to do precisely what you might do: Search on good website design, check out the listings on page 1 of the search results pages and see what nuggets of information rise to the top. It's amazing that so many of these sites take only a "do as I say ... not as I do" approach to good Website design. Despite that peculiarity, here are the nuggets (in no particular order):

1. Amy Zipkin, writing for the International Herald Tribune (the global edition of the New York Times), provides the why, if not the how: Good Web Design Can Mean Good Business.

2. eBizwebpages.com warns that if you “make a bad choice [on layout and design], it won't matter how great your content is or how much advertising you do. If your site looks bad, no one will visit and those that do won't stay long or buy anything.”

3. Taking a more can-do approach, Smashing Magazine’s article, 10 Principles of Effective Web Design, teaches you (among other things) how the folks you’re designing your Website for think:

• Users appreciate quality and credibility
• Users don’t read, they scan
• Users are impatient and insist on instant gratification
• Users don’t make optimal choices—they choose the first reasonable option
• Users follow their intuition
• Users want to have control

4. Vincent Flanders, who has studied bad Web sites for 13 years to formulate his ideas about what makes a site good, offers the following perspective:

“Great Web design is an art and occurs when design and content are seamless and you don't notice its greatness. With great web design, it's easy to find the information you need. The content makes you want to return again and again and, most importantly, great design gives credibility to the company/organization.”

5. Author Robin Williams, known for her style manuals The Mac is Not a Typewriter and The Non-Designer's Design Book, takes a similar approach. She claims, “It is easy to make a dorky web page. It's also easy to make a very nice, clean, professional-looking web page even if you don't have much design experience. Often the difference … is simply a matter of eliminating certain features that are guaranteed to make a page look amateurish. … Keep in mind that the point of eliminating bad features is not just to make the page prettier, but to communicate more effectively."

6. Ben Hunt, from ScratchMedia, offers these practical pointers about current Web style:

• Simple layout
• Centered orientation
• Design the content, not the page
• 3D effects, used sparingly
• Soft, neutral background colours
• Strong colour, used sparingly
• Cute icons, used sparingly
• Plenty of whitespace
• Nice big text

7. Matt Brown, the Dreamweaver Community Manager for Macromedia, states (in 3500+ words, mind you) that the key to good Website design is usability.

8. Usability is also the topic that has occupied the mind of Jakob Nielsen since 1994 (at least). Dr. Nielsen is an industry-leading author, researcher, and consultant on user interfaces, especially Web usability and Web design strategy. He’s the expert that many people love to hate because he doesn’t practice what he preaches on his own Website, UseIt.

Nevertheless, Dr. Nielsen’s research-based approach to Website design has provided the industry with some valuable insights about how “regular people” (not yourself, your company peers or your CEO) interact with the Web. In an Alertbox article, Aspects of Design Quality, he observes that a Website user’s experience is no stronger than its weakest link. “If any one usability attribute fails, the overall user experience is compromised and many users will fail.” The usability attributes he identifies are

• Navigation—how users get around your site
• Content—what they’ll find there
• Features—what they can do
• Homepage usability—users spend 30 seconds or less here and only 50% will scroll down
• Search—the user’s lifeline for complex sites
• Accessibility—site ease-of-use for people with disabilities
• Web presence—how easily people can find you

9. Collis of PSDSTUT offers no fewer than 9 Essential Principles for Good Web Design because “Web design can be deceptively difficult, as it involves achieving a design that is both usable and pleasing, delivers information and builds brand, is technically sound and visually coherent.”

10. At goodpractices.com, the recommendation is threefold, though vague:

• Choose a Web site design standard for your pages like “world wide accessibility” versus something less universal.
• Test, test, test to make sure your design features degrade gracefully in diverse Web browsing environments and screen configurations.
• Use commonly accepted good site design practices

Beyond Page 1—But Worth the Read
An excellent, timely article that did not show up on the coveted first results page (or on any of the top 10 results pages, for that matter) for good website design is the BNET article Obama v. McCain—Online! by Danielle Novy.

Curious about Website design tactics that the top two presidential campaigns pulled off the best, BNET asked CBS Interactive Art Director Marc Mendell to click through the Barack Obama and John McCain campaign sites and analyze their effectiveness, from a business point of view. His conclusions, well-supported by examples from the two sites, offer a blueprint for effective Web design today—an integrated approach to content, community and marketing: