Website Design

Everything begins as a story. Your early childhood. Your wedding day. Your business launch. When we relate to each other, we relate through the stories we tell.

Whitney Quesenbery and Kevin Brooks recently contributed to Johnny Holland Magazine about the value of story to find solutions to problems clients face. In "Using Stories for Design Ideas," Quesenbery and Brooks touched on an approach we use when designing your site: we often begin with your story.

Quite literally, this begins with a conversation. You tell your story to our sales team. After providing initial details, our SEO Specialist begins to assemble the words that will help shape your story. Then, perhaps starting with another conversation, you work one-on-one with me to write your story, page by page.

By the end of content production—and before you see the wireframe or front page mockup—it is your business, service or product stories that serve to ignite the creative process. The words themselves articulate the problem and the solution, and our Web designers commit to further solving your problem with visuals.

Your story continues through design and development milestones, although it now takes on the form of images and user-friendly features. As Quesenbery and Brooks suggested in their article, the story changes over time as more contributions are made during the website design or Web app development process.

As your website launches, we hope it is the story—as text, as design and as functionality—that helps you connect with your visitors and build lasting business success.

Web design is tricky. Unlike print design where creativity is impacted little by real-world requirements, Web design is highly technical. A designer must consider screen sizes, screen brightness and contrast, functionality, Web development methods, Google search algorithms...and the list goes on.

Balancing SEO best practices, Web development realities and preferred aesthetics is a juggling act all Web designers must master, and it isn’t easy sometimes selling this to clients.

While Flash-based design is cool and minimalism (i.e. white space) is clean, both of these things prevent potential visitors from finding you by removing live text from your site.

Web designers must also consider the dramatic increase in mobile browser use, which handheld device software continues to not support Flash-based video. While angled text is interesting, there’s no value at all to image-based text that can’t be updated dynamically or crawled by search engine spiders.

Like doctors for their patients, Web designers need to advocate for the websites they design. Saving it, as it were, from the good intentions and big ideas of their owners.

There’s more to Web design than aesthetics. If clients try to sacrifice SEO or Web development dynamics in the spirit of creativity, I’m going to say something. That’s my job as a usability-conscious designer, and it’s in the longterm best interest of the website I need to create for their businesses.

Until resistant clients join me in the 21st Century—and we can put Microsoft Explorer 7 behind us—it's hard to please everyone. When we transition into the post-IE7 world where HTML5 is commonplace and CSS3 is the norm, we can do all sorts of amazing things, such as use the font we want, online.

But until then, we need to work with what we’ve got. Once I get a client to be realistic about what can be done, there’s a lot Blackwave Creative can accomplish with what we can do.

Innovative website design doesn’t usually begin with a stroke of genius on a blank page.

It starts with your key messages. It’s fueled by your business’ marketing strategies. It’s ignited by your brand’s ongoing conversations.

Blackwave Creative's website design team looks to you, your business and your brand. This info-gathering process inspires us to produce an appropriately targeted website design.

When you commission website design, mobile site development or a redesign from Blackwave.net, be prepared to talk business, first.

The more we know, the better our web design and development teams can serve you.

You want a new site. Your website designer asks, “What do you want to include on your home page?”

You spend the next five minutes describing every detail of your business. Its mission. Vision. Values. Customer testimonials. Team pics. A how-to video. By the time you’re done, what started out as a home page becomes a cluttered, unfocused mess. While a home page introduces your business, it must be precise.

Web usability consultant and Don’t Make Me Think author Steve Krug goes covers this topic well. Clean lines. Easy navigation. A page that’s free of long content. Krug, other usability experts and visitor studies help us keep your visitors in mind. What do THEY need? Connect with that as quickly as possible.

What often gets left out in the website design brainstorm is the most important component of your business: the visitor. The desire to introduce everything all at once may hurt your efforts. Is there anything in your home page concept that will motivate visitors to do business with you? If not, keep brainstorming.

As website designers and clients, we must shift our brainstorming focus from what we want to what your visitors need. If they want to trust you, build that trust in the hero box. If they crave inspiration, inspire them in a headline. When you sell a wide range of products, find the thing that sets you apart. Use it.

Make your home page for your visitors—not for you and me—and we can achieve top conversions.

WebDesignLedger.com recently posted website design trends for 2010.

Huge images for greater impact. Slab typefaces that reflect Old West-style wanted posters. Some old ideas. Some new. There's one trend from Jacqueline’s blog post that I want to discuss. It's the first one in the list: oversized logos in website design headers.

At Blackwave.net, we strongly disagree with this trend. Here’s why…

As a web solutions firm that has designed logos for the web, we know big logos don’t lead to big conversion rates and don't promise greater brand value. Your market may easily remember your oversized logo design, but is that really what you want your website visitors to remember about your online business?

Reach customers in a way that inflates conversion rates, not egos.

While big, bright logo designs make you feel good about your business, it doesn’t satisfy visitors’ searches. Use that extra space to communicate your key messages. Build online relationships with better content, not solely by an oversized branding tool.

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How do we design your website to make a positive impact? We keep it simple.

We’re bombarded by too much info. In print. Online. At the grocer. Out of the mailbox. Do we remember anything we read this week? I’m willing to bet that what we took in this week is already out of mind.

How will your visitors remember you? Invite them in. Keep it simple. How do you do that? By including less words. Through consistent color schemes. By designing your home page to do one thing: welcome.

Think of your home page as a door mat. Not that kind. The good, purposeful kind.