SERVICE NOTES

With a new web site or a redesign, the typical order of topics between most web designers and their clients follows this course: price, page counts, visual layout, artwork, text, search engine optimization, increasing traffic, revisions, maintenance, and the need to get more value from the web site.  This, of course, is completely backwards.

A move in the right direction

Before we can talk about money, either initial production costs or, ultimately, web-generated sales revenue, we need to turn things around. Let’s start with your site’s purpose so we can select the right content and presentation methods to achieve worthy and measurable goals.

Understanding your web requirements, desired execution level, and budget, begins with a simple planning exercise . . .

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Here’s proof that good design skills can span disparate mediums. This month’s website showcase is for Wurts Interiors, created by Wurts’s own interior designer, Debbie Cañedo. Wurts Interiors serves San Diego homes and offices with flooring, space planning, remodeling, and everything in between.

Their classy new site sports a light and easy to navigate style.  It wins a gold star for using standards-compliant XHTML (that improves its performance, accessibility, and search-engine friendliness).  And, unlike most “artsy” sites, it conservatively presents the Flash intro in a way that doesn’t make you wait before you can get to the main navigation links.  (I can’t fuss much about the non-optional Flash intro music.)

Easter Egg: If you have a 1600×1200 display, you might find a little something in the margin.

It’s rare to see a relatively small company launch an in-house designed website and hit all the right style and technical targets (because it’s really hard, I tell you!), so Wurts deserves accolades.