Technology. (We keep up with it)
In this business, nothing stays still for more than a moment. New technologies are being invented and produced at breakneck speed. We think of keeping up with it as a sport. If some new way of doing something comes out that's better than the old way, we'll adopt it, learn it, and put it on your site. That's our way of making your site look and function better, which makes us look better. Then we start scouting for the next new thing.
Search Engine Optimization.
Search engines have become the most important factor for being found. When the search engines were first created, the developers had no idea that they would become as important and as ubiquitous as they have. Google and Yahoo are now the first place people go to find anything. In the nineties, search engines were merely used for deep research and for fun. Now, people depend on them for everything and in the past decade, users are so accustomed to them that almost everyone uses a search engine as their home browser page and a growing number of web users actually use the search box to enter URL's. In fact, surprisingly, a large segment of the population doesn't even know what the URL window on a browser is. They think that the Google search box is "how" you get to a website. Armed with this knowledge, would you want a website that is NOT search-engine friendly?
CSS. It's the bomb.
We can't stress it enough. CSS is the architecture of today and the only way to compete with the millions of other sites out there is to have your website designed using CSS. As recently as five years ago CSS was not the best idea because many web browsers did not support it properly. Now, it is universally compatible and it not only offers more flexibility to the web designer creatively, it is de rigeur in order for your site to be well-indexed and highly ranked in all the major search engines.
Knowledge. We do our best to maintain a lot of it.
We actually study Google's webmaster guidelines. Ask your current webmaster if he knows anything about that. We also read WebPro News, SiteMagic and Technology Online. We work with all the latest versions of software. We study new ideas and technology as soon as they are made public. And we translate this knowledge into every website we build.
Tricks and techniques. (We've got em)
While a liberal use of flash is a no-no in the world of search engine optimization, we know how to use it while still keeping your site lean and mean. We are experts at creating text-rich, search engine friendly websites that look amazing and still have animated elements that grab and hold the viewer's attention. It's all a matter of integrating flash elements into the site in such a way that everything looks integrated and consistent.
And we do other things. Like using liberal amounts of CSS in the site design; using favicons to identify your website on the browser tab; not using URLS (domain names) that are too long to fit in the address bar; implementing page titles that fit and look good on browser tabs; using alt tags liberally not only for search engine access but for accessibility (see below). We think these things through so that your site will be designed to meet all of today's important standards.
Customer Service.
While a liberal use of flash is a no-no in the world of search engine optimization, we know how to use it while still keeping your site lean and mean. We are experts at creating text-rich, search engine friendly websites that look amazing and still have animated elements that grab and hold the viewer's attention. It's all a matter of integrating flash elements into the site in such a way that everything looks integrated and consistent.
Accessibility.
The Target corporation actually got sued for not having a website that was accessible to their web viewers with disabilities. Their site was not designed with the features that allow the visually impaired to use it. "Your website should be available to anyone, anywhere, anytime on anything", according to Matt Bailey, president of SiteLogic. And the same features that allow the visually impaired to use a site are also the features that the search engines need to "see" your site, since in effect, all search engines are blind too.
The Basics. As in, "going back to....."
Website design has gone through several transformations in the past 15 years. And now, today, since we have ridden that ride, we know it's time to go back to the basics. The most successful websites nowadays are built with a very basic structure and shy away from big, long-loading music and sound-effects filled flash presentations of the mid-nineties. People want to get in and get out. Find what they want, and find it fast. There are of course, exceptions, and there are still industries for which exotic, large scale flash presentations might work well, such as entertainment. But in general, the trend is heading backwards. To the basics.