Being innovative with your website is a great thing, but there are certain aspects of the website design that should be held to general web standards. Website navigation is one of those things.
Good Website Navigation
July 20th, 2009Using Flash for Portfolio Sites
July 13th, 2009Flash is perfect for snappy presentations and videos. It’s a great way to control the way people receiving information.
Unfortunately, most photography and art portfolio websites are built using Flash so they look more like a video than a website. I discourage this use of Flash for the following reasons:
- People who want to view a Flash-based photography site have to have a Flash player already installed, or they need to install or update their Flash player before they can view your website.
- Flash websites take a long time to download, so viewers spend a lot of time waiting.
- People can’t send a link to a specific page on a flash site. If Mom wants to share pictures of Junior with Grandpa, she sends him the link to the photographer’s site, and he has to sit through the whole presentation.
Keeping Website Costs Reasonable
July 6th, 2009You can spend a lot of money on a website, but make sure that cash is well-spent.
Make sure you can edit your own site.
Even though your time is valuable, you probably don’t pay yourself hourly. You will, however, pay a designer hourly to make changes and updates to your website. Be sure you are only contacting them for large projects and additional design work, not changing your weekend hours or prices. Integrating with blog software like WordPress or Movable Type or a Content Management Solution (CMS) is a great way to maintain your site.
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Finding a Good Web Designer
June 29th, 2009Most of the challenges we face in a small business often have more to do with people than technologies. Working with a designer you can trust makes the difference between a great website experience and a really bad one.