VisionFriendly.com Blog

Before & After Web Design Examples

One of my favorite thing about Creating Web Solutions for our customers is seeing the final outcome verses the original design.  The transformation can be quite striking..

Here are a couple of recent examples that are going live soon:
 - Any critiques are welcome.

Focused Above the Fold

Most website users today -no scratch that, everyone is moving to fast to take the time to casually stroll through your website.  Not at least until you’ve convinced them that it’s worth their while.  This means that in the top 768 pixels (browser navigation bar included) you had better make your stand and show them why you are worth more than just window shopping.

So look at your website and at what important aspects are above fold.  Are you showcasing large attractive imagery that speaks to your audience? Are there unimportant taglines or obvious statements - why are they on your page?  You have about 10 seconds (being very generous) to entice most visitors to read/skim on.  Expect that of your home page content maybe 3-4 sentences will be read, so make sure that your designer is taking the most important tag lines and highlighting it bold and at least 5 font sizes bigger than your body text.

For your internal pages it is not quite as important.  For example, visitors who’ve reached your About us page or your blog are probably interested enough to spend some time actaully reading.  But for pages like a protfolio or other gallery focused page it is still important to see where the page breaks in the 1024 x 768 pixel arena to make sure that the page is delivered in a user friendly manner.

Would you rather bombard your customers with everything available to them and make them scroll to find the part that they are interested in, or would you rather get them focused on the best specific offering(s) that you have. 

Less is more.  The only thing your website really has to do is entice people through the use of strong photos and headlines (just like the dinosaurs of the newspaper industry have know for decades).  Your business or organization likely has a niche -something you do really well that your audience would be ready to sign up for if only they knew about it. 

You just need to help them get the ‘picture’  (not the text)

VisionFriendly.com – Redesigned

At long last our new website is online!

www.VisionFriendly.com

We have been in the process of building our new site for well over a year (off and on).  Over 13 people were directly working on the content and layout work and a multitude of people provided input from inside and outside of the company.  To all of those involved we are very grateful.  Their impact has been immense.  We had settled for our previous website design for far too long due to being too busy with current clients to get to our own site done.   But, we finally bit the bullet, put a lot of work on hold and dove in to get this redesign to happen for the New Year.

With the redesign we’ve added new products and services; such as our new Podcast Station, improved Construction Site, Social Media and Mobile Website design services, plus much, much more.   We scrutinized the navigation to try to deliver the large amount of information that we’ve developed over the years in the most intuitive way possible.  From the hidden Easter eggs incorporated into our homepage campus graphics to the depth of content that we provide regarding all of our services, our intent was to provide a website that showcases the modern design style that we are capable of while delivering a wealth of knowledge specific to the services and products that we create all in-house and still have the site be fun to look through. 

We’ve posted all sorts of videos to help our customers get to know our staff and learn a little about what we do. So come on in, have fun and learn how we can make your business’s online presence and experience as well. 

Now that we’ve finally gotten our website upgraded I want to continue to improve on our efforts, so please let me know what you think about the design and content on the site.

Regards,

Eric Kinsey – Director of Design

Photoshop tips for quickness

I have found that no matter how ergonomic your mouse is or how many levels of sensitivity one’s stylus has, there is nothing to make your work go faster than good use of keyboard shortcuts.  So I thought it might be useful for me to present some of the lesser know Photoshop shortcuts for your review. 

First and foremost, the simple ‘tool switch’ shortcuts are the most essential in my process and these are also the ones that I never see my designers using.  This allows you to skip the mouse moving over to the needed tool and back to the canvas.  I recommend printing them off and having them next to your screen until you’ve internalized them. 

The Tools Are:

‘M’  -  Marque Tools
‘V’  -  Move
‘L’  -  Lasso Tools
‘W’ -  Magic Wand
‘K’  -  Slice Tools
‘J’  -  Healing brush Tools
‘B’  -  Brush Tools
‘S’  -  Stamp Tools
‘Y’  – History Brush Tools
‘E’  – Eraser Tools
‘G’ - Paint Bucket/Gradient
‘R’ – Smudge/Sharpen/Blur
‘O’ – Burn/Dodge/Sponge
‘A’ – Path Selection
‘T’ – Text Tools
‘P’ – Pen Tools
‘U’ – Shape Tools
‘N’ – Notes Tools
‘I’  – Eye-dropper Tools
‘H’ – Hand (temp shortcut – Spacebar)
‘Z’ – Zoom

Additionally, any tool can be easily switched with the next in it’s series by holding the ‘alt’ key and clicking the tool.  And of course, the spacebar temporary hand tool is essential for moving the document while using a different tool as well as all of the functionality of the ‘shift’ and ‘alt’ keys within nearly every tool and function in the program, if you are unfamiliar with these, just try it, that is what undo is for.

- Happy designing.

What Makes a Website Design a Good One?

Hi Everyone!

We’ve all read articles on what makes a good website design worth it’s salt, but I wanted to let out our ideology of good website design.  It all revolves around understanding our clients marketing message, and creating a website that embraces that message the best it can, and making sure there is a call to action the visitor is compelled to take.  By organizing the information in a simple, easy-to-read method, along with graphics that emphasize the marketing message and make the site interesting, the site should lead to more knowledgeable and qualified visitors.

Look at website graphics in the same way you would look at the interior decoration of a retail store, -while the decor realistically has little impact on the quality product line of the store it is still an important aspect to the customers overall experience and part of what they will walk away with.  Therefore, your decor should be bold and colorful to make sure that it has an impact on the visitors, rather than look like the current trend in design which leans towards the more minimal, all white site designs. 

You also want the buttons to be big and touchable rather than just text links.  You want your user to remember your site by brand colors that appear outside of the logo and try to get large crip heading pictures into every homepage to help tell your story without saying a word. 

Your visitors are looking for a site that gives them the sense that they are looking at a professional company that shows them, rather than tells them, what they do, and how they do it better than the rest. 

While good, quality text and graphics is crucial, having related content and images organized in a way that it becomes a cohesive visual unit will convey that message much clearer and faster.  In addition, having well organized navigation with the intuitive placement of the ‘home’, ‘about’, ‘contact’, and other links makes for a much smoother customer experience overall.

So, in summary, a good design is one that incorporates:

• Impactful graphic elements
• Bold colors
• Large compelling imagery
• Intuitive navigation
• Good visual organization
• A strong call to action

Now all that is missing is getting you site listed on the search engines.  You can check that process out by clicking on the following: SEO and SMM