Design in Context: A Web Design Blog by Greg Kihlstrom

A Few Realistic New Year's Resolutions

I know what you're thinking... New Year's Resolutions... who needs 'em?  Well, I'm not suggesting you give up sugar or dairy or spending so much time playing video games (just call the last one 'research' and it seems to work I've heard).

What I AM suggesting is that we all work together to make Web sites a little better in 2007.  This isn't too much to ask.  I can't tell you how many times my company, Carousel30 has been asked to make an update to a Web site and found that the code was so poorly written and formatted that out of necessity we had to basically re-write the entire site just to make a few changes.  Alright, we're perfectionists at times, too, but if I see one more bit of Microsoft-Word generated HTML, well, I'm probably going to have to re-write the entire site.

That being said, here's a few things I'd like us all to resolve not to do this year:

1. No more <font> tags.  Come on people, CSS is our friend. If you're not up to speed on it, there's plenty of resources you can go to.  Try A List Apart, for instance. 
2. Don't skip META tags. They're very important (you can read my previous post about this as well). It is true that Search Engines are getting better at crawling the true content of a page, but you will be a much happier Web site owner if you put META tags in.
3. Don't use tables when you don't have to. Again: CSS = Friend.  In some cases, <div> tags are just a little too unwieldy to use when you're trying to make a set of columns, etc. quickly, but honestly, it's not that hard to do.
4. No more 'Skip Intro' pages. Seriously.  Either that, or I dare anyone to show me when a skip intro page is actually necessary. I'd love to see it.
5. No more 'Mystery Meat' Navigation.  Vincent Flanders (author of Web Pages that Suck) coined this term to refer to cryptic graphics that are actually used as navigation (an icon of a face turns out to be 'About us', or an icon of a phone is 'Contact Us', with no text whatsoever to guide the user.) I would go so far as to say that coming up with new cute names for standard sections such as About, Services, Contact, etc. can become almost as bad.  Unless you have a really good reason to NOT call the section of your Web site that talks about your company the "ABOUT" section, just follow convention and do it.  Your visitors will thank you. 
6. Use Flash how it should be used.  Strongly consider the usage of Flash animation before you decide to code an entire site in it. This is another one of those things that is happening less often, but I still run across it.  Remember that Search Engines have a terrible time indexing content from Flash animations.  Use it for what it's great for, but don't have all the content on your site sitting in Flash files.  Animations, demos, unique interactive applications, even well-made e-commerce application - these are all great uses for Flash.

That's all I got for now. Good luck this next year with all your Web Design issues.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Greg RS Kihlström is an award-winning Designer and is currently Creative Director at Carousel30, a Washington, DC-based firm that specializes in Web Design, Video Production & Post-Production and Print & Identity Design.

Web 2.0 for Small Businesses, Part 2

In my last post about Web 2.0 for Small Businesses, I talked a little bit about the overall concept of what  "Web 2.0" is, and how it can apply to the small business. I'd like to talk a little bit more about this, and then we're going to get into specific applications and examples.

I mentioned blogging as the only real specific example in the first part.  Let me expand on this a little bit.  The basic concept of blogging is that you are starting a conversation that you are encouraging your customers, peers and enthusiasts to continue, distribute and participate in. This is key, really.  The idea is that eventually people are starting their own conversations and creating the content for you.

Another key concept is the idea of letting your customers and site visitors determine the content on your site.  For instance, instead of you deciding which articles appear on your home page, you might include an application that shows the "Most Read" or "Most Commented" articles.  This is all about reacting to the conversations that are really happening all around you.

Not only is this a smarter way of marketing yourself because you're letting your top advocates speak for you (which other consumers many times view as more credible than marketing-speak on a home page), but you're encouraging people to talk and rewarding them when they do.

In my next post on this subject, I'm going to include some real-world examples so you can see how your peers are using Web 2.0.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Greg RS Kihlström is an award-winning Designer and is currently Creative Director at Carousel30, a Washington, DC-based firm that specializes in Web site Design, Video Production and Post-Production and Print Graphic Design.