Website Design

As a northern colorado web designer, I am often conflicted about one of the most popular and polarizing technologies on the internet: Flash. You probably know that Flash is what gives many websites the slick interactive animation and transitions and you may have read passionate internet rants in favor and against Flash. When done correctly, Flash can be a great way to add some visual zing to your site. If done wrong it can really hurt your site. If you are considering hiring a northern colorado web design company, keep the following list of pros and cons in mind.

Flash Pros
1. Visual Flair
While other technologies are emerging that mimic the visual pyrotechnics of Flash, it is still unmatched in its ability to animate almost anything you can imagine. If you need complex movement on your site chances are you need Flash.

2. Interactivity
Flash shines when it comes to interactivity. If your site has elements that need to respond to or interact with the movement of a mouse, you probably need Flash.

3. Fonts
Unlike typical websites, Flash has the ability to embed Fonts. If your company requires the use of specific fonts other than the default web fonts, you should consider Flash as an option.

4. Limitless possibilities
Games, video, maps, custom apps – the possibilities are endless. If you can dream it, chances are you can make it with Flash.

Flash Cons
1. Expensive
Because Flash is a specialized skill, it can be hard to find a Flash company to help you with your website project. Once you find a Flash designer in Northern Colorado you may have to get in line because they are busy. Add that to the fact that Flash development takes longer than traditional web design and your project will might be more expensive than you would expect.

2. Hard to Update
If your site has content in the Flash sections it will probably be hard to update. There aren’t any content management systems that would let you update Flash easily.

3. Less visible to search engines
While Google has improved its ability to index Flash based websites, it still falls behind traditional HTML in search engine visibility. If SEO is critical to your site be very intentional in your use of Flash and don’t “hide” important content in the Flash ares.

I left a couple cons off my list that you may have be wondering about. One is load time and the other is the requirement of the Flash plugin. I don’t consider these to be major drawbacks because a good designer should be able to keep file size under control. With Flash penetration in the 99% area it is safe to use Flash without loosing viewers in typical web browser situations.

This list hits the major pros and cons of using Flash, but every website is different.
Don’t let this list tip the scales if you really want to use Flash. In the hands of a great Flash Designer you should be able to avoid the Flash pitfalls that other sites suffer from.

In Adrian’s last post, Website Credibility in a Fraction of a Second, he discussed an alarming statistic where web site visitors make up their minds about your company within the first 50 milliseconds of visiting your website.  That’s 1/20th of a second.  People are pretty good at making split decisions.  While that statistic seems frightening, it’s equally frightening that 96% of all websites have never even been read by anyone other than the person who created them.  When you consider the cost, that’s billions of wasted dollars on poor website design.  So which is really worse, not getting people to your site to read it in the first place, or having a site that portrays your company in an unprofessional light in the first 1/20th of a second?

That’s hard to say but either way, it’s critical that a site not only be designed so that your visitors can find the site using Google and other major search engines, it’s important that they perceive your company correctly from the first impression.  Miss the mark on either aspect and your site is destined to fail.

That’s why Red Rocket takes each step of the web development process so seriously.  One person can’t be expected to be an expert in all of the important aspects of your company’s website design.  The creation of an effective website requires writers, designers, programmers, photographers, seo engineers and project managers.  To think that one person could handle all of those tasks is ridiculous.  And when you consider the ramifications of missing the mark on the design or the search aspects, it’s imperative that experts are working on each part of the site, rather than just a jack of all trades who may or may not get it right.

If you’d like to sit down and speak with our team of experts and meet our web design company, please give us a call and we’d be happy to discuss your project.  Call 970-674-0079 today.

There is a statistic that I use quite often that measures the time it takes a person to evaluate your website. Studies show that website users decide the credibility of your site in the first 50 milliseconds that they see your site. While this is a widely accepted fact there are relatively few places online that really dig into this research and make connections between actual design elements and their split second consequences. One of the best pieces I have read was recently published on A List Apart in an article called “Visual Decision Making.” I encourage you to read the article if you have any interest in the impact of good design on the success of a website.

Design often is gets categorized wrongly as an art. Understandably, when design is looked at as an embellishment or a luxury, business owners are hesitant to invest money in it, especially in tough economic times. I like the way that A List Apart defines design in their Visual Decision Making article. It says, “Smart graphic design is always some balance of current expressive trends, information architecture, classical layout aesthetics, and detailed research on user preferences and motivations.”

If you are considering designing your website yourself or cutting corners with the design of your website I hope you reconsider. Amateur design is easily spotted and the visitors to your site will sense the lack of professionalism immediately. With so much at stake it makes sense to hire an experienced web design company. Give us a call and let us show you how much more successful your site will be with great design.

Web design companies in Colorado often make the mistake of talking over the head of their customers. Building a website is a very technical process and conversations with a web developer often leave your head spinning even if you are a reasonably tech savvy person. Below is an entertaining video that has been circulating the internet showing many everyday people being asked if they know the difference between a browser and a search engine.

Most people know that a web browser is the application (like Firefox) on your computer that you use to connect to the internet. A search engine is a website (like Google) that helps you search the internet. It seems unlikely that the video’s conclusion that “as many as 92% of Americans don’t know the difference,” is accurate, but it does illustrate how easy it is for the average person to get confused with even the most basic web concepts.

Most Colorado web design companies are trustworthy, but there is always danger in just “taking their word for it” when it comes to a Northern Colorado web design agency’s technical expertise. Red Rocket Media Group strives to make website design as painless as possible. We explain the technical aspects of your project so that you know the consequences of the decisions you are helping us make. If you are unsure about the technology being implemented on your website give us a call and we would be glad to help you out. We are web experts who speak your language and take the time to make sure you understand the “what” and “why” of your website design.

A website design company in Greeley was recently forced to close its doors due to the economy.  To me it’s sad.  I never like to hear that a small business has had to make that difficult decision.  After all, those are real people with families and mortgages to pay.  And now the employees are turning to other website design companies in Greeley for work, but none of them are hiring right now.  A city of Greeley’s size should be able to support multiple website design companies, especially with the growth that Greeley has experienced over the past 10 years but small businesses are cautious with their marketing and website budgets right now.  Fewer dollars means fewer jobs.

I don’t really consider this particular website design company in Greeley to be our competition, because, as you know if you’ve been following my blog, I consider my biggest competitors my own ego and apathy.  But nevertheless, I was happy to help their existing clients who were frantically looking for a website design company who could help them with their sites before the websites were shut down.  Several of their clients called, literally freaking out because their sites were slated to go down in less than 2 weeks.  Unfortunately, the task of moving the websites over to a new hosting company was no small task for a couple businesses because they were running off of a database and as with any migration there are always glitches.  Scripts won’t run on new servers.  Files are missing.   Pages don’t load correctly.  Actually moving the bulk of the website is only about 20% of the work.  Then next 80% of the job is just troubleshooting and sometimes that can be a very time consuming job.  So how can you avoid this very costly, stressful situation with your website?  Be sure that the website company that you’re working with is stable.  Even in a growing economy, the odds are against small businesses.  More than 98% of all companies fail in the first 10 years.  With the added pressure of our current economic condition, those percentages are going to be even higher.  Just take a stroll through the Greeley Mall.  Or the Fort Collins Mall.  Practically every other storefront is dark.  If you don’t want to become a victim like the other people who have called us, frantic, be sure to ask yourself if your website design company is stable enough to weather this storm.  If you’re with a company that’s less than 5 years old, the odds are significant that you’ll be in the same boat in the next 18 months.  Newer companies just don’t have the established client base needed to survive.  And when that day comes, you may find your own company in jeopardy.

How would your company function if you lost your website?  Or how about your email.  Those are the types of things happen everyday.  Companies in Greeley are struggling as we speak to get their email and websites back up and running.  They’re losing money every day not only because of the lack of communication but because of the time lost due to the distraction.

Have you ever had one of those computer problems that took 30 hours of time spent on the phone with tech support?   Had you known before the first call to tech support that it would take that long, you might have just ditched the computer and bought a new one.  Your time is valuable and you need to protect it.

If you’d like to sit down and talk about how Red Rocket can help with your website, we’d be happy to help.  You can be assured that with a track record of more than 10 years, we’re here for the long-haul.  While other website design companies are watching their business contract, Red Rocket continues to expand.  In fact, we were recently named #14 on NCBR’s Mercury 100, a list of the fastest growing companies in Northern Colorado.   Give us a call today at 970-674-0079.

Chadd Bryant

In my last post I was talking about design mistakes that might cause a website to lose traffic. The first mistake on my list had to do with site navigation. Not only does poor navigation make your site look unprofessional, it leads to frustrated customers, or worse yet, lost customers.  If visitors to your website get confused and can’t find their way around then they will hit the back button and exit your site. This is lost revenue that can be avoided if your site is carefully designed with an eye for usable navigation.

There are countless ways to do navigation wrong, so instead of pointing out mistakes I wanted to make a list of things that help contribute to good navigation. Think of your website as you read this list and consider whether your site could benefit from some of these tips.

1. Organize your content
Obviously you can’t contain links to all 50+ pages of your site within the navigation bar. As your website grows beyond 20 pages it becomes very important to have strong organizational structure. Grouping content into smart categories is the best way to keep your site manageable as more and more pages are added. Good organization guides people deeper into your site quickly and without confusion.

2. Be Consistent
Your site should use the same navigation on every page. If the navigation is at the top on one page, it should be there on every page. It can be very frustrating for a user to go to the top of your page expecting to see the navigation only to find it has moved somewhere else. Consistent navigation produces a sense of trust which gives users confidence that you aren’t going surprise them with unexpected hassles later on.

3. Give your visitors “breadcrumbs”
The majority of your traffic typically comes from a search engine and they often land on a page deep within your site rather than your homepage. These users find it very helpful to see a path showing where within the site they currently are. For example, if someone came to your site from a search for “SEO in Fort Collins” it helps them to be able to see that the page exists at services/strategy/seo. With this information they could quickly back out to learn about other strategies or other services.

4. Use Flash with care
It is possible to create great navigation with Flash, but you should be very careful about using fancy animation in the navigation of your site. If your navigation can’t be understood at a glance you run the risk of confusing your visitors.

5. Don’t reinvent the wheel
Studies show that website visitors almost always look at the upper left corner of your site first. They scan to the right and then down the left sidebar. Take advantage of this natural eye movement by putting your navigation at the top of the page or the left sidebar. Some sites successfully break this rule, but you need to be very careful when putting your navigation in non-traditional locations.

I hope you found these tips helpful as you evaluate the navigation of your own website. As a leading web design company in Northern Colorado, Red Rocket Media Group works very hard to design websites with strong navigation. We would love to help you with your website design, so give us a call if you have a website project that we can help you with.

Next on my list of website design mistakes is the topic of load time. I will be talking about the importance of websites that load quickly and give some tips about how to optimize your site for speed.

Web design companies offer advice all the time but more and more of them are going out of business as this recession deepens.  So how do you know if you can trust the advice you’re getting from your web design company?  I like to use a few online tools to determine if a web design company knows what they’re talking about.  First, look at their portfolio.  Have they worked with reputable companies or are they all no-name companies.  That can be an immediate red-flag.

More importantly, do the sites that they have designed get any traffic.  There are several sites that can give you an indication of whether or not your web design company’s clients’ are getting any traffic to their sites.  While not perfect, Alexa.com offers a free tool that will tell you how popular a site is in relation to other sites.  If you see that the website you’re looking at has an Alexa ranking of 52,432, that means that they are one of the top 50,000 sites on the web.  On the other hand, if the sites that you’re checking out have numbers like 18,234,632, then they’re in the top 18 million sites and are likely getting zero traffic. OF course you could also look at your web site company’s own website and see what their own Alexa rank is.  Obviously, if they don’t have a good ranking, and they’re unable to get traffic to their own site, how are they going to be able to do it for you?

Another way to determine if your web design company is offering valuable advice is to just pick up the phone a call their clients.  Find out if they were able to increase traffic, improve sales and were they easy to work with.   Even if a web design company is excellent at their craft, but they can not communicate with their clients, the design process can prove to be a nightmare.  Be sure to find out how they communicate.   Do they have a project manager who will serve as your point person or will you be tracking down designers, programmers and writers to get you questions answered.

If you’d ever like to put our feet to the fire as you’re interviewing web design companies, please feel free to give us a ring.  The local number is 970-674-0079.

Most sites are designed by one or two people.  Usually, a graphic designer makes the look of the site and then they build it out using any number of software packages.  However, that’s like building a house using just one person.  Sure, it can be done, but ask any expert and they’ll tell you that it takes other experts to do the job right.  Just like a house requires the skills of a cement crew to pour the foundation, a framing crew, a plumber, an electrician, a drywaller, a roofer and more, a web site requires more than one person to do the job right.  If you’re wanting a site that is not only found in the search engines, but also looks great, and packs a punch when you read it, you’re going to need multiple experts to complete the job.

Generally, to do the job right, it takes a designer to create the look of the site, a programmer to build it, a writer to craft the copy and an SEO expert to promote it in the search engines.  Miss just one piece of the puzzle and the whole thing can fall apart.  Without the right copy, the best looking high traffic site will still fail to make any sales.  Or skimp on the SEO portion and your beautuful new site may never see any real traffic.  It all works together and without every part, the machine won’t run.

Did you know that you can lose up to 25% of your visitors with every click that you force them to make.  It’s not that people hate to click.  They hate to wait for new pages to load.  Even with broadband, we’re getting more and more impatient.  We hate waiting, even if it’s just for a split second.  That’s why you need to design your site so that nothing ever requires more than 3 clicks to reach.

It used to be that you’d have to click on something, wait for the page to load, and then hit the back button to go back to the home page.  That was very early on before webmasters realized that you could put navigation on all of the page.  Duh.

Theses days, with drop down menus, you can easily get to most locations within a site by just clicking once, maybe twice.  That’s dramatically increased the number pages that people are viewing within a site, and has increased the length that people are spending on a site.  If you don’t have drop down navigation on your site yet, get it.  It’s imperative.

We live in a world where people are growing more and more skeptical.  Things are especially uncertain right now and with potential economic hard times ahead, people are growing concerned.  Concern leads to skepticism which leads to lower sales and it becomes a perpetual cycle.

In order for your web site to have it’s best chance at success, in these tough times, you have to focus on trust factors.  You have to do every thing in your power to get people to believe you, because they are entering your site thinking that you’re trying to scam them out of their precious money.

So what are some ways that you can gain some one’s trust?

Obviously, the most important thing you can do it to always follow through on your promises.  If at any point, you make a promise that you don’t follow through on, you will not only have lost their trust, you’ll face an uphill battle in gaining it back.

The next thing you can do it to avoid making claims, even if they are true.  People hear claims these days a hundred times a day.  They are becoming meaningless and so many people have already had bad experiences, their defenses are up and they don’t believe claims in the first place.  So how can you tout the amazing qualities of your product or service?  Let a third party make the claims.  If you utilize testimonials effectively, then other people, who are deemed more reliable because they don’t have a vested interest in your success, are making the claims.  But even testimonials are known to have been faked so these days a lot of folks don’t trust them either.  Especially the ones that are anonymous or just list the first name of the person who said the quote.  Those types of testimonials are just about worthless.  Instead, use the person’s first name, last name, city and state.  The more information you provide, the more realistic it seems.  But be sure to ask for permission from your clients before posting their testimonials on your site.

Identity theft is the fastest growing crime these days and online buyers are concerned.  So, do what ever you can to prove to your visitors that every precaution has been taken to protect their privacy and the integrity of their personal data.  Insignias like the BBB or other trust emblems can have a huge impact on sales because they lend credibility and aid in the battle for trust.  Think about promoting the fact that your site is secure and that Visa and Mastercard have approved your site for transactions because it has passed PCI compliance tests.  Encourage visitors to check your BBB standing.  All of these can mean the difference between success and failure because even if you sell a great product at a fair price, if your site isn’t trusted, people will leave to find the product elsewhere.

Chadd Bryant