Small Dog designs our websites with four things in mind:
- It must look good.
- It must work right.
- It must be accessible to all users.
- It must obey all current web standards.
That's it. It's that easy. All the rest is just fluff.
- Design that Looks Good -
Content may be king, but it has to look kingly, too. Webpages need to be attractive in order to draw the reader in, keep their interest, and guide their visual focus to where YOU want it to go. If you have a boring design, you will lose readers. If your design is too chaotic, you will lose readers. You don't want that and we don't want that.
A good design does several things:
- Catches attention: You have about three seconds to make an impact before a visitor clicks away. Make a good one, and they'll stay.
- Gives an impression: professional, creative, serious, casual, academic, etc. Your website "sets the tone" for what your visitors expect. Make sure you set the one you want.
- Guides the eye: Make good use of positioning, color, and contrast. Graphics and typography draw readers further down the page and highlight what they need to know. Too much results in visual overload; too little results in a bland, boring page.
- Design that Works Right -
No matter how good a website looks, it needs to function properly. Your website provides something, be it information, services, or goods. If your visitors can't find what they're looking for, can't figure out how something works, or get error messages, then you've just lost a reader.
We use a variety of technologies to make things work. XHTML, CSS, PHP, and jQuery are the big ones, along with WordPress and MODx content management systems. You might not need all of them, or even any of them, on your website. We don't use 'complex' where 'simple' will work just fine. After all, you're on a budget: why pay for bells and whistles that you don't need?
- Accessible and Compatible Design -
You never know what browser or technology your visitors will use to view your webpage. We test our web designs on the six most common web browsers to make sure it looks and works on all of them.
What about people who don't like pictures, or people who can't SEE pictures? We test our web designs on text-only browsers and on screen readers (text-to-voice) technology to make sure that your users can find what they need even if there are no colors, graphics, or fancy fonts whatsoever. Just in case.
- Standards are Important -
Standard and validated XHTML and CSS code provide the building blocks for making sure that today's website will continue to work and look good in tomorrow's web browsers. You just bought a website; you don't want to have to buy another one, two years from now, just to keep up with changing technologies. Make it once, make it right: simple, stylish, and smart.
