In my opinion, ugly sites can perform very well, and there are a number of factors that can contribute to that:
First, ugly sites are often sites that were originally built back in the 1990s by some business owner who had no web design sense or technical knowledge but wanted to promote his business online. [Read more…]
Tonight we’re enjoying our first fire of the season in our fireplace. It’s quite a cheery little blaze.
The only thing is, since we live in south Florida, it’s really not cool enough yet for a fire. We had to open all the windows and turn on the ceiling fan to get the living room cool enough to have a fire. [Read more…]
Daily newspapers have been fighting decreasing readership and falling subscriptions for at least a couple of decades now. More and more, newspapers are putting their content online. For that I salute them.
But the web is now about 15 years old, and I wonder why so many newspapers still don’t manage to get some of the basic things right.
[Read more…]
Developing a new web site — or re-developing an old one, for that matter — typically involves consulting with the client to determine the site’s target audience and primary objective, creating an attractive and functional design, turning the design into properly coded, valid html, building out the pages of content, and writing the server-side programming to perform whatever dynamic features are needed. But there are several steps that are frequently overlooked before a site “goes live.”
I’ve never liked to use the term “web site designer” in reference to what I do. Yes, I “design” web sites, but the word design seems to suggest, to many people, strictly “visual design.” I tend to prefer developer, because effective web site development must encompass much more than merely designing a “pretty” or “good looking” site.