East Coast Runners
Are you a runner on the East Coast looking for some new events to compete in? Our friends at Amazing Race Timing just published their preliminary running events calendar for 2012 full of races in and around the Washington, DC area. We’ll be running in a few of these ourselves, so stop by and say hello!
If you are in need of a professional race timing company, give them a buzz for your next event. They handle a wide variety of events, in all shapes and sizes, from 5Ks to triathlons.
Web Development Strategy and Scalability
As a business owner or other important person in your organization’s decision making team, how do you make decisions to grow and develop your web site? I’ve sat in many team meetings over the course of my own career that involved lengthy discussions on anticipated new technology needs and solutions. While everyone usually comes to the table with varied theories, what always strikes me is just how varied the ideas can be with regard to projected growth and web site scalability. I usually walk away with the sense that no one in the meeting really knows. So, how do you plan and determine solutions with regard to your web site and application development projects and ensure they don’t get out of control?
I’ve recently come across a straightforward article discussing some realistic approaches for planning the scalability of a web project and thought it has some good talking points.
1. All web sites and applications will have breaking points.
Accept that your web site will need routine maintenance and that performance enhancements should just be part of the technology budget. After all, your car doesn’t run forever without tuneups and oil changes.
2. Understand all of the features you desire and the tradeoffs between them.
Bells and whistles may be visually interesting but if they slow your web site down, your visitor will mentally dock you for performance degradation. Understand all of your features and what you can live with and without to offer the most reliable and dynamic experience for your customer. We’ve mentioned this before – remember the golden rule of “less is more”.
3. Realize at some point you will want to scale back down and rebuild.
Accept that you will need to stop growing outward but instead begin refining and sometimes scaling back. Re-analyze your server use and make decisions on how much infrastructure you really need to be paying for. New technology will also always come into play, offering more efficient solutions. The increasing mobile use is an example of how we need to quickly revamp how we offer up content.
My favorite quote in the article says it all: “don’t be afraid to change everything”. How does your organization make decisions with regard to web site strategy and solutions?
Page Layouts Factor in Search
Whether you agree with Google’s recent announcement or not, how you layout your page will now have some influence on your search engine rankings. The idea is simple: sites that are heavily ad-filled above the fold will suffer some degree of penalty, while those that deliver real content will not.
“This algorithmic change does not affect sites who place ads above-the-fold to a normal degree, but affects sites that go much further to load the top of the page with ads to an excessive degree or that make it hard to find the actual original content on the page. This new algorithmic improvement tends to impact sites where there is only a small amount of visible content above-the-fold or relevant content is persistently pushed down by large blocks of ads.”
I understand and can see Google’s point of view with this algorithm change in terms of delivering high quality search results and keeping “spammy” sites out. But what worries me more, is how well will this algorithm change perform? What about artistic/creative sites which are heavy on graphic content and less on textual content be judged? What criteria are used when defining “normal degree”?
All questions aside, this new algorithm change is an important one to keep in mind when developing your next web site or application. Clearly utilizing splash pages has long been a thing of the past in terms of good design, but this algorithm change delivers the final blow. Are you building a site with heavy graphics above the fold? Does your site depend heavily on ad revenue? Stop and consider how all this will affect your rankings. Having a good content strategy must now include well-designed layout structures.
Lastly, if Google is now factoring page layouts to this degree, how much further will they go with this? Things to think about and consider.
Make a cross-platform friendly New Year's Resolution
As we enter into the new year, we all read about resolutions, predictions, and theories of what will come with 2012. The web abounds with lists of Top 10 Tech Trends for 2012. No surprises with concepts like touch computing, more social networking, voice control (obviously, after Apple’s launch of Siri), and HTML5 landing among the lists. While reading through many online articles about the tech predictions, the trends emerge – mobile computing and cross-platform friendly are still the core concepts of many of the tech predictions.
(Photo courtesy of National Geographic’s tips on photographing fireworks.)
Use emulators and simulators to test your web sites
We’ve mentioned the importance of becoming cross-platform friendly before, especially with the large boom of mobile tablets on the market. Your customers want to visit your web site on whatever platform and device they are using without annoying roadblocks along the way. Barriers such as web pages that do not size down onto a mobile phone will turn into customer frustration. Not being able to complete a shopping transaction with ease on the phone can stop a potential sale in its tracks. Video not loading properly on a tablet is next to near absurd to the end user. Check out some emulators and simulators to test how your web sites and applications will perform on various platforms.
We can help you get through the fast-paced technology changes!
We encourage you to focus on making 2012 the year your business web technologies become truly cross-platform compatible and up to speed with the mobile trends. Sevenforty can help your business reach these goals and give your customers and end users a streamlined and functional web experience. We understand the emerging technologies and the need for fast-paced change – let us handle the hard part for you!
Happy New Year from Sevenforty!
Finding Web Design Inspiration from Art
Do you ever blank out for a while during a web development project, lacking inspiration? Sort of like staring at a blank canvas? In many aspects, web design is really an art form. Imagery, typography, user tool placement, and color schemes all benefit by approaching the design from an artistic mindset. The majority of websites need to draw the user in and help him or her follow a straightforward path toward an end goal – yet not all web developers are able to achieve this. Finding inspiration from art can turn a blank canvas into a pleasant bit of eye candy for the end user.
Inspiration can be found anywhere.
The band Cake released a new album this past year and created handmade lyric books to accompany a portion of their product release. Done with letterpress and linoleum print processes, the band created beautiful artwork out of recycled materials. The color scheme and typography design of these books is a great example of a piece of artwork that can give us an inspiring starting point for a web project.
Look for simple color schemes to engage your viewers.
This particular piece of art also reminds us how simple choices in color schemes can sometimes make the most pleasing impact. Clean design is where Sevenforty excels – we aim to keep visitors on your web site with an easy-on-the-eyes palette and a straightforward structure. Rather than staring at a blank web canvas, find inspiring art work as a launching point. If you are still unsure how to develop your logos and other web based graphics and design, contact us and we can help! We have some great examples on our website showcasing some of our projects and the various designs and web sites we’ve developed.
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