Our Design Philosophy
Why We Design As We Do
We design sites in a certain way for a reason. When we accommodate your design ideas, we’ll want to ensure that you are going to accomplish your goals for your Website.
Professional Sites That Reflect Your Goals
We work with you to design a site that reflects your values and accomplishes you goals while using our knowledge of the technology to make optimal use of the Internet.
- We design sites to accepted current Web standards so they are usable, easy to navigate and simple to maintain.
- We focus on the task of making your site visible to the greatest number of people possible while retaining a professional image.
- We work with you to use the Web to enhance your company image in coordination with your other publicity projects.
We Built Original Designs
Our designs are each unique. While certain elements may be similar within the various sites we’ve designed, we don’t approach each project with a cookie-cutter solution.
We Don’t Use Templates
Templates are used by many designers to speed up the production process. This allows them to appear more comptetitive, but this costs you in flexibility and ability to make needed changes in the future.
We believe that you want a site designed to meet your goals and needs, not to fit an existing template or the legal requirements to use it.
Reasonably Priced
We know that both cost and performance are issues and we price our design work accordingly. We don’t charge like the big design companies, but we are professionals with extensive experience, not amateurs.
Why Web Standards?
Web Standards are not an end in themselves, but do provide a guideline to minimize the limitations of the various Web browsers, operating systems and hardware that are in use.
They also reduce the cost of bandwidth (pages load faster) and make it easier to fix any future problems as content changes on the site. (See this article for a fuller discussion of hidden costs of non-compliant sites.)
Web Standards Make You Money
Sites built to current Web standards open your site to a larger portion of the Web audience than sites built to accommodate a single browser:
- Newer technologies, like cellular phones and other portable devices, tend to be adopted first by those with larger disposable incomes, thereby increasing your sales potential.
- Search engines are an important way for people to locate you and standards-compliant sites tend to have a greater portion of their content indexed.
- Those with older browsers and technology are less likely to use that technology to evaluate purchases.
Web Standards Save You Money
Building a site correctly will save you money in maintenance and in future design updates:
- Changes to the site’s look can be accomplished site-wide by simple changes to a single file (the CSS file) which saves you on the costs of updating your site.
- It also makes it easier and quicker to update the site’s content.
- Verifying standards-compliance is a very quick and easy way to locate and deal with potential problems.
IE6 is Holding Back the Web
Internet Explorer 6 is now holding back development of the Web because it doesn't support many of the more recent advances in web design that would allow for a richer user experience. As well, developers are spending a disproportionate amount of time catering to the special requirements to make IE 6 display properly — particularly considering the diminshing user base.
CSS Enhances Usability & Flexibility
Cascading style sheets (CSS) can be used to allow for an enhanced experience when viewed by various computers and devices. CSS is tremendously powerful when used properly.
css Zen Garden is a wonderful example of how content can be removed from layout, allowing for different views for different tastes.
Try clicking on the various links under the Select a Design section to see the css Zen Garden page in a variety of visual layouts. The text content is always the same. Only the CSS and images change.
Separating Content from Structure
The separation of content from layout also makes it easier for you or your staff to manage the site with only minimal knowledge.
The site’s look can be updated quickly instead of requiring the site be updated page-by-page, line-by-line as traditional methods required.
Hand Coded
Our sites are hand-coded to allow easy editing and update whereas sites built with software packages often require those expensive packages to make updates or changes to the site.
While content management systems (CMSs) may appear attractive in terms of allowing you or your staff to update your site, they work best with replacing frequently shifting sales data, such as for car lots or electronics stores. They can also place your site in jeopardy if a vulnerability allows someone to alter your site content without your permission.
Content is King
It has been said many times that content is king. Web sites should be designed to encourage access to the information on your site, not to showcase someone’s ability to create interesting effects with wiz-bang software.
After all, isn’t reaching the viewer with your message the object of the exercise?
Make Content Accessible
Don’t Let Technology Get in the Way
We design sites to make the content accessible. The site must look clean and professional, and be easy to navigate no matter what technology the viewer has available to view the site.
If the content is obscured by the technology or excessive eye-candy, then the site serves the wrong purpose.
Search-Engine-Accessible
Accessibility is not limited to people. Search engines often cannot "read" the content of flash- or Javascript-dependent content. Since most people use search engines to locate content, you want to ensure your site receives as much visibility as possible.
Use Animation Discriminately
Multimedia and animated presentations on the Web can be stunning, provided you have the bandwidth to download the information, the proper plug-ins installed and the computer to run it on as well as the right target audience.
If not, they can be annoying to your viewers.
It shocks most people with animated entraces to their site when they learn that most of their visitors skip the introduction to get to the content. Since they pay a great deal for these gateways (they take time and expensive software to create), that’s money wasted that could have been better utilized elsewhere.
Ensure Easy Access
All our sites are designed to be viewable by the greatest number of browsers, operating systems and hardware configurations possible.
No Frames
We do not use frames in our designs. Frames create challenges for the end-user when printing, linking and bookmarking specific pages on your site. These problems can make it more difficult to use and to promote your site.
Tables for Tabular Data Only
Tables were designed to present tablular data, but have long been used to lay out sites but this results in longer page download times, difficulty editing sites (the layout is completely embedded in the content making it expensive to modify) and issues with display on modern mobile devices. More…
Enhance Your Overall Corporate Image
Improve Your Corporate Image
Your Website should be designed to increase your visibility and make your company more accessible.
Part of a Unified Plan
Your Website should be a part of a unified advertising and communications plan.
A Creative Process
The design of a site is a creative process that evolves into the finished product. The design process should include:
- A distinctive look to enhance branding.
- A compatible look and feel to your business cards, letterhead and other promotional material.
- A plan for implementation including staff training or alternatives for regular site maintenance.
- Future expansion plans, so you don’t lock yourself into a narrow concept.
We Work to Provide the Best Solution for You
We can work with you to provide the best solution for your particular needs without compromising quality.
www.russharvey.bc.ca/philosophy.html
Updated: December 22, 2009
