The WebSpecialist Blog

The best and brightest in Maryland website design will tell you that it doesn't matter how small your business is or how unknown you are — a new website can transform your brand's image.

The city of Manhattan, Kansas learned this recently when it hosted the "Little Apple Hackathon." Teams of designers competed for Best Overall Design and Best New Functionality. The Hackathon was a unique response to the city's problem of having an outdated and hard to use website. After months of building mock-ups and reviewing new ideas, a winner was chosen by the city this week.

The slick winning website features a brand new logo, a video hub to watch live feeds of city meetings and new images and photos to show off the beauty of the Little Apple. Manhattan may only boast a population of 53,000, but the new website has a chic, big-city feel to it, proving that power of good website design is something everyone can experience.

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Facebook is talking about it. Google and Bing are allegedly obsessing about it. And all the little guys are even wondering about it. The "it" in question is local web optimization. So why is everybody buzzing about local when once upon a time the desired SEO goal was global domination?

Easy. As searches become more specialized, users are directed to businesses, people and places within steps of wherever they're using their laptop or smart phone. Therefore it's more vital than ever for small businesses to make sure their hours of operation, location and services are correctly listed online. Updating business profiles on search engines should be part of a local SEO strategy. Now more than ever, small companies are invited to be empowered by staying in control of their website, social media and search engine results. And we think that's great news. Viva local!

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If a terrible website has pushed you into searching for the best in Maryland web design, just remember your website could always be worse. Like, a lot worse. We've decided to share this PC World slide-show of the Worst Web Design Mistakes from last month as an example of what not to do — and as proof that small changes can make a big difference.

Some of the commonly-made mistakes called out by PC World, like over-clutter of social media widgets and incessant apologizing for not updating, are easy things to fix. Others (poor color contrast between text and background or annoying side scrolling) are more a matter of lack of direction and support from the web designer. Mainly, all of the items on the mistakes list (even the laughably bad ones like the Comic Sans font overkill) are things that can be caught and fixed way before a site ever goes live — if you're working with somebody who knows what they're doing.

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Mobile websites are the smartphone-friendly way for small businesses to communicate with followers. Yet a new study from analytics firm Flurry suggests that when it comes to smartphones, users are more interested in apps than browsing.

Flurry reports that the average smartphone user spends 94 minutes a day on apps and just 72 minutes on web browsing. These numbers are drastically different from last summer, when 81 minutes were reportedly spent on web browsing. App usage continues to grow — jumping 15 percent in December alone. The waning interest in mobile browsing could come from users switching from the web to an app to access social media sites like Facebook. Nevertheless, mobile websites are still a bright idea. Gigaom.com notes that with the arrival of HTML5, many apps will soon be accessed like traditional web pages, meaning a hybrid between mobile browsing and apps is just around the corner.

Have you considered either an app or a mobile website for your business?  Have you decided on one over the other?  What was the deciding factor?  Share your company's experience below.  

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If you're looking for the best in Maryland web design and searching high and low for inspiration for your website, take a peek at what bigger, more successful websites are doing right. And there's no better place to start than Time magazine's list of The 50 Best Websites of 2011. The list features the year's best websites for shopping and travel, music and video, sports, social media, news and more. It is often said that good artists borrow while great artists steal, so why not take a gander at the sites on this list and see what you can steal for your own?

Over in the best of shopping and travel section of the list, Polyvore is a retail website with a definite steal-worthy design. Sleek, easy to use and as hip as the fashionistas who shop there, Polyvore sets its sites on getting shoppers to be social and share ideas... and then spend money. Small businesses can certainly adopt Polyvore's social aspect by implementing comments sections on company blogs, placing "like" widgets on website photo galleries and conducting conversations with followers on Facebook that direct back to your website.

For a great and modern way to use color, swipe the palette scheme of Poptropica. The kid's website made Time's list for being a mecca for tons of cool Internet games for kids but we think Poptropica's use of bright shades of blue dotted with white details is a hip trend any site can try. Using several shades of one dramatic color is big in design these days, and if mixed with minimal text and details like Poptropica, the look can be a chic and memorable one.

Lastly, many of the sites on the list, like sports site Grantland, stand out for being clear. With pared-down design elements and a bold logo, Grantland can get down to the business at hand of dishing about sports. Grantland wisely cuts out the bells and whistles, places its ads in unobtrusive locations and fills the pages with well-written, must-read content. This kind of website clarity is a trend you see happening from sites big and small and one every business can try.

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Happy New Year! Perhaps the arrival of 2012 has sent you searching for experts in Maryland web design. Now is the perfect time to spruce up your website, change your Internet marketing plan and beef up your web presence. With all of the options and possibilities, the task of narrowing down our website resolutions seems a daunting one. That's why we've put together a list of website resolutions that are guilt-free, effective and easy to follow through on.

1) Get Inspired: Whether it's a total website built from the ground up or just a little facelift for an existing website, it's always good to get inspired. Review the websites of companies within your industry and make a list of things you like (and don't like) about them. That way when the time is right, you'll be walking into your web designer's office with examples of what you want. Everyone building a website for his or her business should take a crash course in what the company's contemporaries are doing — and scoping out the competition in your field online is a great way to do that. Just remember to be open to suggestions from your web consultant - as they do this stuff every day.

2) Be Social: If you have an existing website and are wondering why people aren't visiting it, maybe it's because you're not talking about it. Social media is the fastest way to get the word out about your site. Take 2012 to shamelessly promote your brand by commenting on popular blogs, sending tweets that inform your following of the latest company news and regularly update your Facebook page with videos, photos and blogs that will direct traffic back to your site. An effective social media marketing plan can be carried out in less than an hour a day and can put your site back on the map.

3) Keep Evolving: Maybe one website redesign is all you have the budget for and constant updates are a pipe dream. That's okay. A limited budget doesn't mean your site has to stay the same until you get more cash. Content is king and by regularly updating your company's blog, creating newsletters, posting links to social media pages and posting fresh images, you get the perks of an updated site without the cost. Make a resolution to find ways to keep your website interesting and fresh. Your customers will thank you for it.

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Mobile websites that function just as well as, if not better than, their online counterparts are what every small business hopes for. Yet for businesses that offer a variety of savings on goods and services, the mobile website also has to serve as their customers' personal, on-the-go deal finder. Thanks in large part to the success of sites like Groupon (where iPhone and Android users can get the 411 on the latest discounts in their area), websites that are in the business of offering savings are seriously upping their game to meet the needs of the mobile world. Take the travel website Orbitz for example.

The airline and hotel deal broker has been pushing out savings on travel packages online since the early days of online vacation shopping. Yet in order to outpace with the plethora of travel websites, each of which says they're cheaper than their competitors, Orbitz has aggressively launched a mobile website redesign that could be game changer. Released last week, the faster, sleeker mobile website has taken a page from the book of Groupon and catered to shoppers who use their smartphones to get what they want. Users of the mobile site have access to last-minute deals and mobile-only specials on hotels in a section called "Mobile Steals."

Orbitz officials say the move was strategic — a full 65 percent of mobile bookings are for the same day. Mobile Steals features exclusive savings on resorts and spas that aren't featured online. And for folks who perused flights at their laptop but waited to buy, Orbitz now has a solution for them, too. The new mobile site remembers what deals users looked at from their computer and saves them.

Orbitz's move to a fast and user-friendly mobile website is on par with the trend of businesses to have their websites speak directly to smartphone users.

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If the unimpressive look of your website has you scrambling to find the best in Harford County web design, you are not alone. Even the big brands who have had success with the same website for years get tired of looking at the darned thing. Take, for example, the recent Google makeover. It was subtle and gradual but soon every Google product from Gmail and Google Documents to Maps and even YouTube got a hipper, fresher look. Even though Google and its jillions of apps, products and other websites worked just fine before the facelift, the brand forged ahead in the mission of creating a prettier, more design-savvy Google. But why?

The image overhaul started last summer and, according to top Google employees, the goal of the new look was to be modern and simple but packed with the company's signature power.

“We want to keep our look simple and clean, but behind the seemingly simple design, use new technologies like HTML5, WebGL and the latest, fastest browsers to make sure you have all the power of the web behind you, "said Google's digital creative director Chris Wiggins in an interview with Silicon Republic.

Sure, some critics have blasted the redesign as "hard to use" and "unnecessary." But it's hard to fault the company for trying to improve a product already so widely used and ripe for bashing. Google's goal — to strip down the image while having it all work a little harder and faster — appears to be one that they passed with flying colors. Here at WSI, we're particularly impressed with some of the changes to the Google Analytics interface.

The big thing brands of any size can learn from this very expensive overhaul is that you don't have to throw out the things people love about your website simply in the name of a makeover. Website redesigns should toss out the parts of your website that don't work while making the parts that do work even better.

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Remember the John Cusack movie from a couple of years ago, based on ancient predictions that 2012 would mark the end of the world as we know it? We're certainly not betting on the end of the world, but some recent year-end predictions for the coming year offer indications that a long-time squatter at the web design table may soon meet its end - and that's OK with us.

London-based SEOptimise.com's list of 30 Web Trends for 2012 is one of many year-end prediction lists which believe 2012 will spell curtains for Flash as we know it. The death of the Abode product has been rumored for years, but now it appears the end is nigh. After noting that RIM (Blackberry) and Android tablets and smartphones won't be carrying flash anymore, SEOptimise writes, "The original Flash will die finally. Abode is already working on HTML5 implementation instead. So Flash will probably be resurrected based on Web Standards." Other publications like The Register and dozens of tech blogs have also rung the death knell for Flash.

Here at WSI WebSpecialist, we're happy to see this development. We've been avoiding Flash on our clients' websites for years, based upon its incompatibility with good SEO practices.  

So if you're looking for the best in Maryland or Delaware web design, does the end of Flash mean you should reconsider your dreams of a fancy Flash website? Probably. What about those who already have fancy Flash websites? To them, we say it's time for a website redesign. New websites have to take in account the mobile factor — and considering it's incompatibility, Flash is soon to be a thing of the past.

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It's no secret that most government agency websites are much like government agencies themselves: They do their function without many bells and whistles in the best case scenarios, and in the worst case they're messes of ugly design and slow to do the job at hand. We're pretty sure no one has ever uttered the words, "Wow! The Motor Vehicle Administration has the best website ever!" So we had to chuckle at a recent press release that touted a contest for government websites to win an Extreme Website Makeover. (Not that the lameness of government websites is anything to laugh at, mind you.)

Nevertheless, this much-needed contest from a Kansas web developer is meant to ignite city governments to care about their website design. And hopefully contests like this inspire government agencies at every level to give a hoot about their websites. But just so you know, if you're looking for amazing Maryland web design with usability and accessibility in mind, you don't have to enter any contests. Just contact us to set up an appointment to discuss your agency's needs.

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