The WebSpecialist Blog

Here's a story that sounds like it came straight from the latest sci-fi flick.  According to this story in the LA Times online, Nokia has applied for a patent for a tattoo that will alert you to incoming phone calls and text messages on your cell phone.  Apparently the tattoo is applied using a special ink that contains iron and iron oxides that are magnetized, and can be "programmed" sort of like a blue tooth device so that it only reacts to your phone (and not your neighbor's).  It causes a sensation under the skin to alert you to an incoming call or message.

Aside from the immediate questions, like how hard it might be to reprogram your tattoo once you get a new phone, we have to wonder if many people would choose to partake in this fairly invasive use of technology.  We all know people who rely so heavily on their smart phones that the phones might as well be permanently connected to their bodies.  But under the skin??

Switching gears a bit:  A far less invasive use of modern technology (for businesses, anyway) is a website feature that we find a lot of business owners are not yet aware exists.  It's the ability for your website contact form to send a text message to a designated cell phone number upon submission by a website visitor.  This is especially handy for companies that offer emergency services, such as heating and air conditioning, or emergency disaster clean-up.  Within 15 seconds of submission on the website, the technician on call can receive a text message with the name and phone number of a potential client who is presumably waiting for their return call.

If this is news to you - and you believe your company might benefit from such technology - it might be time for a website upgrade or redesign that brings your company up-to-date with the latest technology.  Contact WSI WebSpecialist to see if we can help.  (Being alerted to the incoming text by "tingling tattoo" is optional.)

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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 The Hackathon was a unique response to the city's problem of having an outdated and hard to use website.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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Every so often, Delaware web design specialists like us stumble upon a big brand with a really bad website. All the marketing money in the world occasionally can't buy good taste. And that was precisely the problem at French Vogue. The website from the fashion epicenter of the universe was a grainy, cluttered, slow-moving hot mess. Now the bigwigs at French Vogue — especially notoriously tough editor Emmanuelle Alt — are looking to change all of that.

According to a press release from Conde Naste, the redesigned Vogue.fr will go live on February 6 to coincide with the fall 2012 runway shows.

"Contents wise, the new Vogue.fr blends the digital and print editions, feeding off each other under the watchful eye of Emmanuelle Alt, and aims to be the digital extension of the magazine, adapted to the time frame and use of the media," the release says.

The publisher also promises exclusive interviews, backstage photos and new content daily. We say, way to go French Vogue. You're never too big to get your website "ooh la la" back.

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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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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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