Monday, 25 March 2013

How to Understand the Reputation of a Web design Austin Company from its Portfolio?



When you are on the lookout for a web design Austin company that would boost the looks of your online presence you should start by surfing through the portfolio of work done prior. There might be thousand opinions about a company, but the portfolio is a very honest reflection of what the website designer Austin employed in the company is capable of. When you are hiring a web design company you have to understand that it is a significant investment for betting the chances of your company in the stiff competition existing in Austin business sector. The choice of a web designer can make or break your online dreams.

Though portfolio is such an important aspect for web design Austin companies but you will be surprised to find that there are many companies which do not display any portfolio at their website. When you contact such a company they might come up with various reasons for not furnishing the portfolio at their website, but the true reason is – either they are new in the trade or their previous works are not of significant mention. Companies always like to flaunt what they have achieved, so when there is no portfolio it is definite to raise some eyebrows.

When you go through the portfolio of a web design Austin company it is important to judge the number of projects they have done. Number of projects signifies the experience a company has. If a website designer Austin has carried out 20 projects with success it is better option than another web designer with 12 projects under the belt.

You should also judge the type of work the company has done so far. If the company has not done any work related to your business sector or need then it is safe to move away from the web design Austin company, because you are not sure about the quality of work.

Pay a notice to the type of layouts that the company has done so far. They should be unique and far apart. If all the designs are close in resemblance to each other then you will not have an unique design to work with. The designs should be user friendly too.

Next time you are looking to hire a website designer Austin from a reputed company make sure you have looked over the portfolio with due diligence.

Tuesday, 19 March 2013

What Changes can be expected in Austin Web Design for 2013?



As web design Austin experts will comment every new year comes with a need for upgradation. There are new technologies and trends that rule the roost every year. The Austin web design trends for 2013 are quite interesting to read through. Responsive web design will be a big thing this year and grid designs will continue to stay on. Some trends that will grow in 2013 have been listed below:

·         Use of More White Spaces: People like cleaner designs. Most people liked websites with minimalistic designs last year. So, this year web designers will have to use more white spaces than ever before. White Space or Negative space as par the web designer’s manual is an inch of the canvas that should not be stuffed with anything. In this year less fluff will make designs a winner. Try to create a design and then put some spaces by removing unnecessary elements. 

·         Colour Trends: The most popular colour for web design Austin professionals is Blue. This colour has a touch of the corporate and is soothing to the eyes as well. The deeper shades of Blue were popular in the bygone year. But this year will see the emergence of some new shades such as Pink and Salmon colours. Neutral colours would also pull crowds. Blue has become rather too predictable, above mentioned shades will give a touch of freshness to web designs.
·         Bigger Designs: Websites are not designed for computer screens only. They are viewed through mobile phones and tablets too. So, the websites should be visible in the palms of user’s hands. This can be done by increasing the size of texts and images in the websites. As a web designer you should increase the design to few pixels taller and wider. But the big design again should be clean.
·         Sliding Images: Moving images are simple to include in designs due to advancement in technology. Austin web design professionals can include many relevant images without using up any extra space. The movement within the website is eye catching and they add a charm to the website.

When designing a website in 2013 the web design Austin professionals should keep the above mentioned tips in mind.

Monday, 11 March 2013

Common SEO Austin Mistakes Committed by Designers



SEO Austin has become a key to the popularity of online businesses in Austin. SEO is today seen as the most favourable avenue to be seen in the online business bandwagon. And most statistics would opine that to be seen is to be profitable. If you have a high traffic then there are chances of earning great revenues. These are all praises of SEO services. But one of the disturbing aspects coming out of a recent poll result conducted upon the Austin website design professionals is that 24% of them do not know what SEO is and how they can help the optimizers. This is a big fallacy because SEO starts from the design and development of a website. So, today we will discuss some of the common mistakes committed by the Austin website design and how it affects the performance of websites.

  • Splash Pages: Many websites nowadays use a big banner and there is a link that says “Click here to enter the website”. This Enter link is embedded within a Flash image. Flash images are not read by search engine spiders. If you do not care about the ranking of your website then this is a good act, otherwise it is a big mistake. Home Page should be ideally the highest ranking page and it gets crawled on a regular basis by the spiders. If your landing page does not have proper link structure then the spiders will never find the inner pages, costing you significant traffic loss.
  • Flash Menus: Many web designers are using fancy Flash menus with fade in or animated effects. Though they look nice on the website but the search engine does not recognize these. So the links in the menu are not followed.
  • Image or Flash Content: You can imagine search engines as text based browsers, they cannot read graphic images or Flash. But many Austin website design professionals commit the blunder of embedding some important content in Flash.
  • Use of Ajax: Ajax is a favourite tool for web designers trying to impress their visitors. But this is again a SEO Austin mistake. Ajax pages load dynamically and thus they cannot be read by the spiders.

Make sure you avoid committing these mistakes. If you take these points into consideration while designing websites then the SEO Austin professionals will be thankful and your client happy.