Our Website Design and Development Services
NetSpeak Solutions is an experienced and innovative 9 year old NH web design company specializing in web 2.0 design and re-design services. For every custom web design we develop, we carefully integrate color theory and appropriate graphic design elements to make your site more "engaging" and "easy to use". We also make sure that page content is relevant and concise. Finally, we even consider the way our brains actually have been shown to "search for" and "look at" things on both websites and search engines. It's truly fascinating stuff!
Web 2.0 Website Design
"Web 2.0" refers to guidelines used by some website design companies. And although the guidelines aren't as "rigid" as are the HTML, XHTML and XML specifications developed by www.w3c.org (which we also follow), web 2.0 DOES consider "the big picture" in web design - as well as "the user experience". Still, it shouldn't be followed without forethought (because both good and bad elements are part of).
Wikipedia characterizes "Web 2.0" as "facilitating communication, information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web.” We agree. And "web 2.0" sites can really make the user experience better; since it considers incorporation of today's technology - like social media, SMS, and RSS - and how it impacts website design.
If you're new to website design and development, then please take a moment to read over our web design procedures page. We follow the steps and guidelines on every project. For this reason, we think you'll find it very beneficial - no matter what your web design experience.
Web 2.0 Design Guidelines We Like and Follow:
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Fonts: Larger fonts with ample white space are advocated. This enable users to scan a web design quickly - and locate areas of particular interest to them. If fonts are sized, shaped and colored well, then It can eliminate difficult parsing through paragraph content with 10-point text to locate a specific piece of information. In addition, we use sans-serif fonts (Arial and Verdana are good examples), since they are easier to read with web browsers and monitors (they retain a crispness even at different font sizes).
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Color: Solid, vivid colors are now more often used; especially to highlight areas of importance or interest. Gradients can also be used for background affects and for special objects such as buttons, although solid colors can be used for call-outs on buttons too, as well as on other essential areas of a web site.
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Boldness: Since font sizes need to be larger in today's web designs (because of screen resolution improvements), company logos sometimes need to be redone to "stand out more". Many companies are redesigning their logos and using bolder, rounded fonts. Logos are may also be surrounded by a decent amount of white space and a blank background to allow the logo to seamlessly flow over any variations in site color and /or graphics near or around the edges of the logo.
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Reduced Clutter: Content has to be better organized than ever before - with less unnecessary content on every page, and it needs to be put together with a lot more structure. Information is vital in a Web 2.0 site, and it must be presented in a more digestible manner.
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Social Media: Website designs following web 2.0 must be designed to engage users. This happens when your website easily can be integrated into the building of a community around it. This is becoming more important to many age-based demographics.
Web 2.0 Deign Guidelines We Don't Like, and Avoid When Possible:
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AJAX: This approach to website design is based on the use of Javascript for coding. Although Javascript has been around for quite awhile, and, we've made sites using AJAX, the big problem to us is that many clients want to be able to update their sites but can't easily (because they're not Javascript experts). Also, many people turn-off Javascript on their browsers at times for security reasons - which can be problematic for web designs that need Javascript to function! So, this approach is not in the best interest of many clients.
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Table-less Design: This approach is great from a website design stand-point, but again, it can be terrible for some users. This is because it depends on heavy use of CSS (cascading style sheets) - especially in the defining of the sites layout ("containers" rather than nested tables). To the average user you might just as well have used Javascript - especially those who otherwise can do "some" of their own site maintenance. So, a heavy-handed CSS approach is not necessarily in the best interest of every client (especially those who otherwise know how to update content on table-based sites).
Why Developing a Custom Web Design is Best.
Today, developing and continually enhancing a website is the foundation to everything you can do to create a strong brand and market presence on the Internet. If you don't have a website, and still wonder "why" you should even be on the Internet, then that's really too bad. Because right now, like it or not, we live in a "web based" world - which impacts businesses and individuals directly. In fact, a recent SEM (search engine marketing) report indicated that
small to medium sized businesses with optimally ranking web designs with social media integration, grew nearly 50% faster than businesses
that did not!
This means, that if you don't have website, you NEED ONE. And, IT MUST BE DEVELPED TO SPECIFICALLY WORK FOR YOU. Also, if you have an existing web design that isn't visible on Google (with 65% of the search market share), Bing (with 9.3% share) and Yahoo (with 19% share), then you're losing sales and profits everyday. Remember, the Internet is a "24/7/365" worldwide proposition!
Yet, this doesn't mean that by simply "having" a
"website design" live on the Internet is enough either. It MUST be designed properly for usability as well as for web marketing integration (social media, blogs, search engine optimization and even PPC).
So How Do I Get the Right Website Design for Me?
For a customized NH web design, we first evaluate your needs and learn about your company. If you have an existing website, we'll evaluate it (to see if we can build on what exists, or if we need to re-design some or all of it). When we go through this "evaluation phase", we typically find that companies have spent a fortune on a design layout that may be overly slick and distracting, and/or may completely use Flash®.
Overly slick web designs can be distracting to the user (making simply finding things difficult). Flash™ based web sites do not enable optimum content to be provided to search engines (because the words become part of an image-like file structure). As a result, these types of sites don't show up easily on the free results ranking pages of the major search engines. Sometimes in such cases, we find that people have spent hundreds - and even thousands - of dollars on site submission gimmicks to try and help their cause (but they've simply become victims of a clever rip off). It's a shame, but fortunately it can be rectified!
Another reason for poor ranking on otherwise decent websites are other scams. For example, if you buy a domain name from certain companies that offer web design hosting, they aggressively steer you away from leaving their shopping cart by directing you towards their hosting services. As they do this, they highlight their "automatic web site creator" software that's available only if you purchase a hosting account with them. The problem with this is that the software that generates the website pages uses repeating templates that have limited design and color palette choices. They're also essentially impossible to Internet market (except if you want to pay Google, Yahoo and Bing for as long as you own the site).
So a custom developed website is best. Think about it for a moment; you can pay $2k-25k for ONE trade magazine space ad, or pay the same OR LESS for a custom website design and a legitimate Internet presence! And when you have the Internet, you have a marketing channel that's worldwide, and is "on" 24/7/365, so there's no comparison to traditional marketing! Space ads just end up in the bathroom, the entry-way of an office waiting area, and soon in the trash. Thus, the web is where you should be spending your money for web design and web marketing.
Let us try and help you! Click this link to contact us for a free quote, AND GET A $100.00 DISCOUNT just by using this form!
NetSpeak Solutions
153 Old Hedding Road
Epping, NH 03042
Contact Us At: 603-502-5613
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