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Northern Virginia Life Sciences Communities Launches a Website
It is always exciting to get in on the ground floor, so I was pleased to have the opportunity in my work at Balance Technology Groupto manage a website development project for Northern Virginia Life...
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10 Rules for Good Website Design
.net, http://www.netmag.co.uk/, has published a list of common website design mistakes. Read the complete article at http://www.netmag.co.uk/zine/home/the-top-10-design-mistakes To summarize: Stick...
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The Emotion of the Web
I’ve been doing research on website design options for a client who wants to appeal to businesses to locate in the area. I am struck by how much website design impacts the first impression and initial...
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Swiffer Website Offers Lessons on What Not to Do
My kitchen broom is broken and somewhat nasty looking. So, instead of cleaning the house today, I decided to work on modernizing my cleaning equipment a bit. Surely, I thought, I should be able to get...
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Free Icons
Smashing Magazine recently published information about 50 free icon sets that you can use to enhance your website design:...
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Every Website Should Have a Call to Action
One thing I always recommend to clients is that they make sure their websites have a “call to action.” What does that mean? A call to action is defined by what you want your site visitor to do. Do you...
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Use Website Analytics to Guide Redesign
Here is an excellent article on the use of analytics throughout the design process http://www.enlighten.com/pdfs/wp_analytics_08_06.pdf Web analytics reveal user behaviors and needs Analytics can...
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Reaching College-Age Audiences Online
If you target audience is or includes college-age users, new research Jakob Nielsen has some good insight. In summary, they found that students are multi-taskers who move through websites rapidly,...
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Enliven Your Website Slides with Video
A new idea for the new year: add video elements to your website slideshow. Slideshows are very common on modern websites. Slideshows or “sliders” allow content to move across a frame on a web page....
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How to Pick a Web Development Company
No doubt, a great website needs to be part of every communicator’s tool set. But many of us don’t have the resources or know how to develop a website from start to finish. Enter the web development...
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Avoiding Right Column Blindness
The common use of the right column/rail by website creators to feature advertising has trained users to to avoid looking in this area. But research from Jakob Nielsen shows that the less graphical it...
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Rotations of Death
Colleagues who have worked with me on website projects know that few things get me riled more than the demand for a rotation of some sort as a major element of a website home page. It’s especially...
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3 Goals of a Home Page
Probably everyone in your organization has an idea of what should be on the website home page. But, having an effective home page is really as simple as satisfying three goals: Give users information...
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Take a Fresh Look at Your Website
I know, developing (or redeveloping) a website is a painful process. So, it is no wonder that when the last task is marked complete we tend to stop looking at the site. It’s great, it’s fine; there’s...
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Usabilty Experts Recommend: Keep Visible Global Navigation
Global navigation generally appears on every page of a website to help users to switch between top-level categories easily, no matter their current location and ensure that even users who don’t enter...
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A Website to Model
If you are in business today, you don’t exist if you don’t have a functional website. Period. Finding that sweet spot of a site that really tells your story, is affordable, and easy to maintain...
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The World Is Flat and Other Design Trends
I’ve been working on a few website redesigns lately and visiting sites that sell themes has been like arriving in a new world. Much has changed in the conventions of web design, most for the better...
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You’ll Be Amazed at What You Can Learn from Competitor Websites
Planning to re-do your website? Start with your competitors. An often overlooked and extremely insightful exercise is to look at what your competitors offer online and how well they are serving your...
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Time Craigslist Paid Attention to Usabilty
I am a long time fan of Craigslist. When founder Craig Newmark spoke at the 2008 PRSA International Conference in Detroit I cheered when he discussed his focus on usability over eye-candy design. I am...
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That Whole “Above the Fold” Thing
I’ll admit that I have been advising clients for a few years now that in these days of drastically varying screen sizes the concept of “above the fold” really isn’t valid. New research from Nielsen...
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