Twin Cities Web Design Services
Making a great website is more than making it look attractive but rather encompasses functionality, accessibility, and aesthetics. Taking a user oriented approach; we use the most up to date industry practices for designing sites that get results. Our sites are designed with accessibility, search engine optimization (SEO), and with a rich user experience in mind.
Flash and Accessibility
Flash design can provide sound, movement and user interaction for your site, and is best used for areas of your site that do not affect readability/useability. Basically this tool is to add to the visual representation of your site while not affecting usability. Accessibility is a very important quality in a website as it affects certain software interaction such as screen readers, language translation software, web browser cross compatibility, and internet connection speeds.
In simple terms, screen reader software is used to read text (audibly or visually). This means anything designed in flash would be inaccessible to persons with hearing and seeing disabilities. Language translation software reads a website's text, translates words, and displays a semi accurate translation in the language the user has selected. This can be powerful for businesses doing business in areas where English is not the main language. Finally, the text on your website is what search engine's see. Search engines read through your text, navigation, and the alternate text attached to your images and breaks the data into relevant keywords to index your site. Search engines use these keywords to provide relevant data to users searching for different topics.
Website navigation and the accessibility of a website is one of the most important elements to take into consideration next to a website's content. This is simply because if the navigation is inaccessible, how can a user navigate through your site?
The answer is simple, they can't. If a user can't navigate through your site, the search engines can't either, which means a site can have a lot of content that is un-indexed and will "miss the boat" in the search engines.
Search Engine Optimization
Website accessibility with content and navigation is essentially the definition of Search Engine Optimization also called SEO. When designing websites, we weight SEO and Accessibility very heavily. Designing a site right from the start will help the site achieve optimal results with visitors and search engines. This discipline results in less expensive online marketing and a rich user experience.
We also offer Search Engine Optimization Consulting Services for existing websites.