When it comes to design… first impressions are everything

Here at Atomic, we believe in all the good stuff. Inner beauty. Strength of character. Substance over style.

But when it comes to web design, we know that first impressions are everything.
Ever go to a company’s URL and think to yourself, “Eeeww, that’s their website?” Or spent so long trying to find something on a site that you left it in frustration?

That’s the result of bad design.

Alternatively, ever smile when you open up a website? Don’t you feel good when you see that big orange flower on cuteoverload.com? Or get excited when you go to iTunes to download a song from American Idol? And isn’t it cool that you can find a list of all the tools you need to install a garbage disposal on HomeDepot.com?

That’s the power of good design.

Good design – particularly, good web design – doesn’t just happen. At the macro level, it’s the result of a strong visual presence married to clear, easy-to-use navigation. At the micro level, it’s the result of hundreds of small but important decisions that your web developers make, related to everything from coding and tagging to colors, typography, and white space.

There’s a lot of information out there on why good design is good for business, published by AIGA and others.

But to us, it comes down to one simple thing: you want your customers to smile when they see your website. That’s the result of good design.

As always, contact us if you’d like to talk about your website design. Or, check out some of our recent designs.

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Things to ask when looking for a new web provider

1. Will it have a content management system (CMS) in the back end? A CMS will allow you to make changes to your web pages easily, at any time, just as easily as making changes to a Microsoft Word document. A CMS helps you to:

  • Save time. You can make changes instantly yourself — there is no need to send changes off to someone else, wait around for them to make them, check behind them to make sure they were done correctly, etc., etc.
  • Save money. If you can make changes yourself, there is no need to pay a web designer $75 to $100 per hour to make changes to your site indefinitely into the future.

2. Will it be built using current Web content standards (as defined by the World Wide Web Consortium – /www.w3.org/)? Using W3C standards helps to ensure that:

  • Your site will work in multiple browsers (Explorer, Firefox, etc.) and on mulitple devices (PC, Blackberry, tablet computer, etc.)
  • Search engines will be able to most easily find your content. (This has to do with whether the text of your site is coded properly — search engine “spiders” look for certain codes and if they are not there, they cannot easily find your keywords.)
  • Your site is “forward compatible.” That means that any design changes you want to make to the site can be done very easily. In other words, you can make one coding change and quickly change the look of your entire site, without having to re-do the coding on every single page. This also will save significant $$ and headache in the future.

3. Can you create a professional design that will …

  • Put us on par with our competitors?
  • Help us capture a larger share of the marketplace?
  • Showcase us as a 21st-century company commited to progress and quality?

4. What is your work style?

  • Can you advise us of best practices in web design and development?
  • Will you develop a schedule and project plan for my site development, or will I have to?
  • Can you advise me on a web strategy for my company, or will you just “take orders and build what we tell you?”
  • Can you give me a reasonable cost estimate up front, or will I have to guess what my costs will be at the end of the project?

Graphic Design USA Magazine Features SAA College Website

Yes, it’s true … one of the websites we built recently has leaped out of the Internet and landed in the pages of a big ol’ glossy magazine. The mag in question is the July/August issue of Graphic Design USA , which showcased winners of the 2008 American Inhouse Design Awards competition.

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