A question I often get from perspective clients is: “should I build my website in Adobe Flash?”

To answer this question lets look at the cost vs. benefit of an all/ partial built flash website.

Benefits of a Flash Site:

• Slick Look
• Able to animate just about anything
• Strong potential for great looking portfolio
• Excellent presentation piece
• Attractive for Splash Pages (home page)
• Great for applications that might be used on your website

Downsides to Flash Sites:

• 

  Image via Wikipedia

  Search Engines can’t read the website because it is essentially a movie embedded in an HTML page. So if you care about Optimizing your website for search engines don’t even think about going fully flash. Think target audience! How is Flash going to help in the use of your site? No search engine to date is able to extract textual elements from Flash content. For most people SEO is a very valuable source for bringing visitors to you website – without a search engine’s help you could potentially loose up to 80% of your web traffic!

• Hard to update – you need a Flash Web Master to update the site, as they need to make edits in Adobe Flash.

• Long Download time - means you are waiting longer for the website to load in your browser. Most people don’t have time to wait, or aren’t patient enough.

• Flash requires bandwidth – even though most people use DSL Internet, there are still people who use dialup or other limited bandwidth internet connections. Flash files take a much longer time to load then HTML, especially those with sound effects, embedded movies or bitmap images.

• Blogging is hard – if you blog often this would be very tedious with flash as you have to update the site through an FTP (File Transfer Protocol). There is no way to directly update your website content online.

• No Content Management System (CMS) – How regularly do you want to update content? Using an all Flash website means you are uploading all your content manually to the web server and manually updating. This means opening up the Flash software and adding new text or pages. This can be a problem after a while as its time-consuming and increases the size of your Flash website. Ultimately it will slow down your slick looking website, and might have some impatient visitors leave the website completely.

On the other hand, if you have a Flash designer working on your case, the website can be set up to use text files to automatically add content to your website. Problem solved? Wait, putting in all those text files will take download time, and again you will lose impatient visitors.

Flash can be a great tool and limited use draws spectacular results. It involves understanding your audience before letting your site run loose on the Internet.

One solution is to have two versions of your website on the splash page (first page that people see, or your default page). A Flash and a non-Flash version of the site. We all get excited about fancy animation power with Flash, but you have to step back and sit in the shoes of the user. Some animations are distracting and can deter from what your site is actually offering. At Sayenko Design, we create hints of Flash in most of the websites we create to enhance the professional look but never do we wrap Flash around content. The conclusion is: use Flash wisely if you do and don’t sweat it if you don’t include it in your design.

This may seem like a trivial thing but it actually has a big impact on our market exposure – and it allows us to market in a very economical manner.
Please take a few minutes and help us let the facebook community know who we are.

We are in business today in this tough economic market and we are hoping to bring brand awareness to others by having you on our list of Facebook friends/fans -

You can click here to the Sayenko Design facebook page
or search for (Sayenko Design) in the search box and click on “become a fan” – I would
love to add you to my friend list and stay in touch with you.

Thanks much – I hope your doing well!

Mike Sayenko

In reality, most people glance at each page and, if you’re lucky, scan some of the text, clicking on the first link that catches their interest or vaguely resembles what they are looking for. Usually there are large chunks of the page that the user doesn’t even look at.

The Home page of a website gives a first impression and thus should have some thought invested in its design. It needs to be straightforward, easy to navigate, and possess a clear message. Below are some questions you need to ask yourself about your current website or the one you plan on building. If you cannot quickly answer the questions below then you might want to redesign your website.

Lets Start with the Trunk Test:

• What site is this?
• What page am I on?
• Where am I in the site scheme?
• What are my options from this level?

Design

• · Conventionally, the logo should be at the upper left hand corner because we read left to right and it is the first thing that catches our eye. Also, the logo should be easy to read, conveying useful information or enhancing the branding value of the website.
• · The home page should have Call to Action and contact info placed prominently.
• · Click-ability should be obvious
• · Scan-ability – fast info
• · Text entry areas are obvious – Empty space effectively ends the page and no one is going to scroll beyond it. Anything below this will be lost, so design page layout and flow to maximize sales potential of page real estate.
• · Formatting applied via CSS (Cascade Style Sheets)
• · Conventions applied to all pages
• · Busy-ness and background noise are minimal
• · Footer includes copyright date and text
• · Correct Spelling/ Grammar
• · Image Quality – make sure images are not pixilated (stretched out)

Navigation

• Site Map
• Sense of scale, directions and location
• Page name matches that links that bring people there
• Breadcrumbs and site-level Navigation

When it comes to site design, most think of a product brochure, while the users reality is much closer to “billboard going by at 70 miles an hour.” People don’t read pages. They scan them. Try the three second scan-ability rule on your website. What can you remember about it after that time span? The most important information should stand out from the rest in those three seconds and you should be able to recall what that information is.

Does this all make sense? If you use these easy usability conventions, your site will communicate clearly and effectively.

What is this tool and why is it so effective?

What is this tool?

A ‘web content management’ (WCM) system is a CMS designed to simplify the publication of Web content to Web sites, in particular allowing content creators to submit content without requiring technical knowledge of HTML or the uploading of files.

CMS Backend Login

Old Problems

You have a website that has grown organically over time, much of the content is out-of-date, updating the website is very complex, its hard to find things, and the appearance is becoming dated. Its now to the point where you’ve lost track of where pages are in the website. You might have a skilled Webmaster that does this all for you, but even for them the updates are becoming a burden. You can’t remember what was on the site last week, or last month. If this sounds about right, you’re not alone. In fact, it’s the way most maintain their website, using manual tools such as Frontpage or Dreamweaver. This is where Content Management System comes in, to clean the mess.

Problems Solved

• CMS allows you to update your website through the back-end of your website, by logging in as an administrator, and updating your site directly through the Internet. This is very powerful as anyone can update the website from anywhere as long as they have Internet.
• The old fashion of updating content of a website is to edit locally on your computer then uploading it through a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) program. This is tedious and time consuming, having a chance of overwriting documents by accident or loosing data.

• While with CMS, you have the ability to auto save files (archives) and go back to a previous saved version of the page if you accidentally deleted something.
• Add content without any technical knowledge of HTML.
• Control and maintain your newsletter subscribers and send out HTML emails directly through your CMS system.

Page View of all the Pages in the site

Why is it so effective? Business benefits

• Reduces site maintenance costs
• Fast publishing process
• Faster turnaround time for new pages and changes
• Great consistency
• Improved site flow and navigation
• Greater security
• Reduced duplication of information
• Superior capacity for growth
• Increased site flexibility

Besides the above, the greatest asset to the CMS is to support your business strategies and goals. These are all the reasons why Sayenko Design is operated on a CMS system and integrates this system into majority of our client websites. If you have any further questions don’t hesitate to ask, we would love to help.

Organic Baby Nursery Co. is a custom interior decorating company based in Mill Creek, Washington. The company is a start up, provide families with an easy way to design a healthy, personalized, organic nursery room for their children.

In designing Organic Baby Nursery’s website, our goal was to create an elegant image and highlight the safety of their products. We started with market research by sifting through different websites of organic baby products. We then pulled together a branding strategy that would make Organic Baby Nursery’s website stand out from the rest.

This led us to create a logo and color scheme that communicated an organic feel through the use of earth tones. To stand out we chose a color palate that avoided the usual bright green colors used on most other organic product websites and decided to stand out with a chocolate brown background.

From there, we used technology to help us display a modern, sophisticated and sleek image. We added home page flash animation, and a rotating image gallery with featured products that you can click on, to view those product pages. They don’t sell anything online, which usually is the case with a long product list such as this, this made the process seamless but not easy as there was a 100 page PDF we had to work off to pull all the images and products off, re crop the images and format them to fit the page layout.

Scott Carney the owner had this to say, “We are completely satisfied with the highly skilled and dedicated work of Sayenko Design.  Mike developed a fantastic logo which received rave reviews from many business associates and friends.  He really did a great job of partnering with us during the entire process of developing our custom website and blog. We are thrilled with the elegance, style, color, and animation which is sure to grab our customers attention. We can’t say how excited we are about launching our new business.  Thank you Sayenko Design.”

We are happy to see the website grow in success and enjoy our friendship with the fantastic people at Organic Baby Nursery.

Below are questions to take you through the process of strategic web design.

Objective:

• Before you start designing any page, what is going to be the most important feature? Is it going to be a shopping cart? Your Blog? Your Image Portfolio? Just think for a moment on what you want users to do on your website. Some things to think about: imagery, usability, information, purchasing of products.

• Is the website going to need constant updates, such as text and graphics or a blog? Or is the site just going to be static with a few updates here and there?

• Will you be needing control of your content and have users access it? This is usually in a form of a user login on a website, with a backend database (usually used for news based websites, hospitals, clinics, services based sites)

• This is a critical one that many don’t think about. How can your site generate new users or clients, think marketing on social media sites such as twitter (we have a few great articles on Twitter I suggest checking out), facebook, and youtube to name a few. You want to get your name out to as many people as possible, social media sites are great for that. Also creating social videos are a great marketing tool and usually much more interesting to people to view then to read a four page article.

You are always looking to generate new users on your site, this should always be the end goal for any site. The next step is finding ways to keep existing users/clients coming back to your site. Think about marketing – promotional giveaways, a newsletter sign up, or an interesting blog.

Are you planning on generating revenue? If so what is the process from coming to the home page to the end result of purchasing a product or services?

Content

• What is the specific services you will be offering on your site? Is it a personal site? Or a business?

• If you are providing a service, how do you see the process flow from providing information to your viewer to the viewer purchasing your service?

• Do you send out any marketing material or information to your clients? This helps with keeping people interested and involved with your services. Things such as HTML newsletters, flyer’s, blog posts, social video. The end goal is engaging in your customers and giving them something valuable.

• What types of marketing or informational materials do you send to your clients to keep them involved with your business and services?

You should have most of your content laid out before you start on any design, or at least have a good idea of your content.

Design

You might have thought this should have been first. However, this is usually the last thing that brings all the elements together, as your not just building a pretty website, but rather a strategic one that understands the user, engages, and reacts. Think of the design as your overall picture in terms of how you want it to feel and look.

• Think of the “feel” of the site, the presence, what mood are you trying to convey when a user views your website. Is your site going to be simple and clean? A high-tech sophisticated look? A fun site that might be whimsical?

• A color scheme is very important to the mood of the website. What color scheme do you envision? What sort of feel or mood are you trying to convey? Why? Is it going to be cool vs. warm, black and white, brights, pastel, organic, skin-tones, earth-tones.

• Do you already have a logo, or are you looking to create your branding from the ground up?

This is the journey we take all our clients through to get a better grasp of their end goal and to have a website that is strategic in its design. After going through these steps you will have a good feel of what you will want your website to do and feel. We encourage everyone to go through the steps carefully while really thinking about the process, as design is as much about the process as it is about design. Remember design is about visual communication. You want to communicate with the user – not just making a pretty graphic but a graphic design that works strategically.

In a recent blog post on Flip the Media, Hanson Hosein, Director of the Master’s of Communication in Digital Media (MCDM) program at the University of Washington did a great job of summarizing this change:
“Effective communication in the 21st century requires us to build relationships by telling our story and providing value-added content to online community platforms, quite often with inexpensive, amateur content creation and distribution tools.  This approach reflects current economic and budgetary realities, as well as a need to engage people with entrepreneurial zeal.”

The key concepts from this quote include:

• Building relationships
• Telling stories
• Providing value-added content
• Use of inexpensive, amateur content creation and distribution tools

Building Relationships

With the advent of social networks and social media in general, the world has started to build relation

ships in new and exciting ways.  Staying in touch with friends is easier than ever.  With web 2.0 we can now connect with people we never would have met before.  Communication is cheaper, faster, and more convenient then ever before thanks to social media around the web.  These things are all positive and have helped strengthen – not destroy – personal relationships.

What is perhaps even more exciting is the change we are starting to see in the business world.  In the latter half of the 20th century, advertising was based on broadcasting to people.  Communication was very top-down.

Advancements in technology have flipped the traditional structure upside down.  If companies wish to succeed, they must have conversations with their customers through social media.  Companies are going to have to be personal, and they must actually listen to their clients.  Being faceless isn’t going to work in the 21st century

How much will this cost me?

Until recently, creating content was difficult.  Cameras were expensive and editing equipment was difficult to use.  To make make things worse, distributing content was difficult.  Television, radio, and newspapers/magazines were the only viable ways to reach a mass market, and buying ad time/space was unreasonable for small businesses.  Now you can buy a high definition camera that has editing software built into it.  Simply plug it into any laptop, and you can edit and distribute your video through free social video websites such as YouTube.  Sure, you have to have some basic video training and creativity to produce a decent video, but the barriers are far lower than ever before.  The inexpensive nature of content creation and distribution means connecting with costumers in ways unheard of in the past.

What does this all mean?

What this all means is businesses need to rethink the ways they do marketing.  Consumers are looking for personal stories and relationships, not faceless advertising.  Fortunately, telling these stories and building these relationships is far easier and cheaper than ever before.  We believe this is great for both business and consumers, as it helps connect your target prospects to your business emotionally, increase user loyalty, deliver your company’s message clearly, and confirm your credibility.

Call us optimistic – but at Sayenko Design, we believe the days of manipulative advertising are slowly fading away.  These ads are being replaced by more honest and authentic communication between consumers and businesses.   One thing is for sure – business and brand loyalty has taken leaps and bounds to help connect small businesses to their consumers.  It is time to take advantage.

There appear to be misconceptions about what branding really means. With that said lets start with the basics – what is branding?

According to the American Marketing Association (AMA), a brand is a “name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers.”

Who needs branding and why?

Every business – big or small – needs branding. Just because you are a small firm with a small budget does not mean you should skip the most crucial aspect of your business.

Your brand is what people remember your company by.

Think about Coca-Cola, Microsoft, McDonalds and Nike. These companies didn’t get to be as big as they are without an effective branding strategy. This includes the customer experience and perceptions, which you have influence over. What is the first thing you think of when you see the Golden Arches or the Swoosh? That feeling is the brand experience, and is the essence of a brand that connects your buyers to your business emotionally.

Okay, I went out and got a cool logo. Am I good to go?

Branding is not a logo. Your logo is just one piece of the puzzle. The logo can provide consumers with powerful brand recognition of your business but remember developing your brand identity before your logo is the first step to success. Without a strong brand strategy, the logo can actually weaken your branding.  It is also important to keep your brand message consistent throughout your marketing material to build consumer recognition.

Alright, I’m starting to get a hang of this, but how do I brand effectively?

First you have to understand that branding is not about getting customers to choose you over the competition. It is about getting your prospects to see your business as the only solution to their problem.

An effective brand aims to achieve the following:

• Deliver your company’s message clearly
• Confirm your credibility
• Connect your target prospects to your business emotionally
• Motivate the buyer to buy
• Increase user loyalty

Whether you are big or small, branding will help build and strengthen your business. To be successful at any level, branding must be the first step – not the last. If you would like more information or help with branding of your business, feel free to contact us.