We would love to help you succeed in all your business endeavors and work within your budge with cost effective marketing that will bring you returned business, Contact Us today!

I will begin with the traditional method of web design and then explore a new method that many developers are now using due to the vastly changing web world. Feel free to sit back, relax and take notes as we explore the wide world of CSS.

First, let’s look at the history of CSS (Cascade Style Sheets). The governing body of the Web, W3C, recommended CSS in December 1996, with CSS Level 1 specification. CSS Level 1 described attributes for use in HTML pages. These attributes replaced the traditional font tag along with other “styles” such as borders and colors. In May 1998, W3C introduced CSS Level 2, adding additional capabilities to level 1, including positioning attributes. These attributes replaced the widespread incorrect usage of the table tag to design web page elements. The most recent version of CSS is 2.1 removes some of the attributes that previously had limited usage and adds refinement to others.

Problems with the Traditional Table Layout and CSS Responses:

Making simple changes such as moving images, changing navigation, or switching colors can take hours. Traditional Table layouts have slow-loading pages because the browser has to retrieve the page from the server and decipher the complex elements of the nested tables. When using CSS, the browser instantly renders content from the server because there isn’t extensive markup language there.

Another down side to tables is the browser needs to retrieve, analyze, and render each individual page. The browser has to go through these steps for each page, which can really slow down your website. But, if you use a cascade style sheet (CSS), the first page of the site allows the browser to cache the linked style sheet file that is used for that page. Meaning, all of the remainder of the pages will load faster since the style sheet has been decoded.

Lastly using traditional table layouts adds lots of extra code, which takes time for the computer to figure out and longer for rendering, features such as font tags. This can be minimized by moving codes to a CSS design. This will minimize your code by as much as 50% or more!!! Less code = a faster loading website!

Hopefully this has helped you better understand CSS and why it has become the web standard for design. If you have any questions feel free to comment on this article or contact us directly. We would love to help on your next project.

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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

Northwest Canopies, INC, based in Bellevue, Washington, builds custom canopies in order to meet the specific needs of their customers. Founded in 2000, the company provides long lasting shelters for RVs, boats, heavy machinery, livestock, and sports equipment. These canopies have proven to be a wise alternative to shipping containers or monthly slip and storage fees.

In designing NW Canopies’ website, our goal was to create a professional, clean design, by highlighting the website with strategic key word placement for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) purposes.

We also kept in mind the possibility of ecommerce expansion in the future and designed the website to accommodate that possibility.  We started with market research by sifting through different websites on canopy products. We then pulled together a branding strategy that would make NW Canopies’ website stand out from the rest.

This led us to create a logo and color scheme that communicated a northwest feel through the use of a green palette. From there, we re-branded from the old website, pictured on your left, to a green earthly tone and an easy to use navigation that symbolizes a shelter like covering over each menu item.

We are happy to see the website grow in success and enjoy our friendship with the fantastic people at NW Canopies.

We would love to help you succeed in all your business endeavors and work within your budge with cost effective marketing that will bring you returned business, Contact Us today!

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.

1.    Potential Client meets Designer – to get a good grasp of the project we will get in contact over the phone, email, or set up a meeting.

2. Project Quote Issued by Designer – an email sent to the prospective client with an attached PDF quote for the project.

3. Approval of Quote by Client – usually an email sent back stating the approval.

4. Contract/Project Outline Issued by Designer - the designer emails the contract or meets in person.

Mike Sayenko

5.    Contract is Signed/Project Outline is Approved – paperwork is given back to Sayenko Design.

6.    Client Provides 50% Retainer Fee – along with the signed paper work we require a check of 50% deposit, you know to make sure you are serious about the project.

7.    Consultation – Client and Designer Meet, this may or may not happen as most of the communication is going to be over email/ phone. If there is a need to meet to understand the project better and to hand off project assets for example as CD with images, products that might need to be photographed, and anything that might need to be accomplished over a meeting.

8.    Proposal Provided by Designer – the designer sends an email to the client with a composition of the design usually in JPG (image) format.

9.    Proposal Reviewed by Client – client sends back revisions in an email.

10.    Revised Proposal Provided by Designer – the designer emails back the revisions.

11.    Finalization of Project – project is approved by client and ready to go live (if it’s a website).

12.    Final Payment Submitted by Client – client sends the rest of the payment (usually 50%) within 30 days of completion of the project.

Again nothing is set in stone we are flexible and try to work together with a client on things such as payments, sometimes things aren’t so linear. If you have any further questions don’t hesitate to Contact Us.