10-20 Media has recently overhauled and launched a website for Joanne Kostecky Garden Design Inc.

You can see it here: http://www.gardendesigninc.com/index.htm

The goals were:
~ Represent professional web design that reflected their professional landscaping design
~ Show the quality of their work without having to click too much
~ Make the site Search Engine friendly

The major asset that Joanne and team were able to provide was the 'before and after' pictures.
This is very important for a landscape company because a "finished" picture never reflects the state of the job a the "start".

It was a real pleasure working with Joanne and Kurt on the site. Now it is time for it to go to work for them.

Steve

Web Site Design Mistakes #2

Few Words - Wrong Words

One of the ingredients to great web site design is having great images. Having great words is even more important though. The words, or copy, or text on a site is a big part of what the search engines crawl and index.

The words on your pages should be keyword specific per page. Don't try to build pages where the words explain all the different things you do. That kind of approach will result in the search engines not knowing what you do....confused.

Gerry McGovern has an opinion about word usage:
"I have seen situations where sales have been doubled by changing a couple of words. (Nothing else on the website was changed.)"                  
Click here to see the full article.

One other thing about words .............. selection. When choosing keywords for your pages, don't choose the wrong words. Choose the keywords that get traffic.

For example, why build a page for 'Landscape Services'? Nobody searches for 'Landscape Services'. People search a bunch for 'Landscaping' though. Build your page around the word 'Landscaping' and do it thoroughly.

Click here for an article about Keyword Suggestion Tools.


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Archive
Web Site Design Mistake # 1  -  Animation and Flash

Web Site Design Mistakes
Animation and Flash

Studies show that users of your web site want to get down to business starting in the upper left hand corner.

The use of animation and Flash are a distraction, plus they may inhibit the successful crawl of a search engine spider.

To be sure you get crawled thoroughly, keep important content in HTML and use Flash as an additive or "accessory".

Stick with html based web design and provide colorful images and great content that convey the emotion and the message that is compelling to your customer, and you will be on your way.

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An alternative to Flash is to have animated .gif, but that has some limitations. An animated .gif will not fade in and fade out. The images will simply jump from one image to another.

We built a web site for MattMartin.tv and utilized Flash to display images that tell his story.
Click here to see the page.

The trick to using Flash on the html page is to place the Flash source code as far down as you can so the upper parts of the page can be read by the search engine spiders.

There is some great content on the web about Web Animation. Here is a good source.

Do you have some examples of using web animation on your site?

Please share.

Thanks,

Steve