Code to text ratio – Part II

Posted on May 30, 2008 by Taylor to SEO

For many business owners, putting together a website on their own is a great way to save a few bucks. However, because an online presence is so valuable these days, you may be unknowingly costing yourself money if you aren’t sure of the best way to optimize your page, or how to use the right keywords and get the proper code to text ratio. Because the last thing anyone trying to make money with a website wants in these tough times is to lose money.

One of the search engines criteria in ranking a website’s keywords is looking at the content on your website. This is a fairly simple concept—the better and more relevant the content on the topic of your site, the better the rankings will be when people are searching in your category. This almost always ensures more eyeballs to your site.

The tricky part comes when you have to start thinking about how to ensure that you have a good code to text ratio, as there has to be a certain amount of HTML coding in place on your site to make it work properly. Most people use HTML, sometimes in combination with Flash, to make a site look the way it does. So, it’s tricky to figure out how to have a certain amount of coding on the page, still get it to look the way you want without going overboard and overloading the site with it.

Of course, it’s best to hire an SEO company to help with code to text ratio because it’s a complicated process to implement on your site if you don’t know what you are doing. When your Web page has too much HTML coding, the search engine spiders can’t crawl the entire page and properly rank you according to the content on your site. Sounds a bit confusing, right?

For people who specialize in SEO and search engine management, it really isn’t that complicated. More often than not, they can ensure that your page gets picked up on the search results in a fairly high ranking because they have checked your code to text ratio to make sure there is a good balance.

The Luxurious Gran Melia Palacio de Isora Launches

Posted on May 29, 2008 by Damien to Projects

West Palm Beach’s top web design firm, THAT Agency has launched yet another stunning website for Sol Melia. Gran Melia Palacio de Isora located in beautiful Tenerife, Canary Islands reflects the style and flair that is the Gran Melia Brand.

THAT Agency successfully married the elegance and class of Gran Melia Palacio de Isora with up-to-date web technologies producing an online presence to experience.

Emotional imagery with luxurious feel greet the user allowing the hotel’s overall beauty to do the talking. White space and a clean and concise navigation scheme guide the user effortlessly through the site.

THAT Agency delivers exactly what was needed to get this chic site up and running. Constructed on a stable PHP background utilizing elements of Flash, Prototype and a well written and organized library of CSS docs the site is at the very forefront of online hotel competitors.

An easy to navigate and intuitive online booking engine add to the functionality and success of Gran Melia Palacio de Isora allowing the visitors to not only experience the site through strong visuals and information but book a stay at this luxurious resort with ease.

Written in both English and Spanish it completely caters to a worldwide audience as well as serve as broadening Gran Melia Palacio de Isora’s online presence in search engines. The Adwords Qualified company of THAT Agency tirelessly pursues greater searchablity and web exposure to better produce a greater ROI than your average hotel site.

Gran Melia Palacio de Isora, timeless luxury with an avant-garde flair.

Tags: hotel website design

Redefining the Limits with the Launch of Regency Centers

Posted on May 27, 2008 by Damien to Projects

Regency Centers, one of the largest commercial real estate owners commissioned THAT Agency to really come up with an online method of of managing their ever-growing list of shopping centers across the United States. Owning over 450 community shopping centers Regency Centers took a step in the right direction with THAT Agency.

Working closely with Regency Centers’ brand managers, THAT Agency set out to redefine the commercial real estate online web presence. The site is user driven allowing every visitor to search the immense library of available properties, site plans, layouts, demographics, tenant standings, photo galleries all while delivering a pleasing aesthetic not yet known in this field.

Built on a solid PHP background, Regency Centers utilizes a vast array of web technologies to bring the most user-centric and branded face of Regency to the web. Layouts constructed entirely using table-less CSS scripting coupled along with Flash, Microsoft Virtual Earth and an enormous online database THAT Agency delivers a well rounded online tool capable of immense growth and scale-ability.

Tags: Regency Centers design

How to Create Keywords – Part II

Posted on May 20, 2008 by Taylor to SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most important aspects of any website. SEO corresponds directly with ranking on the major search engines, which is how people find your site and therefore, your product or service. Part of creating a higher ranking on the search engines has to do with creating keywords. Keywords are the terms or phrases that people generally search when looking for sites in your industry. For example, if you run a florist business, one of your keywords would obviously be “flowers”, since you want your site to show up whenever people search under the word “flowers”. However, this may be unrealistic due to the daunting level of competition for the term “flowers”.

The process of creating keywords can be tricky. After all, many people search for certain phrases versus just one word to get specific results. The best way to create keywords for your site that will put you in the line of search for the audience you are targeting is to think creatively about creating them.

When you think about how to create keywords, not only should you think about whom you are a targeting, but also about the need you are trying to fulfill. Your site should feature words that directly correspond to the services or product you offer. You should also consider how you think people might search for whatever it is you are featuring on your site. Think abstractly and remember that there should be a fair amount of these words in the content on your site.

There are many tools that can be used that will help you create a keyword list. You need to analyze a few pieces of data to determine the best keywords. First, look at the traffic to each keyword and the number of websites that are using the keyword. This will help you determine if it is realistic to optimize your website for the term you selected. Then look at the websites that are using the keywords. Is the website that is using the keyword you would like a more relevant site to the search engines then yours? At this point you need to compare your website to the competition. For example, how many inbounds links do they have? How relevant are the links to the keywords they are optimizing for? How many pages is there website? How long has the website been active? How is the website coded?

In many instances, business owners work closely with SEO companies to help them determine the best search terms and keywords for their business category and then develop content around those words and terms. Whether you do it yourself or work with a professional SEO specialist, thinking about how to create keywords and implementing a plan of action is the best way to ensure that your page gets top ranking in the search engines. Moreover, a higher ranking will ensure that the public is better aware of what you have to offer, giving your business a great chance at online success.

Tags: keyword research

It’s Not About Theory, It’s About Practice

Posted on May 18, 2008 by Jonathan to General

Consider the following image:

It incorporates rich imagery. There are multiple directions of movement—The orange, glowing core commands your attention and, from there, your focus wanders. Motion also follows an elliptical course and seemingly revolves along the canvas.

If it looks busy, that’s because it is, and the effort that went into its creation—40 hours and a skillful hand in Adobe Illustrator—can all be appreciated in the time-lapsed video below.

Look for… The design of a cat that is ultimately condensed to an illegible proportion.

Over at Designing The News, Dave Bowker employs Illustrator for the purpose of representing The Guardian’s headlines through a cohesion of clean typography, pictograms, and low-contrast earthtones.

Why the shift from writing and typographically-themed posts to one devoted to graphics design? Because it’s all art, and a fitting segue into the 3rd annual Seed Conference in Chicago, IL.

On June 6th, “learn about taking control of your own work by seeking out methods to inspire new thinking and adopt unconventional ideas about collaboration and business…”

Who the conference is for:

“…attend if you’re a designer (print, web or video) or a business-minded soul who is looking to take creative ideas and turn them into something SATISFYING & BANKABLE. Anyone creative with an open mind will take away something useful.”

As always, these posts are meant to be informative and, most importantly, inspire

Webby Awards

Posted on May 6, 2008 by Melanie to Web Design

Ladies and gentlemen the winners are in!! You are probably thinking to yourself “what winners?!” And right about now you are going through the list. It’s not time for the Oscars or the Grammy’s and unfortunately it’s not time for the elections yet either (although only 7 month to go so lets stay strong!) So what winners were announced? Ok ok don’t panic I’ll tell you; it was the Webby awards of course. So you may not know about them yet but one day these awards will be just as highly anticipated as any of those other award shows (maybe even more so).

Now I bet you want to know what the Webby awards are. Well here it is in their own words: “The Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet. Established in 1996 during the Web’s infancy, the Webbys are presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a 550-member body of leading Web experts, business figures, luminaries, visionaries and creative celebrities.” They also have a voter’s choice award from each category. They give awards for websites, interactive advertising, online film and video, and mobile. And each of those categories has many subcategories.

So now that I’ve told you all about what these awards are I bet you are dying to know who the winners are. Not only is it fun to check out these websites but they are actually a great learning tool. These sites are the best in their fields so why not take tips from them.

Let’s start with best home page; most of the nominees had flash as their homepage. That tells us something. The winner for this category was LA Film School. The Peoples Choice was National Geographic.
Another interesting category is best Navigation structure. The winner in this category is TED.com and it is easy to see why. Everything is very clean and organized and it lets you see where you need to go easily. TED.com was also the winner for the Best Visual Design- Function.
One that everyone should definitely check out is http://www.coke.com/hf. They won best use of animation. Animation is a difficult thing to get right, and coke did a wonderful job. Plus it’s a really cute site so check it out!

These are just a few that I felt were worth mentioning but if you want to know more check out the site for a full list of winners. There a winners in most fields (such as banking, automotive ext) so check out the best in your field for ideas on how to make your site better. Also this is a good chance to check out cool websites you have never heard of before. There is also fun stuff like person of the year (Stephen Colbert) and Artist of the year (Wil.i.am). Plus there are awards for best Blog in many categories.

Tags: webby awards

The Building Blocks of Web Design

Posted on May 1, 2008 by Melanie to Web Design

Meet Melanie, our new Intern. She’s 19 and migrated all the way from Quebec to THAT Agency. It’s her first day and she’s already posting blogs. The following is her take on achieving a chic and effective Web design.

These days it is all too easy to forget that Web design is actually a form of design, which should follow the same rules and principles found everywhere from art and clothes to magazine pages and architecture. Elements of design are important to consider when creating a website, because the way a Web page looks is just as important as its content. I say this because the design of page is the first thing people notice about a website and if the design is horrible, the reader may not even go on to read what is on the page.
So what are the five main elements of design to be considered when building a web page? They are: Balance, Proportion, Rhythm, Dominance, and Unity.

Balance
First up is balance, this is the idea of reaching visual equilibrium. Basically you want two sides to have equal “weight.” This can be done symmetrically or asymmetrically. Symmetrical balance is easy to understand; it is two sides that are a mirror image of each other. Asymmetrical balance on the other hand, is when balance is created without a mirror image. This could involve multiple smaller figures offsetting a large figure on the opposite side. If you can successfully create balance on your website then no one part will call too much attention to itself, thereby increasing the unity of the page (an element we will visit later).

Proportion
Related to balance is proportion. Proportion is linked to size and or scale of objects on the page. In the simplest since more important things should draw more attention from the reader. Proportion can be used to get the reader to look at certain object in a particular order. To do this the designer should create a visual hierarchy using different sizes.

Rhythm
When most people hear rhythm they think of music, but rhythm is equally important in design. As rhythm creates a source of organization in a song, rhythm in design is the repetition of certain elements to keep things structured. An example of this is Digg.com.

Rhythm should be carefully assessed because if all the objects on the page carry equal weight, the reader may be overwhelmed and unsure of where to look first. Conversely, too much variance will not leave the reader any less confused.

Emphasis
Emphasis or dominance involves controlling where someone looks first. Assess where you want your reader’s eyes to go.

Color, white-space, and shapes are three main ways to get a reader to pay attention to something. Color of course can be very effective in drawing a reader’s attention to a certain object. White-space is also very efficient to direct where someone looks; a great example of this is the Google logo:

(by Jeff Koons)

Finally, circles have become very popular recently; circles tend to stand out because they contrast the box nature of the web.

Unity
I would say that the unity of a site is the most important design element. When people visit your site you want them to feel like everything fits in and flows together. When something is not in unity with the rest of the site, it stands out and may draw unnecessary attention. It is a lot easier on the eyes when a site flows, and this creates a better overall experience for your visitors.

Conclusion
There is nothing worse than turning away readers before they have even had a chance to check out what it is your site’s about. You have about three seconds to make an impression on your visitor; applying these useful design elements will increase the chances that people will stick around and check out all the great stuff you have to offer.