Web Design

File formats

Are you using the right ones on your website? What is the difference in a jpg, a png or an svg file?  All compress media (make the file size smaller) for the web.  The jpg format is best for photos.  A png file has a transparent pixel channel which is great for a graphic with …

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Themes vs Templates

Not all Wordpress themes are created equal. Some themes are more like templates which limit the design of a website. This can be as bad for design as using any DIY web builder service like Wix, Squarespace or Weebly. While these make it easier for people with less design skills, it’s the reason most DIY …

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WordPress Themes

Don’t make your customers wait on your website WordPress uses themes to customize the layout and design of a website. There are 1000s of free and premium themes available.  Changing a theme won’t change the content of the website, just how that content is displayed.  I use the Generate Press theme with Generate Blocks which …

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piggy bank

How Much for a Website?

One of the most frequently asked questions I get is how much does a website cost.  Cost has a lot of variables like:  number of pages functionality  experience level and knowledge of the web designer is the site being built with existing software available? is a developer writing the code from the ground up?  A …

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example of footer of a webpage

What’s a Footer?

Can viewers easily find important information on your website? The footer of a website is the area at the bottom of every page that has valuable information like policies, phone numbers, addresses and maybe an email sign-up form, just to name a few examples. Users intentionally scroll to the footer to find that information. So this area …

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illustration of fonts

Do Fonts Matter?

The body area of a webpage comes after the hero section (the top area that you first see). It’s the meat of a webpage and the page element with the most information.  As with everything on a website, it’s important to make it easy on the viewer. So ornate fonts are best reserved for headlines …

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Info graphic showing visual heirarchy of different size headings on a page

What is Visual Hierachy and why it matters in Web Design

Good web design uses visual hierarchy to tell the reader what is most important and in which order to view it in. This involves using design principles like contrast, scale, balance and more. Visual hierarchy tends to be one of the common design mistakes that I see on websites.  Good visual hierarchy is always going …

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various sizes of screens - desktop, phone, tablet

Does your website take more than 3 seconds to load?

If a website takes more than a few seconds to load – 39% of people will leave.  A big culprit of slow loading pages is image size and is one of the main mistakes people make with their websites. Images should be resized for the size that they appear on screen – not uploaded directly …

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