Faith Seekings
Bill Tibbles
Terri Carson
Tom McGall
Category Archives: Web Development
10th Anniversary Part V: There’s No Substitute for Good Back-end Web Development
First and foremost Rapport is a design firm – we want everything to look great and communicate how it’s intended to. There are tools that let designers build websites, but when you want to do something complicated, you really need great back-end web development so it’s stable, well tested, thought out, a progressive solution and lasts a few years. Continue reading
More on Proprietary Websites
I’ve written about what proprietary websites are in a previous post because I’ve had several clients, or prospective clients who have built sites on proprietary systems and run into trouble later on. They weren’t happy with the service or the fees and wanted us to take over management, refresh or expand it. Unfortunately, they were unable to move the site because it was built on a framework that belongs to someone else. Continue reading
Avoiding Scope-creep on Web Projects
Scope-creep is when requests for changes or additions grow outside the requirements and price of the original project agreement. Website projects are the most susceptible to this. It can be simple as extra pages or complicated like adding a login area. The resulting problem isn’t just financial, but often delays. Why? And what can we do about it? Continue reading
10th Anniversary Part III: Always Make Time for Proofing and Testing
Always Make Time for Proofing and Testing. When a client needs something in a rush from us we always manage to make it work. It’s not a regular habit, but things get forgotten or come up last minute. It can be a little stressful as both sides drop other things and rush to get it done. But, no matter how rushed, you must make time for proofing and testing. Continue reading
When’s a Good Time to Redo Your Website? Part V
People are looking at your website on a mobile device. Your site should at least work properly. I’ve seen many that are just mini versions of the full site, but I’ve seen some that don’t work at all, look completely broken. The best mobile websites are not just scaled down versions of their big brothers, but redesigned for the medium. The images are often minimized or deleted, the navigation may take up the whole screen as a list, or made to look like navigating an app looks. It’s simplified. Continue reading
When’s a Good Time to Redo Your Website? Part IV
Since the dawn of websites people have complained about the monthly contracts, cost and time lag of needing to get their web developers to make the smallest change to their sites. Until just a few years ago creating an environment where non-coders could easily update their website content required custom building of wysiwyg editors. That was expensive, especially if you had to integrate it with some special functionality. Now there are many great platforms to build on that make it much easier… Continue reading
Website Videos: A New Way to be Found Online
Ignore DAO marketing at your peril! When properly set up, search engines pick up your web content in all forms that isn’t text-file based: videos, animation, podcasts, message boards, maps, images. Putting a video on your website, for example, can seriously increase your search visibility and ranking position. Continue reading
When’s a Good Time to Redo Your Website? Part III
Everyone can be an author now, no one wants to be broadcast to anymore, everyone wants to share theirs’ and read others’ opinions these days. Simple brochure sites that people just read through to see how great you are just don’t cut it anymore. Visitors expect more from their experience now and that can be done quite simply. Continue reading
When’s a Good Time to Redo Your Website? Part II
B2Bs have been skeptical about the importance of being found on Google since the dawn of Google. They assume their website is an online brochure that only gets looked at by those who already know them, or have been referred to them and are just doing research. Not true any longer. Being findable is a minimum requirement.
There’s simply being findable (ex: not all Flash) and then there’s optimization. Continue reading
