Category: Free!

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Our approach to designing web sites

We follow a very methodical process in the creation of web site , here is a simple description of our process…what I like to call the 4 D’s

Phase 1 : Define
During this stage we learn from our clients the full scope of their project.

  • What do they want to achieve with the website?
  • Who is the target audience?
  • Who is the competition?

Armed with this information a tactical plan is developed and a full proposal produced to proceed with the project.
This phase of any project is always FREE

Phase 2 : Design
Keeping in mind usability and good web practices a polished concept design is created. This is a collaborative phase where client’s feedback is used to refine the design and helps us “home in” on the optimimal “winning” concept design.
Our tools of chice for the design phase are Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.

Phase 3: Develop
The “pictures” created in the design phase comes to life in the development phase of the project. The designs are coded to be understood by web browsers and undergo strict testing to ensure cross browser compatibility. Any functionailty assocaited with a web site is added during this stage.

Phase 4: Deploy
Once the site is complete it is ready to be launched online. The site is uploaded to a hosting account and publicised to the world.

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Blog widget: The web poll.

Blogs are becoming an increasingly popular marketing tool for companies, both big and small. They allow you to update your readers with company news, offer tips, tricks, promote products. The list is endless.

Blogs can now also be enhanced with widgets.Widget are small applications which have a specific function to perform on a blog or web site.For example some widgets allow you to show videos play music, and while this might not be relevant to a business blog there are plenty of widgets out there that are.

For example a web poll widget.

Widgets like increase the interactivity with your readers just that one step further. They require little technological know how to add…cut and paste some code and your are ready to go.
What’s more most of them are free.

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Image Optimization: Improve the load time of your web site or blog

For the average web site or blog most of the load time is a result of the images on the page, the bigger the image files, the longer it takes for the page to completely download.

To improve download time, professional web designers will go though an image optimization process where the images on a site are fine tuned via a balance of file size vs image quality.

The following picture of some nice juicy fall apples illustrate the process. The settings used to save the image were adjusted but it is not until you look at image 4 that a noticable degredation appears. In this case Image 3 would be selected having the best combination of low file size and image quality.

Although we use professional graphics software to optimize there are plently of free ulitilies available to do the hard work for you. My favorite is Net Mechanic ..here you can upload your image and it is presented in varous optimized forms. Pick the image that best suits your need, right click and “save picture as”.


Image 1 : file size=14.1 Kb

Image 2 : file size=8.66 Kb

Image 3 : file size=4.58 Kb

Image4 : file size=3.02Kb
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Celebrating a blog milestone


Writing a blog takes commitment. Obviously there is the element of time it takes to write a post but there is also the commitment to deliver quality content and post regularly.

Today we are celebrating our 200th post!

A tool I have recently started using to read blogs is Google Reader Another great free application from Google, Google reader allows you to subscribe to your favorite blogs and then delivers any new posts to your iGoogle page via a widget. (For more information on iGoogle see this post). Using the reader allows you to keep up to date with the blogs that interest you and saves time from actually visiting the blogs.

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St Louis Web Designer – tip of the week

Ok this has nothing what so ever to do with designing web sites but a is a tip for all those St Louis gardeners battling with deer infested gardens. This is a nugget of gold found online and provides a very cost effective way of protecting your plants from ” deer digestion” Many web designers I know are very keen gardens so I felt I should share

Ingredients:-

2 eggs
1 cup of skimmed milk
1 cup of water
2 tablespoons of dish detergent

Put all ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth. Pour mixture into a old “409” type spray bottle. Spray all the plants in your garden that the deer like to eat.

The deer are repelled by the smell of rotting eggs… but I have been unable to detect much of a odor. It is cost effective and bio-degradable.

I whip up a batch of this a week and it does the trick

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Free web site analysis

How is your web site performing, are you achieving your online objectives?
Does the design of your site reflect your marketing materials giving you a branded image?
Is the navigation on your site making your visitors think too much?

These are some of the questions we will address during the evaulation of our
FREE WEB SITE ANALYSIS

If you are looking to better your online presence contact us today at info@indigoimage.com and we will review your site for free.