We experiment with our sites–here and SperoWebDesign.com–so we can learn the strengths and weaknesses of various web applications and designs.
Those experiences and the feedback we receive permit us to offer well-tested, robust solutions to our clients. In particular, we seek easily-self-managed solutions–both to reduce our own involvement with routine maintenance and to offer the most efficient applications to our clients.
The Design Template(s)
After a few years of using Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam,” as our header image, we redid our template. It’s modern, fast, relatively plain and simple. It focuses attention and permits easy navigation. (We practice what we preach.)
Web design involves a huge and un- or under-appreciated trade-off between appearance and universality.
- A modern, great-looking site may look horrible on an old computer with a low-resolution monitor or a new monitor that is not projecting at its native resolution.
- Plain, narrow sites will look plain and narrow on all screens.
- Graphics cards, monitors, browsers, installed fonts, color ranges and various other settings affect how a page is displayed. (In fact, we keep one monitor out-of-spec to see how bad every design will look on it.)
We hope this latest template is at the optimal point where it looks good on a lot of screens and in a lot of different browsers, but we are well aware of the trade-offs.
That being said, we designed our desktop site with Google Chrome and Internet Explorer, version 8, in mind.
We use a number of free add-ins including the ultra-cool visitor location map and our translation feature, which translates our English into more than 40 other languages. We doubt that the sentence and paragraph translations are contextually or grammatically correct, but the words translate correctly and appear appropriately in search engines across the world, and that brings visitors to the site (and the potential for business from foreign corporations in their homeland and non-English-speakers in ours).
We have a separate template for mobile phones, and continually test alternatives, there, too. When our server identifies a mobile phone browser, it automatically redirects visitors to http://SperoConsulting.mobi that features a scaled-down, less-graphics-intensive design or not–depending upon the test of the week. Now it should identify and present present a different theme to iPhones and the like: it’s very cool.
Generally, our .Mobi themes allow much faster speeds and improved legibility on small screens. (The widget on the bottom right on every page except the home page, allows visitors to switch back-and-forth.) For certain topics, the exact same post will appear in the top ten of Google search at both the .com and .mobi “sites,” though they are not distinctive sites–just different domain names and skins pointing to the same underlying content. It’s very cool, and very inexpensive.
Our Motto or Tag-line
For nearly two years our motto was “Thought before Calculation.” That’s always the way we operate -but our practice is much broader than mere quantitative analysis. So, our motto had to change. It’s now, “Innovative Management Solutions and Web Design” although we like “grownup web design™” because we develop and design attractive, focused, easily-managed sites as useful business tools.
Annual Cost
Excluding the time needed to manage the content, which can be substantial, the entire site costs less than $100 per year to operate. Not bad, eh?
Feeds
Finally, if you use Google Chrome, like we do, then you probably already know that feeds (from anyone) are illegible in it. If you didn’t know, you now know it’s not our fault. Everyone else can sign up for feeds of new posts by clicking the RSS feed icon to the right.
The Royal ‘We’
In our blog, we write about items that interest, amuse or annoy us. Our most noticable affectation is the use ‘we’ rather than “I” in our posts.
We do that for a few reasons. First (and fortunately), Jill and Andy share very similar perspectives. So, if you ask one’s opinion, you’re most likely getting the other’s, too. So, while Andy writes all of the posts, the blog speaks for both of us. Secondly, much of what we write is our thinking and opinions and we want to be clear (and honest) that such comments are our opinions and reflections and not statements of fact. (We know the difference and know that we can be wrong. It’s rare, but it can happen–usually when “we” disagree with Jill.) Given that goal, there would be far too many “I”s if we wrote in the singular. Somehow, “we” seems softer and less egotistical than “I.” That’s why ‘we’ do it.
