If you have your site built by a web developer, the font sizes, line spacing (leading) and other attributes should already be established. It’s best to stick with these conventions to maintain a clean, consistent appearance for your content.

Character Spacing — computer fonts are proportionally spaced. Unlike typewriters with mono (fixed) spacing, computer fonts (with a few exceptions) adjust spacing automatically, based on the context in which they are placed. It is for this reason, that a single space after punctuation at the end of a sentence is appropriate. Two spaces at the end of a sentence is a convention that was established with mono-spaced typewriter fonts. The result of using two spaces with proportional fonts is a river of white running down the page.

Line Spacing (Leading) — this is something you probably won’t adjust, but generally smaller type size on larger leading is more easily readable than large type on narrow leading.

Other Spacing — stick with the established convention for spacing before/after headings, paragraphs and other layout elements. This will give you a consistent, clean appearance to your site and minimize the possibility that it will become busy and disorganized over time as you continue to add content.

Emphasis — quotation marks (“) should be used when quoting something a person said. They should not be used to emphasize text. Instead use italics or bold attributes for emphasis. Underlining text is not advisable. It can make it look busy and more difficult to read and, on a website, it can easily be confused with hyperlinks.

Alignment — generally, the best text alignment is flush left, rag right. That is: aligned on the left side and allowed to wrap naturally on the right side. The flush left gives the reader’s eye a consistent place on the page to return to start the next line. Rag right is a visual cue for differentiating one line from the next. Newspapers often use full justification (flush on both sides), to make the most of limited space. It works reasonably well in the narrow newspaper columns, but can be difficult to read in wider layouts like a web page. Given that English is read left-to-right, flush right or center-aligned text is better used in specialized circumstances where the text is brief and presented more as a design element than text.

Column Width — columns that are too narrow or too wide are difficult to read. It’s best to keep column width in the approximate range of 10-20 words per line.

Downhill Media recently launched a new Women’s Travel website for Wisdom Tours — www.womenstravel.travel.

After decades of experience, Wisdom Tours has developed tours specifically for women who seek to travel with other like-minded women to relax, replenish, and rejuvenate! The initial trip — July 5-18, 2011 — will be to Greece and will include Athens and the islands of Samos and Santorini. The new website offers information about the Greece trip and includes a sample itinerary and a blog called Travelogue.

Wisdom Tours has taken over 1,000 people on cultural adventures to fascinating places — from the base camp of Mount Everest in Tibet, to the crystal clear waters of the Aegean Sea on the Greek Island of Samos. Owners Jim and Shelley Hagan have lived in and traveled to many of their destinations for over 35 years. They offer insider tours based on personal relationships they have developed in Greece, India, Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, and Cambodia. Wisdom Tours is accredited by IATAN.

Downhill Media recently launched Wisdom Tours’ new Wisdom Study Abroad website. The new site incorporates current technologies and interactive features that will help students find the information they need and share their experiences with others. A blog called Travelogue and social media integration are also included.

People responding to the website have nothing but raves! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

— Gary Eckhart, Owner, Moosewalk Studios & Gallery

Michael Lewis has done a superb job in creating and managing the web site for the Allen Clark Hill Climb, a charity bike race that I organize. He has been especially adept at producing a clear, attractive, and well-organized site despite the limited resources and artwork I have been able to provide him. He has been consistently prompt in responding to my requests for changes in content, organizing new information in a way that best services site visitors. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Michael to anyone looking to develop a new web site for their business.

— Peter Oliver, Allen Clark Hill Climb Race Director

Downhill Media worked with our existing eCommerce site to improve the visual design, usability, and the overall customer experience. The original shopping cart design lacked visual interest, continuity, and had no content beyond the products listed. Michael redesigned the visual appearance and, in some cases, the site structure. He added better navigational graphics, modified how the products are displayed, and added more comprehensive content including an overview of the product lines, the technologies used, and photos of the products in use. Search engines now have more to work with, customer experience has improved, and traffic to the site has increased.

— Janet Danner, Owner, SunglassesEtc.com

Wisdom Tours has had two websites built by Downhill Media. Michael designed and built the sites — wisdomtours.com for our adult tours and wisdom-study-abroad.com for our growing study abroad business for college students. He has maintained, updated, and added functionality to the sites — in addition to managing our advertising, marketing communications, and collateral material design and production since 1999. We have had many postitive comments about both sites: the value of the content offered and the use of so many images from our extensive library of photos from Tibet, Nepal, India, China, and Greece have given our travelers a feeling of being there before they even registered for a trip.

— Jim Hagan, Owner, Wisdom Tours, Ltd.