We like to be clear in how we do things, and being clear on our prices is a part of that. That’s why we’ve put our rates on our website for all to see.

What do you charge? Tell us in the comments.

Because I know nothing about you. I don’t know about your levels of customer service. I don’t know if you’re any good at what you do. How can I recommend your services, by placing a link on my website, if I have no idea what you’re like to do business with?

I can understand why people consider link exchanges to be worthy pursuits. The more sites that are linked to yours buildings up your search engine rankings. You may have seen some of these link pages – with hundreds of links – a garbled mess.

However, Google is becoming wise to this tactic, and sites that have millions of links at the bottom of their site are not going to win (don’t believe me? Read on…).

It’s about quality and relevance. If I had done business with the company that emailed me, I would probably have written about them in our about page, about how great they are at getting the job done. I would have given them a space for their logo and a link to a relevant page on their website. It’s a quality link and it’s a reciprocal link that works.

What are your experiences with reciprocal links? Or have you seen any examples of horrific link pages? Share my friend…

Online Bookmakers required a one-stop-shop to design and build an online community of betting experts and beginners alike. skysoclear designed an easy-to-use site and built the new website with WordPress MU and BuddyPress, adding a social networking layer to the business. This enables users to communicate with each other, write blogs and join web-based clubs.

The site launched in July 2009. We are now working with Online Bookmakers on the second stage of development, launching soon.

We know that content is king, so let’s enable the user to start reading/viewing/interacting with our content as easily as possible, without the need for scrolling down past the top navigation. We also know that like town planning, space is at a premium.

Here’s a pick of websites that I think illustrate this well:

Do you think website headers are becoming slimmer? Have you seen other designs we could add to this list? Add your opinion in the comments!

It’s a part of the design process that deals with the creation of mockups.

Now, the misconception here is that the web designer creates two or three mockups for the client so they can choose which they like the best.

Having experienced this first-hand, there are several reasons why this is detrimental to the design process.

If the designer is spending time making a number of mockups and only one is chosen, what happens to the rest of the mockups that didn’t make the cut? They go in the bin. That’s a waste of time, money and the designer’s expertise.

There is also the likelihood that the client will like something from one design, and something from another, resulting in a messy, clunky final design.

So how do we avoid this practice? Well, what we do at skysoclear is stick to one design throughout – it’s an evolutionary process. Mockups are just one stage in a simple, but comprehensive process that we use on the majority of our projects:

1. Research
2. Structure and Navigation
3. Wireframing
4. Design aesthetics
5. Code
6. Optimise and initial SEO
7. Usability testing
8. Delivery

Using a process like this, where each part is signed off, enables the project to flow much smoother and maximize the efficiency of our expertise. Essentially, at each part, we’re adding a layer.

Looking at the wireframing part for example, the focus is on layout. This is decided upon after just a few revisions, quickly and easily (no more “Revision 20+”). Then when it comes to adding the graphic layer in the Design aesthetics stage, all we’re looking at is enhancing the look and feel of the user interface – making the site a pleasure to use.

The process is cut up into each stage to enable the decision making process to be at its most productive. We could take the process and show how the decisions are made through it:

1. Research or “What are we hoping to achieve”
2. Structure and Navigation or “How will the user move around the site and how many pages will there be”
3. Wireframing or “What will the site layout be like”
4. Design aesthetics or “How will the interface engage with users”
5. Code
6. Optimise and initial SEO or “How will we make the site run fast and how will new users find us?”
7. Usability testing or “What do our users think of the new design/do changes need to be made that we haven’t considered?”
8. Delivery or “Let’s roll it out! “

So the process as much as decision-making as it is production.

I hope this post has dispelled a few myths and encouraged you to think that multiple design choices are not the way forward.

Is this a common misconception? Do clients expect multiple designs – where does it come from?

On a couple of web design projects I’ve had the pleasure in undertaking, I sometimes get requests to “make the page not scroll”, or “make sure that the page is above the fold”. The term comes from the printing world, where the fold would be the fold in a newspaper.

Not knowing much about the fold then, it took me a while to find out that what my clients meant was that they didn’t want users to scroll in their browser. Now, as Chuck Mallott’s article explains, the fold has very little bearing – as users have a variety of screen resolutions, especially on mobile devices.

Anyway, it’s certainly worth a read and for other web designers, a worthy addition to your decision making arsenal!

Read the article here.

Price really does affect quality, and charging low rates doesn’t do anything to help raise the professionalism in the web design industry.