Smart Alice's Web Design Blog » using fonts

Creating a Web Site with Depth

Alice Gebura — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 13:15:20 +0000

Home Page, Web Site of Louis Lortie

Monday, March 1 marks the 200^th anniversary of Frederick Chopin’s birthday. In honor of one of my favorite composers let’s talk about the web site of pianist Louis Lortie. For me this web site is the epitome of why we bother to build web sites. Louis Lortie is a concert pianist and recording artist. At his site there is a great depth of information about him, his career and discography, and, most interesting, it showcases his thoughts about music interpretation and its challenges.

Here’s the treasure you’ll find on just one page, Chopin:

An excerpt from the score of a Chopin Etude
A series of videos
A photo of Chopin

The series of short videos showcase Lortie playing two of the Chopin Etudes (a glorious aural experience) and Lortie, at the piano, talking about his approach to playing the etudes while playing excerpts to illustrate his thoughts. As each video plays, its title changes from black to lavender so you can keep track of where you are in the series. Or, you can click on the one you want to hear. Great user interface design! Notice that underneath the video the timer is presented as a musical staff! Clever design!

Chopin Page, Web Site of Louis Lortie

My only criticism is that the text on the home page is hard to read – a result of using a justified right margin and the italic font with very little line spacing. The opacity factor on the font doesn’t help either.

Lortie has created a passionate web site with great depth of information that gives us a window into his soul and the beauty of the music he plays.

Analysis by Smart Alice Web Design, smart web design for businesses who want a unique and effective presence on the internet.

Tips for SEO

Alice Gebura — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:20:44 +0000

Does it take a search party to find you on the web?

(Photo from the Mel Brooks movie “Young Frankenstein”)

Before computers, how did a local business get noticed? Besides the usual marketing activities, you could list your business in the yellow pages. Remember the days when businesses named themselves “AAA Roofing” or “AAA Rent A Car” so they would show up first in their category? These days people won’t usually look for a business or service in the yellow pages. They look on the web. So what can you do to make sure your web site shows up high on the list returned by a search?

Make sure your web pages contain critical information

Practice common sense when designing your web site and writing the content. For example, if you own a floral business, it’s unrealistic to expect your business to come up first on a search when there are 28,700,000 other florists out there. However, a search engine, such as Google, is happy to list you on the first page when:

Google recognizes the location of the user doing the search
And then matches the search to a business and a zip code.

If you’ve included location and zip code information on your web site, you’ll show up at the top of the list. Including location information is common sense but you’d be surprised how many web sites make people – and Google – dig for it.

Two for one: good writing enhances search

There are more common sense practices to follow that enhance the user interface, impart information, and help people navigate your site:

Ascertain key phrases to identify your business and message and use them strategically, especially in page titles and headings.
Write straightforward text and organize it logically.
Present it with legible, user intuitive typography.

When you follow these common sense rules, you also enhance the ability of a search engine to index your site and promote it.

What is SEO?

A buzz word you hear a lot is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is basically doing whatever you can to make sure your web site shows up high on the list returned by a search relevant to your business. SEO is the common sense practices I’ve just described and anyone who is intelligent and thoughtful can do it as they write, with a little training and practice.

Marketing companies are charging big money under the premise they can employ “magical” SEO techniques to promote your site, but I’m skeptical about what works and how much it’s worth. One thing they can do is pay a search engine to artificially promote your site, but be aware you’ll pay thousands of dollars per month for it.

Who is that man behind the curtain?

I was hired to write web page content for a business I’ll call The Widget Company. What I wrote was then sent to a 27 year old Vice President of SEO (that was his title, really!) at a high priced marketing firm. (That a 27 year old could be a vice president should be the first tip off something isn’t right.)

To increase the probability the web site would come up first whenever a user typed “widget” on Google or other search engine, he stuck the word “widget” in front of every possible noun he could, often creating awkward noun strings that impacted readability. And stuck the word “widget” inside of product names, creating incorrect product names. He also introduced grammar and spelling errors. For this The Widget Company paid a retainer of several thousand a month. Does anyone besides me smell a bad deal?

Why is The Widget Company paying for it? There is one answer – fear. The management doesn’t understand technology and this creates insecurity. And, as long as everyone else is doing it, they’re afraid they’ll be left behind if they don’t do it, too.

Frankly I’m skeptical of paying a bunch of money to SEO salesmen preying on people’s lack of experience with technology. Common sense, good writing, and strategic marketing along with intelligent web design will boost your visibility. You don’t have to pay thousands of dollars for an SEO specialist.

Update, Jan. 26, 2010

Four months after I wrote this post, the Boston Globe published an article that echoes my opinion. It includes the quote “Being charged $5,000 a month to manage the SEO process is crazy.” You can read the entire article at In Web world, a successful marketing effort means gaining inside track on searches

Update, March 27, 2011

More info from another Boston Globe article (that borrowed my analogy regarding the yellow pages!): Google analyzes more than 200 factors when ranking web pages and Google tweaks its ranking software 500 times a year!

Commentary by Smart Alice Web Design, smart web design for businesses who want a unique and effective presence on the internet.

I’m Calling You

Alice Gebura — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 06:34:48 +0000

“The web design of this web site is horrible.” My daughter was rather annoyed. She had looked up the web site of a local bookstore because she wanted to call them about a book. All she needed was the phone number. Her irritation increased the more she had to click around to find such an obvious piece of information.

How many businesses get caught up with slick, flashy web design but forget to take care of basic information? How many times have you had to click Contact Us to get to a phone number? I’ve visited sites where the phone number or location are seriously buried.

If you want people to call you or locate your place of business, put that information in a prominent location on every page, and never beneath the fold. Consider other factors that contribute to visibility: contrast, font size and color, reverse type, and so forth.

Check out these business sites and see how long it takes you to find the phone number.

Analysis by Smart Alice Web Design, smart web design for businesses who want a unique and effective presence on the internet.

The Dog and the Lotus

Alice Gebura — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 00:49:01 +0000

The experience of good web site design feels like settling into a comfortable chair. However, when the design is visually exhausting, it repels the user instead of inviting him or her in. Let’s take a look at how two yoga studios present themselves on the web and see how we feel about them.

First, the Dog

When I look at the home page of Laughing Dog Yoga the first things I notice are a) the layout feels awkward and b) there are way too many fonts. The layout is basically an endless list. This creates big blank spaces. It makes my eyes tired to scroll through it. On a more personal level, I find the color scheme unattractive.

Font Crazy

There are six different fonts in the left navigation pane and five different fonts in the content area, for a total of 11 different font variations. Fonts vary by color, size, style (bold, italic, etc.) and typeface.

Note the links in the navigation pane are all caps and in white with a drop shadow for an overall blurry (that means hard to read) effect.

The design principles of repetition and clarity should govern your font selection. Too much variety prevents the user from finding and focusing on information.

My overall experience: Uncomfortable

The Lotus – Love Those Colors

By contrast, Mudita Yoga Studio features a beautifully composed photo on the home page.

Look closely at the colors in the lotus blossom. You’ll see these same colors used throughout the site for backgrounds and borders. A collection of related colors form a color palette and this is one characteristic of good design.

I see only three fonts used on the home page. Each one is distinct and each one has a function. There is a font for the name of the business, a font for the navigation buttons, and a font for the main content. Immediately my eye understands and I feel comfortable reading and investigating the site further. I might revisit the sight later just to enjoy the photos. If some of the photos change, that’s even better.

My overall experience: Enchanted

What do you think? Which site do you prefer? Send me a link to another yoga site and tell me how the design affects you.

Analysis by Smart Alice Web Design.