Denver Web Design & Denver SEO - The Katz Web Design Blog

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In Part 1 of Building a real estate website in WordPress, you learned about a plugin called FreshPost that we used to set up the basic structure of your real estate website.  Using this article, you will be able to display a single listing page that has all the content your real estate website will need. (more…)

Westside Business Builders is a networking group based in Golden, Colorado. Their website provides general information about the group, and it serves as a member directory. Katz Web Design is a member of the group.

The membership committee asked Katz Web Design to prepare a proposal for the WSBB website, and this Wednesday, the group voted to have KWD redesign the website to improve appearance and functionality.

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I am designing and creating a real estate website with WordPress, and I’m going to be writing a few articles that detail how it’s done.  This article will get you started — please leave feedback with any questions or topic requests for the next installment. Real estate using WordPress Part 2 is now available!

A little background — why use WordPress?

I’m working with a Denver company on a real estate website. Their goal is to showcase their listings in an easy-to-update CMS.

I’ve worked with Open-Realty, and — to say it bluntly — it’s a huge pain in the ass.  When you scratch the surface of OR, you begin to realize how cobbled together it is. Customizing the code to work as it should requires a steep learning curve.  The templates are relatively simple to work with, but the administration section is horrible.  The Open Realty user experience is just awful. 

WordPress is my CMS of choice currently, and it’s so easy to develop for that I recommend it to many of my clients. (more…)

We know who Barack Obama’s web designer is.  Let’s find out who Hillary’s web designer is!

I’ve looked through the CSS and there’s no trace of the designer. Anyone know?

Hillary Clinton’s web designer has been found!

Thanks to krs who left a comment below, Hillary’s web designer has been found.

• Design by Mayfield Strategy Group
• Backend by SolutionSet
• Great analysis of website by PoliticalGastronomica.com

A company of few words

The only content on Mayfield’s website is this:

The Mayfield Strategy Group is a leading provider of strategic internet services for political campaigns, non-profit organizations, and corporations. Our unique experience and methodology allow us to provide the highest quality and most professional services in the industry.

And I guess that’s all they needed to say about that!

A lot of people have wanted to know who designed Barack Obama’s website. With good reason: Obama’s website is beautiful. It even conveys Obama’s message of hope in it’s wistful design. Well, here it is:

Barack Obama’s web designer is:

SimpleScott. SimpleScott designed Barack Obama’s website, so here’s to SimpleScott for a gorgeous design.

From Scott Thomas, of SimpleScott:

I am the creative director of New Media for Obama for America. The team consisted of many people in house as well as many volunteers. Project leads were myself and John Slabyk. We are maintaining site and brand in-house. Sol Sender designed the logo before I joined the campaign.

How did I find out SimpleScott was involved? Just check out Obama’s main style sheet. SimpleScott also uses CSSEdit, a great program for Mac CSS web design.

The CSS code gives it away:

/* @override
http://obama.simplescott.com/css/global.css
http://localhost:8888/css/global.css
http://www1.barackobama.com/css/globalv2.css
http://my.barackobama.com/css/signup.css
http://www.barackobama.com/css/globalv2.css
*/
/* CSS
Author: Scott Thomas
Client: Obama for America
Created: 12-15-07
Modified: 12-22-07
*/

The logo design is by Sender, LLC

Sender, LLC developed the Obama ‘08 logo.

From Brian Drum, of Sender LLC

Sender designed the original mark, but the site is developed and maintained in-house by the campaign’s web team.

Sender was involved *only* with the development of the “sunrise” mark, and had no role whatsoever in the design, development, or maintenance of barackobama.com.

Leave your reactions here

Do you like the design, or not? What aspects work best for you? Drop a line below.

The current KWD website was never a permanent solution, but it was the direction I had been going. That has changed. I am proud to officially announce a rebranding of Katz Web Design, and give a preview of what’s to come.

The new logo (draft)

The future website (draft)

Click on image for a higher-resolution screenshot.

What do you think?

Post a comment below.

I like to brag every now and then.

When we set out to design a landing page for my Denver client, we had our eyes set on a minimum 2% conversion rate for their pay-per-click campaign. Currently, we’re achieving a 15.94% overall conversion rate. I made some tweaks to the form design last week, and for the past 6 days, the landing page is getting a 30% conversion rate (that’s pretty good :-))

Focusing on the front door.

The reason we’ve been able to get such good results is because we’re focusing on one thing: having people sign up for a form. No longer is the internet about websites. The internet is now about front doors. Showing people exactly what they want to see — and sometimes only what they want to see — is how to improve your conversion rate.

Don’t lock users in and throw away the key.

Amazon cages me in. If you go to Amazon, place something in your cart, then begin the checkout process, they make it impossible (without clicking the Back button a lot) to return to their store. They throw away any chance of revising your order, adding a product, or just browsing around — they sacrifice user experience for the sake of conversion rates.

Guide users through a funnel, don’t force them

Amazon.com no longer shows you how much shipping will be until you’re at the final checkout page. They used to show you right up front, but now you have to get to the final checkout page to find out shipping costs. Very annoying. Always give users the information they want, even if it means some will choose an option you don’t want them to. Give users a way out.

We know better now.

My wife and I have just bought our first house. It has been updated, it looks great, and we’re slowly making it our own. When we bought it, we planned on installing our own laminate flooring. We bought a circular saw, read a few how-to articles, and felt generally pretty confident. It can’t be that hard!

Each day after work, my wife and I would come to our new house to work on the floors. We started in the small room to get a handle on the process. To make a long (and painful) story short, 8 hours in, we had only completed about 30 square feet. It was a disaster.

By doing flooring ourselves, we managed to:

• Turn our new house into a source of frustration
• Spend valuable energy
• Waste three nights of our lives
• Burn ourselves out

In the end, we hired a professional. Now the project is done, and it looks great.

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This two-page PDF file (Defining Your Website Audience) is an example of how to define your website audience. When you create a website, it’s important to have in mind for whom you’re designing.

When designing landing pages, it is especially important to focus on an audience and craft every piece of content to fit that profile.

Feel free to use the Audience Profile example as an outline for your projects.

As a web designer / developer, my job is pretty straight forward: I design a website, code it, and add the content. But that’s not all. I’ve also got to be a pest, hounding clients for content.

At the beginning of each project, it’s always a good idea to get a firm grasp on exactly what content is going to be on the website. Defining a site map is vital to developing a website. A simple list helps you figure out what is needed. Below is a sample:

• About us
  • Employees
    • Bio paragraphs
    • Head shots
    • Contact information
  • History
    • Photo of founders, current owners
    • Chronology
    • Intro paragraph
      • Bridge history with present, link to various project

Once you’ve got a good understanding of what is needed, you must start asking for content immediately. Companies like to wait until the last minute, then wait days longer to deliver content. If you plan for late content and pester your clients from the get-go, you might be able to have everything you need when the website is complete.

There is a great book (Web ReDesign 2.0: Workflow that Works) that says you should create a timeline for content delivery. They have a pretty table with deliverables and a flow chart and all sorts of great stuff. In a perfect world where the website project is the client’s top priority, a content delivery timeline might work. Heck, you could even bill clients for overdue content! However, in the real world, there’s no such thing as a content delivery timeline. A web developer must take content into their own hands, or else you won’t get paid.

Designer, protect thyself!

If you have clients with overdue content that is holding up the launch of a website, it’s not a big deal, except that designers often get paid when the site goes live. No content, no pay check.

A contract is a great place to define what happens if the site is ready except for the content. Rather than being paid at launch, it is a good great idea to be paid when the site is ready – content or not. That way, if you’ve done your part of the project, and your client has not yet prepared their portion, you can still send off that invoice.

When modifying your contract, keep in mind that you’ll still need to agree to add the content once you receive it! If that’s too big a hassle (working for free after getting paid), then don’t bother changing your current contract.

How do you deal?

Do you have nightmare clients? Late content delivery? Are you the client? How do you handle being part of a web design project? I’d love to hear your stories.

When you first move to a new city, you aren’t familiar with the roads. You buy a map to help guide you, you ask Google how to get you from here to there most efficiently, and you stop and ask people directions.

After you’ve lived in the city for a while, you become familiar and confident. You start to understand the road naming conventions, the north/south corridors that are the fastest, the quickest way downtown from your location.

The more experience you have with the city, the better you understand how to arrive exactly where you want to without running into any snags. But yet, there’s always more to learn.

Like a city, every profession has its own learning curve. Are you exploring past your comfort zone?

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Here’s the problem: I want to use CSS Sprites for transparent images, and they require different matte colors.

The promise of CSS Sprites is great: you can combine many small images into one bigger image, and use CSS to reveal only the revelant parts. But what if you have a background image, and the background changes color on :hover? When trying to save the smilies, you can only choose one matte color. I need multiple matte colors!

The issue really is a pain when you have already given your object a stroke. Using the Appearance panel, we’ll make everything happy in the world again!

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