Consulting by Jeff and Susie Day

We are Exclusive

We receive a lot of requests to do design work. As a small business, we have to make the difficult decision of which projects to take on and which to decline.

Part of this decision depends on whether or not your particular business is captivating to our technical or artistic interests and gives us inspiration to come up with a design. But, don't let our exclusivity prevent you from inquiring. You might be surprised at what we find interesting.

We have also learned that we work best when we focus on completing a single project at a time. We may not be able to start your project right away, but when we do, it will be completed with our full attention.

Doing the Job Right

We are committed to doing our work the right way.

You may have heard of the Project Triangle, which is often expressed as "Good, Fast, Cheap: Pick any two."

When it comes to our professional services, such as web and graphic design, we aren't interested in doing shoddy work. Because your web site helps to establish the image that your company expresses to the world, its design should never be driven by tight deadlines.

High standards of quality are a key to selling your products or services online, and potential customers who see a poorly designed site will naturally expect that your company's other products and services are equally poor.

While some web design projects may have a relatively quick turnaround time, you should begin working with us on your project several months before you want to launch the new site.

Technical Standards

We employ modern web standards to ensure that your site will reach the largest target audience and continue working properly for many years to come.

Some designers treat the web the same way they treat a print-based advertisement, laying out text boxes and images on the page using a visual editor such as Front Page, DreamWeaver or Fireworks. After this is done, they might try the site in a couple major web-browsers, and if it looks right they call it finished.

We take a different approach. We design the site with accessibility and standards in mind. We write our XHTML and CSS code by hand, which ensures that it not only looks right but also means what it is supposed to mean. We also avoid using content based on the Adobe/Macromedia Flash plugin whenever another solution would be more appropriate.

Both of these techniques help allow alternative devices to access your site, such as audio-based web browsers for the blind. They also increase the usability of your site on new web-enabled devices such as the Apple iPhone or the Amazon Kindle.

Search engines also do a better job indexing sites that have been designed using modern web standards to give semantic value to the content. This means more and better traffic will be directed to your site.

Design Standards

When we begin your web design project, we will gather information from you about your company, its products or services, and the goals of your online presence.

At some point in the process of designing your site we may give you a few options to choose from, and we will take feedback into consideration. However, unless you are a graphic designer, you won't get to make design decisions: That's our job! If you really want to do it yourself instead of having the site professionally designed, there are many products online that will allow you to do this, but we recommend against this if you are serious about marketing your products or services online.

Content Standards

Most of our websites use a Content Management System which allows the site owner to easily add content and make changes to the site. But, with great power comes great responsibility: You'd be surprised how many people don't think twice before stealing someone else's copyrighted content to put on their website, whether it is in the form of written text, product images, or artwork.

In today's world, and in light of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it is more important than ever that we respect copyrights online. A single violation could cause your site to be permanently shut-down or cause you to become subject to legal action.

Because of these issues, we strictly forbid the use of copyrighted materials on all sites hosted with us by any person other than the copyright holder, unless you have received express written permission from the copyright holder to use the content on your site.

If you are using the CMS, we also ask that you use good judgment in how written words are placed on your website. Because spelling, grammar, and punctuation reflect upon the image of your business and ours, it may be necessary to hire someone else to edit your copy, or to pay us to do so, before it is placed online.

If you are unable to comply with these basic content standards you may be asked to find a different hosting provider.