For the internet - web design, internet marketing and SEO go hand in hand. I found a designer who has a great approach to website design, Ash Harris of Kinetic Web Media, LLC - aka ShakeYourBusiness.com.

How did you get into web design? “I’ve always been an artistic person with an eye for layout and design. I had a friend in college who started the font website www.FontFace.com. This was my introduction to web design and development. After college, I went to work for a creative firm and learned how creative business worked. They also trained me on the basics of web design as of 2000. I then moved to a technology company and learned how a tech company was run and then the next natural step was to branch out and try my own business. It was a perfect marriage of creative and technical services. So, long story short, design has always appealed to me. I just had to get the technical under my belt and I was on my way to mastering web design.”

Do you remember the very first site you designed? “Aside from the practice sites for classes, the first actual website I worked on was a small website for the tech company that I worked for. It was cool for the year that it was created (2001). As you know, time goes so fast in cyberspace that it was only a matter of a year before it sorely needed replacing.”

You are doing a lot of email marketing. Is this a specialization for you? “It is one of our specializations. We really focus on working with a company to understand the nature of the business and then to help identify and address the needs of the company. We work with them in web design and development and then we also work with their marketing approach. We are really a one-stop shop for commercial marketing needs. Our primary purpose is to help businesses become visible - in the virtual marketplace and in the actual marketplace.”

Where do you get your art for these webpages? “There are a number of sources that we have available. We work with professional photographers in some cases. Primarily we use stock photography from photo libraries on the web. Our favorites are Getty Images and iStockphoto.”

What will be the next big development in webpage design? “I am going to say accessibility. It is not going to be long before higher authorities get involved with website development and begin to lay down legal requirements for website structure and presentation of content. Basically, the Internet has to be made ‘accessible’ to individuals with disabilities in much the same way a shopping mall or an office building needs to accomodate them. With a commercial building, we have ramps to allow people in wheelchairs access to the building. On websites, we use high-contrast text and backgrounds providing for people with low vision to be able to read the content. We use other methods to allow screen reading software to read a website to an individual who has no use of his eyes. There are many other strategies and standards that need to be followed as well.”

Have you ever worked with website templates? “I have. In fact, I am currently working with some templates for Joomla!.”

What website template providers have you tried? “I have really been enjoying working with the templates I get from Rocket Themes. Very user friendly, very easy to customize. All around a great product.”

What was your experience with them? “They have great support and great prices. The forums there are very well maintained and the user-base is ready and willing to provide input and assistance.”

What do you think about Flash technology? “It’s beautiful. However, I rarely use it. I think that 99% of websites can get along just fine without it and it is really only useful to Multi-Media and Creative firms to ‘WOW’ their visitors. It’s GREAT for visual effects, but it’s terrible for content delivery. And, I would say many sites abuse it by delivering ALL of their content with it.”

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using Flash? “Accessibility comes up with this question as well. Flash is at least VERY difficult and at most, impossible, to make accessible to an individual using a screen reader. Again, Flash is beautiful if used in the correct ways, but, if your entire site is flash, you are going to be losing a segment of your website visitors, and you are going to be limiting how much search-engines can ’spider’ on your site - unless you take care to provide content specifically for the spiders.’

What are your sources of inspiration? “Here are several GREAT sources for inspiration: Website Design Ideas:
- www.monstertemplates.com
- www.bamag.com (Before & After Magazine)
- www.coolhomepages.com

Colors
- www.colorschemer.com

Books:
- Layout Index

- Color Index

Just to name a few.

VERY IMPORTANT - I suggest to any designer that when they surf, they should definitely be keeping an organized set of bookmarks so they can come back to a site that has great content or a site that just knocks their socks off.”

What are your favorite website designs that you did NOT design yourself? “I used to like www.apple.com - but it is really in need of an update. Adobe has come a long way - www.adobe.com - cool new design merged with Macromedia solutions. www.bamag.com is a nice clean design.

I also really like these sister sites:
- http://trendwatching.com/
- http://springwise.com/”

What was the toughest project or customer situation you’ve encountered? “I was once blamed for mis-handling a customer’s meta tags. The client was selling a holiday product and we deployed their site in mid October. They were baffled when they weren’t at the top of search engines in time to do a HUGE amount of sales for Christmas. I was blamed - basically for not getting them to the Top 10 on Google and Yahoo! within a couple of weeks. And here’s the kicker - they never asked me to do it. They assumed it was part of the project price. When I tried to explain, the situation got stickier. In the end, I lost the customer and I learned a valuable lesson about educating clients.”

What are your interests and dislikes in webpage design? “I LOVE the design process - the process of finding inspiration and injecting life into designs and the message of the site. I love the artistic side of it. I love meeting new people and helping them solve problems and bringing them solutions for their website and their image. The business side is difficult just because of the details and the paperwork. It’s just a lot to keep track of.”

Thankyou Ash for the expertise and experiences.

Template Impresario,
Arthur Browning