Our favorite place to work tends to be coffee shops and delicatessens.  In all of the chaos and varying conversations, we can get lost in the work at hand.   One particular place that we’ve come to enjoy more than most is the Atlanta Bread Company in Warrenville, Illinois.   Since this franchise is family run, the atmosphere is not only welcoming, but quite inclusive and friendly.  The kindness, the artistic fervor, and the immersion within a flowing sea of people coming and going actually makes for our most productive work environment.

The families that manage and own the store are some of the first people I met when moving to Illinois.  I have a large amount of gratitude for the kindness they showed me when arriving here and when we came back to Naperville this past spring.  They have welcomed us and our clients into their establishment and given us a warm environment to conduct our business meetings and web design presentations.

Artist tend to flock to the “Bread” as well.  On any given night there will be some form of artistic group that is having a meeting at their location.  There are women who stitch on one night, trading card women on another, painters discussing canvasses, and many other niche artisans who wish to meet and share their talents.  For those familiar with the area, Naperville and Warrenville aren’t exactly thought of as Art Mecca’s, but within the Atlanta Bread, there is an exception that is a pleasant change for the Chicago Suburbs.

Lastly, the absolute chaos of a busy lunch cycle completes our A.D.D. persona and elevates our productivity.  We tend to get more accomplished in a two hour rush at a coffee shop, than in eight hours of quiet within our on office.  we’re going to post a lot more on this in coming weeks.  There’s just an odd correlation between our better work performance and the amount of interactions taking place at the same time.  We’ll be posting more about our favorite working environments in the weeks to come, but at this moment Atlanta Bread is our favorite local coffee shop for web design and seo meetings and work.

While many in the City of Naperville jokingly refer to themselves as “Napervillians”, the area is considered one of the finest to live and raise a family.   The area is filled with entrepreneurs and families from the population boom of the 90’s. They are gifted with one of the lowest crime rates and highest public education systems in the entire country.  Because of the, and many more positive aspects of the area, Naperville has become a thriving market for capital investment and small businesses to make their marks.

Along with business headquarters moving to Naperville, marketing firms have grown by leaps with the surrounding area.  For many years, there were only a handful of graphic and web designers in the area.  Web design in Naperville was a decision made on lack of options.  Even recently, independent web designers just began to make a name for themselves in the area.   Most of the web design and development for all of Illinois was being maintained out of Chicago or Oswego.  Five agencies did 95%  of all design and maintenance for the businesses who are now part of the community.

It shouldn’t be shocking that most businesses who have been here for some time, have websites that look alike and have no real distinguishing characteristics.  With a lack of major competition, the web designers and developers that were here, got complacent and would typically make sites that mirrored even the clients competitor.

As a result, Naperville has now opened up as one of the best markets for the design and develop of website services.  Although there are still a lot of “basement hosting groups” here, it has gotten considerably better with the infusion of hard working Freelancers in the area. The hosting companies with “Auto Builders” are becoming less trusted because of their obvious attempts and successes at preying on their customers; Freelancers have made a difference here as well.  At last count, there were over 100 freelance web designers just within the city boundaries of Naperville and another 150 in Aurora.  This added amount of competition has enabled the area to introduce higher quality websites than were previously available.  The price for high quality design has also normalized from the days here a select few ran the books.

The recent changes in the market have evened the playing field.  Web Design companies that had massive overhead at their clients expense are going under.  The freelancers and small businesses are surviving and becoming more trusted due to their ability to survive on their humble status.  The prices for a good site have become realistic.  Instead of a local Steel Company that paid $15,000 for a pitiful 8 page HTML site, now designers locally are charging based on work and experience.

I hope that it doesn’t come across as though I’m excited about the way the markets have fallen.  I understand a  lot of people, including myself,  have lived through a lot of  suffering this economy has left us with.  It is on the way to recovery, but it is coming slowly and there will be more to weather.  The economic downturn has hurt business, but maybe it can be a functional way of resetting the clock. Even in these tougher times, it’s becoming a better experience to be a web designer in the city of Naperville.

Naper Design in Naperville, IL

While many in the City of Naperville jokingly refer to themselves as “Napervillians”, the area is considered one of the finest to live and raise a family.   The area is filled with entrepreneurs and families from the population boom of the 90’s. They are gifted with one of the lowest crime rates and highest public education systems in the entire country.  Because of the, and many more positive aspects of the area, Naperville has become a thriving market for capital investment and small businesses to make their marks.

Along with business headquarters moving to Naperville, marketing firms have grown by leaps with the surrounding area.  For many years, there were only a handful of graphic and web designers in the area.  Web design in Naperville was a decision made on lack of options.  Even recently, independent web designers just began to make a name for themselves in the area.   Most of the web design and development for all of Illinois was being maintained out of Chicago or Oswego.  Five agencies did 95%  of all design and maintenance for the businesses who are now part of the community.

It shouldn’t be shocking that most businesses who have been here for some time, have websites that look alike and have no real distinguishing characteristics.  With a lack of major competition, the web designers and developers that were here, got complacent and would typically make sites that mirrored even the clients competitor.

As a result, Naperville has now opened up as one of the best markets for the design and develop of website services.  Although there are still a lot of “basement hosting groups” here, it has gotten considerably better with the infusion of hard working Freelancers in the area. The hosting companies with “Auto Builders” are becoming less trusted because of their obvious attempts and successes at preying on their customers; Freelancers have made a difference here as well.  At last count, there were over 100 freelance web designers just within the city boundaries of Naperville and another 150 in Aurora.  This added amount of competition has enabled the area to introduce higher quality websites than were previously available.  The price for high quality design has also normalized from the days here a select few ran the books.

The recent changes in the market have evened the playing field.  Web Design companies that had massive overhead at their clients expense are going under.  The freelancers and small businesses are surviving and becoming more trusted due to their ability to survive on their humble status.  The prices for a good site have become realistic.  Instead of a local Steel Company that paid $15,000 for a pitiful 8 page HTML site, now designers locally are charging based on work and experience.

I hope that it doesn’t come across as though I’m excited about the way the markets have fallen.  I understand a  lot of people, including myself,  have lived through a lot of  suffering this economy has left us with.  It is on the way to recovery, but it is coming slowly and there will be more to weather.  The economic downturn has hurt business, but maybe it can be a functional way of resetting the clock. Even in these tougher times, it’s becoming a better experience to be a web designer in the city of Naperville.

Naper Design in Naperville, IL

When dealing with our clients and giving consultations, we are often asked, “how often should we update our site?”  This is not a pointless or easy question to answer.  Often there are many considerations to be made to find the correct answer for the site owner.   We consider a variety of criteria to decide what the proper choice should be for each individual site.  In this post, we’re going to share the top five questions used to determine the need and frequency of site updates and revisions of web design needed to keep the site up to par.

1. What do your customers and site visitors know you for?

To some this may seem like an unlikely question to start with, but it really needs to be the basis of all choices with web design.  Like a logo, letterhead, and all print media associated with a company, a site can be a major branding for the basis of client recognition.  If the website design is one recognized by the readers, it may cause a negative response to make a massive change in the way it’s is read.  Likewise, if the website is the weaker link of media associated with the company, it will need to be designed in a way to compliment the company and its preexisting media.  While content will always reign supreme to the search engines, genuine viewership is still the ultimate goal of a website.

2. Is this a vanity website or one meant for inbound marketing?

Ok, we’ve talked about this before and heard negative response for the choice term “vanity site”, but it is what it is.  It’s  not a negative or positive statement about a website to call it a vanity site.  If the only  purpose of your website is to have one to be followed off of a business card, then you may not be concerned with how the site looks on a regular basis.  The use of these sites, while decreasing, is still common enough to be asked when deciding web design criteria.  It may not be in the interest of the site owner to have frequent and extensive web design if the website is only to be viewed by  a select group of people.   Often major web design updates are associated with a website that is trying to build and convert newer and inbound traffic instead of regulated and specific visitors.

3.  Much like the last question, what is the site to do for you and your business?

It’s very difficult to design a website or revise one when there is no clear goal to be set.  Some view web design in the same way they would view making a pamphlet or Power Point slide-show. Those who have experienced a bad design have found that web development and web design are key to converting visitors into regular viewers.  If a site is meant to be informative in a serious manner, but looks like  something of a comical nature, viewers will be confused.(one more reason to stop using Comic Sans)  The website design must match the content for readers to truly appreciate it without confusion or blatant distaste.  While there are still debates of how much psychological responses to a design can be felt, there is a consensus that they do impact readership.  Bringing the design of your site in line with the theme of its content will ensure that readers are left with an accurate interpretation of the content meaning.

4.  Code, Code, Code!!!!

If your website is still trudging away on legacy HTML with tables, it may be a good time to consider moving to a better framework.  Table usage in websites was never meant to progress to the levels that it did.  They were invented for simple actions, but after some time, were being manipulated to design all aspects of site layout.  With the advent of CSS, these tables are no longer needed in such long and drawn out lines of code.  Your website can move more efficiently, be designed in a better and cleaner way, and… Oh Yeah, the search engines will appreciate it.

5. HTML or PHP

It would also be good after asking the previous questions to determine if the HTML in your website should be replaced with PHP. Whether using a database driven CMS like Joomla, Xoops, Drupal and Wordpress, or just wanting a basic PHP scipted website, you’ll be able to more easily updated for content.  Regular updates can be helpful to sites that aim to offer newer information to viewers on a regular basis.  It would be good to know before making any site changes to know how often content would need updated.  Be aware that if you should choose to remain with older framework, even content updates will have their cost.  If  the page is to stay static, this shouldn’t be a problem and it may be a waste of funds to do a complete update of the code.