The Ocean Agency

You will hear from many web designers, including some of ours, that “eye candy” websites– or visually appealing ones– aren’t practical for businesses. The argument stands that websites should be immediately usable and functional; you almost shouldn’t even notice the design, but instead navigate through it without stopping to think about it. But there’s definitely an argument for beautiful websites, too.  We recognize that creative web design should sometimes include daring visual designs that are more than “mere styling”.

The relationship between aesthetics and usability is more closely linked than some may realize. The way users perceive a website is almost entirely visual, so of course, the visual design of a website can govern the way it is used and influence functionality.  An aesthetically pleasing website is necessary, therefore, as far as it positively affects your users. A graphic that is good looking and well designed, but merits no helpful repsonse from your user, must be reevaluated. Similarly, the photographs and images you use on your website, though they may have special significance to you, may not inspire any particular emotions in your visitors.  Allowing your designer to help you choose the graphics that will be most moving for your users is usually a safe bet.

Part of attracting users to convert on your website is providing them with attractive features– enticing contact forms, buttons and copy. If a button is functional, but not attractive, no one will be tempted to use it. If the content is there, but is layed out in an unattractive way, it will not get read. And if your contact form has no allure, you won’t be capturing anyone’s data. Visual designs are more than mere styling in these cases.  Attractive designs add to the functionality of your website; they function to attract more users to complete your desired conversion.

Flowery visual design isn’t always necessary on a website, but used properly, it accentuates the usability. A web design firm that employs beautiful aesthetics when beneficial to a new site can enhance your site, in visual enjoyability and in true functionality.

Creative web design means more than just a beautiful, functional website; it means a beautiful, functional website that suits your needs. For real estate agents or companies, your website of course needs to be informative, displaying your listings in a logical way and providing facts and benefits about the areas you sell in. But listings and facts don’t win over every customer– real estate agents all rely on interpersonal skills to gain the trust of their clients. So whether you’re a designer creating a website for a real estate client, or real estate agent buying a new website, make sure you don’t neglect your community.

Ideally, your website will have an easy and effective way to search your available properties. The first thing clients or potential clients usually want to do is browse your properties by the attributes that matter to them. A usable search function will gain you points with your users, and accelerate their conversion.

Capturing your personality on your site is never a bad thing, unless it comes at the cost of your professionalism. For real estate agents, you will need to find a happy medium of conveying your personal touch and staying within the conventions of professional web design, which your design can help you achieve. Similarly, your trustworthiness needs to be established. A website that has too much personal flair, and not enough information on you or your listings may prove ineffective. 

Characterizing your locale on your site is important as well– with a blog or news section on your site, you can publicize events in the areas you target for sales. By promoting the areas where you have listings, you can obviously extoll the benefits of living there to your clients. Avoid cliche ways to catch the spirit of your city on your website though– while cityscapes are beautiful and can be used in original ways, they often come across as cliche. When individual personality is important, cliched imagery can ruin the feel of your real estate web site.

Keeping these things in mind, a real estate client and a web designer can find the best way to portray your practice or company. Through creative web design, a cohesive strategy and some personal flair, your real estate web presence can echo and enhance your presence in the business world.

Regular readers of this creative web design blog will know that we give a lot of advice. We recommend many “dos” and admonish many “don’ts”, but here is the most important advice of all: Once you know the rules, break the rules. Our web design company believes that progress is created by knowing what makes a website a traditional success, and then by smashing expectations and providing the consumer with something new, different, but above all better.

We don’t discard traditions for any reason. We use strategies that are proven successes and integrate them with innovative experiences to make a memorable and useful tool for your users.

You must know the basics to be able to innovate. Assessing how people communicate, what design elements they respond to, and what ultimately converts them from users to customers gives our innovation a foundation in success. While exactly following an already successful template can give you a reliable site, the marketing prospects for an inventive site are unlimited. We want to portray your brand message articulately and intuitively, but more importantly, we want to portray it individually.

The Ocean Agency creates; we don’t copy. Your strategy and design should be unique, and through innovation, we’ll give you a distinct web presence that functions with all the usability of tradition.

Is your website tainted by one of the seven most cliched images used by web design firms? See the list to make sure your web presence represents your company and no one else’s.

The Seven Most Overused Graphics:

1. Sun rays/rays of light/rising sun. Ever since it made its appearance on the Japanese flag, we can’t seem to get away from sun coming up over the horizon.

2. Colored or darkened human silhouettes. iPod commercials are all anyone thinks when you see these faceless people.

3. Ink blots or splatters. If you still think this is innovative, you are living in the 80s.

4. Flourishes/Swirls/Ornaments. Fanciful? Sometimes. Silly? Often.

5. Flowing lines. Great for showing motion, but how many companies really need to depict motion on their website?

6. Concentric, funky circles. Retro and “funky,” but also overused. If your company needs to maintain an image of trustworthiness, formality or security, geometric psychedelics are probably not for you.

7. Smoke textures. Again, if your company needs to maintain an image of trustworthiness, formality or security, sultry-smoky imagery is probably not for you.

Whether one of these images is your logo or just comes into play in the background of your site, it could be doing better branding for another company than for your own.  A distinct color, print, texture or object can distinguish your business and your brand, but only if it’s truly original! A web design company will help you research to find an identifier that suits you, and only you.

Read more from a designer’s perspective on these overused images.

This article about value came across our desk today, and it got us thinking about what we value, and how to portray value, in creative web design. For our web design company, value is best communicated in simplicity and ease of use. And of course, we value our ability to help you communicate your message. What does your company value, and is it being portrayed correctly in the forefront of your web presence?

Value, like the article points out, “is not just price. Valuable-ness comes from relevance to the consumer’s needs.” It is not simply a number. And creating a website that accurately portrays your company’s values isn’t an expense– it’s an investment. We help you choose how to communicate with your visitors, through design, messaging and copy; the tone of your website, once decided, is embodied in each aspect of your online representation.   

What message of value will your users respond to best, and what is the proper way to get it across to them through a website? Since your website is often the first experience a user can have with your brand or company, your website should deliver your company’s message and create the right expectations for your users from the get go. From the perfect typeface to an intuitive structure, your users should understand your offerings without even realizing that they are learning about them.

In this economy, when consumers aren’t looking for the next trend but rather for a good investment, demonstations of value encourage your web visitors to convert into customers. A well-designed website is often your first impression. Investing in a web design company that understands and can execute an accurate vision of your company can be your first step toward enhancing your company’s value.

Here’s our web design agency’s round up of the best design-related links of the week. 

First off, Web Design wall shows the power of simplicity with 50 functional, beautiful, minimal websites.

A website’s copy is just as imporant as its creative web design: Web Designer Wall and AIGA give tips and advice about how to write better copy. 

Back to design. Smashing Magazine shows you how to dramatically enhance your designs  with simple techniques. 

Keeping your blog current with redesigns is key– and promoting your redesign to the fullest potential makes a redesign even more worthwhile. Blog Design Blog shows you how.

Structure, balance and color can make a blog great– Pro Design Blog suggests some other design elements that can increase your readership and your authority in blogging.

And that’s it for this week. We’ll be back Monday after some Ocean teambuilding and a relaxing weekend!

Passion is necessity in design. That’s why it is The Ocean Agency’s pleasure to announce that today, we are abandoning creative web design and reopening our doors as a haute couture men’s atelier. We want to bring the most current men’s fashions to the Chicago area, starting with a Spring 2010 collection showing at Chicago’s Fashion Focus. 

Here are some of the major inspirations for our line. We’d describe it as chic, modern and frankly groundbreaking.

Every high fashion men’s line has a corresponding underwear line. Calvin Klein, Hugo Boss, Armani and now… Ocean.

After our foundations, we love accessories. Yes, men can wear high fashion accessories, too!

Functionality is almost as imporant as aesthetics. That’s why we provide functional gear like mantyhose.

Although formal wear and business attire are important for the modern man, casual wear is the basis of the Ocean line.

Like we said, it’s gonna be groundbreaking. Yep, totally unique.

So this April 1st has a special importance for us at Ocean as we embark on our new fashion endeavor. We’re really excited to make this big leap and use this economy to take risks and make changes… Ehh, who are we kidding. Happy April Fools’ Day!

Creative web design benefits different industries in a variety of ways, as each niche has its own individual set of web design needs and uses. Lawyers’ websites and the websites of law firms, for instance, need to show an impressive level of experience, trustworthiness and credibility. Web design for lawyers must impeccable– professionally crafted and seamlessly functional. 

At our web design firm, we add individuality to the designs of our legal clients. Although many law firms may think that they will benefit from a familiar layout or traditional feel, undervaluing the importance of an individual or company brand on your website is detrimental for a legal web presence. Highlighting you or your firm’s particular experience, specialties or history can make you stand out for a client, and such individual touches will also further your online business development when expanded to aspects of your web presence.

As a lawyer, you need to position yourself as the simple answer to your users’ complex problems with your web presence. Simplicity of content and contact is essential. Avoid legal jargon in your copy that might pose confusing, and make the contact page or form easy to find and to the forefront of the site. Ask questions in your contact form that ascertain important information and prompt users to respond fully. 

When picking a web design firm, look for a company that has experience in your niche, or address the unique issues of your industry through creative web design solutions.

Here are the articles that came to our web design agency’s attention this week! Read about creative web design, how to make it better, and how make sure people see it.

The Social Path’s David Griner confronts fear and loathing in social media, in this presentation.

The Skittles brand foregoes a traditional web site in favor of directing you to all the different facets of their web presence. Clearly, they’re not afraid of social media!

Smashing Magazine helps you navigate Adsense, so skip the trial and error.

Sometimes, the sitemap and footer of a web site get overlooked– here are some modern ones from Web Designer Wall.

Six Revisions show us how to use illustrated elements in our designs, without getting too cheesy.

And that’s it for us this week!

In response to this post on Conversation Marketing, our SEOGroup discussed 10 reasons why SEO is not like bacon, but rather like cupcakes.  Well, we think creative web design is a little more like cookies. Here are our 10 reasons why.

1. Well, of course, there are tons and tons of varieties. Oatmeal raisin, snickerdoodle, pecan sandie. Ecommerce, flash-based, social network. Your absolute favorite kind might not be the best choice for goal you’re trying to achieve (or the meal you’re finishing with dessert!).

2. Both run the range from simple to elaborate. Cookies can be simple (chocolate chip) or insanely difficult to execute. (Have you ever tried any of Martha Stewart’s cookie recipes? Yeah. They’re hard.) Web design can be simple, and good. Or simple and bad. Or elaborate and bad. Or elaborate and great. A practiced web design company will serve your needs better, just like an experienced cook will whip up the best cookies, no matter the skill level needed. 

3. You can buy them both premade, but they might not be as good. I don’t think anyone will argue against the fact that homemade cookies are better (possible exception to rule: Girl Scout Cookies). Similarly, you can buy a template web design, but it just fails to compare to a custom-made site.

4. It isn’t always about how pretty they are. Yes, we’d love it if every website was a beauty to behold. But sometimes, a website that is plain in design may function better for your customers. Similarly, just because some cookies may not look like they came straight from the bakery doesn’t mean they aren’t delicious!

5. Sometimes, less is more. We probably all went through the phase where we loved the cookies from the bakery that had cream filling and sprinkles and chocolate chips and ice cream on top. But perhaps, as your taste became refined, you found yourself craving a simple sugar cookie instead. Flashy websites lose their luster, too– especially if they don’t function well.

6. Sometimes, less is more, again. You know what happens when you a whole box of Oreos. Stomachache. If your company has multiple websites that aren’t tied by a common design, or too much irrelevant content on your website, you may be giving your users too much info (and a headache, too). 

7. This might be predictable, given the subject, but… you don’t want too many cooks in the kitchen. Too many people adding to your tried-and-true cookie recipe might ruin the finished product. Too many opinions on your online identity might take you too far from your established brand. Keep true to your original recipe– the brand that made your company successful in the first place.

8. In baking and online design, you need customer responses. You’ll never know if your website is functioning well if you don’t track its performance with your users. And you’ll never know if that dash of cinnamon was the missing ingredient if you don’t let your consumers (ha) give you a little feedback.

9. Have a sense of humor. On a website, a little humor injected into the design, whether on the about page or the 404 error message, goes a long way to engage your users. And cookies always taste better if you get to lick the bowl and make a mess. You may be laughing, but it’s true.

10. Finally, it’s about a complete experience. The best cookies look good, make the house smell great, and have a satisfying crunch you can hear when you take a bite. The best websites are more than just copy and design– they are an interactive experience for users. 

And that’s it! Now, can someone explain to us how online marketing is like a great steak or how quality content is like a fine wine?