Off-Site Services is an award-winning web development and consulting firm providing strategic services to our partners

Merry Christmas to all, the naughty and the nice!

The ones who cleared their cache and the ones who thought twice
'bout the impact it wreaks on the speed 
of their site content, if ever in need.

The bold and the cautious, the expert and the newb
who'd rather shy away at the mere mention of "compute"

Creatives designing for latest of gadgets,
PMs and IT watching schedules and budgets,
Disruptors in marketing, making the call,
and business side units that pay for it all.

Same as anyone remotely involved with IT, I get bombarded with unending streams of daily emails, calls, and feeds promising superior offshoring, nearshoring and all other kinds of remote technical help for fraction of what it should cost.  Being a polite person, I occasionally respond to these sales pitches and over the years have come to gauge fairly well the background of these companies just from the way their sales pitch is crafted.

A colleague recently brought to my attention an article which stated in rather axiomatic fashion that website design is dead, period.  As this would obviously concern many a practicing web designer with existentialist questions - if website design has indeed expired, well then, have I? Are my current projects being shaped by forces beyond the grave? - I figured it might be beneficial to explore the question in depth and offer constructive criticism instead of outright dismissal (spoiler alert: you’re not dead).

We all know the recent news - a software and electronics giant Apple, Inc. released an updated version of its new operating system only to receive severe backlash from users installing it on their phones, which often stopped performing their primary function of making phone calls. Apple quickly recalled the update but the question remains - why would a preeminent software company engage in such embarrassment in the first place?

True story from some years back: we were transferring project documentation to a client and have hit a wall, their point person taking the project over was not able to get through the very first screen of the application.  Time went by, and we just could not figure out their issue, as everything was working fine on our end.  Finally, a conference call with multiple participants ensued, and the client spoke:

- Well, it says here to “hit any key to continue”, but I do not have a key labeled “any key” on my keyboard.

Some time ago, we completed a beta version of responsive site and turned it over to agency’s client for review.  The client came back with a number of issues, all centered around font and image sizes that were apparently not to spec for one of responsive states.  Naturally, we were concerned as this indicated a significant lapse in our QA process.  Upon closer look there was nothing to resolve, as our work was a pixel-match to Photoshop files provided by the agency; the mystery deepened, as there were clearly issues on the client’s side which we were not seeing.

Online presence is always a part of the overall branding strategy and as such, follows the same typography guidelines.  As we all know by now, web typography presents a unique set of challenges; fortunately, for every challenge there’s a solution.  The technical solution is driven by larger decisions - generic free fonts vs. custom licensed typography, open source usage vs. one time license vs. ongoing license fees.  

Having the best site on the web is no guarantee it will be found and appreciated.  You have to actively promote it and one of the best ways to increase the site’s visibility is to drive traffic through major social networks, such as Facebook and LinkedIn.  However, that calls for increased marketing efforts, even if it is simply coping and pasting same content across different sites.