My Web Design: Tony Rauti Luxury Homes

I've had a couple of requests lately by potential clients asking to see some of my recent web designs. I figured I'd start off with one the small business web designs I'm most proud of Tony Rauti Luxury Homes. They're a custom home builder in Windsor Ontario and the surrounding area. A friend of mine referred them to me and in a matter of days I was meeting with them to discuss potential ideas. Here's what we came up with after all was said and done:

This is a very elegant design done primarily with HTML and CSS. Showing off their recent works was something they were very interested in doing so I figured I'd make 60% of the homepage a content slider of the exterior and interior designs of their custom homes in Windsor. Along with the web design & development, I also did a bit of on-site search engine optimization, and social network marketing. I also implemented a beautiful photo gallery using Lightbox.

All in all it was a delight to work with the people at Tony Rauti Luxury Homes on their web design. I look forward to working with them in the future!

Does City Windsor Need A New Web Design?

The other day I was checking out which sites came up in the top ten results in Google when I typed in certain "Windsor" terms such as; "Windsor Ontario" and "Windsor Canada". I was just curious which sites were performing well when someone searched  for this great city of ours. Turns out one of the top results for most Windsor searches ended up being the city's homepage http://www.citywindsor.ca. After browsing around the site a bit I started to ask myself whether or not is should be updated with a fresh web design. Take a look at the homepage below.

At first glance the website design isn't all that terrible. I've seen far worse websites from other cities in Ontario, yet I still feel this site could be much better.

I would guess there are 3 different types of people searching for the city of Windsor; tourists, residents and potential residents. I think the homepage of the site should make 3 separate areas for these 3 different type sof traffic. I find that most of this site is geared only towards 1 type of traffic; residents.

I also think since this site is one of the top results for Windsor it should also put our great city on display. Add some type of content slider showing off everything we have to offer. Tourists attractions, parks, events etc. would all look amazing on a website about the city.

Again, the site overall isn't terrible, I just think it could be better. What does everyone think? Should cityofwindsor.ca be re-designed?

Must Have's When Optimizing For Search Engines

The other day I was working on a web design for a client who had purchased my basic plan of search engine optimization as well. When they first approached me about designing their website, one of their concerns was being ranked highly for a specific local term when it was searched on Google. I explained to them the difference between my SEO packages and they agreed that the most they needed for now was on-site SEO.

There are several must have's when it comes to on-site search engine optimization. The first comes right at the top of your website. You have to have properly described <title></title> tags for each page on your website. When someone performs a search, this will be the title they see on Google. Another must have is the <meta description> tag. This should be a short paragraph consisting of no more than 150-160 characters. It should describe your website and/or your business. This is usually what Google pulls in search results under the title of your website. Check out the image below to see what I'm talking about.

Those two tags are absolute must have for every page of your site and each should be unique. They're both easy to add and will be a big help when it comes to search engine optimization.

My First Web Design That Was Put Online

Before I ever started doing freelance web design in the Windsor area, I designed a bunch of sites for school projects and just for fun. Most of those never saw the light of day, however one design I did for the Montessori School of Windsor actually did!

 It's somewhat embarrassing to even put this site on display, but since it's a site I did over 6 years ago, I can laugh at it now.

As you may be able to tell, the site was done using frames. I had a header, left content, right content and footer. The only thing that would change per page is the right content. I actually don't think the overall layout of the site is too bad, it's just the presentation of it that's terrible.

I'm not sure why I had two logo images on one page? I'm also not sure why the one links seems to be a different color than the rest?

All in all, I give my first web design that was ever put online about a 3 out of 10, however I'm sure when I first put it out, I thought it was at least an 8!