You have all probably seen responsive web design and not even realized it.  Responsive web designs are coded in a way that scales the content to the size of the web browser.  An easy way to see if a website is responsive is to grab the browser window and drag to make it larger/smaller.  As you hit certain widths, styles will change based on media queries in the CSS.  This is a very simple way to create mobile/tablet versions of your website without needing to create a separate mobile site.  These media queries are often used to hide or rearrange content for best consumption depending on the size of the device.

Take a look at the following list for some inspiration.  Look at them on your machine or mobile device and try different browser widths or switch between portrait and landscape to see differences.

Examples of Responsive Websites

CSS Tricks…

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Many people ask how much it costs to build a website and unfortunately there is no simple, quick answer.  It depends on a variety of things including, but not limited to; how many pages, layouts, complexity of features, and a  lot more which will be for another post.

What I will do is briefly outline the steps from the initial meeting through a full launch from one of our previous projects that is simply a brochure site for a small business.  I will outline the hours as well to give you an idea of the man hours involved.

Initial Meetings & Communication (Proposals/Agreements)

The initial meeting can take place over the phone but is preferably done in person.  It is mainly a question and answer to understand the client’s needs and goals of the site.  We have a basic set of questions that help steer the discussion but this is …

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Each agency has their own launch checklist and I thought I would share ours here at CWS.  Over the last 5 years we have been refining our process to a simple list of steps to follow on each site launch.

Just about all of these are no-brainers but maybe there are some that you haven’t seen that you can add to your launch process.  We keep the site on our testing server throughout development  so our clients can see how the site will look without having to send screenshots or show them a laptop at a meeting.  Once we have sign-off on the testing server, we begin this launch process.

Edit .htaccess file for redirects

Rather than having 2 different URLs for a domain (http://yoursite.com and http://www.yoursite.com), we prefer to point all traffic to either the www. or the site without the www but never both.

Double check email addresses for

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I always found it very useful to see how other designers and agencies took websites from start to finish.  I think that I am comfortable enough at this point to share our design process here at CWS in hopes that it can help some young up-and-coming web professionals.

Phase 1 – Requirements Analysis
This is by far the most important phase so that time is not wasted during the rest of the process.  During the requirements analysis, it is our responsibility as the web design team to interview the stake holders and learn as much about the project as possible AND get a feel for what the stake holders are looking for.  We ask them questions about their customers, ask them for a list of good (and bad) looking websites, determine whether or not they have a logo and color scheme selected.  These are only a few questions but the …

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I want everyone to take a step back from their website.  Think about who the site is for and what the objective is.  For most business owners and professionals, they look to their website as a sales tool ultimately.  While the objectives (generate more leads, increase awareness, educate consumers, etc)  might be slightly different, your website is usually providing information to others (as opposed to yourself).

With this in mind, most of us (including CWS at times) design sites and content for ourselves before considering the audience and users.  We become so wrapped up in our own content and source material that it becomes hard to distinguish what is actually important to the users of the site.  We think about what looks good to us and stop there.  Obviously we all want to be proud of our websites but we must be careful not to look past the audience in the …

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