Blog you can’t dance to this...but you can try!

About half of the web design projects we take on are redesigns. Of those, most clients have elements from their old sites that they would like to carry over or maintain in the design of a new website.

When the site is heavily trafficked, particularly by repeat visitors, too drastic of a change can cause a bit of a backlash. Nothing's worse than a redesigned website that confuses or otherwise frustrates regular website visitors. These two things make the path to a successfully revamped website a tricky one to walk.

Our latest project, a full redesign of the Philadelphia City Controller's website, presented us with this challenge. As with any government-oriented site, web standards and accessibility play a key part. Unlike the static existence of many government websites, the Office of the Controller thrives on web-based communication such as web video, PDF press releases, and daily content updates.

While maintaining much of the structure of the old site, it was our job to improve the site's accessibility and enhance features that regular site visitors were using most. An analysis of visitor behavior informed us of what decisions to make about information architecture -- particularly with regard to front page content placement.

We made a key change, for instance, in pulling biographical information about Philadelphia City Controller Alan Butkovitz from sub-pages in the old site to the front page of the new site. We also retooled the layout to present important content and functionality higher up on a user's computer screen (believe it or not, many users never scroll down). The shift to exclusively horizontal, drop-down navigation allowed for the addition of a third column for content.

These types of considerations make website redesign as lengthy and detailed of a process as developing a site from scratch. But, unlike a new site, there's a certain satisfaction in improving on what was there before (see for yourself).

The truth is, everyone around here loves our new rug.

Even though we're still getting the new studio in order, nothing ties a room together more than a classy (second-hand) rug. Unfortunately, one of us is going to have to tell Zoe that we didn't lay it down there just for her.

A title tag is an HTML tag that tells your browser what to display at the top of the browser's window. In the picture above, the title tag reads "New Media Philadelphia - Nimblelight - Web Design and SEO". 

Search Engines, particularly Google, give title tags a lot of weight in determining your page's search engine ranking. In Google's algorithm title tags are as important a factor as the visible text on the page and the links that point to your page. Updating your web site's title tags can be one of the simplest ways to dramatically improve your search engine rankings. 

Changing the title tag requires a minor modification to the source code of a web site. In the source code of a web site, the title tag is bordered by "<title>" and "</title>" (without the quotes). The tag is typically found within the first ten lines of source code. The line of code that generated the title tag in the example picture reads:

<title>New Media Philadelphia - Nimblelight - Web Design and SEO</title>

To change the title tag of a particular page simply edit the text that appears between the "<title>" and "</title>" tags. Whatever text you place between those two tags will appear as the title of your web site. 

Title tags, as a general rule, should include the web site or organization's title. For SEO purposes, it helps to include a few keywords or keyword phrases that you would like to come up for in Google. The example title tag includes the name of the organization (Nimblelight) and some keywords (New Media Philadelphia, Web Design, SEO) for which Nimblelight would be a relevant and competitive search result. 

It helps if the title tag is unique to each page of your site. Ideally, the keywords used in a particular page's title tag should also be used somewhere in that page's visible text and meta data. There is a lot to choosing the best keywords to use in your title tags- you can read more about choosing the best keywords here. 

Depending on how frequently Google visits your site, it can take anywhere from twenty-four hours to several months for the search engine to index the changes to your title tags. 

oh, hello!

We build dynamic websites that dominate search engines, leverage social media, and increase sales.