• Type of Agency
• Website Design Portfolio
• Experience of Website Design Company
• Expertise
• The Website Design Team
• Process
• Pricing

If you do your homework ahead of time, it doesn’t need to be a bewildering process to find the right partner for your project. Good luck!

I would say, arguably 10 years ago, most people’s number one concern when getting a web site together as a customer purchasing design services was “is it going to look cool.”  Things like usability, or especially search engine friendliness really weren’t even on the radar. Now, the opposite is true, a portfolio is almost routinely ignored.

So, here are three quick rules of thumb to remember when putting a portfolio together for your site:

1. Less is more doesn’t apply to a portfolio. A screen grab with no related information is a terrible idea. An even more terrible idea would be just a link to the client’s site-especially when it opens in the same window. Yikes. I can think of three prominent agencies that do this off the top of my head.

2. A case study is not a portfolio is not a case study. Design portfolios should show designs, while case studies should be left to your other services, like SEO, marketing, or making delicious guacamole.

3.  Creativity doesn’t need to define the portfolio, just the work in it. For example, that interesting window size you choose to display your work in is sort of over the top.

So, with those items in mind, who are a couple of design firms with great portfolios (whom we don’t know, nor endorse, but like their portfolio):

http://www.avatarnewyork.com/portfolio

http://www.metdesign.com/portfolio/studies.html

More shortly…but if you have other suggestions, leave a comment.

Disclaimer: The Delphic Sage portfolio is being revamped, so while I hope to include our partners in design, I can’t just yet.

First, we switched web hosts. While hosting companies may not seem to provide a direct link to web design, I have a few topics honing in on that concept that I will post in the near future.

But, for the purpose of this post, I think there are two main reasons we made the switch.

One, we are running WordPress and wanted a linux host, rather than the IIS host we had a number of sites on. We still have a number of sites with the host, but for linux, we needed to look around a little. To be fair, we also wanted a dedicated IP to use for two sites, to run as a case study, so that was the extra push to make the switch.

Two, we ultimately wanted to test more hosts. While we have an enterprise and middle-enterprise level host that we choose for most projects, we really haven’t ventured out and tested out a number of the smaller (read, cheaper, shared) hosts. So, we thought it was about time to go beyond the 2 or 3 that we have used a lot, starting with some of the big names.

So far…so…ok. Not quite good yet, but getting closer.

The other big change that we made was to refine our mission statement a bit.  That probably shows up in very small ways at the moment, but a lot more will be forthcoming on that front as well.

• What a squeeze page is
• How squeeze pages increase conversion
• Should you use long infomercial sales letters or short copy (we side on short here at WDNYC)
• Why your copy won’t matter to a search engine
• how to make your IT people love you

Fairly good breakdown of how to use squeeze pages, but we would like to point out that squeeze pages are only one variation of a landing page, not a magic bullet. We are going to have to post a full rebuttal eventually.

In the meantime, here is something that we want to share about what a squeeze page ISN’T. Everyone tries to explain the components of a good squeeze page, so here are a few items to keep in mind, as a squeeze page is NOT:

• A way to fix your crumby page quality just enough to lower your PPC bid
• A stand alone website. This is a terrible choice, in fact
• A substitute for every landing page. Sometimes you want people to buy, not submit information
• A scam

Feel free to check it out here.