Ruth Carmichael's
Online Portfolio
Web, Graphic Design and Photography
If you are thinking about a new, redesigned, or updated web site or need graphics, then take a few minutes to browse around. Whatever your purpose is, I hope you enjoy your stay. If you have any comments or questions, feel free to drop me a line.
Web Design Process
Creating and Maintaining a Captivating Web Site!
A web site is your online business center and calling card! A well designed Homepage should be immediately appealing, and create the experience of arriving somewhere extraordinary. To assure your visitors that they have arrived in the right place, your message should be easy to read and your web site well organized and effortless to navigate. The structure of your web site is critical in many ways to keep your visitor involved and also to make the web site rank higher with the search engines.
- A web site's purpose should be obvious from the start.
- The web site should be organized, like a department store: Underwear is found in the lingerie's department, not the shoe department; or pet food in the pet department, not in the food department.
- Navigating through a web site should be easy and enjoyable; like riding on a scenic drive instead of getting lost in a maze.
- Color palettes should be complimentary and cohesive. You don’t wear pants with purple stripes and an orange checkered shirt at the same time!
- The web site should be designed with optimization so that it will load fast and you won’t lose any visitors. I don’t know of anyone who loves to sit in traffic, do you?
- All elements (text, images and so on) should flow together in a rhythm like music from different instruments of an orchestra.
- Your site should be informative, current, clear-cut, interactive and engaging.
A poor design or an outdated web site can hurt your business.
Your visitors will leave quickly and never come back if your web site is noticeably inferior to other web sites.