Simply explained, Meta Tags are part of the HTML code of a web page that imparts information about the siad web page to web browsers such as, Explorer and Firefox, as well as to search engines.

If you are building a website or own a website the three really important Meta Tags that will help get your website found are, the Meta Page Title, Keywords and the Meta Description.

The Meta Page Title appears in the bar at the top of a browser window, in the case of Microsoft Explorer it is the text that appears immediately before the wording in the blue bar which says Microsoft Explorer. Most search engines place a lot of importance on this title when ranking web pages, so you should ensure that you have a unique title for each of your web pages and they that it contains your top search phrase for that page.

The Meta Description, is as it sounds, a description of what that particular web page is about. It is also the text that many search engines use to describe your web page in their search results. Again this is an important Tag that can help get your website found. Like the Title Tag most search engines do read these descriptions and put a lot of importance on them.

Meta Descriptions should also be written with real people in mind, as a well written Meta Description can attract people to click on your site when faced with dozens of listings on a results page, even if you are listed towards the bottom of a page.

The Keyword Tag started life as the place to put all the phrases that you wanted your website to be found by, however many website owners found that they could out smart the search engines using them, most search engines no longer pay much attention to them. However some do use them and most will check to see if they have been included, so it is important to use them.

Most web users type in phrases into search engines rather than single words, so you are best advised to use key phrases rather than single words. If you are in a very competitive area you many also want to consider using common mis-spellings as away of avoiding the competition but still attract a reasonable amount of traffic to your site.

Having said all of the above, unless you write web pages about the things you want to get found for the above advice is of limited help.

Some people think it is easier to be creative when you have a blank canvas but personally I find it helps channel my energies to have a client who can give me parameters for their website, clues as to what they are looking for.

Artists seem to be good at laying down the bare bones of what they would like their site to look like and how they want to structure it. Perhaps artists share a method of working things out before they start creative projects that is able to translate across different media, who knows?

When I met Fiona she knew lots of the parameters for her website, had done lots of research into other site along similar lines and had some fantastic close-up photos of her hand-made wedding invitation cards to use on the site. It was obvious that Fiona loves texture and colour so this seemed to point the way to the design for her site.

The information on the site was fairly limited and the photos would take up most of the space on the screen so I made up a page consisting of oblongs surrounded by white keylines to create a kind of gallery across the screen to fit in as many images as possible. The resulting site is probably the most textured that I have ever made and immediately visually reflects the product Fiona makes.

On this site every page features a different colour and texture from one of Fiona’s cards and this helps Fiona to get across her message that every card is unique and can be personalised to match the colour, style and even the fabric of the bridal dress.

To see the site for yourself please click here.

This post is written by Charlotte Lamb, designer for I to Eye

When I start designing a website all I have is the information from the client, perhaps a logo or a colour and a few words about what they would prefer their site to look like and the kind of customers they want to reach. I always try to combine all the things the client wants and their target audience into the design so that the site will look attractive, be easy to navigate and respond to the need for lots of text, lots of pictures or sometimes a bit of both. At the beginning anything is possible and that can be an exciting place to start.

With the Niall Catlin site I had a really fab modern logo to start with, strong colours (black and orange) and a description that the site needed to look modern and clean and have a list of the plumbing and heating services provided displayed on the first page. The site design evolved through playing with the logo shapes filled with montaged photos onto a cleaner line of boxed photos to help describe visually the areas they work in.

I think the final site looks great when browsed, very clean and simple but with plenty of space on the pages to describe the services Niall Catlin Plumbing and Heating provide and some of their excellent testimonials taken from the Check a Trade website. Visit the new Niall Catlin site by clicking here.

If you would like I to Eye to design your website or take a look at your website and redesign it then why not contact us? If you would like to see other sites we have designed for clients click here to visit our gallery page.

Posted by Charlotte Lamb, designer at I to Eye

Today I am going to introduce you to one of my favourite minimalist designs, as far as websites can ever be minimalist with all those buttons…

The owners of a new business: Basingstoke Apartment Services, came to see us at I to Eye with some specific ideas about the kind of clean and simple site they really wanted.  It is easy for sites with a lot of content such as photographs of properties and their interiors to become cluttered and difficult to navigate. Basingstoke Apartment Service also had lots of other information they needed to include for landlords as well as tenants and it became clear they needed something that would allow all this information to be easily read by site visitors.

The top part of the site acts as a sort of compressed navigation and corporate information banner as it neatly includes the contact numbers as well as all the navigation buttons alongside the logo.

It was important to get some photographs on the pages to relieve the intended white space and I designed a simple grid that allowed photographs of the local area to be included as well as the strapline for the company. The text for all the pages re-uses the red, grey and black theme that the company logo suggested to me when I saw it.  A grey keyline helps to draw the eye down the page as well as defining the edge of the site pages. Each page is bookended by the red footer that carries the text version of all the links.

The site is now updated regularly with new properties and the design allows the company to present a corporate image unified with all their paperwork and advertising to customers.

Visit the site by clicking here.

Posted by Charlotte Lamb, designer at I to Eye. 

The next website I am going to look at is one that I to Eye have been working on for a long time, we have seen the site change and develop as the business itself has changed over the last few years.

Relish People is a company that organises life changing classes and events to help participants build up their confidence, meet their goals and improve their lives. Wendy and Kim run the business and work with both individuals, groups and with businesses in the south of England and their infectious enthusiasm has shaped their website from the beginning.

Originally the site had a collection of hand-drawn illustrations used to convey a sense of fun around a subject that can be hard to articulate with design and now the site has a growing collection of photographs the owners feel are appropriate to the ideas being put forward.

Probably the most eye-catching aspect of the site is the bright purple colour chosen by Kim and Wendy. I began to understand just how important is was to them when I heard they have painted their office the same colour! Because the colour is so bright and welcoming I simply drew a curved banner to act as a frame for the navigation and pages to hang off.  The advantage of the design is that with each new course Relish do they can update the site easily.

Relish liked the banner design so much it now also features on their printed flyers, a real success!

Go and visit the site here.

Posted by Charlotte Lamb, designer at I to Eye.

For my first blog post (ever) I am going to take a quick look at one of our more recent web design projects and examine some of the the reasons behind the decisions I made when designing it.

 Janet Ashfield of Mpowerme is a life coach and she came to I to Eye for a re-design of her existing website. In contrast to many clients Janet already had a lot of written material for the site and because of her existing site she also had ideas about how the site would be structured and the audience she wanted to reach. So my contribution more than anything else was to provide a design that would allow her text to become the centre of attention and provide a means for the visitor to navigate through the pages easily.

So the design became a series of boxed links on the hame page to allow visitors to locate the precise service they were interested in and an array of links across the top of the pages so any page can be accessed at any time.

 I followed the style and colours of the logo Janet already had closely because it had a lot of impact and it felt right to extend it across the website balanced by the white background of the pages.

 Go and visit the website here.

My all time top web design tip to sell goods and services from your website is really simple.

Know your market, know your customers, identify their ‘pain’ and understand the barriers to making a sale.

Then design your website to address those issues.