Why Great Website Design Matters

Solutions by Design

Your website is often the first interaction potential customers have with your business. Within seconds, visitors form an opinion about your brand based on what they see and experience online. That's why exceptional website design is no longer a luxury…it's a necessity.

At Solutions by Design, we understand that a website is much more than an online brochure. It's a powerful business tool that can attract visitors, build trust, and convert prospects into loyal customers. Clean layouts, compelling visuals, intuitive navigation, and professional branding create an immediate positive impression.

A well-designed website communicates credibility, attention to detail, and a commitment to customer experience within moments of a visitor arriving on your site. However, beautiful design is only part of the equation. Effective website design focuses on creating a seamless user experience that helps visitors find information quickly and easily.

Clear navigation, logical content organization, and strategically placed calls-to-action guide users through your website and encourage engagement. Whether visitors are looking for products, services, educational content, or contact information, a well-structured website makes the journey effortless. The easier it is for users to interact with your site, the more likely they are to stay longer and take action.

With a significant percentage of web traffic coming from smartphones and tablets, mobile-friendly design is critical. Today's users expect websites to function flawlessly regardless of the device they're using. Responsive website design ensures that content automatically adapts to different screen sizes, providing an optimal experience on desktops, tablets, and mobile devices. Not only does this improve user satisfaction, but it also helps boost search engine rankings, as mobile usability remains an important factor in SEO performance.

Visitors expect websites to load quickly. Even a delay of a few seconds can cause users to abandon a site and seek information elsewhere. Fast-loading websites create a smoother user experience and improve visitor retention. Additionally, search engines favor websites that perform efficiently, making speed optimization a key component of a successful digital strategy. From optimized images to streamlined code, every aspect of website performance contributes to overall effectiveness.

Modern design elements, consistent branding, high-quality imagery, and clear messaging reassure visitors that they are engaging with a reputable organization. A polished website demonstrates that your business values quality and is committed to delivering a positive experience.

The most successful websites do more than provide information…they create experiences. Interactive elements, engaging visuals, compelling videos, and thoughtfully crafted content encourage visitors to explore and connect with your brand.

At Solutions by Design, we specialize in creating dynamic digital experiences that combine innovative design, engaging content, and user-focused functionality. Whether you're launching a new website or enhancing an existing one, our team can help you build an online presence that captures attention and delivers results.

As digital experiences continue to evolve, businesses must prioritize website design as a key component of their overall marketing strategy. An effective website attracts visitors, enhances user engagement, strengthens brand credibility, and supports long-term business growth.

Your website is often your most valuable digital asset. Contact Solutions by Design today to make sure your website is working as hard as you are.

 

Montage Interactive: Advertising and Promotion

There are endless opportunities for our Montage users. One of the latest features is advertising on the Montage boards. Scratch Pay a leading provider of financial services for veterinary hospital clients has entered an agreement to provide promotional sponsorship funds to our Montage clients. Scratch joins the likes of Trupanion, Royal Canin, Virbac, Elanco, Purina and others in promoting their products and services to pet owners and providing sponsorship funds to participating hospitals. Beta testing begins in just a few weeks!

More On Montage

What is Montage Pro?

Solutions by Design has created a powerful interactive digital bulletin board that is flexible for any business. We’ve taken the sleek look of modern technology and paired it with our specialization in software and programming to create the ultimate digital communications solution. Equipped with a touch screen, custom widgets, photo booth, whiteboard, and more, our Montage board delivers relevant information and technology to your internal audience at your location.

What are widgets?

Our Montage software interface is comprised of Widgets; an application that enables a user to perform a function, similar to an app on a smartphone. Each widget is designed by Solutions by Design for specific vertical markets, our most popular being orthodontics, veterinary, and home building markets. Though we specialize in these fields, we do have several other business markets we work with and can customize widgets for any area of business. 

Take a look at some of the widgets available to our Montage users by visiting the Montage page of our website. Click here to view that page now.

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Google’s New Mobile Index Split | How It Will Effect Your SEO

Due to the fact that the majority of searches are now conducted on mobile devices, Google has decided to split their index into mobile-specific and desktop-specific versions.

What is the Google index? Every day, Google’s search engine “bots” crawl through websites and index the contents so that results can be presented to searchers. Until now there has been one unified index for both desktop and mobile searches, so no matter what device you were searching from, the results would be basically the same.

Google’s plan is to provide results optimized for mobile users, and they will be updating and focusing on the mobile index to a greater degree than the desktop index. When a search is conducted from a desktop computer, Google will present results from the desktop index. Alternately, when a search is conducted on a mobile device, Google will present results from the mobile index.

Effect on Websites
If a website is responsive, very little will change. The main criteria will be the speed of the website. If the website is slow to load then it will suffer in the rankings compared to faster sites.

• This will be especially important going forward with new websites we build, and the designers and developers will need to be aware of these issues:
• All sites will need to be run through Google’s website speed tester prior to launch. If the site scores lower than 90 out of 100, adjustments will need to be made following Google’s suggestions.
• Images and other design elements will need to be optimized to enhance the speed of the site. These design considerations will need to be made during the initial concept phase to avoid any potential speed issues.
• Scripts and other files necessary to the site will need to be “minified” and placed in the optimal load order. Google has good documentation on this and it should be followed by the developers. In addition, no supporting files should be loaded from external sites wherever possible. This includes jQuery base files and jQuery app files. Wherever possible, font files should be loaded locally.

For SEO clients who already have responsive sites, the same issues above will apply and some modifications will need to be made.

For those clients with separate mobile sites there will be more issues to consider. The main issue will be content. Since most mobile sites contain only an abbreviated portion of the content of the main website, the reduction in content (because Google is now keeping a separate mobile index) will definitely affect the site’s rankings.

To correct this, the same content that exists on the desktop version of the site will need to be present in the mobile version. This ensures that Google will have enough content to index in order to rank the site effectively. Obviously, this presents challenges when it comes to showing interactive content (Choose Your Look, Terms, etc), and a solid development plan will need to be in place to address these challenges.

Also, Google’s focus is moving increasingly toward their AMP (accelerated mobile pages) technology and soon will play a major role in rankings. It is highly recommended that we begin exploring this technology in order to stay in the game.

Effect on SEO Efforts
For existing responsive sites, the main thing to consider is optimizing the site for speed. This will involve a combination of work from the designers and the developers. The designers will need to develop routines for optimizing the images and graphical elements, and the developers will need to concentrate on optimizing the code and supporting files.

For new responsive sites, it will be important to follow the guidelines above during the entire development process.

In terms of additional time needed for SEO purposes, there should be no additional efforts other than a possible change to the monthly reporting. I’m still waiting to see if the SEO reporting software will change to accommodate the index split. But once the site is optimized for speed, monthly on-site SEO efforts should remain the same. For sites with separate mobile versions, a little additional time will be required in order to make sure the desktop and mobile versions are in sync, with attention being paid to the differences needed in order to affect rankings. The additional time needed will have little impact overall.

Conclusion
Unless more changes are revealed by Google, this announced change to Google’s index will have little impact in terms of monthly SEO work required. The primary consideration will be developing responsive sites for optimal speed, developing new techniques and requirements to achieve this, and exploring new technologies such as AMP. The burden will rest on the designers and developers to produce sites that meet Google’s optimization guidelines.

Google’s War Against Pop-Ups

Last month Google announced that they would begin penalizing websites that display content-blocking pop-ups. These are called “interstitial ads,” you can find these all over the Internet as you try to browse certain websites. This is how they work: you navigate to an article that you want to read and as you are just starting with the first paragraph, a pop-up appears that blocks the content. These pop-ups usually want you to sign up for their newsletter, purchase a subscription, or will display an advertisement for a product or service.

Sometimes it is hard to find the button to close the pop-up, and some even prevent you from closing the pop-up unless you click through the advertisement. These pop-ups are irritating and Google is making sure that websites with these types of ads don’t make it into their search results. Google’s focus is on the user's website experience, especially when it relates to mobile browsing, and this type of advertising interferes with that experience.

What does this mean for our clients? We have always advised against adding pop-up advertising for our clients and will continue to do so. There are much better and less annoying ways to get your message to your visitors. Now that Google will start penalizing websites that utilize pop-up advertising, you can’t afford to choose this option in the future.  

If you have a website with interstitial ads, contact Solutions by Design to discuss updating your site. We have a full in-house staff of graphic designers, web developers, programmers, and more, as well as specialize in custom websites.  Also, we don't use templates and have over 30 years of experience assisting clients all over the world with maintaining branding, web presence, and our clients have top rankings on Google. Call us today 800-888-4084.  

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Important Reasons Why You May Need To Revamp Your Website

The internet is ever-changing so it’s important to remember your website must reflect those changes as well. Maintaining your website is essential to your business because most potential leads come from searching online for goods and services. Typically, the first impression potential customers of your business get will come from your website and other platforms your business is connected to online. Because of this, it’s imperative your website stays fresh with new content and design trends. What worked for you in the past may not work for you in the future, especially as the audience to your site changes and web developments continue to occur. So when is a good time to update the look, feel, and operation of your website?

Keep reading to learn some important reasons you may need to revamp your website with redesigning and functional modifications.

Maintenance
Just like everything else, your website may need repairs once in a while. Unlike a car, however, you may not be aware of when something breaks on your site. Having a trusted team to help you with website repairs will make your life a lot easier as most of your staff members in-house don’t have expertise on browsers and servers that operate your site. Sometimes what may seem to be a minor change may actually result in a major web redesign. Regularly revamping your website will keep your business updated with the latest technology changes and leave your customers with a flawless website experience.

Results
You might have a breathtaking website with amazing functionality and gorgeous graphics, but if you’re not getting the results you want it may be time to redesign your site. One major purpose of a website is to build a customer base, so if you’re unhappy with the analytics of that, redesigning may help. Updating and redesigning things such as the call to action, too much text, or the tone of voice can help you achieve your goal results.

It’s Not Responsive
Out of our clients at Solutions by Design, over 50% of their website visitors browse from a mobile device, that’s why we make sure our website clients have responsive websites. Responsive websites are crafted to provide an easy experience and website navigation to users on a wide range of devices and browsers. Also, another important factor is Google algorithms give preference to responsive websites. If you want to keep your rankings up or increase them, you need to have a responsive site. Responsive sites must be built from the ground up, you can’t convert these, but you’ll likely see a return on your investment once you update from a non-responsive.

There are several other factors as to why redesigning and routine maintenance to your website is significant. From outdated third-party tools to your competitors who keep up with the trends. Realizing that investing in your website regularly will keep your business modern, functional, and ideally it will appeal to visitors and turn them into new customers. Do you think your website may be in need of a redesign? Give us a call to set up a consultation. Call 800-888-4084.

The Death of Flash

There have been warnings from the major browser companies in the past couple of years regarding their decreasing support of Adobe Flash. Google and Firefox have both stated that it would eventually drop all support for Flash, and it looks like Google is making good on that promise.

This week Google announced that the new version of their Chrome browser, Chrome 53, which is set to be released next month will block Flash content by default. Users will still be prompted about enabling Flash support, but this is the first major step toward dropping support altogether. Firefox will soon follow with the same type of Flash blocking.

What does this mean for you as a customer? If you still have a Flash-based website, or if you have any Flash content on your website, your customers will be unable to view it. A Flash-based website is now a virtual dinosaur and it’s time to upgrade.

If you don’t have a Flash-based website, or any type of Flash content on your website, congratulations! This will have no impact on your online presence. If you’re still using Flash, it’s time to update it now to prevent complications in the future. If you are ready to take the steps to update now, call Solutions by Design at 800-888-4084.

The Ultimate Facebook Secret to Success for Orthodontic Practices

Lately, we’ve been getting a ton of questions from clients confused about social media and how to create effective social media strategies on social networks. This is a huge topic, seriously, we could write pages and pages on it! To make your lives easier, and save our hands from carpal tunnel, we decided to share with you the ultimate Facebook secret to success for orthodontic practices.

Here it is…USE YOUR CURRENT PATIENTS AS BRAND AMBASSADORS ON FACEBOOK FOR YOUR PRACTICE!

How do you do this, you ask? Simple. Engage with your patients when they’re at your practice and encourage them to connect with you online, specifically on Facebook. One way to do this is something a lot of our social media clients currently do; use strategic Facebook contests.

Let’s explore this a little more.

So many practices do contests, but the real question is, are contests being done right? This Summer, Solutions by Design’s social media clients have tons of custom created contests that are efficient for the practices social media marketing strategies. Several of our custom created contests promote patients to post selfies and tag the practice on Facebook, in order to be entered to win a prize from their doctor.

By doing this, we have the patients utilizing the power of social media for the practices brand awareness.  Yes, posting photos of the patients to the Facebook business page is great, but having patients post their own photos and tagging the practice is even better, and the ultimate secret to social media success. By doing something like this, your patients become brand ambassadors for your practice on Facebook.  Ultimately, this connects their closest friends and followers with your practice because they tag your practice on Facebook, and this shows the world of Facebook they do business with you. All while they think they're just entering a contest.This eliminates extra costs of paying to boost Facebook posts, purchase Facebook advertisements, or worrying about HIPAA consent forms.

Also, when your patients tag you in a post, Facebook will notify your practice, and provide you with the option to share the post on your practice's page.

Custom designed contests are just one of the several ways our social media clients use patients as brand ambassadors. Are you interested in learning more about our social media services? Contact our trusted social media department and ask for more details or client reviews.  Remember, there are several companies out there claiming to provide similar services, but they’re based on limited experience and misguided advice; especially when it comes to the area of orthodontic marketing. 

3...2...1...Launch!

April has been an amazing month for Solution by Design’s website clients. We have had several of our website clients finalize their websites and are now live! Solutions by Design would like to congratulate the following clients on their recent live websites.

These beautifully custom crafted websites created by our SBD team show detailed skill, knowledge, and professionalism of each practice. Check them out now!

1. Dr.Rupali Wadhwa : Morristown Orthodontics – New Responsive Website, Social Media Program and bLink Patient Reminders
2. Dr.Jeremy Albert: Albert Family Ortho – New Responsive Website
3. Dr.Alex Cranford: Cranford Orthodontics – Responsive Website Upgrade and bLink Patient Reminders
4. Dr.Eric Sacks: Sacks Orthodontics - Mobile Website Re-Design
5. Dr.David Kemp: Kemp Orthodontics – New Responsive Website, Social Media Program and bLink Patient Reminders

Our team is proud to call you all clients. It was a pleasure working closely with you during this process to provide you with a truly amazing website. Solutions by Design features custom website development. No templates and no canned content. Each site is developed based upon the attributes of the individual practice and its markets.

Our clients choose Solutions by Design for the creation of their website after evaluating their other options and realize that we are the only company that truly offers a unique combination of design, marketing, programming, SEO, social media and clinical knowledge necessary to create effective and functional websites. We are the total solution and offer several levels of website development based upon your needs and budget. Give us a call to now at 800-888-4084 and ask us about our newest promotions.

New Websites Launch

We’ve had an exciting start to the New Year for our SBD website clients. From January through February we have had 6 of our website clients finalize their websites and are now live! Solutions by Design would like to congratulate the following clients on their recent live websites.

These beautifully custom crafted websites created by our SBD team show detailed skill, knowledge, and professionalism of each practice. Check them out now!

http://www.carolinaorthopedo.com – Dr. Jesse Arbon (New Responsive Website)

http://www.coolsmilesorthodontics.com - Dr. Simjee (Upgrade from HTML to Responsive)

http://www.southbaybraces.org – Dr. Peter Sinclair (Upgrade from Flash to Responsive)

http://www.texasorthodonticspecialists.com – Dr. Chen (New Mobile Website)

http://www.appletreeortho.com - Dr. Timmeny & Dr. Polgrean (New Responsive Website)

http://www.webbbraces.com – Dr. Brian Webb (New Responsive Website)

Our team is proud to call you all clients. It was a pleasure working closely with you during this process to provide you with a truly amazing website. Solutions by Design features custom website development. No templates and no canned content. Each site is developed based upon the attributes of the individual practice and its markets.

Our clients choose Solutions by Design for the creation of their website after evaluating their other options and realize that we are the only company that truly offers a unique combination of design, marketing, programming, SEO, social media and clinical knowledge necessary to create effective and functional websites. We are the total solution and offer several levels of website development based upon your needs and budget. Give us a call to now at 800-888-4084 and ask us about our newest promotions.

SBD Website Development - January 2016 News

All of our website clients received an e-mail discussing the addition of a SSL Certificate to your website for added security.  This is highly recommended for a variety of reasons. As discussed in the document that you received, not only is this necessary for Chrome but we fell will be a requirement by most browsers to add security to the sites visited.

If you didn’t catch the email on SSL security here is a short list of reasons why this is a critical piece to your site:

• Information submitted on the internet often pass through more than one computer before reaching its destination – SSL certificates encrypts communication broadcasted between users and webservers in case hackers are listening or collecting data (data mining) from the webpage traffic.


• Establishes trust with users accessing your webpage – so the public know you are who you say you are and transactions are protected.


• Authenticates your organization identity to public users via a Padlock image on the address bar in case someone else is spoofing with your IP address (trying to communicate information on your behalf).


• Encrypts webpage transactions so users who fill out forms or enter in their information through the website know it is encrypted. Any and all forms will now be secured.


• SEO…(search engines optimization) is enhanced with secure sites.

New Testimonial Page:

Many of our website clients utilize blink and or Montage.  Practice Reviewer is a great tool for enhanced SEO.  We are adding a new twist to those of you that use both of these products.  The new Testimonial feature allows your patients to take a photo with the Montage Board….then post a comment along with the photo to your website!  Before the Testimonial goes live…you will review each in ANDI, controlling all content before it goes live.