Web Design and Development in Greenville, SC | Merge

So Merge is on the move.  We are leaving our downtown loft for one of Greenville's newest and coolest spaces, the Next Innovation Center.  As sad as we are to go, here are the top five things we are most excited about.

1.  New Neighbors:  Gnoso, NWN, Michelin Development, Northgate Labs, Promo Pipeline, SinglePoint, Next and UCAN.  See you all soon. 

2. New (more) Space:  In the last six months, Merge has almost doubled in size.  Our new space will not only provide great space for future growth, but also a great space for current and future clients to visit and meet.

3.  The War Room:  Merge's new innovation space.  White board walls and plenty of room for sketchboarding for the next generation of web design. 

4.  Location, location, location:  While this one is a little bittersweet, we love being able to walk to our favorite local haunts, being right next to Cleveland Park will be great for a lunchtime run.

5.  Common Areas:  Not only does the Next building provide plenty of these, but we have a few of our own in the new digs.  Team Merge is excited about hanging out on some comfy furniture and cranking out some great ideas.

Although it didnt crack the top five, there was one recurring theme when I polled Merge, so it begs a mention.  Bathrooms that don't reside right by someones desk.  It's the little things that count.

Bottom Line:  Merge will be open for business at the new joint on February 15th, hopefully you'll stop by and say hey. 

Why is photography important in web design?

Great photography can greatly improve the look and feel of your website, enforce your brand image, and add a level of trust and professionalism to your website that text alone cannot.

So, does that mean that I can plop any old photos onto my website and be good to go?  Well reader, I'm glad you asked.  With everyday access to digital cameras, many people take this task into their own hands. This can lead to less than desirable results, and can even demean your design.

Take our client, OOBE, for example.  OOBE has a great photographer and makes excellent use of photos throughout their website. These photos instill their professionalism, their expertise of uniforms design, and showcase the impressive quality of their products.  Now, imagine if OOBE had sent a random Joe Schmoe out to Great Wolf Lodge to make their rounds with a point and shoot?  You might end up with a result similar to the example below (take note of the photo on the right):

Lets compare and contrast: On the right you see this likable employee reading to a group of children in his snazzy uniform.  But it's a pretty plain photo, especially for OOBE's website design.  It doesn't do much to enhance the look and feel, nor does it help to get their message across (not to mention the poor indoor lighting, which is an important issue).  Using professional photography for your website's photos is a definite, and worthwhile upgrade to take your website to the next level.

Stock photo websites are a great solution to finding good photography. Websites like istockphoto.com and gettyimages.com have millions of photos available for purchase.  You might even strike gold and find a quality free image on free stock sites such as sxc.hu and freerangestock.com, which is always worth a look. 

However, if you have the resources, and especially if you have more specific product or brand, hiring a professional photographer is the way to go.  Merge recently has gathered a list of recommended photographers we trust for our clients.

How to choose/take photos for web design

The photography situations we've encountered while working with many clients is spread across the board.  If you are choosing photos yourself or having an outside photographer shoot them, there are some important points to keep in mind that will help the process run smoothly.

1. Compliment your website/brand

What is the look and feel of your website?  You want to choose photography that compliments your site and brand.  Let's take a look at AXIS Performance, a website we're about to launch.  AXIS Performance is an athletic training program that focuses on improving strength, speed, skill, and nutrition.  The website will soon provide downloadable videos of the trainers that allow you to train anytime, anywhere.  Since members will be regularly watching videos of the AXIS trainers, using general athletic stock photography would not do the site justice. The AXIS colors are grey and green, their design is clean yet a bit edgy, and the trainers are the face of AXIS.  The black and white, clean photography greatly enhances the website and the use of the trainers as models adds a more personal feel.

2. Orientation&composition

When you don't often look at your websites concept or wireframes and are concentrating on photos, its easy to forget the design.  You could get caught up in taking photos or you might find some stock that you love, and unintentionally forget the orientation and composition the photos need to be.

A common problem I run across is the improper orientation of images.  Say we have a horizontal slideshow of images on our hotel's homepage that we need a few photos for.  We should keep in mind that these photos need to be horizontal, or need to be composed so that there is room to crop the subject accordingly.  We have this pretty, vertically oriented photo of a room, but once we crop to our needed size of 940x300 pixels, we end with something like this:

As long as we're not going for an abstract feel, you can see the problem.  Cropping the photo this much adds no value to our slideshow, in which we're trying to show off our beautiful hotel.  This may seem like a common sense, but it's often hard to keep the big picture in mind (no pun intended).

We need to pick out another photo for our 940x300 pixel slideshow, and we need room to have some copy on the right side of the image.  Yet another thing to keep in mind at a photo shoot or when looking for stock images.  I'm not saying we have to find/take a photo with exactly this composition, but we do need to make sure there is plenty of room for any cropping that might be done.  Its also important to make sure our photos are given to the designer at a high resolution, so there is plenty of room to crop and scale the photo if needed.

So, reader, my advice for you is to keep the above in mind, whether you
need photos for your website, or you're a photographer who's been hired
to take photos for the web.  Keep a copy of the concept or wireframe
and requirements close by to refer to.  And, if at all possible, work with your web designer. 
I would personally love to help clients pick photos or work with the
photographer to make sure we're all on the same page, as I'm sure any
web designer would.  And a tip for web designers- be thorough when
explaining the size, orientation, and composition of the photos you
need.  

We're all working towards the same goal, so lets work together to ensure you get the best photography for your site!

1. Use professional photography- hire a photographer (Merge has a recommend list for our clients) or use stock photography
2. Keep in mind the look and feel of your website and brand- what are you trying to convey with your photography?
3. Keep in mind the orientation and composition of your website
4. Deliver high resolution images
5. Work with your designer

Bottom Line: Awesome photography greatly increases the look of your website.  It can add an extra dose of personality, trust, and professionalism.  

 I asked a prospect to tell me about his business. He quickly clicked off three foundational elements of his business, under these headlines:

• Focus
• Structure
• People

I was impressed. When he asked me about Merge, I was able to use the same three elements (with a minor tweak):

• Focus: Merge focuses on generating you results through your web site (we don't focus only on the web site).
• Structure: Merge uses its Digital Strategy Methodology to align your web objectives with your business objectives (to generate the results).
• Structure 2: Merge does this through its Partnership Model, where we become your business' outsourced Web Division.
• People: We have painstakingly built Team Merge, a team of web specialists, to deliver on our promise to deliver results.

How about you? Can you rattle off your Focus, Structure and People? Take it a step further and do the same for your web site. What's its focus? How is it structured--and if it was an employee, what role(s) would it be playing for your organization?

Bottom Line: Take five minutes and use the Three Elements to gain better clarity for your company--and while you're at it, try it on your web site as well.

Merge conducts quarterly webinars and in October of 2009, we reviewed the best practices of ecommerce by analyzing four major book retailers, ranging from Barnes and Noble, Borders, Amazon and Wal-Mart.

Best Practices of E-Commerce from Merge Web on Vimeo.

Here at Merge, we do a top-knotch thing that we like to call our Lunch and Learn. Your average Lunch and Learn consists of a randomly selected Merge-ian telling the rest of Merge all about something really awesome.

We also use a top-knotch CMS called Drupal. There's a new version of Drupal in the works: Drupal 7. The great thing about Drupal is that it's open source, which means that it's free and anyone can contribute. I just happen to be one of those anyones, and I spent a good bit of time talking with other Drupal developers about the new features, fixing bugs, contributing code, etc. Needless to say, I'm pretty pumped about the new release.

This time, it was my turn, and I chose to talk about the work done so far. Drupal 7 adds a lot of features and also changes a lot of things for the better. Some of those things include:

• A new administrative toolbar
• A new shortcut bar
• A new administration theme designed by the great Mark Boulton
• A new administrative overlay which allows you to access your site's administration without ever leaving the front end of the site
• A new bunch of really cool things that makes the lives of programmers a lot easier

The common thread behind most of the new additions to Drupal 7 is that they all make Drupal easier to use. In light of this, Merge is going to be taking a lot of the cool ideas from Drupal 7 and start giving them to our clients now. These new additions include a shortcut bar, a really easy to use administration interface, and a nice customized help section for each of our clients.

Why? Because Merge isn't in the business of cranking out websites. Merge is in the business of providing solutions for clients' needs.

Bottom line: Web development isn't about making pretty websites, it's about making sites that are usable and functional, and that's what Merge does best.