Just chillin’ with the Goldsmiths, and once a web designer, always a web designer

My first social stop on my trip is with Karen Goldsmith in Fayetteville, NC. Turns out her folks are on their visit the kids in the US trip (they have lived in Israel for the past 13? years), so I get to visit with them as well. We’ve been hanging out today, and made it to a movie (Hot Fuzz, a horribly funny spoof of cop movies) — remember that when it’s hot and humid in the afternoon, movies are a popular attraction.

For those of you who haven’t heard, Karen has been running a chiropractic practice in Fayetteville, Atlas Chiropractic, for some years now. I got to see her busy office yesterday, then take a nap on the massage table in the back room (24 hours of travel will do that to you: I left home around 3:0o pm Friday via taxi and BART, then a three leg flight, then picking up my car and driving up to Fayetteville). Karen has won “Best of Fayetteville” in the local free weekly several times.

In talking to Karen about her business’ web site, I realized that I am to web design and small business like Karen is to chiropractic: I’m certain that there are many ways people can build a web site (her: take care of themselves) but that many people are lead down poor paths by folks who don’t know any better. I’m continually amazed at how poorly designed many web sites are at the structural level. Sometimes they even look pretty, but their organization and navigability is very bad. Anyone I build web sites for I stress the importance of using good structure for their site (e.g. tags in the code that says “this is important”, “this is the first section”) and how this makes the site more accessible to: people with vision disabilities, novice web users, and, if they don’t care about that, search engines. One client I built a web site who does bodywork and movement didn’t think accessibility issue was that important but went along with my recommendations. A while later, she gained a blind client who said she appreciated the accessibility of the site. For more on this, visit High Accessibility Is Effective Search Engine Optimization by Andy Hagans http://www.alistapart.com/articles/accessibilityseo.