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Feathering Your Online Nest

You already know the value of a website. But how do you choose the right web designer?

The Basics

(if you're familiar with the basics, please feel free to skip ahead to the portfolio)

Creating and publishing a website is a complex process, and can seem a bit mysterious to the uninitiated. At Lucky Birds Media, we're happy to involve you in this process as much or as little as you like. Some people have a clear picture in mind of exactly what they want, and they just need someone to execute their vision. Others don't have the time to sit down and conceive a whole website out of thin air, and would prefer someone else do the heavy lifting. We're perfectly comfortable working with either extreme, or anywhere in the middle. Regardless of where you fall on that continuum, here are some of the basics you should know:

The first thing you need is a domain name. Your domain name is essentially the street address of your new online home. Our domain name, for example, is luckybirdsmedia.com. That one happened to be free (lucky for us!) but your preferred domain name, if it's a common one, might be taken. We can help you research available domain names, and suggest alternatives, should your first choice be unavailable.

The next thing you need is a hosting service. If the domain name is like your street address, the hosting service is like the plot of land where you're going to build your online house. Lucky Birds Media does not provide web hosting, just as neither your architect nor your building contractor sells you your land. We can, however, recommend an appropriate hosting service and plan, and we'll do all the legwork to get you set up. Once that's in place, all you need to do is continue making the payments to that hosting service — just as you would pay the rent or mortgage on a piece of property — for as long as you want your website to be visible to the public.

Once you've picked your street address and bought your land, the next step is to draw up the plans for your house — this is where the "design" part of the web design process begins. Now is the time to think about structure and organization of your content, as well as layout, colors, fonts, images, etc. With this well-considered plan in place, it's finally time to break ground so construction can begin.

No matter who you choose to design your website, you'll need to take these basic steps...so why choose Lucky Birds Media?

Beyond the Basics — The Lucky Birds Philosophy

At Lucky Birds Media, we believe the following:

1. In web design, form must follow function. Your website can be a thing of absolute beauty, but if it doesn't work properly for as wide an audience as possible, it's pretty much worthless.
2. Form follows function — but it follows it very, very closely. Any high school kid (or younger!) can slap together a few pages and call it a web site. We believe that a good website has thoughtful and consistent design both on its face and in its infrastructure. We pay extra attention to usability — with a Lucky Birds design, your users won't spend time figuring out your website, they'll spend time absorbing your content.
3. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. On the internet, things can blink, or spin, or beep, or bounce. Pretty neat, but do those tricks really help communicate your message? At Lucky Birds Media, we think of your content as a work of art, and your website simply as a frame. A good frame helps display the art, and in some cases can subtly complement it, but if your visitors think "What a great website!" instead of "What a great company!" then something's wrong.

If you found yourself nodding along with these three points, then look no further — you've found your web designer. Take a look at the portfolio below for some examples of our work:

Portfolio