Website Design in Texas

Usually not. Engagement data across many published studies consistently shows the first slide gets the overwhelming majority of interactions and later slides get almost none, so anything past slide one is effectively invisible. They also hurt performance, because every slide's image loads, and they frequently cause layout shift. A single well-chosen hero image with one clear call to action nearly always outperforms a five-slide carousel.

In practice one typeface family with two or three weights covers almost every design need. Each additional weight is a separate file the browser downloads before text renders in its final form, and font files are among the larger assets on a typical page. We serve fonts with `font-display: swap` so text is readable immediately in a fallback face rather than invisible while the web font loads, and we preconnect to the font host to cut the handshake delay.

We target WCAG 2.1 AA: body text at a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 against its background, large text at 3:1, visible keyboard focus states, form inputs with real associated labels, and a heading structure that describes the page rather than being chosen for its font size. Beyond being the right thing to do, several of these overlap directly with how search engines parse a page — a correct heading hierarchy and descriptive link text help both a screen reader and a crawler.

WebP for most images, with JPEG or PNG as a fallback for older browsers, and AVIF where the extra compression justifies the slower encoding. Every image is exported at the dimensions it actually displays at rather than being scaled down in the browser, and `srcset` provides alternates so a phone doesn't download a desktop-sized file. Explicit width and height attributes are always set so the browser reserves the right space and the page doesn't shift as images arrive.

Enough to communicate a relationship or state change, and no more. A subtle transition confirming a button was pressed, or content fading in as it enters the viewport, helps orient the visitor. Animation that delays access to content, or that plays on every scroll, becomes an obstacle. We also honour the `prefers-reduced-motion` setting, because for some users motion causes genuine physical discomfort — the site should respect that preference automatically.

The risk in a redesign is almost never the visual change — it's the structural one. Before anything is rebuilt we inventory every existing URL and which of them have traffic or inbound links. Any URL that changes gets a 301 redirect to its closest equivalent, page titles and headings that already rank keep their key terms, and content that earns the ranking is carried across rather than trimmed for visual tidiness. Then we monitor Search Console for crawl errors and ranking movement for several weeks after launch.