Posts

When I Recommend a Website Redesign Instead of Small Fixes

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This article is adapted from the Prateeksha Web Design blog . A website redesign is a bigger investment than most businesses realise going in, so I don't recommend one lightly. When a client comes to me unhappy with their site, my first job isn't to sell a rebuild — it's to work out whether the actual problem can be solved with targeted fixes instead. Most of the time the answer is somewhere in between, and being honest about which side of that line you're on saves a lot of wasted budget. Small Fixes Are Enough When the Foundation Is Sound If a site is fast, mobile-friendly, and structurally sensible, but the copy is outdated, the imagery feels dated, or a couple of pages are converting poorly, that's usually a content and design refresh, not a full redesign. I've fixed plenty of underperforming sites just by rewriting headlines, adding trust signals near the call-to-action, and cleaning up a confusing navigation menu. None of that requires touching the cod...

Accessibility in Web Design: The Practical Standards I Build In From Day One

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This article is adapted from the Prateeksha Web Design blog . Accessible web design gets treated as an afterthought on a lot of projects I audit, usually because it's assumed to mean a slow, expensive compliance exercise. In practice, most of what makes a site accessible also makes it faster, clearer, and easier to use for every visitor — not just people using screen readers or keyboard navigation. That's why I build these standards in from the first wireframe rather than trying to retrofit them after launch. Colour Contrast Is Non-Negotiable Low-contrast text over busy background images looks stylish in a mockup and becomes unreadable the moment someone views it on a phone in daylight, let alone for a visitor with low vision. I check contrast ratios against the WCAG 2.1 AA standard as part of the design review, not after a client complains they can't read their own site. This one habit alone fixes a surprising number of usability complaints that have nothing to do wit...

Ten Questions I Would Ask Before Hiring a Web Design Agency

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This article is adapted from the Prateeksha Web Design blog . Hiring a web design agency is easier to get wrong than it should be, mostly because most businesses only find out what a good process looks like after they've already been through a bad one. Rather than list warning signs after the fact, I want to give you the opposite: a structured framework of ten questions to ask before you sign anything. Ask these on the first or second call, and you'll know within twenty minutes whether an agency has a real process or is winging it. 1. What Does Your Actual Process Look Like, Step by Step? Ask for the stages in order — discovery, wireframes, design, development, testing, launch — and how long each typically takes. A serious agency can walk you through this without hesitation because they run it on every project. If the answer is vague or jumps straight to we will design something you will love that's a gap worth noting before you commit. 2. Who Owns the Code, the Domai...

How to Audit Your Google Business Profile Against Your Top Mumbai Competitors

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This article is adapted from the Prateeksha Web Design blog . Most Mumbai business owners check their own Google Business Profile and stop there. They glance at their star rating, maybe check a competitor's once, and call it research. That's not a Google Business Profile competitor audit — it's a glance. A real audit means placing your profile next to the businesses that actually outrank you and comparing every field, photo, and signal until you can name the exact gaps costing you the map pack. This is the process we run before recommending local SEO work, and it ends in a 20-point audit table you can fill in today. Step 1: Find Your Real Local Competitors — Not Who You Assume The businesses you consider competitors and the ones Google treats as your competitors are often two different lists. This audit starts by finding out who actually shows up when your customers search — not the three names you happen to know off the top of your head. If you haven't yet worked...

Google Business Profile Conversion Optimization: Turn Maps Views Into Calls & WhatsApp Leads

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This article is adapted from the Prateeksha Web Design blog . Getting views and getting calls on your Google Business Profile are two different problems. Google Business Profile conversion optimization is the practice of turning people who already see your profile — checking hours, reading reviews, comparing you against three other businesses on the map — into people who call, message, or book. Most Mumbai businesses treat their profile as a listing to fill in once and forget. The ones that convert treat it as a landing page that happens to live inside Google Maps. If you've already ruled out visibility problems and know people are finding your profile, this guide covers exactly what to change — the call button, the booking link, the photos, the offers, the WhatsApp journey, and the landing page your profile sends traffic to — so more of those views turn into paying customers. Fix the Call Button First The call button is the highest-intent action on your Google Business Pr...

Website Browser Compatibility Checklist: What Should You Test?

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This article is adapted from the Prateeksha Web Design blog . A website that looks perfect in Chrome can break silently in Safari. A form won't submit. A font never loads. A checkout button hides behind a layout that collapsed on one screen size. A website browser compatibility checklist is the only reliable way to catch these failures before your customers do — and it needs to check function, not just appearance. This checklist gives you 36 specific things to test across every browser your visitors use, grouped into 13 categories. For the full walkthrough of how cross-browser testing works — tools, browser/device matrices, and workflow — read our complete cross-browser testing guide first. This post is the checklist you run once that process is set up. Why a Checklist Beats "Just Looking at It" Most browser bugs are invisible unless you interact with the page the way a real visitor does. A visual scan catches maybe a third of real compatibility issues — the res...

News Website Design: Homepage, Article & Category Page Layouts That Work

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This article is adapted from the Prateeksha Web Design blog . A news website has about three seconds to prove it belongs to a reader who just clicked in from Google, Twitter, or a WhatsApp forward. News website design is the discipline of arranging headlines, images, and navigation so that reader finds the right story instantly, trusts what they're looking at, and keeps reading. Get the layout wrong and even the best reporting sits unread below a cluttered fold. This guide covers the actual layout decisions: what goes where on the homepage, how an article page should be structured from headline to related-stories module, how category pages should organize a flood of content without becoming a wall of links, and what changes on mobile. If you're planning the full build — CMS, hosting, monetization, SEO setup — for the full step-by-step build process, see our complete guide . This article is about what the reader actually sees and clicks. Homepage Anatomy: What Belongs Abov...