Chula Vista web design with room for a second language.

In a city where 57.4% of residents speak a language other than English at home, a layout is a decision about who gets to read it. That figure doesn't say which language or how anyone likes to buy, and we didn't test language on these sites, so ask your customers before you pay for translation. But plan for the answer. Words grow and shrink between languages, and buttons built tight to one word tend to break on the next. Our design habit here would be to leave the room now, so a second language can be an addition and not a redo. See the web design page for how we work.

The forms need it most. Of the 98 form fields we found on the homepages we tested, 38 had no label, ARIA name or title we could find, 39% against 27% in our 31-city sample. That's a modest count, and one long form can swing it. Still, a box with no name on it is hard in any language. Text contrast is about the same as in the sample, failing on some text at 55% of sites against 62%. Images missing alt text run 24% against 18%. Images served too small for the screen run 21% against 13%, 8 of 38 sites, so that one's worth a look if photographs do your selling.

Then there's the wait. Median main content took 8.7 seconds to show, and the middle half of sites ran from 4.8 to 13.3 seconds, a wide spread on 38 sites. Median page weight is 3.22 MB, about the same as our sample's 3.08 MB. For a gym, the top of the page is the class schedule. For a clinic, it's what a new patient does first. For a contractor in a city where the median home is valued at $758,700, it's finished work, sized for a phone. Websites run $1,500 to $5,750 at a fixed price, up to 70 pages. If only the forms are wrong, it may be a repair, from $149. The numbers are in the Chula Vista report. Send us your homepage and we'd start with the forms.