St. Petersburg web design for the visitor who has never been here and the client who has seen ten firms.

Decide who you're talking to before you pick a typeface. A restaurant or gallery may be read by someone who has never been here, so it has to say where it is and what it is in a sentence, with a picture that's actually of the place. A financial or legal firm is being compared with others, so its design should get out of the way of who you are and whom you serve. In a county with 40,998 establishments, a stock image of a sunset does nothing for either one, in our view. That picture could belong to anybody.

Good looks have measurable costs, and here's where to look for them. We have no city sample, so these figures are from 1274 sites in our 31-city sample. A typical homepage in that group weighed 3.08 MB at the median, and 383 of 1228 were lighter than 2 MB. Some text fell short on contrast on 62% of them. Some tap targets were too small or too close on 22%. Headings broke their order at least once on 47%. 77 of 1228 showed at least some images at the wrong proportions, which is a poor look for a gallery. None of this describes any business here. All of it can be checked on yours.

A new site runs from $1,500 to $5,750 at a fixed price, up to 70 pages, and online stores start at $2,500. A site that still looks right may only need design upgrades, with repairs from $149. The St. Petersburg report has the wider argument. Tell us which of your two readers pays the bills, and we'll say what the first screen should do.