As many of you that read this blog or know me personally know, I used to design websites and like most freelances operated as a one man band. I still do when the mood takes me although these days it’s more for my own side projects. My client work is more concentrated on the strategy that goes into making websites work. What surprises me is how so many people I come into contact within this industry manage to convince clients how to ‘successfully’ market a site without understanding the basics of what’s underneath the hood.
You can’t deny the fact that aesthetics play a very important role but with more and more companies turning online as a more tractable, accountable and effective use of their marketing budget it really is about much more then a pretty frontend.
Designers need a toolset of knowledge to produce something that’s going to work, and work well otherwise you are better off employing the services of someone that can manage the design process before the designer gets carried away with something that looks amazing but might not be that practical for your client base.
The old proverb ‘if you build it, they will come’ no longer rings true. Even if look fancy, blitz the market with advertising and offer me a discount.
Mistakes I’ve made and learnt from along the way
- Expect a client to grasp what can be a steep learning curve with a content management systems
- Not explaining the findings in analytics from a monetisation perspective
- Not challenging the clients views along the development process with hard evidence to backup decisions
- Not encouraging the use of an online copywriter before development
- Committing to the design stage early
- Not conducting usability tests at each stage
- Thinking I could write copy for every website.. I cant
A good web designer has a role to play and will certainly have a full plate dealing with producing the most optimised code possible with time being taken up ensuring that the following is taken into account:
- Accessibility
- HTML validation
- JavaScript validation
- CSS validation
- Image optimization
While a copywriter will be looking at:
- Incorrect punctuation marks, particularly apostrophes, quotation marks and hyphens.
- Headings
- Widow/orphan terms in important paragraphs
- Consistency
- Keywords within content
- Capitalization (especially of main headings)
- Tense/Style of writing
- Recurring/common phrases
- Variations in words (e.g. UK vs US spelling)
- And much more
My suggestion is to use your budget wisely, divide the roles into the areas that people specialize in and you will start off on the good foot in getting the most out of your venture.
I think that the web design in Malta is still way back compared to other countries. There are some good graphic designers which tend to believe that they are good web designers too, if they export their designs from Fireworks or Photoshop.
Also no attention to SEO, accessibility and still heavy usage of Flash to do simple stuff which can be done using CSS or Javascript. With all the Javascript frameworks around it has become easier with no advanced knowledge of coding.