It’s been my experience that most clients enter into a web design contract knowing no more about what they’re doing than they do about molecular biology. I wouldn’t hire a carpenter to build onto my house without some knowledge about what he was doing so I could know I wasn’t being ripped off and I wouldn’t go into surgery without reading up on the procedure first. An educated client is a happy client and produces happy web designers, therefore I present my list of 10 things you should know about web design.
- You will get what you pay for
Your nephew said he can make your website for you, he can, but it winds up being like the Rolex that you buy from some guy on the street, it looks nice but later you find out it doesn’t work. The same goes for low budget web design firms, if they are offering to do it cheap chances are they are not giving it the necessary time and attention to create a quality product, which leads us to our next point. - Designing a good website takes time
To make a website that works on all browsers and platforms, downloads quickly, performs well on search engines, meets current web standards and all the other things required for a website to be successful not to mention looking good and being easy to navigate takes many many hours. In addition a really good website won’t be done quickly partly because of the next point. - There’s a lot of code behind a website
When you look at a website you are just seeing the end result of a whole lot of code, try viewing a website’s source code sometime. And that is just the HTML portion, there may also be many additional files for scripts and style sheets. The point is, don’t judge a book by its cover, a web page has much more to do than just look pretty. - Know what you want, plan ahead
It’s helpful if you approach your web designer with some idea of what you would like in your website. Look at your competitors websites and make notes about what you like or don’t like. Your web designer will find it much easier to be creative with some initial ideas to work around. - Every browser will render your website differently
There are more different web browsers available now then ever and each handles things a little bit differently. What your site looks like on your browser is not what it looks like on everybody’s browsers. There is no way to make one website render identically on every web browser, the goal is to allow it to degrade gracefully. - Every screen resolution and monitor will make your website look different
This is like the previous point, depending on the monitor being used and the screen resolution along with various other settings like color depth, your website will look very different from one computer to another. It is often a game of compromises to make it look as good as possible on all and the best on the most monitors. - Fonts will look different on different computers
Windows and Macintoshes handle fonts very differently, furthermore the individual fonts on a computer vary widely. So this is yet another example of what may look one way on your computer may look different on another, once again the web designer looks for a compromise that looks the best on most computers. - Honor Google, it holds the keys to online success
Google has about 43% of the web search market to the nearest competitor, Yahoo’s 28%. Any website hoping to be at least mildly successful online needs to do well on Google which means playing by their rules for search engine optimization. - Visitors will not flock to your site when it’s done
The road to internet success is littered with the remains of websites that have failed to make an impression in the market. The key thing to remember is that a successful website does not just happen. People need to be able to find your website on the search engines when searching for relevant keywords. You will need to promote your website to current and prospective clients. And one other thing is required to make it successful, our next point. - Your website will need to change… often
People will return to a website that changes often, but not to a brochure website. The most successful websites are those that are more than just static information about your company, consider incorporating a business blog, community forum, RSS news feeds, photo gallery or at the very least have the ability to go in and change things around occasionally.
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