Maybe we need to answer the question “what is web design” as well.
When I first considered writing this post I knew that I’d immediately have to add that “of course this post is a client resource as those of us in ‘Web Design’ already know the answer“.
Of course that isn’t really true. The definition can be confusing . Even those of us who consider ourselves designers have trouble. Simply reading the job postings will demonstrate this. One company’s web designer is another company’s web developer. Whil one company is satisfied with layout and illustration skills another requires a solid grasp of coding, scripting and software development cycles. So venturing boldly into potentially controversial territory. I’ll make an attempt at defining, or at least narrowing down, what separates a web designer from “someone who makes web pages”. Then I’ll explore what a web designer should absolutely know and some additional (don’t you detest this term?) value added skills.
The first misconception I want to dismiss is that web design is about making a site “pretty”. Its not though it surely doesn’t hurt. The second misconception is that if a person understands Dreamweaver or even html and can use Photoshop or another graphics editing program they can call themselves a web designer.
That misconception is responsible for more built by a relative, designed by a friend and self-created sites well. . .you know. . .you’ve seen them. Frankly thats all some people need but I wouldn’t recommend that particular approach for any site that needs to attract an audience or upon which your business or reputation may depend. If your only knowledge of web design is using Dreamweaver in design view I think it safe to say at some point you will run into trouble and ask for help.
You wouldn’t expect your six year old child to create a gallery worthy painting with the paint set they received for Christmas either.
So web design is not merely graphic design or art. It is not html or software knowledge. What else is it not?
A surprising number of programmers and software engineers out on their own advertise as web designers.
Someone with any, or a combination, of the skills above has made a solid start – its simply that knowledge doesn’t stop there.
Web Design has a lot more in common with Industrial Design than it does with Graphic Design. Think about it. Remember that Buckminster Fuller quote from an earlier post?
“When I’m working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.”
What this quote means is that all of the skills mentioned above, in combination, come into play as well as a number of additional skills. The site should be beautiful. It should be functional. It should be easy to navigate.
Web projects are problems that need a solution. A good web designer will know how to separate the pertinent from the immaterial and will work out a solution that addresses those specifically. Unless your project is on an extremely fast track a wireframe diagram will be created at this point. This is much more about placement and how items are weighted on the page than look and feel. The point of a wireframe is to work out a layout that solves the unique design problems of a project.
A web designer needs to be able to grasp the nature of sometimes large amounts of content and understand how to make that information easy to find and navigate. Web designers are often the professional closet organizers of web content and this part is known as information architecture. This, as well as a number of skills and or knowledge areas to follow, is critical enough to the success of a web project that there may be a dedicated team member specializing in this one aspect of the whole if the project is very large.
More to come on this post. Return for more on usability, web standards, browser compatibility, color theory, creativity, css, seo . . .
I have been on all sides of this one throughout my career and, frankly, some of the recommendations I am going to make here are not going to be popular with all of my friends and former co-workers.
If your re-design project is for a mission critical website and you have internal staff who are responsible for the management, design, maintenance or performance of the site its not a good idea to put them solely in charge of a redesign or to make them the primary/only contact with any outside vendors, contractors or firms you may want to bring in to work on the project.
Here are the reasons.
- Internal staff are usually too close to see the issues clearly. In addition, they are often convinced that no one from outside can see or ever understand the issues they face.
- Internal staff are territorial and usually defensive. They are likely to assume that the desire for change is a reflection on the quality of their work. Often its not.
- Internal staff are usually focused on their specialty (IT, Marketing, Design) so their solutions will reflect a narrow focus.
- Internal staff are usually stuck in the trenches. A redesign project will likely never happen. You may get a facelift. You may get individual parts repaired. They simply don’t have the time for a more extensive change. If you hire extra staff hoping to free up some time for the redesign project the new staff member will usually get sucked into the vortex of daily tasks too. This ends up being an awfully expensive solution to the problem. Think about this one for a minute. If your existing staff had time to take on a large redesign project then their current daily load isn’t enough to warrant a full time salary. I’m assuming that is not the case – you wouldn’t have full time employees if there wasn’t a full plate of issues for them to address.
What do I recommend?
A senior staff member should be placed in charge of decision making and should serve as the conduit through which communications between outside consultants and internal staff occur. All of the internal stakeholders should be involved to some degree – with Marketing and IT primarily in charge of implementation.
Why?
Designing or redesigning a website is not an IT project and it shouldn’t be only a marketing project. You wouldn’t want a mechanic to design your car and you wouldn’t want a decorator building your engine. Marketing and IT will have the “broken part list” and the project will benefit from both points of view.
A really successful (public or external) site is partly a marketing tool, partly a solution to business problems and, in addition, needs to run smoothly, be constantly available and secure. To achieve that you need the participation and input of several internal staff members or departments and you need the overall view that only a good outside consultant can bring.
Where do you start?
- Identify the target audience.
- Identify the business problem(s) you want to solve.
- Determine how to best meet the needs of your business and your audience.
Then your outside consultant can recommend a solution that should address all of the needs and requirements. The important stakeholders have all been part of the process with no one area pulling the project too far in the wrong direction.
At its most basic your website acts much like the signage outside of your brick and mortar office or store front. It displays your branding, shows your location, gives some information about what you do and probably lists your hours.
Your site can do so much more. Though adding functionality can mean additional upfront expense your savings or additional income generated should more than make up the difference.
Let’s think of your website in different ways:
Your site as Receptionist: Thinking of your site this way means you are thinking of your site as representing your company in a professional way. This particular receptionist works 24 hours a day greeting your customers, handing out basic information and initiating more complex customer interactions including taking messages which then may be routed to one or several different people or departments.
Your site as Sales Representative: If you have a product or a service it is your site’s job to sell that product or service which generally involves more than listing information about it. Take a look at your copy and ask yourself if it convinces the prospective customer that your product or service fills either a need or a desire and if it addresses why it should be purchased or obtained from you rather than a competitor. In this case it is not about more text it is about convincing text.
If you haven’t been successful selling your product or service through your site make sure you:
- Are promoting your site
- Have compared your pricing structure to others selling a similar product or service (Its not about how much you want to make from a product as much as it is about what others are willing to pay)
- Have adequately described and promoted your product or service on your site. A good web copywriter can make all the difference by writing to promote the product as well as considering the keywords so important to SEO.
Your site as Customer Relations Manager: Whether you are offering online support, a subscription service or send out a regular newsletter; capturing the contact information of people interested in your product or service is one of the most valuable things your site can do for you. Though the site “acting as receptionist” probably obtained this information via a contact, information request or shopping cart form be sure you follow up, tailor your follow up to the interest expressed by the customer, that you treat customer privacy seriously and are clear about how you will use their information.
I spent a good portion of last week taking my own site, rrinterative.com, out of tables, creating nice tableless css and then making sure it validated. Of course you know the one about the cobblers children – I preach search friendly valid code but when it came time to put my own site up I pretty much just threw it up there nasty old tables and all.
I’m not done – a couple of pages still need work but the biggest hurdle in the process was that the validator [as you may have experienced yourself] does not like the embed tag – you know, the one Netscape based browsers, including my version of Firefox, require or Flash will not display properly.
I didn’t want to give up the Flash file, I wanted it to validate.
And so it does with a nifty conditional statement.
This is for ColdFusion but the same thing can be done in php, .NET whatever. . .
So here is my code – I’m including it all from the opening to closing object tag:
<object classid=”clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000″ codebase=”http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=7,0,19,0″ width=”531″ height=”179″ title=”Bubble Flash”><param name=”movie” value=”bubblesrrv1.swf” />
<param name=”quality” value=”high” />
<cfif #Find(“Netscape”,CGI.HTTP_USER_AGENT)#><embed src=”bubblesrrv1.swf” quality=”high” pluginspage=”http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” width=”531″ height=”179″ /></cfif>
<cfif #Find(“Firefox”,CGI.HTTP_USER_AGENT)#><embed src=”bubblesrrv1.swf” quality=”high” pluginspage=”http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” width=”531″ height=”179″ /></cfif></object>
I’m sure there are better methods out there. This worked for now.
note: this is an article from the monthly newsletter i send to my clients
What makes a good site and what are the basic steps you and your designer should follow in order to get there?
R Buckminster Fuller once wrote, “When I’m working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.”
Ask the right questions
A good design provides the solution to a problem or is the solution you arrive at after asking pertinent questions. An elegant design is a simple solution to a complex problem.
If your project is a public facing web site then some very important questions might be:
* Who is (are) your target audience?
* What message(s) do you want them to receive?
* What action(s) do you want them to take?
* How can the site contribute directly to increasing your business, easing the burden on your staff or both?
The most important step is to ask the right questions and to know what problems you want to solve. Perhaps the problem is simply that your site has become stale and needs a fresh look. Then again you may have decided you want more interactive components, the site may not be attracting and retaining the traffic you had hoped or you want something that can be updated in-house. A larger company or organization will be dealing with additional issues such as changing management priorities, shifting market requirements, a new focus by one or more stakeholders or wanting to increase the strategic use of technology to meet fundamental business goals.
Build your site to support your original objectives
Every decision regarding your site should be made after the fundamental questions, and business problems you hope to solve have been considered.
The design and architecture (how people navigate through your site) should support the site mission by making the important areas easy to find. Site layout should be clean and focus on ease of use.
Page coding should adhere to current web standards. You may not know the difference but your web developer should. This will speed download times, increase accessibility and improve the ability for search engines to index your site. Accessibility is simply good practice. If your site was developed a few years ago chances are it is all table based.
Programming and back end decisions should be made based on the current needs of your business, the requirements of your site and your budget.
Hosting decisions should be made based on what will best support the sites needs including the size of your site, the security it will require, any legal compliance issues you need to consider and the traffic you expect to receive.
Finally – Traffic: Finding you is not automatic
As of September 20, 2007 , based on figures provided by Netcraft, there were 54,400,000 active sites and 136,000,000 domains on the internet – and thousands more every single minute. If you want people to find yours, more is required than just creating a site and launching it onto the web.
At minimum you should include your web address on your business cards, advertising and letterhead.
Get yourself listed in as many reputable online directories that cater to your business category as you can.
Consider even a small PPC [Pay per Click] campaign.
This will make a big difference in your traffic and therefore your bottom line.
