Web Design News

Well, after an incredible lead up to Christmas I actually have a few minutes today to sit down and add a few thoughts to this blog.

We worked over the Christmas – New Year period when all the other web design places in town took a break and that brought us some new and interesting clients. We sat down with one of them yesterday to get all the details we need to work up a proposal for an e-commerce site and it was interesting to listen to him talk about small business and what he thought of web designers in town.

He mentioned a site that a local designer had built for a friend and, after he left, I went searching for the site. I didn’t have the URL for the site but I knew what line of business his friend was in so I searched Google using a number of keywords and keyword phrases that would be relevant for that business … and I still couldn’t find it.

My partner finally located it after tracking down an advertisment the business had run in a local newspaper and then I discovered why I hadn’t been able to find the site listed in Google. There was not one single keyword or keyword phrase in the text on any of the site’s pages that was in relevant to the business.

The only time the keywords and keyword phrases appeared was on a graphic … and it didn’t have an alt tag. I couldn’t find it in Google because Google couldn’t see just what the site was relevant for.

Even if the client was going to use other ways to promote their website just a few keywords or keyword phrases would have made that site visible in Google for there’s very little local competition for the site owner’s business.

A brain snap or sheer bloody incompetence on the part of the web designer? Sadly, knowing the design company involved, I think it’s incompetence.

I hate to see small businesses that have very limited resources getting such poor service. A website should add value to a small business rather than costing a lot of money and delivering nothing in return. It takes so little effort to design a site that not only looks good but also adds that value that a small business is looking for.

Producing websites that not only look good but also sell a product or generate leads AND are extremely attractive to search engines spiders is a process.

Last week at a small business meeting here in town a rather prominent businessman asked me what the ‘secret sauce’ was that we applied to our designs that enabled them to achieve those goals that I mentioned above. I must admit that I had to scratch my head for a few moments before the truth dawned on me … there’s no ‘secret sauce’, there’s just a process that not only needs to be learned but needs to be understood.

Sure, anyone can label themselves anything they like in this industry and they can produce reasonable looking sites simply by emulating what others do. They can even make their clients happy … for a while. But invariably their sites fail in one or more vital area simply because the designer doesn’t UNDERSTAND the process.

Clients aren’t fools … it doesn’t take them long to realise that their sites aren’t working for them and then they become highly critical of whoever built their website … and they’re not slow to tell others that they’ve wasted money on a poor web design.

So if you want to be known as a web designer then take the time to understand the process of building effective websites otherwise you may not stay in business for very long.

Websites that market a business product to another business are becoming more and more popular but as web designers and developers should we be looking at a B2B site in the same way that we might look at a site that is selling a product to an ordinary consumer?

Just recently I came across a B2B website that had a rather in-your-face background to the text that appeared on the pages. It wasn’t even a particularly relevant background and had little to do with the services the business offered to others.

Should we really be decorating B2B websites in that way or are decorations like that totally irrelevant in a B2B setting?

I’ve certainly got my thoughts on the matter and even the text I write for a B2B site differs from the text I would write for a consumer targeted site but what say you?

There are some web designers and developers who lean towards functionality rather than pretty pictures. Then there are some who think that pretty pictures are far more important than functionality.

Whichever camp you fall into perhaps you should look at this site – http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/ -

and then review the discussion that is going on here.

Personally I’m with the guy who made this comment “Business is not about pretty sites, it’s about making money.”

But of course your mileage may vary

With that said, the site is perfect.

It’s been one of those crazy weeks here at Copy Text Online where the work coming in has just not stopped. If anything it’s actually increased and we’re seriously beginning to think that it’s time to take on more staff.

Not only have we been hit with a bunch of work from some of our overseas clients but we’ve also just been handed a project that is like a dream come true for us. We’ve been asked to do the redesign and text work for two local sites in major tourist centres here in Queensland.

One of the domain names cost the client many tens of thousands of dollars and the other didn’t come much cheaper and now he wants us to rebuild them. Hmmm it’s a challenge we’re looking forward to.

But I didn’t come here to brag about that. What I did hit the blog to talk to you about was banner blindness and that’s something that web designers really should be aware of. As most of you are aware, Jakob Nielsen is the leading usability guru on the Web today and when he speaks we really do need to listen.

Now he’s spoken again and you’ll find what he has to say here. You should read it not only because it talks about what people don’t see on web sites but there’s also a little gem hidden away in there about some of the useless navigation that web designers inflict on their clients.

Good web design is about more than just pretty pictures. Good web design is about more than just the text that’s included on the site. Good web design is also about the site’s directory structure –  - that part of the site that surfers don’t see but search engines do.

When a client asks us to review a site … or do something – anything – to improve its rankings in the search engines we often find a site that has a structure that looks like it was built while the designer was off his or her face.

Site structure may not appear to be very important to the designer who wants to impress their client with their ability to build something that looks pretty but site structure is very important for the client after the site goes live. If it’s not done right then the client could end up spending a lot of money to get their site rebuilt so that it is right.

So why not do it right from the beginning?

If you’re not sure what really does constitute good site structure then read 7 Maddening Site Mistakes – it will have a lot to teach you.

When you’re designing a website for a client what voice do you speak in? Who are you talking to when you’re writing the text for the site  and does the design combine with the text to speak with one voice?

It seems to be a problem for many web designers and one that many web designers don’t even seem to recognise and it’s certainly that our clients don’t understand either. But it’s a very real problem that can have a very negative effect on a website’s ability to communicate effectively with its target audience.

For example if the website you’re working on has other businesses as its target audience are you using language and design that is appropriate for those businesses or are you talking to them as if they were ordinary web surfers? If the website is supposed to sell a product does it actually sell the product or is it merely entertaining?

On Monday I was asked to take a look at a new website that a large design business here in town had just built for a local industry. This industry has a very specialised product that can be used by governments and businesses all around the world. It’s really very innovative and arousing the interest of those who would buy it would be so easy.

But, instead of targeting those who would buy this product the website set out to entertain. The language used was weak and almost apologetic. Important aspects of the product and testamonials from high ranking users were either overlooked or hidden so deep in the site that most people wouldn’t see them.

It’s a website that definitely speaks in the wrong voice despite the fact that it obviously cost the client a lot of money.

Kim Krause Berg, a usability expert, has written a piece that every web designer should read and apply to all their designs. You’ll find it here.

We may have never experienced the product or service that the website we’re building is promoting but that’s no excuse for not getting it right.

Late last week we were talking to a local signwriter who was telling us that he was about to resort to legal action against local web design business here in Hervey Bay. It seems that said web design business had taken much of the signwriters website and incorporated it into their own without bothering to ask.

Out of curiosity we wandered over to the offending site last night and got quite a surprise. There was a site promoting the web design business and it was littered with Google Adsense ads … including a rather eye-catching ad for the biggest web design business here in town.

There’s nothing quite like advertising your competition on a site that is supposed to be displaying your talens to prospective clients.

Here in Australia web design for real estate businesses is a fairly specialised industry and, because of the franchise structure of the real estate industry here, it’s almost a closed shop.

But in the United States things are a bit more fluid and there are a lot of local real estate sites run by independent real estate businesses and their websites are beginning to include some new and interesting features.

You can read more about that here

Should you bother to sign a contract or have a written agreement with each client who employs you to develop a website for them? Small Business Trends offers some good reasons why you should.