This might sound a little “out there” but I think there is a serious misconception among the general public & small businesses.

For years people have been playing around with WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML editors and claim that they are web designers – sorry to break it to you, but they are NOT web designers, they are novices. I can personally recall occasions where potential clients have grumbled about the amount I have quoted them. Their response is often: “But my 16 year old nephew can put together a site for a fraction of that cost – why should I pay so much to you?” Or “I have quotes from other companies that are charging half of what you are – if you lower your quote we’ll give you the business.” In the beginning I found comments like these rather intimidating and I would try and accommodate these new clients even if it meant slashing my prices beyond it being worth my while. Mistakes I will not readily make again.

What I discovered is that clients that are not willing to pay you adequately for your services are usually the ones that will have the least amount of respect for you as well. These clients will probably expect you to leap through hoops of fire and give you completely unreasonable deadlines. They don’t respect your time and will most times make you change things over and over again.

The professional web design process is a lot more involved than most people realize. Again I say PROFESSIONAL web design process. The steps to designing a website that works great, looks great and attracts a great amount of traffic is both time consuming and skill intensive. From obtaining a proper brief to conceptualizing and designing an accurate visual proof – there is just something different about the way a professional works. Obviously the result achieved when the project is completed speaks volumes in itself, but most don’t understand the processes in between.

A professional web designer has to understand the principles that make up a great website. These include: aesthetics, content, structure, usability, relevance, technology & optimization.

Aesthetics:
There is nothing worse than a website that just looks bad. A poorly designed website is off-putting and reflects negatively on the company it represents. It gives the appearance that the company is unprofessional and the content contained within the site cannot be taken seriously. However a well designed website gives you the feeling that you are dealing with a professional & credible company who knows what they are talking about.

Content:
Granted having a great looking site does a lot for your business image, but if the shell is empty visitors will leave fast and probably never return. Your website content should be relevant to your industry sector and relevant to what you say you’re all about. Your content may be relevant, but id it is poorly written or has countless spelling errors, again the impression created is poor. Content should be well written, aimed at web users who are not interested in long winded stories, but who are looking for headlines and condensed paragraphs. Users want to find relevant information quickly and easily – the more you make them work to find information, the faster you will lose them.

Structure:
A website with no structure just seems to fall apart at the seams! A good structure affects your appearance, navigation, sitemap, and usability. Professional web designers don’t rely on WYSIWYG editors to put a website together, but rather have the ability to hand code every element involved in building a great site. Having complete control over the code helps one to ensure that the structure of the backend code stays intact and that it is clean. A good structure will ensure that there is a certain uniformity in the way a website looks & works.

Usability:
A sure way to lose visitors quickly is to have a site that is not user-friendly. If your navigation is hidden or so unconventional that users are unable to get to pages easily, they will leave and not return. Naming of your pages and titles of your links should also be as common as possible. It does feel good to get creative and break the mould sometimes, but people feel comfortable with what they know – they have a certain sense of security in knowing what to expect. For example: A much wider audience will respond to a button called “About Us” than would respond to “Get the low down.” The latter may seem more creative or informal, but will prove to be a lot less effective. Another important aspect to ensure is that your website works across browser platforms – a professional web designer always has this in the back of their mind, amateurs probably don’t even understand what this means.

Relevance:
Why has a visitor come to your site? How have they found you? Most would have come via a search engine after looking for something specific. If your website content is not relevant to what the user searched for, they will simply get irritated and leave your site immediately. There are a lot of tricksters on the internet and experienced users have become wise to their ploys. One of these being attracting visitors under false pretense or directing users to their website using keywords not relevant to their site’s content. If you have quality content that is relevant and well structured, you are almost guaranteed to keep visitors on your website longer and have a greater chance of them bookmarking your site for future reference. They may even be inclined to share your site with their friends.

Technology:
Today the web is alive with technology! It is a nice touch to harness some of this and incorporate it into your website. Professional web designers should have their fingers on the pulse and have a good understanding of all of the latest technology offerings. If there is a better way to do something, it should be done. Especially if it assists in aiding usability and simplicity. Amateurs will most likely be ignorant to new technologies and if they have some form of understanding, will most likely not be able to implement it correctly.

Optimization:
This is the last point, but is one of the most important. Optimization is a key factor in your website getting found by search engines, which in turn drives free traffic to your site on a daily basis. I have dealt with companies that have spent vast amounts of money promoting their website, but have missed huge quantities of free traffic simply because their website was poorly optimized. A professional designer will always develop a site that is optimized for search engines. They will understand what is needed by large search engines like Google, Yahoo & MSN, but also what is needed by the lesser search meta search engines. I can use our own website as an example of this: http://www.freedomstudios.co.za relies completely on web traffic to generate new business. Freedom Studios spends absolutely no money on conventional advertising and constantly attracts quality clients who find us via search engines or directories.
Some of our clients also enjoy top rankings in Google simply because their sites are correctly optimized, relevant and have a lot of quality content.

An amateur may charge you a lot less to create a website, but the potential loss for your business is unimaginable. While hiring a professional web designer may be a slightly higher initial investment, your returns will most likely be worth a whole lot more.

I’ll take that one, no wait that one, hold on…

What is it about the word ‘choice’ that makes my heart smile? Perhaps it from the pleasant connotations to the word that have been deeply rooted in fertile soil of my mind.

Choice is great! Especially when choosing which take-outs to get over the weekend. “Will it be pizza? How about burgers? Ooh no what about that new place…?” What about choosing clothes, “yip that shirt looks great” or “these new trainers are awesome!” Even better yet, choosing a car. This is something we men seem to relish. It amazes me how we can stand for hours checking out all the bells and whistles the new models have to offer and reading the performance specifications until we know them all by heart.

A big choice is choosing the right home. Where will you feel comfortable? Are you close to the places you frequent often? Is it your style? Very similarly we make choices like these in business. Where to setup office, which marketing approach to take, who to target, where to get the funding and the list goes on.

Take a minute to think of how you would feel if there were no choices…
… You are forced to eat some devilish looking slop for breakfast, lunch and dinner. You were forced to where the most unimaginative, putrid, uncomfortable clothing everyday. You drove the same car that everybody else drove and no, it’s not a luxury sedan or a new SUV. You lived in a commune that spanned as far as your eye could see, homes clustered together like processed goods along a conveyor. The world is grey, there is no colour, life is dull.

OK before I get way to depressed pondering on the previous paragraph, I am going to celebrate the fact that I do have choices and many of them to last a lifetime.

What choices are you going to make today? Will they be your own, or will they be pressured by somebody else?

Choosing is a form of creativity!
Just as an artist chooses which colours to stroke across a blank canvas, so too are the choices that colour our lives.

Be creative, think out of the box. Hey there doesn’t even have to be a box. But most importantly be the best you that you can be!

Graham :^)