5 things your web designer won’t tell you

Posted by Jeremy L. Knauff | November 17th, 2009

Hi, it looks like you're new here...be sure and subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting and we hope you come back soon!

Your website probably doesn’t need to be redesigned

A professionally designed website should stand the test of time. Depending on your industry, it’s usually advisable to redesign your website every few years to maintain an up to date image, but not more frequently than that. The only time you should make sweeping changes to the design of your website is when you feel that it doesn’t present the image that you want for your company. But remember, you will tire of it long before your visitors do.

You don’t have to pay every time you want to make a change

Even if all of the content on your website is perfect today, it will probably change at some point in the future. Almost every business owner has found themselves in this position at some point in time They’ve had to wait for an opening in their schedule and then pay a fee before the changes could be made. This can be frustrating and sometimes costly, but it can be avoided with a content management system which enables you to easily make changes on your own. This gives you complete control over your content, it doesn’t cost you anything to make changes and you can make them whenever you want.

Web hosting is cheap

I’ve talked to countless clients who were charged well over $100/month for web hosting – and we’re not talking about a dedicated server. These people were being charged 10 times what they should have been charged by a web designer who was simply looking to pad their own wallets. These days, you can find reputable and reliable hosting companies for under $10/month. This usually includes unlimited traffic, bandwidth and email accounts and will more than adequate for most companies.

Website design does not equal SEO

SEO (search engine optimization) is probably one of the most misunderstood aspects of marketing ever. In the simplest terms possible, SEO is a combination of quality content, clean code and inbound links. Without the proper application of all three, you won’t achieve significant ranking in even a moderately competitive niche. The optimized code can only take you so far without quality content and inbound links. Any designer who promises that their web design is all you need is trying to sell you a nice shiny bottle of snake oil.

You are not always right

The job of a web designer, aside from the obvious task of designing your website, is to provide their guidance and expertise. If they blindly agree with everything you want them to do, they really aren’t giving you the best service possible. Your designer should be able to make recommendations and explain their logic, but at the end of the day, the final decision is in your hands. I’ve worked with a few clients who insisted on doing things their own way even after we’ve advised them why a different approach would be more effective, but since they write the check, they get what they want. More often than not, however, they usually follow our recommendations when their idea didn’t work the way they had hoped.

Related posts:

1. Non-designer vs. designer - When it comes to graphic design, what separates a non-designer from a designer? The difference is that the designers know what to...
2. How to choose a graphic designer without losing your mind - If you haven’t already experienced it yourself, then you’ve probably heard some of the horror stories about trying to find...
3. What is a content managment system? - Something we’re asked about frequently are content management systems. Many people have no idea what a content management system is or...

4 Comments »

4 Responses to “5 things your web designer won’t tell you”

1. Scott Hancock
   November 19th, 2009 at 8:02 pm

   I just wanted to thank you very much for this enlightening article.

   [Reply]

2. Mary
   December 8th, 2009 at 9:18 am

   Your posts are the best! Always helpful!

   [Reply]

3. Ryan
   December 8th, 2009 at 10:38 am

   Interesting read, however, I am going to have to disagree with a couple of the points made above:

   Your website probably doesn’t need to be redesigned:

   In my experience 99% of websites on the web need to be re-designed, BADLY, the problem is that most companies get an amateur to design their first version of the site and it ends up looking and behaving awful. With the exception of many large corporate websites, often small business websites are in gross need of redesign. For example I have been recently researching Alaskan Malamutes as a potential pet and every single breeder and club site I have visited has embarrassingly poor design that makes them almost impossible to interact with. To a degree, you are right in that a professional designed website does not need to be remade often, however, the reality of the industry is that the grand majority of non corporate sites simply are not professionally designed.

   You don’t have to pay every time you want to make a change:

   Why not? Yes CMSs make changes easier but they don’t make changes happen magically. A web design agency still has to assign a resource to even the smallest change which in turn costs them money. Also developing solid CMSs is expensive and time consuming, it is designed to make changes faster for the developers. Simply put it is more effort up front to decrease effort going forward, often the increased effort up front is an investment by the company in question that needs to be returned on via the efficientsy that a solid CMS provides.

   [Reply]

4. Jeremy L. Knauff
   December 8th, 2009 at 11:00 am

   Hi Ryan,

   Thanks for your opinion!

   I agree that many websites do need to be redesigned, and many times, small businesses just go with the lowest price they can find. Those sites definitely do need to be redesigned, but if a site has been professionally designed, it probably doesn’t need to be redesigned. That being said, just because someone calls themselves a professional designer doesn’t mean they actually are.

   In regards to the CMS – no, changes don’t happen automatically, but it gives the client the ability to change their own content, which means it doesn’t cost them anything. I have to disagree with your statement about CMSs being expensive though – we offer a custom web design package that includes a full-featured CMS for around $3,100

   [Reply]

Leave a Reply

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

Click to cancel reply

Notify me of follow-up comments via e-mail