Web Design

Traditional Web Design VS Modern Web Design

Years ago (early 90s), building a website was an incredibly time-consuming and complex process. You designed a site in Photoshop, chopped it up and converted it to HTML; it was highly skilled, meticulous, technical work.

The majority of the time, effort and expense of the website was spent on graphics and production. Marketing and message was secondary (or was the responsibility of the client, not the web designer); the site was designed to show off the business. Web design was the purview of graphic artists and coders.

This is how many people (including designers) view web design and the role of the web designer; let’s call this “Traditional Web Design.”

If you hire a Traditional Web Design firm, you may be missing out. Here’s why.

Who Works on Your Website?

I’ve had a couple of web design prospects tell me lately that they want employees or friends to build or design their company websites.

For example, one gentleman told me that one of his employees was “really into graphic design” and didn’t like the look of their existing, professionally designed, website. (This was a health care company, by the way.) So the business owner said something to me about letting this employee design a new site and I could just “put it up.”

Another prospect (automotive industry) told me that the husband of one of his employees wanted to learn how to build websites. So he was thinking he’d let this guy build the company site.

Folks – this is your LIVELIHOOD we’re talking about, right? Your website is your first impression to a prospect.

So why would you let someone who doesn’t know anything about it, do it for you?

In the first example – the employee may know what she likes, but it doesn’t mean she’s studied graphic design OR that she knows how a site should be laid out. And if she did create another site for the business – now there are TWO sites that need maintained. And TWO sites competing in the search engines. Not smart.

In the second example – if someone you know wants to learn how to build a site, let ’em work on their own. Suppose this employee wanted to learn how to be a mechanic – would you give them your Mercedes to work on as they learned, or some old clunker?

I DO believe in building sites that my clients can update on their own, which is why I typically build in WordPress. It’s easy to learn, you can update a site from any computer with an Internet connection, and you can assign different people varying levels of access to your site. (Plus you don’t have to pay a web designer $100 or wait two weeks to make a simple change!)

For example, an Administrator can change anything on the site, including layout options. An Author can publish and manage their own posts, nothing else.

But otherwise – if your site represents you professionally, let a professional build it for you.

Getting Site Visitors to Fill Out Forms

One of my new clients has a contact form on her site that asked for very basic info:

Name
Email Address
Phone
Comments

She called and asked me to make the form longer – to request more information.

Generally speaking – that’s not a good idea, and here’s why. It boils down to two main reasons:

Site visitors are in a hurry – they don’t want to mess with filling out a long form.
Visitors are also protective of their privacy, and they aren’t sure what you’re going to do with all that info!

So be very careful what you ask for in a form – and make sure you really need the information.

For most email lists, for example, asking for a first name and email address is all you need. You’ll get more signups that way.

However – your sign-ups will be less targeted than if you request more complete information, so that’s the “flipside” to consider. Which is more important to you – more, less targeted contacts, or fewer, more-targeted contacts?

Always tell people what they’re going to get when they DO enter data on a form, and if possible give them an incentive for doing so – a discount, free report, etc. It’s also helpful to reassure them that you’ll respect their privacy and not sell or share their info with anyone else.