As I sit and write this story, I can’t help but be reminded of the words of one of my local competitors. I won’t dare paraphrase her statement… I’ll just post it in its entirety. The company name has been removed to protect the innocent guilty. Here it is:
“If you have a business, you need a custom website! Your web site needs to reflect your own company identity. Beware of templated sites produced by so-called designers using these templates. All websites at *** are custom designed, hard coded and convey your business style. Having your website designed by *** will help you meet your goals of success and service. Stand out amongst the competition with a crisply designed site that portrays your company in its best light.”
Let me start by saying that I completely disagree with this assessment. Designers like this, stuck in the 20th century, do their customers a huge disservice by not keeping up with technological advances in web development. They make their clients slaves to them when it comes to site modifications and additions. It doesn’t surprise me that a review of this designers work shows many web sites that haven’t been updated in as little as 8-months and as much as 2+ years. Is it possible that these clients are benefiting from their web presence? While it is possible, it’s highly unlikely.
In the early days of the web, most sites consisted of a few HTML pages. As the web has grown, HTML hand coding has become antiquated technology. While knowledge of HTML is valuable, using it as primary web development technology is too complex, tedious, and gives web site owners little or no control of their website content. Even worse, the process of search engine optimization using HTML is a painstaking task.
What I could only define as “the blind leading the blind,” too many business owners are spending hard earned money on sub-par websites designed by clueless web designers. In the case of the aforementioned competing designer, let me address the statements.
- “If you have a business, you need a custom website! Your web site needs to reflect your own company identity.” – As opposed to reflecting another company’s identity? But, what about using WordPress? A small, local business owner could have a website up and running in about 2-3 days – optimized for search, tagged for the cloud and fully operational – all without a single stitch of hand coding.
- “Beware of template sites produced by so-called designers using these templates.” – Ouch! How about beware of the web site that you can’t update yourself? Content management systems like Joomla, TYPO3 and Drupal; as well as blogging programs like WordPress deliver clients a web site structure that allows them to concentrate on the most important part of the site – its content.
- “Stand out amongst the competition with a crisply designed site that portrays your company in its best light.” – Nothing makes your web site stand out like not changing it for eight months, or two years. It doesn’t have to be that way. Content management systems give web site owners complete control of their sites and the ease-of-use removes the wait time and complexities that typically bog down the site update process.
As 2009 begins, I am laying down a challenge to the many clueless web designers stuck in the 20th century. Get a clue people! You are doing your customers a huge disservice by developing bad web sites. I suggest reading the following book:
If you don’t get a clue and learn the inner workings of new web development techniques, you won’t know what hit you when your customers start going elsewhere.
