Dealing with Hired Web Designers


A truism in the computer industry goes, "Just because a programmer can do something doesn't mean he should do it." The same applies to Web site design.

There are, for example, many ways to make text on your site blink, fade, rotate, or otherwise move around. It is easy to make images jump from one side of a reader's screen to the other. It can be tempting to add sound files to a site so that every time a reader clicks on your main page, he or she gets not only words and pictures, but background music, too. Every one of these devices will irritate more readers than they will attract.

The purpose of a commercial Web site is to convey information, either in the form of news that will attract many readers so that you can sell enough advertising or subscriptions to make a profit, or information about products and services you are selling yourself. Either way, you want no gizmos or gimmicks on your site that will detract from its main message.

Music? Very nice idea, but don't force it down people's throats. Many of us use our computers as CD or MP3 players while we check Web sites, so we aren't going to hear it anyway. Other users may be in office settings where music without warning may be considered rude by co-workers. So if you or your Web designer want to provide music, do it with a "background music" icon which users can click if they want to listen, and ignore if they don't.

Flash animation? Web designers often fall in love with Flash because it gives them a chance to show off groovy graphics and movements and sound without using as much bandwidth as other methods of sending video and audio over the Internet. The only problem is that Flash will detract from your message more often than not. Sure, you can include little bits of Flash here and there to spice things up, or perhaps a Flash product demonstration or two, but don't overdo it. If your designer is a Flash hotshot, he or she can put up his or her own site that displays nothing but Flash artwork, much the same way a graphics artist who lays out newspaper ads for car dealers by day may do wild abstract paintings at night.

Blinking, fading, and rotating text were fun when they were brand-new in 1994. Now they are nothing but cheap tricks. An artfully selected headline font will deliver your message better.

As a general rule, the more experienced a Web designer you hire, the fewer gimmicks he or she will try to stick on your site. This is yet another reason you (hopefully) hired a Web designer with provable skills and a strong portfolio.

Web designers need to be treated with respect, and you need to gain theirs as well if you want to get good work out of them on time and under budget. You get their respect by telling them, clearly, exactly what you do and don't want on your site, and why. You gain more respect by soliciting their input on how you can best accomplish your goals than by micromanaging them, and you can take that respect to an even higher level by asking these skilled professionals if they have ideas that might be better than yours that will save money or make things better and easier for your users.

All this discussion needs to take place before anyone actually starts working on your site beyond the rough sketch level. The single most expensive thing you can do while building (or rebuilding) a Web site is make major changes to a project half-way or two-thirds of the way through.

You must decide, before you get going, exactly what your site will and won't contain, how it is going to look, and how users are going to navigate it. And once those decisions are made, you must stick to them even if you or your designer or your programmer or someone else have a whole bunch of brilliant new ideas after work on your site has started.

You may want to read the preceding sentence several times. More Web projects have probably been ruined, both in the bud-get sense and esthetically, by in-process changes than by any other single factor, and management mind-changing is one of the greatest problems cited by Web designers and programmers when dealing with non-technical bosses.

Web designers are, by definition, task-oriented people. They want to know exactly what they are supposed to do, then go do it without a lot of fumbling around. Many people who go into this field do not have good social skills, so they may not be able to express their displeasure with management failures as easily as people in more outgoing professions, but this doesn't mean the displeasure isn't there and that it won't show up in the form of work that isn't as good as it could or should be. It is up to you, as the person with overall responsibility for the site, to provide firm direction from the very start and to maintain a straight course as the project develops, no matter how many interesting detours or new routes present themselves along the way.



The Online Rules of Successful Companies. The Fool-Proof Guide to Building Profits
The Online Rules of Successful Companies: The Fool-Proof Guide to Building Profits
ISBN: 0130668427
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2001
Pages: 88
Authors: Robin Miller

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