This year (2010) we are receiving many “website design” briefs in from businesses who have decided to look online to increase sales and promote their businesses. They have either come up with a design brief themselves or they have got in a marketing consultant in to help them do the website design.
Great, more inquiries, I’m happy, the guys in here are happy.
That is until we open the brief and it is nearly identical to the last one, except the name of the company have been changed! So some hero in an office has copied and pasted in a specification that was created for some other business and thought that it would do for their own business.
Who should design a website?
More and more these days we find that companies are willing to get anyone who owns a pc to design a website for them, Great work away and then later when it all goes wrong we get a call asking us to help out. We can and we do without saying ” I told you so…” But if you want to get a job done right from the start going to a professional business may not be as expensive as you think.
Web packages can start off from as little as €600 these days, (I know you can swap them for a sandwich and marble too) but generally prices are not €20k or 30k anymore.
This image is just one of the pages from a 25 page web design specification that we received in and they client was looking for a website that had all the bells and whistles and they amount of pages was around 170 mark. We had emails flying to and from the clients making sure this was the exact design that they had needed and they were positive it was.
The Meeting.
They came to our offices and we discussed the objectives of the website and the reasoning behind the structure that they have come up with. Most of it was unnecessary and the goals of the project we defined by both parties listening to how the web really works and what they wanted to gain from the new website.
The website is now actually just a normal Content Managed Website that will have about 60 pages and their staff will be trained on how to make more pages if required in the future.
Their website specification made the price of the website much higher than it needed to be and finally now they will get a brand new website at a great price and with a proper structure and layout, not menu upon menu and everything being buried 4 or 5 clicks deep.
Designing a website is not rocket science, but it is a computer science and no matter what field in business you are in, you are in it for a reason. Hopefully because you are good at it. Therefore my rant for today is : stick to what you know in terms of business knowledge.
I have a ruler and and pencil, I’m not an architect !
So if you are starting to look at designing or redesigning your own company website and need to make a good first impression and not bamboozle your target market then talk to us today on 053 9430748
My name is Dave Jordan, I’m here Tuesdays & Thursdays, Try the veil.
