I’m asking the question, “What does web design mean to you?” because the way I see things and do my work is often very different for what people perceive.  I can’t speak for everywhere but I’m involved and attend a lot of networking events in Greenville,SC and the greater upstate. When I tell people that web design is one of the things my company does I seem to get the same questions asked by different people at different locations.  Here is a sample of those questions;

• What software do you use? Dreamweaver?
• Aren’t their a lot of people doing that?  How do you stay in business? (Those two questions are usually together)
• I’ve created a site using .Mac,  Yahoo, Google.  What can you do I can’t?
• My 13 year old son does that.  What exactly do you do that he can’t?

I’ll answer these questions as completely as I can.  Yes, we will use the web design software,  Dreamweaver.  The impression is software used for designing and developing the whole web site can be done visually.  That is pretty much true with a static site but I can only recall one site we do that is a static site and we would like to change that pending the customers wishes.

Web design and web development has changed greatly since the early days of managing entire sites by hand in a web layout editor like Dreamweaver.  To achieve the functionality of the services we offer our clients like business blogging, photo galleries, e-commerce stores, etc. You need a content management system.  A content management system gives the user or business owner the ability to add or edit content without even looking at any coding.  Another advantage is content management systems automatically create new pages on the fly without the web designer needing to manually create them.  Gone are the days of selling web sites based on the number of pages, at least for SpinningSilk Multimedia.

Yes, a lot of people are creating web sites.  We have a lot of competition in Greenville,SC our local market. The question is how do you define competition?  When people ask the question about competition I like to remind them their is a lot competition in the restaurant industry as well but each restaurant has it’s niche.  Even fast food restaurants that sell hamburgers sell them differently or they may specialize in a  completely different sandwich and business model, like Chick-fil-A for example.

The general conception of a web designer is a self-employed techie and a lot of web designers fit that mold however using the web is becoming a business tool that required in almost any business. Even if an outside firm develops the web site it’s still a good thing to have an inside person within a company that understands some web design and web development basics in order to properly communication with the web designer. Our niches include; putting the content first in our work flow. We believe compelling content is the reason people go to a web site or buy from a company. We will not even begin the process of developing and programming the web site until we have initial content in hand.

We cater to the small business and entrepreneur market which needs to leverage the most cost effective tools of getting the word out about their business.  if you are a large multinational company we are more than likely not the company for you.  Not that we wouldn’t love to have such a high profile client but in such cases the best option may be an in-house staff working on such a project. We are also moving towards becoming the area experts in one particular content management system.  More details on that later.

Can you create a great looking and functional web site with a do-it-yourself service? Sure you can.  Apple’s .Mac service allows one to create very professional limited web sites.  Yahoo also offers a nice user friendly solution for creating a basic e-commerce store.  You can also nice basic blogs through services like Blogspot.com and Wordpress.com.  I’d rather you use one of these services that provide nice proven templates than buy a copy of Dreamweaver and do it the hard way.

One thing to consider however a lot of these services can be very limited in functionality and you’re pretty much on your own.  I’m a big fan of Apple Computer’s offering but I have to admit that while the web sites created through a .Mac account may look very pretty and are great for getting some photos or some basic information up quickly.  The pages created with .Mac use way too much code in the backend and consideration for image files size doesn’t appear to be a top priority.  If you company needs a professional web presense please consider using the expertise of someone who works with the technology everyday.  It’s more than design.  It’s about optimizing the content, handling financial red tape with e-commerce issues. etc.

It’s amazing what young people can do.  I’m 41 but I try to have the mind of a person in their late teens or early twenties as far as being open to new technologies, etc.  In other words I like to play but play with a purpose.  If you have a young child or  relative that is passionate about technology, writing and graphic arts by all means encourage them.  If they have talent let them use it but remember their is more to designing a web site than, well designing a web site. Does this person understand your industry, communication laws, are they too young to be responsible for any legal issues or are you willing to take those on? Does the young person understand how to optimize both images and words so that pages load quickly and are found by the search engines?

When you look at and judge web sites in designer portfolio do you consider just the look and layout of the site or do you consider the many aspects of design? 

This entry was posted on Friday, January 18th, 2008 at 10:30 am and is filed under Compelling Content, Greenville,SC, Internet, Tips, Upstate,SC, blogging, branding, web design, web development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.