The changing face of web design
Mon, 03 Mar 2014 10:39:00 +1100
Designing a website ain't what it used to be.
I have been designing websites for about 17 years and in that time things have obviously changed massively. Technology has developed at a remarkable rate to the stage now that web designers are almost obsolete.... or are they.
The small business owner these days is becoming pretty savvy with online marketing and they use things like Facebook and Twitter to help promote their business. They are increasingly developing their own websites as well with fantastic tools like Wordpress which enables them almost complete control over the content on their website. They don't even need a designer, all they need is a few dollars to purchase a template for Wordpress and they have a unique site they can call their own.
All this is fantastic for the small business owner isn't it? Well maybe yes and maybe no. At first glance the business owner is saving money by developing their own site, but when you think about it, what is the business owner best at? Well running their business, which is exactly what spending a lot of time on their website and learning new technology is not generally about. Sometimes they can get so caught up in creating a fantastic site that they forget what their core business is. If they add up all the time they spent on the website, they probably could have paid a professional developer 3 times over to do a better job.
In all the years I have worked on websites, I have seen this situation many times and it is hard to get this through to the client that they will actually save money by getting a professional to do what they do best and let the business owner concentrate on what they do best.
Sometimes people can be blinded by the cool factor of new technology and being able to use this to do things they previously couldn't. It still remains though, that they need to put their business first and that sometimes doing something because you can isn't the best reason to be doing it.