by Theresa Carpine 6.March 2008 11:25
First of all, Karina gets 5 Gold Stars just for working Jane Austen into a blog post about web design. As a Lit major, nothing really makes me happier than a good P&P reference.
But she also makes some great points about what the first priority when creating a website for a client: aesthetic or programmability? And what’s most important when working for that client: giving them what they want or giving them a website that will work? And Rusty reminds us that many clients don’t know why they need a website, so how do they even know whether they need a designer or developer? They might not even know that there is a difference—I certainly didn’t until I started working at Mindfly.
It’s pretty interesting that Karina and Rusty focus on what the “customer” wants, meaning the customer that has hired us to design the site. As someone who never really thought about web design until about four or so months ago, I would think of the customer as someone who visits a site, searching for potential business (like the person who hopefully is reading this blog after a doing a Google search of “Bellingham web design”). The only time I ever considered that a website didn’t just exist or emerge fully-armed from Zeus’s forehead was when my favorite sites would undergo a redesign and I’d have to figure out how to work my way around again. At the time, I always considered it an inconvenience to me—a loyal and frequent visitor of the site. But once you get used to things, you can’t imagine it being any other way. Or that’s what you hope people think, if the design is in fact an improvement.
The good folks at Mindfly have to serve a variety of masters when creating a site: the limitations of programming, visually innovative design, the client, and the client’s clients. And it’s great that Mindfly has a variety of people with a diversity of skills to bring to the table, but there can also be the issue of having “too many cooks in the kitchen.” We manage to work all of these things together to make attractive and functional websites. And when you think about the significance a website can have, that’s exactly what needs to be done.
According to this video by faculty and students at Kansas State University, people in my generation (currently in college or just joining the workforce) spend about 3.5 hours online every day and read 2,300 web pages a year (as opposed to eight books). The Internet is where we get our news, our entertainment, it’s how we network and communicate with each other. I can only imagine what the next generation will expect, as they are being raised (quite literally) on websites.
Without being too sales-pitchy, here are just a few things you might want to ask yourself if you’re in the market for a website. They’re pretty basic, but for a novice like me—someone who is a potential customer of the site itself—they’re probably the first things I consider when I’m looking at a site for the first time.
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Who is the audience and what will they use the site for?
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Is content on the website clear and easy to find?
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What is innovative about this site, both in regards to the design and programming?
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How will the look of the site reflect the business or organization behind it?