If you are a entrepreneur, or small business owner, you probably have already thought about how a website could help your business succeed. Now days, unless your business is a small mom and pops grocery store on the corner, a web presence goes hand-in-hand with starting a business.
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| Screenshot of Ingenfeld, a German website |
When the Internet was first growing in the 90's and web design was first starting off websites typically looked something like this. The excitement that tech savvy newbie web designers felt at the time got a little overwhelming when they realized that they could place images and text anywhere on a webpage. Before CSS, table designs and primitive image editing applications gave webdesigns these awful appearances, but since the Internet and web design was new to all of us, webpages like this got more noticed and acclaimed as Internet art.
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| Disturbing image from the same website, Ingenfeld. The image is even more disturbing on the website because the eyes move. |
The fact is web design has come a long way. In a new world where Photoshop'ed images are the norm, and JavaScript, SASS, CSS, and jQuery are used faithfully, nothing this horrendous should even be online. Yet there are so many DIY's out there that now the web is just a scrambled mess of pourly designed sites just like this. If not, check out the other 29 fails, or just do your own search.
Now you might be wondering what the point is that I am trying to make. The fact is, there are a slew of DIY web-based applications out there for anyone that wants to build their own website. Google Sites, WIX, Webflow, and SquareSpace are just a few. What people don't understand about many of these automated web design platforms is that they do not produce good code, or code that even meets the W3C web standards. While it is easier than learning code yourself, and faster, you are actually never really gonna know what you get behind the curtains when it comes down to the code. There is no guarantee that your website is going to work in all browsers and there are no professional grade tools for image editing, or SEO.
Also, there are only so many combinations of free web templates and layouts that are available on each website. That means, eventually, there is going to be multiple people out there that will have a website almost identical to yours. And if you need help with something that you just do not understand, or you cannot place something right in their WYSIWYG application, then you are going to have to get additional support that comes at a cost anyway.
Some might wonder why web designers charge so much when you have all these options to DIY on the web. But what many people do not take into account is what a web designer really does for your business which is most important; branding. When you use a reputable web designer you get a website that is original, which is usually optimized for search engines. They also usually handle all the copyrighting, or higher a freelancer to do it. It takes years to learn all the in-and-outs of good web design, in which a DIY web application does not support. But finding a good web designer is probably the most important marketing decision you could ever make for your business.
Now that mobile designs have become almost essential for anyone that is looking to make a business prosper online, having your website work on all platforms is a must, which is also not guaranteed when you us a DIY solution. Just because mobile designs may not be as fluent as a desktop website, it does not mean that a mobile site is any easier to design, or less important.
As mentioned above, a "reputable" web designer is important. A good blog article that touches base on this is 20 Signs Your Web Designer is Terrible. How Much Should a Web Design Cost is also a good basic explanation as to why a website costs so much, and why it is worth it.
Feel free to let me know what your opinion is about this, or if you just want to post more links to awful web designs you have found out there on the web.
