Creating a New Web Site
Many times I have spoken about the dangers of hiring a web designer who is not oriented toward web optimization. Here is an article on web site design that does an excellent job of describing the problems that are created when you engage the wrong person to create your new site. Marketing firms and graphic designers might be very good at what they are familiar with, but web design is a different field, and many people try to use what they know from other fields without updating their understanding of the differences that are important in a different medium
Good web site design incorporates many features that only people with the right experience bring to the job. To be fair, some marketing firms or graphic designers have that experience, but, in my experience, they are few and far between! When you get the wrong person or team on the job, they will make choices that make sense in a different environment, but can cause serious problems on a web site. Those problems can range from costing you a lot more money to fix, up to and including making your site non-functional from a marketing perspective. To be specific, a good marketing web site is intended to attract traffic from the Internet, and if it doesn’t do that effectively, it is failing in its principal function!
I won’t go into the specifics any further, because Kristine does it so well in her piece, but keep the message in mind. I don’t know how many times I have had people tell me that everyone who sees their new web site loves it, and I look at it and see immediately that it will never produce any traffic from the web for their business! If what you really want is a site you can send people to because it is beautiful, that is all well and good, but most businesses are not really investing in a site for that purpose. most really intend that the site will produce a return on their investment for them by bringing in new business leads.