Archive for November, 2011

I did a Google search for “The origins of smoking” and found Wikipedia of course. They say that the origins of smoking started from people burning intense and stuff. I personally believe it started much further back than that. I actually think smoking was used as a method to move fire from one place to another from nearly the beginning. If they smoked in rolled leaves as we do now there would be no evidence of this so it’s hard to prove. If they smoked with some sort of pipe then it might lend some credibility to this theory. However, considering that moving fire was needed and people still till this day will move fire in similar manners in primitive tribes I think it is a valid theory.

Before you hire a web designer you should consider a few things. These are often overlooked by most people. Especially those out for their first web site. So hopefully these tips will help you get a better experience when hiring your first web designer.

The Portfolio: Things to pay attention to.

One of the most important things to look for is not always how cool the other sites a designer has done appear. Most first timers look at high end web design and then are in for a let down when they hear the price tag. They usually end up then looking for the cheapest thing they can find. This can also be a big mistake. Also there is another problem with this approach. If the site looks fantastic because you’ve found a fantastic designer that doesn’t mean they are going to build the site properly.

What you are looking for is someone with a decent amount of talent who can build a site that will make your phone ring. The site should mirror your image so look for someone who shows examples of flexible design. If you find a designer who can design in many styles you’re probably on to one of those good ones who can take a peek inside your head and give you exactly what YOU want and not what they want.

Getting what you want:

Which leads me to my next first timer foul. Don’t over do it on the “what YOU want” thing. A good designer is going to have reasons for doing things that you might not understand. Let me give you a few examples.

You might want a serif font for your site but your designer tells you that you should use san serif. He/She says you can use it for headlines but avoid it in the copy. You say no. Bad communication on the designers part. What he/she really meant to say is that studies have shown that people generally have a better reader experience with less eye strain with san serif fonts on displays. Serif fonts cause less eye strain while reading on paper and therefore are fine for magazines but on the web you should stick to san serif. And to go even further you should keep your columns around 500px wide at no smaller than 13pt font size. If you want to appeal to the widest audience and give your visitors the most pleasant reading experience you pay attention to these studies.

That should be enough to tell you that your designer at least cares about making your website be the best that it can be. There is no benefit in telling a client to choose a specific font for the designer other than the possibility of the client becoming more successful and bringing future business to them. That is a good thing. You’ve found a smart one

Of course this is a two way street. If your designer cares about you and is knowledgeable about his/her craft make sure you are fair to them. Finding and establishing good working relationships is the key to successful business. These key relationships make all the difference in the world.

Thinking Ahead:

Relationships and websites both take time. You’ll find some site mills out there that turn sites out in a couple of days but you can imagine what you get with that. That makes me think of template sites. They are great to look at and get an idea of a possible direction that you’d like to go but I would advise against ever publishing a template site. The code is going to be the same as a hundred other sites and you’ll just blend into the background. They’ll pay as much attention to you as they did to building the template. Done.. publish.. sell to the masses. I know I wouldn’t want to be treated like that. Anway, my two cents on template sites.

Back to timelines… One thing that clients don’t consider before they contact the designer is the content for each page. They start the process with the designer. Which is by the way a good thing to do. A good designer will help you a lot with site structure. They call it information architecture. If you’re designers heard of it that’s really really good. If they just say “make me a list of buttons” that’s kinda bad. Anyway, you’re going to be providing content to your designer based on what you guys come up with so make sure to plan ahead and give the process time. Most freelance designers and small firms work with a limited staff and are working on multiple projects so time gets shifted around pretty dynamically based on how fast content is delivered or created. Anything worth doing is worth doing right. And doing things right sometimes takes time. Plan ahead and you’ll save yourself stress. Don’t wait till the last minute to get your designer involved.

Search engine optimization or SEO:

The next big thing to know is about SEO or Search Engine Optimization. A good designer will also know a bit about SEO and they may end up making some strange suggestions to you. This is a bit tougher to explain but think logically about what they tell you and see if it makes sense. Think about it like this. Google goes out and looks at every website on the internet and learns things about it and then when someone searches for something it says “hey they might like this site I found”. It’s sort of like a good friend telling you what they think you’re looking for. So you’re site is going to have to reflect that. But it’s not just quite that simple. Because it’s not really your friend. Its a complex program that does this automatically. Basically a robot. So it’s looking at what your site is saying very literally. It won’t get “beat around the bush” type lingo on your site.

Think about how you search for things and that will help you understand SEO if you relate that to what I’ve said above. If you are looking for a painter in your area and you lived in Indianapolis you’d probably type “Indianapolis Painters” and whatever comes up first is going to be what Google thought you wanted. In this case it’s a site called www.indianapolispainters.com that is a local painting company in Indianapolis that offers residential and commercial painting services. In the title of their URL is the search phrase you typed. It’s no wonder they came up first. They can still be beat but they’ve also optimized the site in other ways. It’s done mostly with copy, urls, and some stuff called meta data. There is some linking strategy and all that gets a little more advanced. If you’re getting further along in the process than you probably should be at this point. You should have had a site up for awhile with typical SEO… which is good copy that makes sense that quite literally describes what you do or who you are and what services you offer.

More later:

This blog is getting a bit lengthy.. i might break it up and work on it some more later. I’m tired. bbs.