Avoid Web Design Pitfalls

Posted by Joni Holderman on Wednesday, August 26, 2009 at 3:42am.

Finding the right designer for a business website can be a major headache for business owners across Africa and the Diaspora, as these quotes from business owners illustrate:

“I hired 3 web designers…and not one of them did a thing,” from a florist in Nigeria

“I paid a very large amount of money, more than twice the estimate, and the designer still was not done with the site,” from a software engineer in South Africa

“The web designer seemed to have good intentions, but the site he created was not anything like the one we discussed,” from a restaurant owner in Mali

A great website must be attractive and easy for customers to use. However, it must also function well, making it easy for customers to place orders or contact the company. It should be adaptable so you can update it easily without software headaches, and ideally, it should get excellent SEO rankings.

A website needs clean code so that it can function well. But more importantly, clean code means updates and improvements can be incorporated readily.

Usually, a web designer who uses CSS, XHTML, and/or ECMA web standards will create clean, highly usable code. These standards also ensure that the website functions well across a wide variety of platforms  including different browsers and operating systems like MAC, Windows XP and Windows Vista. A good web designer will test the site using a wide variety of platforms. Be leery of any designer who uses only one platform for testing.

When a web designer uses CSS or Cascading Style Sheets, each page has less code and more text. This is a huge advantage for SEO because search engines rank pages with more text higher.

Have the designer create script files of dynamic images or dynamic menus, instead of putting the script on the page.

Put content on the page, not inside an image because search engines generally ignore any text within an image.

Don’t be “penny wise and pound foolish.”  A very inexpensive site built by an inexperienced web designer may be visually pleasing - but it may be impossible to update as the business grows. Be sure to ask the designer if the technology he or she is using allows the site to grow in the future. Spending a little more money now can save a lot of money in the future.

Good web designers offer excellent customer service. No matter how well it is designed, at some point the site will have a design glitch. Find out up front what service is included in the contract, and how long it takes the web designer to respond.