After nearly 10 years of developing websites of all shapes and sizes, across
multiple market segments, over mountains of fads and hacker infested waters,
I have come to one conclusion Web Design is Over-rated!

Now before the minions of the W3C and their lovely 'utopia' of
compliant code web wackos start to gather to hunt me down for such heresy, let
me explain. I have spent many years in the trenches of the web development
world and still enjoy creating digital art in my spare time. I am still
at arm's length with my web development business and have a vested interest
in the industry in general. I am not so sure this 'rant' is aimed
at you.

I believe it may be the web site owners and their perceptions at work here.

Sure, I have now alienated my clients as well as my industry peers. Sounds
like another normal day for me. Let's just hope we're all galvanized
now to get onto the meat of the issue.

Start with a relative value

No matter if you're a web developer or looking to have your website built,
understand the Web Design for what it is, a design.

It is not;

1. Server reliability

2. a Back end application

3. a Customer support mechanism

4. a Sales or 'call to action' tool

5. a Transaction processing system

6. a SEO or other Search marketing tool

7. an entertainment system (FLASH kiddies)

In short, It is NOT an overbearing factor of importance. I
am NOT discounting it as a function of the process, so put down the mouse and
give me a second before writing your own RANT. I am trying to give it
a place that can be related to in the over-all scheme of things when
developing a web site.

Your web site design is going to be 'part of the team' not an all-star
prima-Donna. We need to utilize the site design to achieve goals inline
with the over-all site/business model and get the most from it. This
is NOT about looking pretty. Everything in your design 'eye' should
be geared towards the end goal of the site and conversions thereto.

Some areas of interest;

To get a better feel for using design outside of mere looks
I have grabbed a few concepts out of the air to try and expand on my point.
You really do need to step outside of the deisgn eye and come up with ways you
can get the most out of the design aspects of your web site design and development.

1. Split testing and MVT; Split testing and multi-Variance
testing are a function of increasing a sites conversions based on changing various
elements on a page/document. Testing one's page layouts against a known
'control page' can bring to light many lessons in effective design.
A must learn for the serious web designer.

2. Usability - getting to the conversion; Simply enough a site
that has inhibitors such as heavy FLASH or weighty graphics, poor internal navigation,
cluttered content, make it very difficult to even get the user to the conversion
process. This has it's obvious problems that can not only not help the
situation, but be a factor in the site's ultimate failure. Design does
play a heavy role.

3. Navigating for Bots; Organic search traffic is responsible
for up to 80% of a websites traffic. Poor navigation, as touched on above, can
also be bad for search engine spiders looking to index the information contained
on the site. While poor code cannot generally affect a web sites rankings in
the search engines, poor structure can present indexing issues as can on page
java script, FLASH and other 'toys' of the average web designer.
Not traffic, no need for a design or even a site for that matter.

4. Building the Brand; One important area for the design world,
online or offline, is Brand development. A design is a personality. It is used
in creating trust and confidence in your user base. Decide on the personality
you wish to take out to the world with the site and ensure you design to the
end user NOT to the designer or even the clients 'personal picks'.
Get yourself a focus group and that is the data to decide the brad. I weight
it above my own or the clients personal feelings anyways.

Wrapping it up; No i-Frame included

The main thing I want folks to take way from this piece, outside of the fact
I need to get out more, is to look at web design from a deeper perspective than
'a pretty picture'. If you're thinking about hiring
a web designer or if you are one, ensuring that the design elements
of your site play their role to the fullest is paramount to success. If succeeding
in the world of internet business was easy, everyone would be a success. That,
is not the case.

Get the most out of the website design. Don't let it
be just 'another pretty face'

About the Author

David Harry has been creating
custom web site designs since 1998. His firm, Verve Developments, currently
specializes in OsCommerce
and Joomla development services.