Don’t make your designer work in a vacuum. (pt 1)

– Robert Kruger 29 April 2010

“I need to find a website designer.” That is the most common way I hear companies explain their need for a new website. Well … here’s what’s wrong with that statement: designers don’t create websites.

So who really creates websites. Designers, producers, database engineers, information architects, user interface engineers, data architects, SEO specialists, and copywriters create websites. All of them, working together. It takes a variety of expertise to build a powerful, dynamic, and current website (AKA a successful website).

Yes, it’s possible to have a hard-coded website that was created by a solitary designer using nothing more than Dreamweaver. The same is possible with an all-Flash website. While it’s possible, it’s not desirable. Any hard-coded solution that a designer may be able to create alone misses out on the countess benefits of dynamic content.

I suppose it’s a generalization to make a statement about all designers. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. Some designers are non-technical, and others are as left-brained as they are right-brained. But give me a little slack on this one - even if you’re a technically inclined designer, you’ve probably been told it’s not your job to think about the behind-the-scenes stuff that goes into a dynamic web presence.

Dynamic websites can personalize contact with each site visitor, reduce the content refreshing effort required by Google, easily repurpose web content to multiple formats like smart phones or kiosks, and easily manage product catalogs and blogs while keeping them under the same domain as the website to strengthen SEO. If you’re a designer and you think, “I don’t care about all that - I just want it to look cool.” then you are out of touch with today’s internet business. If you’re a creative director, and you tell your designers to not care about all that, well, this is your wake-up call.

Let’s just look at smart phones as an example. Today, there are nearly 50 million smart phones in use in the U.S. alone. A designer may be unaware of the unique characteristics of smart phone browsing. Without the technical expertise of a developer providing input, the designer may cause frustration for a huge share of the market, and “frustrated customers” = “former customers”.

The solution is simple. Designers should design, but should also collaborate with experts in other areas. Design work shouldn’t even start until functional needs and site architecture are defined. Most of all, every member of an interactive team needs to remember that there is usually one goal that trumps all others: the website must be good for business.

Dialogs Professional Services provides the expertise creatives need to work the web. We can help you create websites that give your clients a competitive edge in business without getting in the way of your creative work. Let's talk.