Should You Pay for Professional Web Designers?
A couple of days ago, I met up with a friend. He had a website which he wanted me help him with.
Then, he told me that the firm opposite his office is offering him a very cheap rate for web design… and if I could match his prices, he’d give the project to me.
Frankly, I really didn’t want to do the project. There is no point competing on price.
Here are some things professional web designers do which you probably won’t get at cheapo web designers.
#1. Great web design is TESTED design
The design works for any browser, any platform. If you are in the web design trade, you’d know that there are HTML standards, and not all browsers follow that standard. Internet Explorer, in particular, tries to be “one of its kind” and never fails to meddle things up. Unfortunately though, because IE ships with Windows, many people use IE.
Here are five browsers that good websites need to work well on.
At bare minimum, your site should not be all messed up in the latest versions of each of these browsers. At best, it needs to look exactly the same on every browser, with legacy versions (1 or 2 versions back), on every platform.
#2 Great web design is OPTIMIZED design
While we have broadband connections everywhere now, it is still important that your page loads quickly. Images need to be optimized. File sizes need to be minimal.
For a start, here are two very simple guidelines:
- Photographs need to be JPEGs
- Graphics need to be in GIFs or PNGs. (Preferably PNGs for transparency)
How bad can things get? Here’s an example. Once I was doing a revamp of a website for a company. The contact page featured a map and a photograph of the building which the company was located.
The original web designer combined these two photos into one. Making a bigger graphic, and its was over 80KB in size. When I split up the two images, and optimized each accordingly (the map as a gif and photo as a JPG), the file sizes combined reduced to less than 20KB. Imagine this one image loaded 500 times a day, 365 days a year… that is for ONE image.
How much bandwidth (and loading time) can you saved if you have 10 of such images?
#3. Great web design is USABLE design
The concepts behind usability are really common sense, but common sense are not common. But web usability does affect your ROI. Smacking a huge and useless image on the first fold of your webpage makes it look pretty, but it does not help the reader much.
These are teeny weeny little things that make great websites great. Some people may argue that the time spent is not worthwhile… but if you look at your web stats, you might be amazed how many people you might be “turning off” with these little things not fixed.
Tags: web-design
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Tan Kian Ann is blog marketer based in Singapore. He now works with individuals and small businesses reach out to the world using blogs. 
January 8th, 2009 at 10:37 am
Visit Wilson
Great insight Kian Ann,
I cannot agree more with you on the few simple yet important points regarding web design.
I am looking into working with someone on this subject,
do you have any names that you can recommend ?
Wilson Ong
Singapore
January 13th, 2009 at 12:23 am
Visit selfdesign
I agree with you 3 basic points.
Many web designers do not even qualify themselves to be competent in SEO, Usability, Testing on all browsers. People say… “If you pay peanuts you will get monkeys”… designing for you…hahaha!
January 17th, 2009 at 5:48 am
Visit Joan Azarva
Are you saying that professional design is recommended for a BLOG as well as a website??
January 17th, 2009 at 8:36 am
Visit Kian Ann
Well Joan, it depends on what you use your blog for. If you are running a personal blog, it really doesn’t matter. But if you are running a corporate blog, then you might want to have custom (and optimized) theme built for you from a professional designer!
February 14th, 2009 at 2:57 am
Visit SEO Web Designer
Hi Kian Ann, I strong agree with you from the first comments, as you do not want to compete with price with cheap services. Most of the time, a website is the very first impression to your client and there is no second time for first impression. Thus a well construct website is crucial
When designing a good website, it involved more that the 3 points you mentioned, and lets think logically, a cheap low cost web design services can well done on all min above these 3 points? Good test, well optimise and good in usability?
All above mentioned needs track records, real experience, patient, fine work and test and test. Lastly, as a good web designer, if you want hang around in this industry for life time, please do not destroy you future by just providing cheap price with cheap services. Think again!
February 14th, 2009 at 3:00 am
Visit SEO Web Designer
One more.. YES is absolutely true that in this world, no way you pay peanut you can get lion!
March 2nd, 2009 at 3:26 am
Visit Kiniption
Great suggestions. It depends on what your site is used for. While a professionally made website will probably give you the best results, it may not be the best choice, depending on the type of business and it’s budget. For example, a local plumber could pay for a professionally made website, and it would look great, but they could also probably get away with a cheaper, non-professional web site. Most people would not expect their plumber to have a high tech website, although I am sure they would be impressed if they did. Most people would probably just be happy to see some type of website up so they can get information about the plumber and his services.