I’ve been developing and hosting web sites since 1996–back when most people were saying, “The world wide what…?” I’ve developed literally hundreds and hundreds of web sites in my time and taught dozens of interns how to design, develop and host web sites. I’m not trying to “impress” you with this, I’m just trying to lay out some of the credibility I have on this subject. My current web hosting company, UniMatrix xSP, offers quite a lot of service and I have many happy clients… ok, so enough of that– let’s talk turkey.
Allow me to say at the outset that I consider most “web designers” to be graphic artists who fancy themselves qualified to do marketing. They have ZERO sense of business in most cases and place “pretty” over “effective.”
A web designer will talk about how “professional” a site will look.
A web developer will talk about how “easy to use” a site will be.
On the other hand, many web developers are so geeked out that they overdevelop a site with “features” that no one really understands but them. And again, even these folks have little understanding of business reality.
Allow me to super-emphasize a point here: most web designers and web developers charge by the hour– so their incentive is to sell you as much as possible. They erroneously assume you will be willing to pay more in return for the perception that you are getting more. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m not interested in paying someone for “pretty” nor for “fluff”– I’m interesting in paying for RESULTS.
Wow! What a concept… someone should pay for RESULTS, not billable hours.
So…. not convinced? Still thinking, “but….”?
Let’s try this…
Designer Says: “Mr. Jones, I’ll design a fantastic web site that will make you look great on the web for $3,000! It will have awesome graphics that really reflect your company’s image and people will compliment you all the time! In fact, all my clients get compliments on how nice their sites look!”
or
Eriks says, “Mr. Jones, after looking at your business model and typical clients and doing a little research, I think we can double your current ecommerce results in the next three months–netting you an extra $50,000 in profit. I’d be willing to accomplish that for you for $5,000.”
Which would you choose? If you pick the $3k option, you’re lying…
People may be temporarily impressed with bluster and style and fancy-this-that-and-the-other, but what keeps them coming back is RESULTS. And, folks, a pretty web site is NOT a result.
Ok, so back to designers and developers… My point here is basically that with all the changes to the web in the past few years– not the least of which is the move towards honoring “natural language” above all else in search engines– the folks who create “pretty” or “feature-rich” web sites are out of touch.
In the new world of web development and design, USEFUL CONTENT is king. Hallelujah!
Search engines (source of 80% of web traffic to most sites) have no idea how pretty your site may be, they only see things like:
- How many other web sites link to yours and what words are in the link?
- How often do keywords appear in your site? (NEVER exceed 10% density!!!)
- Are your page titles and meta tags unique and related to every page’s content?
- Do you use alt descriptions on all images and links?
The list goes on and on… but to give you an example, Google’s patented algorithm uses over 180 criteria to index and prioritize sites.
The thing I think is the absolute BEST thing to happen to indexing is that now all the “tricks” we all used to use– meta tags, text the same color as the background, doorway pages, etc.– will now cause your site to be PENALIZED in rankings. Hallelujah!
As I’m sure you can guess, gentle reader, I am not always popular with designers and developers–but I’m VERY popular with my clients. And that’s my RESULTS. 
