It always seems to amaze me how people still look at web design. They look at the visual aesthetics and not the core functions of the site. It’s simple really, like looking at a car… they like how the body looks, but never even think about the engine… how much power it has, or how efficient it is when it comes to fuel. They just look at the body, make it their dream car, and not even notice that the engine burns oil and leaks all sorts of fluids.

This is why you hire a web designer. You want someone that can give you a good looking outside, and a good engine that actually makes the car run and work like you want it. It’s not rocket science, but in my 10 years as a designer, I can say with absolute certainty it’s more of a science than an art. It’s about making the site do something rather than just sit there and look pretty. It’s simply just making it do what you need it to do. The sites that focus solely on visuals fail miserably because they forget what the site is supposed to do.

Look at Google for instance. When Yahoo and others garbled up their pages with 9 billion other things besides the search box, Google just kept to their goal of being a search engine, with nothing more than a logo, search box, and a few other minor links. Now, Google is the dominant search engine out there while Yahoo and the others are on death’s doorsteps. I may be oversimplifying it, but they just took their eyes off the ball.

So how does this apply to your site? It applies when the visual aspects that you want interfere with the actual functions that you need. Load time is a big factor, but the biggest one is in the time that a visitor takes to fill your call to action. Plus some of those actions can be so distracting that the visitor doesn’t even get to filling the call to action. They just sit there admiring your visuals, and not get your message.

In closing, when you’re talking to a web designer, be prepared to leave most of your ideas at the door. It would be like going to a cardiologist for a triple bypass, and telling him what to do. Yeah, your heart might look pretty, but odds are it won’t work.

Most everyone knows in life you have to plan for the unexpected. We all probably have a safe place in our homes or businesses that has those papers we need in case the unexpected happens. Whether it’s wills, power of attorney papers, partnership agreements, or just receipts for big purchases… they’re just tucked away in a safe place. And there’s one other paper you need in that safe place, your web site information.

It’s actually pretty simple to make up. And it should have the following:

• Domain Registration Info (who you registered the domain with and the username and password needed to renew or modify it)
• Web Host Information (who you have your web site hosted with and the username and password to renew or modify the hosting plan)
• Site Administration Info (if you have a page you log into to administer the site, you need the page link, username, and password.)
• SSL Information (if you have a SSL Certificate, who you registered the certificate with and the username and password needed to renew or modify it)

And that’s it really! Having one page for each site is what you need for several reasons, if something were to happen to you, or the person maintaining the site, the person taking over has all the info they need to keep things running. And this puts you in control of your sites too. If your unhappy with who you’re working with and decide to make a change, you have all the info needed to change passwords and give the new guy the information he needs to get the job done.

And if you don’t have this info, demand it from who has it. Because after all, it’s your site! A lot of designers try to keep this info to try to secure themselves a job, but in reality they’re doing you a disservice. If your site goes down, and something happens to them…. you’re screwed. And trust me on this, getting things back to normal is a nightmare that I would wish upon nobody.

So with all that said, it just pays to be prepared!

I get asked to do a lot of re-designs, and the one thing I see a lot of is sites that just don’t work. I don’t mean they don’t load, or have a lot of broken links… I mean they don’t do what they were intended to do, and that is sell! Whether a business is selling a product or service, the web site needs to sell in order to really work.

Ask yourself this… If your website was a sales person for your company, would he be worth his salary (i.e web expenses)? If not, then your site doesn’t work!

When looking at a re-design, theres two things you need to look at. You need to look at your competition’s sites, and you need to look at what you want to promote the most. Looking at your competition is actually pretty simple thanks to compete.com, and it can tell you a lot about what people are looking for, where they’re coming from, and how many people are looking. It’s data that can help you get a better grasp of what your site needs in order to compete.

After that, you need to determine what you need to promote the most. It usually is the product that has the highest profit, but it could be anything really. You just need that core group of products that the re-design surrounds. And those products are going to be the biggest part of your site design, how the site is positioned when it comes to search engines, and where you put your promotional dollars.

The biggest mistake people make is they spend a ton promoting the business, and not the product. It should be the opposite. A good product with competitive pricing will promote any business better than anything.

Sadly, 90% of re-designs are just wiping the slate clean and starting from scratch. Not just with code and images, but a new idea that the web site should actually work… and not just look pretty!