One Dimensional Site Design

Design for Who?

A friend of mine sent me a link to a web design / hosting service set up for photographers. He knows that we have a similar product and wanted to let me know about this service.

I visited the site (no names, email me and I will let you know) and found it to be one of those "designy flash thingy" sites with Flash 'templates'. I was not impressed, explanation coming.

The deal is - you pick your template and then fill in the info and images in the portfolio. Now, the content management looks great, and I believe it to be very important. However, that is the end of the functionality. There are no meta tags, no page name management, no way to have the SE's find the site, no room for growth and expansion of the site.

In short, it is one dimensional design. "Hey it looks good, we're done." What? That makes no sense to me at all. Design should be multi-dimensional.

Websites should have many goals:
1. Satisfy the visitor. What would the visitor to the site be looking for? How can we make it easier for the visitor to find what they are looking for.
2. Help the site owner develop more business. How can the site do that effectively? How can the site actually bring in more customers?
3. Increase the photographers visibility. How does the site attract visitors? Can the site do that 'on its own' so to speak? How will the site utilize existing technology to further reach out to prospective clients?
4. Look good, while being functional and informative. Does the design help or hinder the navigation or content availability? Does it work FOR the visitor or against them?

The site design company only addresses #4. That is way too short of a list to count as the reason to build a site. If it looks good and the photog still has to spend marketing dollars just to increase traffic (because the site is incapable of drawing visitors on its own) then what is the benefit? Sure, a handful of photogs can legitimately claim that they do not need to be found by search engines, but most do not have that luxury.

When looking to get a design for your website, make sure the web designer or firm understands ALL of the reasons you want a web site. And hope that they bring even more reasons / solutions to the table.

Sure it should look good, great - even cool. But it should also work for you on the other levels mentioned above. Or, hey, it's just an online place to put photos... and Flickr does that already for free.