There is more to a professional website design than just some pretty images; yes it goes way beyond just the look. It’s a combination of several things put together in hopes of creating the right mood that will cause a website visitor to become a website customer.

And I personally believe that it’s the job of the web designer to create that mood and make sure it flows throughout the site. Other words, if the client wants to add text or something else to the site, that will interrupt the flow of the site, the web designer should offer an alternative or explain to the client that it will break the flow of the site and could cause the sites conversion to not be as good as it could be.

A website design is a lot like creating a package for a product. A good package should grab your attention, tell about the product and get you to purchase that product.

When someone is creating the packaging for a product I am pretty sure they don’t just make it look pretty and allow the client to through some text on it and call it done.

While I’ve never created packaging for a product I’d think there is a lot of hand holding and communication back and forth between the client and the company creating the packaging. I’d even go so far as to say that the package creator’s reputation stands on the success of that package.

So why should a web design be any different?

When it comes to marketing a site online, you need to have something that is link worthy. Link worthy is when something is so cool that people will link to it just because, it’s so cool.

A lot of times well written content on an interesting subject is enough to do this. But there are times in life that the product being sold is just not that interesting. It doesn’t matter how many articles you right, people are just not going to link to them.

This calls for a different approach and it is one we are working on now with a silicone wristband site we have. We hired a couple writers however, it didn’t take long for all the articles to start looking the same and it was rare for anyone to link to the articles.

In the past I’ve run across graphic designs that were just so cool that I linked to them. This got me to thinking about the silicone wristbands as well as the fact that none of the competition had tried this approach yet.

I’ve got some graphic designers in-house I am going to use and see how things work how.

Below are the original images we have to work with, these are all silicone wristband images and are very boring however, they are mixed in with images that I found online that are not boring to give you an idea of what I am talking about.

There are times in life that I sit and look and things just for fun and then there are times in life that I want to through the computer across the room while looking at those same types of images.

The difference is when I’m looking at someone else’s screw up and when I’m getting a client pointing out one of our screw ups.
Below are a couple screw ups that were done by someone else and found on websites like http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com

My guess is that there was not enough room for her arm so they just cut it off.

Where I come from the reflection lines up with the image a little differently than it does here.

This was no screw up, it was a work of art.

Just how many hands do most humans have?

I think I was shorted.

I wonder if you get a refund if you don’t get to see both sunsets?

Now this one came from http://abduzeedo.com/absurd-photoshop-disasters but I have to wonder, does he or does he not have on a jacket?

What the heck is this website selling?

Porn for kids?

Custom Website Designs

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, when you are building custom websites day after day you need something to inspire you.

While it’s easy enough to build one website a month, building 4 and 5 a week can cause your brain to lock up. It’s for this reason that I post pictures, graphics and other things on the site from time to time in hopes of inspiring my web designers to work outside the box they are currently living in.

The below images were found throughout the internet and posted here.