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?

I spend a lot of time and money searching the web looking for better ways of doing what I’m already doing.

However there is one thing that always amazes me, websites that give me too many choices. I spend a lot of time online and feel I have a pretty good understanding of the internet and the way it works yet I become overwhelmed and confused when given too many options.

In most cases I’ll spend about 60 seconds on the page and decide it’s not worth the time and effort and close the page and continue my search elsewhere. If this is a normal routine for me then I have to wonder how many others do the same.

As a website owner we need to understand that a website visitor can become overwhelmed with too many options.

No One Cares About Your Website

A lot of web designers miss the boat when it comes to website design. Your website is not suppose to stand out, well unless it’s about movies, artists, musicians or web 2.0 companies.

A website design is not suppose to distract from the path you want the website visitor to take. The purpose of the website design is to help shine some light on that path but in such way that no one even notices the light.

The purpose of the site is to generate some sort of action and the purpose of the website design is to help the site generate that action.

This means that the site can’t be cutting edge with flash moving all around us but at the same time needs to be clean cut enough not to stand out as a crappy website design. It’s a tough road to walk down however as a web designer you should try and walk down it and not show all the neat new things you’re able to do.
The site is not about you or the client; it’s about what the website visitor can get out of the website.