Vital Web Design Information
This may very well be the most important page on this website for those seeking a web designer or information about web designers.
If you are like most people looking for a web design company, you probably have expectations of what such companies can do. This would be okay, except that there are probably more differences than are generally imagined — and for a reason. The bottom line is that:
Either you or your web designer
should know how to market and sell
What does "web design" encompass?
Web Design is
just one part of
Web Marketing
"The basic purpose of any web site is to communicate something. This marketing fundamental is often lost in the whirling wonders of new technology. DianeV Web Design Studio never loses sight of your message. Their web design and search engine expertise is focused on delivering your message to your audience. The result is a site that achieves, and often exceeds its original goal -- whether that is to sell, inform or entertain. We've built three web sites with DianeV and are very pleased with the results. More importantly, our customers like the sites and they tell us so."
Michael Metzler, Publisher
Action Publishing
The term web design refers to "designing and building a website" — and a web designer is someone who can design and build a website. That's a lot (and these are vital skills), but that's all it means.
The problem is that most people who don't live and breathe the Internet assume that anyone who can build a website (or who "knows computers") is also a marketer, expert salesman, and can get one's new website found in search engines. That is, someone who knows how to build a successful website. Unfortunately, that isn't a safe assumption for the simple reason that marketing and sales are not taught in web design classes.
About the search engines. Many people assume that the fact that a website is built for them means that it will be easy to be found in search engines — or that all they need to do is to mention to their web designer that they want it to be #1 in the search engines. Nothing could be further from the truth — in fact, an entire industry has risen up around getting websites found in search engines.
That said, it's vital not to assume that web design skills include a knowledge of how search engines works, or being able to build a website so that search engines can read it, let alone make your pages appear at the top for your particular search terms. In fact, most web designers are taught that search engines do all this via something called "meta tags" — which hasn't been true more or less since before the turn of the century, when there was a lot less competition than there is today.
Think of it this way: designing a logo is not the same as creating an advertising piece to gain new customers or sales. Similarly, all web design services may not include what is needed to create a successful website.
Most Web companies specialize — in web design, or graphic design, or getting high search engine rankings or marketing. This requires that you expend the time to learn something about all of this, discover what's missing and then hire companies to fill in the gaps — which will probably mean paying each of them to rework each other's work.
Doing it right the first time:
Full Service Web Design
As marketers who came to the Web in 1997, we soon became aware that boosting sales would require more than simply building a website. We've brought all of these services together in our market-oriented web design. What's more, we pride ourselves on our plain-English explanations to clients. Our aim is to de-mystify the website-building process so that you understand the issues and can make educated choices for yourself.
We trust that this information will be of help to you.
