Good Design KNOWS No Bounds. Are You Giving Off the Wrong Impression with Your Website…?

Your website is surely and definitively a reflection of YOU. Online, that IS your first impression — and you only get one shot.

Is your website telling tales about your personality, your business objectives … your morals and personal values … that contradict your personal truth?

We hope not.

Let’s explore…

Are you a slave to your template…?

First, some background.

All too often, I see business owners coming to their designers with preconceived notions of exactly how they want their websites to look. That, in and of itself , is not a bad thing. It’s quite refreshing, actually, to work with clients who have some idea … some vision … for what they want their online image to embody.

Awesome.

It’s not always so awesome when Joe Nu Bizness instructs his designer to construct a website based on a composite of five different sites that Joe likes — a header from this one, the exact navigational scheme from that one, the colors from this one, the menu style from this other, and a logo style like that one.

Results can be particularly disastrous when none of these sites Joe has fished from are even remotely related to his industry. And unfortunately, they’re usually not.

Are you starting to see the danger here…?

If you’ve chosen a good designer, they should be experienced in designing sites that achieve results , and should be able to act as a consultant of sorts to help YOU get the results you’re after with your website. That being said, coming with a list of ideas is great. Coming with a list of non-negotiable requirements is usually quite bad.

The partnership you have with your designer is important — and it’s built on trust .

The designer has to trust that YOU will fully disclose as much as is needed about your target audience, the need you’re trying to fill for your users, and your personality … with depth and clarity … so that they can translate that vital information into creating an effective Web presence for YOU.

And YOU have to trust that your designer has your best interest in mind, even (and perhaps especially) when your opinions differ, and that they’ll never lose sight of the goal of making YOU look the very best that they can.

In the end, it’s about coming up with a product that both you AND the designer are proud to show off in public.

Hold on — make no mistake.

You should not interpret that to mean that you’re at the mercy of your designer!

Quite the contrary.

YOUR WEB DESIGN PROJECT SHOULD BE ALL ABOUT YOU .

You should be happy with your website’s final result for obvious reasons. But your designer should be happy with it as well, even if ONLY because … if they’re not, that typically is because they don’t feel like they’ve done their job of creating something that will achieve the RESULT you’re after.

No designer should want to place work in their portfolio that doesn’t reflect professional, effective, results-oriented work.

Hence the importance of the partnership.

A happy client AND content designer means that YOU are proud of your website … AND that it should get you the results you intend.

Do you see…?

But what’s this about being a slave to my template!? Relevance…???

Ah yes — sorry. ;)

This concept carries over when you try working to a template. Trying to fit your content, images, ideas, and very persona to a templated design is usually not the best idea. Rarely can we find templates that fully embody everything our website should.

From minor hacking to major modifications, these types of edits can take just as long as simply creating a fully customized design from scratch that’s unique to YOU, and that embodies who you are.

And when is that NOT better…?

Trying to fit yourself into a template can result in boxy, ugly, unattractive designs … boring, yawn-worthy websites … the "cookie cutter" look of everyone else in your industry … or even more disastrous consequences. And is that really what you want?

Of course not.

It only makes sense that if you’re going to invest the necessary money (or time, if you’re mostly a do-it-yourselfer) into your Web persona, make it the BEST you can afford now, to avoid costly and time-consuming redesigns, profit loss (from ineffective design), and redundant investments later.

If you have a high-quality, professional, focused, refined, and UNIQUE product/service … it’s logical (and profitable!) that you should create your website to MATCH that image:

Creating you a solid, definitive, UNIQUE brand that’s easier to sell.

After all … it just makes sense.

 Respected Business & Marketing author H.T. Major has nearly a decade of collective experience fine-tuning the art of creating effective, efficient business websites that SELL, and boosting the conversion of existing sites. Now she offers supremely affordable website, photo, & business design services that are not only about creating "pretty pictures", but about creating RESULTS: visit ChumpChangeWebDesign.com.