Forum Moderators: phranque
All the text in the pages was embedded in images, and I'm not talking a small amount of text. In order to get the text to fit the pages, the designers had made the font extremely small. I have good eyesight and a 19 inch monitor, but at 800 X 600 I was having trouble reading it.
So I sent an email over to the vendor partner letting them know the pages had issues - file size, usability, potential loss of customers.
The response came back from the design company today explaining their reasons, to paraphrase:
Saying text in images for a web page is bad is a 'subjective response', and the text 'might' appear to small 'to some'. - I mean this text is tiny! And last I checked, people with less than superhero standard eyesight still had credit cards.
Its imposssible to make the text appear the same in all browsers and all computers. - what!? So all web pages should be laid out with the text in graphics?
Laying out the text in html instead of graphics would only reduce the file size by around a half. Yeah right. I could easily get it down to less than a quarter using tables, never mind css. And in any case, reducing download time by a half isn't worth doing?
OK, I'm no whizz as a designer, but I can make a usable web page that looks ok and doesn't take half an hour to come down and fill your logs with partial download 206s.
If you'd comissioned work and got something like this back would you be happy? The vendor's marketing department are throwing up their hands and saying they don't understand all this 'technical stuff'. It looks like its going to descend into a slanging match now so I'll politely withdraw, but I really think this company should clear out their lockers and go back to print layouts. Small thing perhaps, but I'm just surpised at the standard of work of a supposedly 'prefessional' design firm.
Want to bet that they had some print media guy come up with the design? Then, the lazy way out was to simply convert it to an image.
WBF
I had a similar problem a few years ago. A highly paid ad agency created banner ads and landing pages for the company I worked for. The day before the banners were scheduled to hit, they sent us the landing pages to install on our site. These landing pages showed specific prices and specific configurations, and the pricing changed often, sometimes two or three times a day. Well.... the landing pages were nothing more than a big ol' GIF file with barely legible text. Me, being Mr. Naïve, simply assumed they had mistakenly sent us they comps rather than the actual files. So, I replied to the ad agency asking for them to deliver the landing pages in HTML. Later that afternoon, I got a reply email with zip files attached for each landing page. “Success!” I thought… Until I opened the zip files and discovered that all this big money ad agency had done was run the images through Fireworks, sliced, then tabled up the images and sent them back to me. They still got paid, while I stayed late into the night recreating the layout in actual HTML.
I’ve since discovered that there are all too many “web design firms” whose only real qualification is having enough chutzpa to charge exurbanite prices for feeble work. These design firms have only one skill, promoting themselves to senior and middle management who control the checkbook but have no clue about what it takes to build a website. That was one of many incidents that made me a firm believer in the old adage “if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself”. I witnessed first-hand way too many of these so-called “web experts” con my former employer out of a lot of money.
Luckily, the company I’ve been with for the last few years has enough savvy at all levels to avoid these con artists. But, this made me think about all the businesses (especially small businesses) who don’t have the time and expertise to filter through the hacks and find a truly good web designer. What would be some good warning signs? After all, to the untrained eye, the garbage unloaded on PPG would probably look professional. So, if you were to create a check list of warning signs for those with no web knowledge, what would you include? First on my list (based on personal experience) would be “never trust a web designer who shows you Photoshop comps of a site design”. Any others you can think of?
Yeah, not my choice though unfortunately. I made my point, so now the files have gone up, I don't have time to waste on it basically. Presumably they're used to their e-mail marketing canpaigns not doing that great :)
It just really surprises me that they could get it that wrong, and then stick up for themselves.
> if you were to create a check list of warning signs for those with no web knowledge, what would you include?
These days, I think I'd ask them first if they knew anything about search engines. A user friendly page and a search engine friendly page have a good few things in common I think - and the reply would give you a rough benchmark.
Always use a company that ONLY does web design.
Although i can very much sympathise with what you are saying, i also feel (for some yet unknown reason) that i have to defend these guys.
I remeber the day when web was web and print was print and databasing was databasing.....and it wasn't so long ago! Then web designers were having to know more and more about SQL/ASP etc, and print designers were having to know more and more about HTML and so on and so on.
I know print desingers (who no practically nothing about web design) who have gone (and got) jobs as web designers soley because their print work was excellent, but also because the managers of the employing comapnies were not aware of what was actually involved in building a web page.
So you end up with these usless print designers, working as web designers, thinking they suddenly know everything....and why? Because they managed to b*lls**t some even more useless person further up the chain that all that was really involved with web design was cropping an image in photoshop and putting it in dreamweaver.
Webboy
The problem is that the customers that once went down that road loose confidence that it is possible to achieve results on the net, because their website didn't bring any enquiry - hmmmmm no we didn't have any log analyser to know who came and how they came to our site - hmmmmmmm no we didn't have any enquiry form on the site, why do people use them? - hmmmmmmmmm no my 12 years old computer whizz nephew did the site with M$ Powerpoint is that bad?
, if you were to create a check list of warning signs for those with no web knowledge, what would you include
Yeah, ask for phone numbers and contacts to the owners of the sites in those shiney new photoshop comps and then interview them on your own to find what their experience was like dealing with xyz design company. If they're unwilling to provide any contacts then you might want to be somewhat skeptical.
easy_coder
