Forum Moderators: open
The web desingers tend to use the flash, java, and many other programs that are not HTML and have no usefull content on their web site. On the other hand the page looks good, but will not list.
Generally when I get a contract I look at the source code and know if it was designed by a SEO or a Web designer. A web designer, in most cases the key factors are missing are Meta tags, text links, and pages that load quick. Instead they use the Flash Intro that takes anywhere between 20 seconds to a minute to load the page, thats too much time to wait. You lose customers if its that slow.
However on the other side of the coin the SEOs can build a page that loads quick, has text links, lists in the search engines, has the proper meta tags, but looks a little ugly. I guess the trade off is ugly and lists vs. good looking and list poor.
Has anyone else noticed this or is it just me.
There is, I beleive, a breed of 'web professional' that deals with both.
Nick
Travoli you have a good point with a medium. But not too many people find it.
What would be a good medium that you have seen. If you dont want to post the url you can sticky me.
First place rankings (SEO) and visual presentation (graphic design) can co-exist very nicely indeed - it's far easier than you might believe.
The limitations are with the individual developer.
taking the limitations principle a step further.
Once an individual, knows the basic operational limitations of a site on all of the basic issues concerned with maximum visibility (SEO) and visitor durability issues, this is where joe-bloggs, i ain't got a clue about graphic design jumps in /or i'm expert at visual design, pushes the boundries on the looks front, while picking up maximum yeild from the sites other assets.
I personally would rather use a site where someone has thought about content distribution, with the structural navigation of getting what i want, rather than it looking out of the space age, and its eye candy and useless. Coming to think of it, i'm trying to find a house to buy at the moment, and the sites, of the majority of estate agents who operate in my area, have definetly left SEO, and common sense at the door.
The less experienced and savvy ones neglect search engines.
However just putting all your effort at becomming No 1. while neglecting the visual appeal of the site is a BIG mistake.
I have founf numerous "top ten" sites that I didnt even bother looking at because no effort was made at a visual level. Those sort of sites give me no confidence in the site and its the back button everytime.
I have a constant battle with a regular contributor to a (printed) newsletter I help produce, because she regularly supplies reams of content without any paragraphs. As a result, not only do I have to ruthlessly edit the original to about 30% of its length, I also have to work out where to put the paragraphs in so that the text reads naturally but without being a formidable block of print.
The mistake, though, is to think of web design in the same way as print design. I have seen many sites that would look great as brochures, but fail as websites simply because the rules are different. Some designers get carried away with innovation -- fine in print, where innovation doesn't change the fact that you still "navigate" a brochure by turning the pages, but when web designers start messing around with "innovative" navigation, the result is simply confusing.
Technical constraints, such as the difficulties of reading onscreen, browser/platform compatibility issues, bandwidth etc mean that design, while important, is trickier to implement.
I once picked up a book off a shelf (but put it back because I didn't have enough cash on me) which documented a study of web design. A group of people of varying competence were given the addresses of various websites, and asked to perform certain tasks ("Find out how much a ticket for the Saturday matinée performance costs", "Get the postal address of the head office" etc). The sites ranged from Disney.com to a car salesman with a really amateurish looking site.
While the car salesman's site scored very badly when it came to "design" and "first impressions" and "would you use this site again?" it came up on top for almost everything else, because the navigation was so good.
I’ve been in the web design /seo trade for about a year, and I’m always trying to combine/balance the two...
Web Site Usability, A Designers Guide...by Spool, Scanlon, Schroeder, Snyder, DeAngelo
some excellent points to ponder from a superb study...I recommend it wholeheartedly to everyone...though more as a get from your local library than as a constant reference
IMO usability is a given...stage one is to make sure the site can be used...SEO and design must work around it
IMO, a balanced redesign would put seo into consideration along with site architecture/navigation, download speed and usability. Yet the mainstream is quite unaware and this book is a great example of this.
Web designers should not be versus Seos at all but part of the same effort.
However, as long as they don't interfere with my work, they can keep on being unaware; it allows my sites to leapfrog over theirs in the serps.
It seems to me that seo is an afterthought, if a thought at all. I finished a book entitled, "Web Redesign, Workflow that Works" and found it comprehensive and very very useful. It touched on ever facet of web site redesign, except seo. It wasn't even an afterthought.
I suppose books might avoid delving into SEO because the information they give could be outdated within a week or even a day!!!... as we all know, search engines are always changing there algo's… services they offer… who they become partners with/join forces with etc....
I think it must be one of the hardest subjects to write about.!!! ;)
It's about time someone wrote one. Then we could spend all week slagging it off!
Nick
We all know that it is not a straightforward thing to port from (print) graphical design to web design.
I'm technically a web designer, but my background is as a programmer... I just happened to have a semi-decent eye for colour and design. Yet I spend much of my time trying to persuade people to try and write standards compliant code, to stop using deprecated tags etc. etc.
How often have we heard the saying "html isn't rocket science"? No it's not, but to write true, valid and standards compliant html/xhtml to all the accepted industry norms is no easy feat.
