How Not To Design Your Web Site

One thing that I tend to do when I visit a website that peeks my interest is to check out the company that designed it, if they provide that information. Most of the time I will check out a web designer’s website if their client site I am visiting looks great and I am curious as to what other websites they have in their portfolio, other times I want to see what company created such an ugly website and wondering if their own site is as bad.

In the case of today I was looking at a local janitorial service company(www.corporatecleaning.bc.ca) here in Metro Vancouver and was somewhat disturbed at what I saw. It reminded me of a website created with FrontPage! I shudder at the fact that businesses who call themselves ‘Web Designers’ use a WYSIWYG editor to create websites. I mean who here can tell when a website was created with FrontPage? Dreamweaver is a little bit better for a developmental environment, but FrontPage? So at the bottom left of the website for this janitorial company is the logo and link of the business who created the website, a company called Professional Business Systems (www.pbsco.com).

I was disappointed again to see another website that looks like it was created with FrontPage. There is almost no style applied to bring it up to the standards of current web design. Not only that, but it was also updated this month!

Things I do not like about it:

• Header Menu colours are painful to look at and alternate in an ugly way
• The content is mainly text with no styling. It has NO CSS.
• Fun Stuff? What is this about? It has nothing to do with Web Design and Development. Do you ever play web games on a Web Designer’s Website?
• Their <title> tags are pretty much their META tags. Not good SEO practice.
• Table layout - That’s right they make the use of tables where tables shouldn’t be used.
• Their portfolio is not laid out nicely. Their portfolio designs are really similar to their own site. Not much in diversity or creativity.

Things I do like about it:

• Honestly there isn’t anything I do like about it.

Looking over their portfolio of clients they are almost as bad. I mean in todays day and age of Web 2.0 and visual eye-candy none of the sites look very appealing and I would personally shy away from them. I am not sure how much money this company has charged these companies for their ‘online presence’ but I’m sure you could hire a elementary school student for a couple bucks an hour to create something more visual pleasing.

There is a lot on their site that I could critize and could suggest to help improve it such as:

• Use CSS to style paragraphs.
• Use <div> tags instead of <table>.
• If your not going to use all the space of my monitor then limit the width and center it.
• Use a better higher-quality graphic for your company logo.
• Make use of a colour wheel to find complimentary colours so my eyes don’t burn when trying to navigate your site .

I am not saying I am the best web designer out there but I have looked at many many websites over the years (been using the internet since at least 1992) and have also ‘borrowed’ layouts in the past and modified them for my purposes. I am just noticing that people don’t seem to shop around when it come to web design for their company. It could be the price of the designer, it could be because they are lazy and just want a ‘presence’ on the internet. Your website is a large part of your company’s marketing and branding strategy. It also portrays more professional look if done correctly.

What am I trying to say? Don’t be too cheap when looking to have a website created for you. Shop around, there are tons of Web Designing companies out there. Don’t go with the people who says they have been designing websites for years and pay them money for something that was whipped up in a matter of minutes (or looks like it has).