Do you think ‘web design’ when you really need ‘web services’?

It’s a symptom of a relatively new industry. Just when you think you’re on top of the new online way of doing things, the landscape changes again and you’re back to the drawing board again.

And it’s easy to understand why. Of all the fast moving industries that have emerged in the past few decades, none has come close to the lightning-fast pace of change in the eBusiness sphere.

The perfect illustration of this was featured in yesterday’s newspaper. In profiling search giant Google, Melbourne’s The Age provided a fascinating timeline of its history.

It showed that in 1998 Google rented a garage in Silicon Valley, in 1999 it moved into an office and in 2000 it became the world’s biggest search engine.

Just like that! And there lies the rub. Because none of us can afford to be complacent when an industry development may see what was once a prominent online presence fade quickly into the background – and costing us business in the process.

Adapting to a rapidly moving online landscape

Similarly, many in smaller business – quite understandably mind you, charge their web ‘designer’ with the responsibility of managing their entire online presence.

This is a bit like asking your architect to not only build your house, but to build the garden and do its maintenance over the years.

In other words, you are asking someone who has an important role in the process to take responsibility for areas they have little relevance to.

This incorrect perception isn’t helped by a fairly muddy understanding of what constitutes web ‘design’ in the first place. But that’s the subject of another blog.
The point is, the days of whacking up a nice looking website and hoping for the best are now well behind us.

From Billboards in Cyberspace to online businesses

Back in the ‘old’ days (circa 2002) when the web was still in its infancy, a good looking website could hold you in good stead. Visitors could get an idea of what you offered, ensure you were a legitimate business and pick up the phone and call you.

But my, how the landscape has changed since then.

Nowadays visitors expect that they’ll find you on the first page of Google when they conduct a search for your line of business. Or that you have a prominent ‘pay per click’ ad that promotes your services, or that someone on Twitter or a chatroom has recommended you. Or that you have a blog or video that has given you some credibility.

Then when they finally get to your website, they expect it will appear differently to the last time they visited your site. If you sell product they expect they can buy it online. They might fill in a form or leave you an email message, which they expect will be responded to quickly. They will also expect to sign up for specials or news and that the ensuing email newsletter provides value to them.

Nowadays the last thing they expect to do is pick up the phone to call you. They expect that your website can perform the vast bulk of your business on your behalf.

Design becomes a smaller cog in a bigger machine

Little of this has anything to do with the ‘design’ of your website. Instead it is embroiled in the related areas of online strategy, search engine optimisation and advertising, social networking, content management systems, secure shopping carts and email marketing systems.

Subsequently, the role of the designer has moved from being the only person you needed to deal with, to a valued member of a much broader team, who can easily pull together all of your online requirements.

This explains why my own web services firm has seen a steady flow of enquiries from graphic designers who want us to partner with them on client web projects. They have realised that they lack the skills or resources to look after their client’s online requirements. Rather than risk losing the client altogether as a result, they have had the foresight to partner with someone who can, resulting in a win/win scenario.

An evolving skill set

A diagram we featured in an earlier blog illustrates the skills your web provider now needs to draw on.

Note how the web ‘designer’ is now a smaller cog in a larger team.

Of course, you don’t necessarily need to employ a team as large as this to plan, establish and maintain your online presence. However, whoever does look after it needs to either provide these capabilities themselves or tap into them.

The danger in utilising a designer who doesn’t have these capabilities is that they will innocently spend your entire budget on the ‘design’ of your website when instead it should be spread across all of the above disciplines.

So it’s wise to ensure the person or firm that is responsible for your online presence is taking the entire range of online capabilities into account when quoting on your requirements, and not just those that fits within their skills set.

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Craig Reardon is a leading eBusiness educator and founder and director of independent web services firm The E Team which provide the gamut of ‘pre-built’ website solutions, technologies and services to SMEs in Melbourne and beyond.