Web design is all about creating perfected marketing/promotional platforms where companies will expand business and increase revenue. Therefore, what is expected from good websites is to consider users’ perspectives and behavior, and to respond to their specific expectations.
That makes the job of a web designer far more complicated than one would expect: he needs to do research, to think of the content, prototyping, functionality, and style; and to come up with a solution that is both powerful and breathtaking.
While choosing the appropriate designer, we look for expertise and creativity, and require a successful website that will influence the market.
Choosing a good designer is not easy in any case, but what makes it really difficult are common misconceptions about web designers that have affected their industry for years.
Image source: Fireart Studio
In order to take advantage of quality web design, business owners have to start ignoring them as soon as possible. Let’s check them:
Everybody that knows how to put up a website is a designer
Well, most of the time, he’s not at all. The way things are nowadays, websites can be created even by 10 year olds, because there are many easy and affordable ways to do it. Think about it: how many families and school softball teams launched a website of their own lately? It is just easy!
Of course, designing a professional company website is something different, and it requires plenty of skills for effective navigation. Before the website goes live, the role of the designer is to convey information effectively, all the way from the layout to the overall messaging structure.
They are not progressive
Is there a bigger lie than this one? You’ve seen design developing and improving incredibly during the last years, but you may have missed the fact that the drivers behind the wheel were exactly web designers.
Web design can be useful to every industry or social sector, as being an advanced practice that follows fashions and trends, or even creates from scratch an image that the entire world would love.
Hiring them will break the bank
Image source: Marco Goran Romano
No, it won’t. In fact, a good designer is more likely to save your money than to spend them, especially if you observe the results of his work on the long run. Reputable designers are really professional in what they’re doing, and the first thing they ask about is your budget, in order to know how far they can go.
A huge money-savior is the fact that they avoid common mistakes you’d do on your own, and they are always there for you to update or change something. At the end of the day, you choose – if the website is not as balanced or attractive as you expected, you can always ask for alteration.
They were not trained to do their job
True, there are self-thought designers who relied on nothing but their talent to enter this sector, and their work is actually pretty awesome. Still, the majority are well-trained and educated professionals, who studied to adopt the profession and went over thousands of blogs, magazines, tutorials and seminars to learn what they know nowadays.
At the same time, they are all members of large coworker community where each question is easily answered, and everybody learns from the other.
They can’t design without HTML knowledge
Image source: Dan Edwards
Most websites are written in the HTML programming language, but this fact has almost nothing to do with good web design. Obviously, the more a designer knows, the better, but that shouldn’t be a number one priority when choosing yours.
Asking an experienced designer whether he knows HTML is the same as believing that everyone who knows the lyrics of a song can actually sing it.
They are all computer nerds
Image source: Vic Bell
You may as well be crossing the boundaries of politeness by believing that designers are star trek lovers who need to speak wookie and to know binary to finish their job. They are normal and communicative people with quality perceptions of beauty, and most of the time they have no idea about IT and programming languages.
They won’t socialize
Image source: Justas Galaburda
There are asocial people in any profession, if you think about it, and design is not tat likely to be the one where there are most of them. Think about it: how would a designer attract clients if he doesn’t communicate?
Additionally, designing a good website requires constant collaboration, and it is exactly there where designers try to be most friendly so that they will be recommended. Socializing is simply critical for this profession.
There is no difference between web designers and web developers
Let us give you a closer example: Developers are the mechanics that fix the engine of your car. Designers are the guys that paint it to attract attention.
Developers handle the technical part of the work, such as coding and adding functionality, and they are sometimes good designers too. Most of the time, however, they entrust the refining part of the work to their colleagues designers, who put the cherry on top of the cake.
They won’t try to compromise on affordable solutions
There will be such who will offer nothing but expensive packages, but not all of them. The myth says that they don’t like to settle common prices, but the truth behind it is that know your budget in advance, and they plan accordingly.
Most of them love their job so much that they would even go beyond what they’ve promised for the money, and they’d use their skills to make an extremely attractive website on a low price. You need to know that it is not only their talent that you’re paying for – it is rather the access to expensive tools and programs that they need to complete your project.
They are not artists
Image source: Kevin Yang
If this is true, please explain me why not every kid that took a graphic design class in school is not a designer nowadays? Being completely honest, designers don’t even have to be artists, because you’re not paying them to create a masterpiece that everyone would watch, but one that everyone can use.
Still, most designers go beyond effective communication and usability, and make use of their creativity to design a unique product. They are probably the only people out there who know how to convey a practical and emotional message at the same time.
Web designers and graphic designers are the same people.
Sometimes they are, but not always. Graphic designers certainly have the potential to create amazing websites, but they often lack the knowledge of how to make those websites maximally effective, clear, and usable.
Their role is to make things look good, which doesn’t exactly coincide with the role of your web designer. He uses beauty for marketing purposes.
Planning and design are key factors for the quality of user experience, and functionality is the aspect that has to be considered first. Preparing an awesome, jaw-dropping website is worth nothing if users don’t know what to do with it.
That’s why web design and graphic design (being as different as they are), always walk hand by hand.
They won’t let you decide
You are the one who is paying, and the designer won’t just skip asking you what you want and how you plan to achieve it. He will let you choose first, and then explain whether what you’re asking for is actually feasible.
A large part of his work is to come up with suggestions and ideas, in case you don’t have preferences, or have such that don’t match your purpose. Above everything else, a designer is a listener – he collaborates with you, understands your long-term goals, and requirements, and starts working only after that.
As you can conclude, not even 20% of the work will be based on their individual decisions.
