Someone on an internet forum that I belong to runs a small business. She asked other members of the forum to proofread the text on her business’ website.
I had a look at the site and saw that
- Text was poorly justified and fonts were poorly spaced
- Contrast between text and graphics and background and graphics made the text hard to read
- The colour of the text changed in places for no apparent reason
- Product images were too small to see details
- etc.
What’s notable about this is that the business is a craft business, which means that the business owner needs to let customers know that she has an eye for good design – but her website sends the opposite message.
This is a problem that I often see when looking at websites for businesses that are supposed to be artistic – websites for craftspeople, photographers, painters and so on.
I find that websites for these types of businesses are often poorly designed. Many of them are made from cheap templates.
The owners of these businesses may save money on web design at first, but ultimately, they lose customers by telling visitors to their website that they really aren’t very good at what they do.
Here’s an analogy:
Let’s say you run an English language school, and you want your school to have a website.
Suppose, to save money, you have someone who doesn’t speak English very well write your website’s content.
On the front page of your website, in big, bold text, is the line:
WE LEARN YOU THE GOOD ENGLISH
Do you think many people would sign up for your courses?
Of course not.
Yet craftspeople and artists often do the equivalent of this.
They try to convince website visitors that they have artistic talent while ignoring the artistic quality of their website.
When visitors comes to a website, their first impression comes from the design of the page they land on – how it is laid out, what colours are used, and so on.
If it doesn’t impress them, they’re not going to bother to find out how many qualifications the business owner has, how many awards the business has won or how many products have been sold.
Of course, not every artist’s or craftsperson’s website is badly designed.
There are artists and craftspeople who understand that a well-designed website is essential for maintaining a good image and who are willing to make the investment needed to get such a website.
For examples of such well-designed websites, which were created by York Interweb, see
and
