Last week I stumbled upon this article that states that "Web design is dead", a pretty bold statement. The web has been around for about twenty years so naturally, its content and the way people use it has changed. Those changes have asked for other ways to build websites and more skilled web designers and programmers.
By "Web design, the author of the article means "old web design", which means "first best guess design, where the web designer gets to submit their personal view of what will work, the client pays for it, and it's put live."
Do I agree with this statement?
Well, yeah, I do.
Web design is overrated
Let me start off by saying that I think traditional webdesign is somewhat overrated, which is proven by webdesigners all over the world every day.
Let's say, you're a highly skilled webdesigner, you've worked for some big clients on successful websites and a new client comes up to you. They want a complete redesign of their current website and they give you the best briefing you've ever seen. They know exactly what they want, they got some very clear conversion goals and you get the freedom to design whatever you think is best. You got every thing you need to create a killer website, plus they got the budget to get this thing going.
Seems to me like the ideal job, so you get to work, you start sketching wireframes, thinking of every detail there is and after you're done, you present your work to the client. The conditions were perfect to create your magnum opus.
In this highly unlikely and ideal situation, do you think you would come up with the best design possible? I can promise you, you most likely won't.
It's not because you didn't do a good job, it's because you had no idea how visitors were going to behave on the website. There's no way you could have guessed what a certain call-to-action button should look like and what look would have the maximum effect on the conversion goals.
Why I think that web design is overrated, is because most website designs are based on personal taste and intuition and not on actual knowledge or research.
Most websites are the best possible guess and not the best possible website.
"To measure is to know"
These words are taken from the words of Lord Kelvin, 19th-century mathematical physicist. Another of his quotable phrases is "If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it."
To know if your design is the best possible design, you have to measure its success. Try usertests, eyetracking or A/B-testing to see if the design meets the conversion goals. I'm sure you can come up with some alternative solutions to test if you can optimize the conversion rate of your masterpiece.
Even the smallest changes that no one will notice (at first), like altering the text in a link, can increase the clickthrough rate by a stunning 78%. There's no way you could have guessed the right text with your first shot.
It's almost 2010, you've got all the tools you need to perform usability tests so why not start using one or more of these great apps:
- Usability tests
- A/B-testing
So now what?
The first thing you should do is switch to a more agile design process. Realize that there is no perfect design and let it go when you're 90% finished, it's probably more than good enough at that point.
I recommend you read this great article by Cennydd Bowles about agile design (it also contains some useful links to other resources), everyone who is serious about web design should read it.
In your design process there should be room for more iterations. Not the oldschool-iterations, where the client gets to tell whether he likes the size of the font or the photo in the header and you goback to the drawing board, but iterations based on actual data. Start building prototypes and tweak them to optimize the conversion rate.
Sure, your client wants a design that fits their brand image, but they will like it a whole lot more when they actually sell some products online or when they notice much more leads from the website.
It's time to rethink your web design process. A website is not print, you can change anything at any time, even after you put it online. Build prototypes and test them on actual users, optimize the conversion rates and track as much as you can once the site is live. You will see that small optimizations can have an enormous impact.
Don't settle for the first best guess.
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