What Web Designers Really Do

The web design industry only started around 20 years ago, when the internet appeared. Hence, many people who are not in the industry probably do not understand exactly what does a web designer do. Many mismatch of expectations between a client and a web designer happen precisely because the client has a wrong picture of this industry.

This post will help to shed some light on the web design industry by showing the things that every professional web designer should do.

Understanding our clients

Clients come to us, web designers, in hope for a website (duh!). But what kind of website are they looking for? Or rather, a better question to ask will be “Why do they need a website?” We believe our clients come to us with a problem that they want to solve, maybe it is how to let their brand be more well known, or their website needs a revamp because the technologies have to be updated. So we have to figure out by talking to our clients and understanding their needs. Next, we have to understand how to work best given the constraints some clients have, such as their budget and timeline constraints.

Also, they might have certain ideas or feature requests that they assume are “normally” included in the quotation. So to prevent any misunderstanding or conflict, we always have to go through with the clients in greater details and list out all the inclusions and exclusions in the project contract.

Present solutions

After understanding what problem our clients have, and what kind of website they want, we will present possible solutions to them. There are many ways to do this, such as doing a graphic image of how the website will look like. Web designers should not spend too much time on this stage, as the idea is to find out about our client’s unique preference and taste towards websites even before designing the final website.

Working with a strict timeline

Web designers have to always remember the interest of our clients, and hence be transparent about the time needed to complete the project. This timeline however, may be very subjective because there might be delays due to changes in client expectations or delays in communications that causes more time to be used in the project. However as professional web designers, we try our very best to keep the project within the proposed timeline.

Constantly learn the new technologies

Web designers today need to know many things, because there are too many web technologies today. It is likely that some requirements that clients need are outside the skill set of a web designer, and he or her has to learn through the project on the best ways to implement it. In other words, we are always learning, and this is a norm for our industry.

Maintaining a relationship

This is by far the most important thing we do, because we work for our clients and it is an ongoing process, we need to maintain good relationship with them and communicate well with them. The last thing we want is to terminate a project that we have invested time and effort in. Even after the project ends, we still maintain the relationships with our clients as we have to maintain and update their websites should they choose to engage our maintenance services.

In conclusion, many people will think that a website is pretty easy to design. but not many see the amount of work and man hours that we put into creating the website. This applies to creative works in general too. But as every other job, hard work is needed and web designers should be prepared for it as well.