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Thread: The standards of web design in SA

  1. #21
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    Hi Guys,

    It is not that I disagree with the original post. I think I am questioning the terminology and expectations.

    I have come across this very phenomena when chatting to my very own IT team (yup, they are mine, on loan, one calls me MOTHER) and I am trying to find the reasoning behind our different expectations.

    They are very SYSTEMS and TASK driven individuals and they often steer me away from some form of BLING that I want, with the comment, "if you want DESIGNERS go and hire them!"

    I personally had to do some serious analysis and research to understand what I wanted, because I thought I did want a DESIGNER, but in fact I found that I actually wanted PROGRAMMERS (PHP to be exact and I now have automated invoicing and all kinds of amazing back end stuff, leaving me free to interact on this forum I love these guys!).

    I still need really great inhouse marketing/SEO contractors, now that I have functionality and capacity to cope with volume and I (who know dangerously little) was able to put the "layout" (design) together.

    But it took a mindshift from ME (the client) I had to speak in a language the IT team understood. I also needed to know EXACTLY what I wanted, because they worked to spec (I now believe this was in fact a conspiracy to get me educated, so they didn't have to deal with my ongoing moronic requests!)

    In my efforts to educate myself as a client I found:
    1. steinergraphics - who I thought were great at design and have a very exclusive type client base.
    2. a few sites that are on the web purely to provide backup for technical teams (downloads, specs etc) There is no DESIGN (pretty) as such, no marketing, no SEO, pure programming, logical layout and functionality - who I saw as programmers
    3. A myriad of sites telling you that having a website that the SE can't find doesn't bring you sales, mostly coming from and aimed at medium and small business.

    In essence, to get a website that really WORKED for me, I had to think beyond sales and shopfront to functionality and sustainability, it took a lot of blood, sweat and tears realising that I had to make myself understood in foreign language, but I had insider assistance. If I didn't have it, I may have ended up either firing a DESIGNER halfway or settling for a half-baked job. I suspect that this is one of the challenges of the IT industry as well as their clients?

    As to the exclusivity - I personally think ( no proof, just conjecture) that when you move in those circles you seek approval from others who you perceive to be in those circles too. Therefore I would suggest that your store needs to be widely known amongst the elite

    And keeping with the store analogy, maybe this will help as to how I see it.

    The brick and mortar shop lease and rental = client + web hosting company (setup and hosting)
    The architect/builder/ shop fitter = client + graphics designer
    The staff = client + programmer
    The continual flow of customers = client + SEO/marketing guy.

    In each case it may be necessary to replace the client with a project manager!
    Regards

    Debbie
    debbie@stafftraining.co.za

    From reception to management training, assertiveness, accountability or interviewing skills, we have a wide range of training workshops available for you!
    www.stafftraining.co.za

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  2. #22
    Email problem RKS Computer Solutions's Avatar
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    This is an absolute brilliant thread...

    SEO side of the coin

    Having done a backlink search on Steiner, I couldn't figure out why the were linked to from Wikipedia for the term: Trepanation. Following the links, it seems to lead to sites that have been designed by them and left on their site for whatever reason. Why? Can't see the point in that, unless they are medical consultants/web designers... Wouldn't trust them either, all pretty pictures and no substance!

    Looking at some of the other links pointing to their site, it's quite obvious to note that those backlinks are indeed from sites that they have designed and stuck their name on their pages, fair enough, but no-one would ever find any of those sites because of non-existent SEO on those pages... Going to give one page as an example:

    Code:
    http://www.cfscommunication.com/products001.html
    
    <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
    <html>
    <head>
    <title>CFS Communication</title>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
    That is the entire header of that page... So, for a human that is given a direct link to that page, that won't make a difference, but from a SERPS standpoint and looking at the page from a robot or a crawlers viewpoint, the only thing to be seen is the title, ie. CFS Communication.

    Do a Google Search, nowhere in the top 100 anywhere is there a link to the CFS Communications website. This would take into account that you actually know the company name and were searching for it... But you wouldn't find anything, because they aren't listed in the top 100... Why would you bother going through more than 10 pages in Google looking for a company you know, by that time you would have assumed they don't have a website and left your searches for someone else.

    Taking the above in mind, nowhere would they be ranked or listed for any of their products or any of their services... So, paying for web design as well as hosting is throwing money down the drain, because if you're not going to be actively marketing it offline, then you won't be getting any marketing online unless further cash is spent...

    Taking the above into account, the website designed by Steiner, linked to from Wikipedia, has the following in the header...
    Code:
    http://www.steinergraphics.com/surgical/006_17.6.html
    
    <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
    <html>
    <head>
    <title>Surgical Care at the District Hospital</title>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
    <script language="JavaScript" type="text/JavaScript">
    Do a Google Search for "the forum SA" and it is right there, 2nd link from the top... So knowing the company and searching on its name after some decent SEO has been done, gets you an immediate result...

    Code:
    http://www.theforumsa.co.za/
    
    <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
    <html dir="ltr" lang="en">
    <head>
    
    <title>The Forum SA - for South African business owners and managers </title>
    
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />
    <meta name="generator" content="vBulletin 3.6.8" />
    
    <meta name="keywords" content="forum,south,africa,small,business,sa,the forum sa" />
    <meta name="description" content="Welcome to The Forum SA - The place to ask the questions and get the answers about doing business in South Africa" />
    If we take a look at internal pages, let's take one of the more popular topics that we've had in the last few months and do a Google Search for that... Rudco

    TheForumSA is listed at nr 2 with the titel: Rudco Homeloans at 6% - The Forum SA

    looking at the headers for the page:

    Code:
    http://www.theforumsa.co.za/forums/showthread.php?t=1559
    
    <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
    <html dir="ltr" lang="en">
    <head>
    	<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />
    <meta name="generator" content="vBulletin 3.6.8" />
    <meta name="keywords" content="Rudco Homeloans at 6%, south africa,south african,business,industry,vbulletin,forum,discussion," />
    <meta name="description" content="Questions are being asked how Rudco is going to finance homeloans at 6%. But reading this article, it seems that is not the only question" />
    It seems as even though "Rudco" is not listed as a direct keyword on it's own, the relevance of the page to the searched for term means that it gets higher SERPS and thus gets it placed at nr 2 on Google...


    All of the above proves one point. When a site is designed well and the proper information is given to crawlers, bots and search engines, your visibility on the net is exponentially so much more and thus you get so much more out of your site than it just sitting there only to be opened when you send the link to someone.

    I can provide various links to web designers internationally that have nice fancy smancy sites, all done in flash, or very overrated Java... The only thing they have coming for them is the links they force on the pour souls website which they have just stuck on the web, knowing full well that that website won't get a single hit from any search engine, because they have done some pretty pictures and little else.


    Design side of the coin

    Obviously a site needs to motivate and steer a potential client into either signing up with your company, or partaking in your service or purchasing your products.

    A website has a slim chance of doing this if the design looks likes it's been done by a grade 5 pupil over his afternoon sarnie with milk and cookies being a bonus for the nice blinking text that irritates absolutely everyone except for the brilliant voice in the owners head begging it to blink some more...

    The owner off course needs to have an idea of what the website should look like before it's being designed, but I do believe that anyone wanting to start a website, either for their company or themselves, have browsed enough websites in order to get half an idea of what designs they like or would like to emulate. If this is not the norm, then I'm sorry, your website is not going to cut it.

    In the competitive day and the age of technology, your website should stand out from the rest, be a cut above the best and strive to be the best in it's market. If those are not part of the goals of the website being designed, why bother in the first place? A website that is properly designed, uses decent CSS and valid HTML, will go a long way in today's cut-throat market where everyone is trying their best to entice clients to only stop at their site and not go wandering off to their competitors who have a better designed website.

    I'm not the best designer in the world, but I'd like to prove my point on design with one example... A simple little thing, something that has come about with the advent of Web 2.0... Stupid? Creative? Why don't you be the judge...

    In popular Web 2.0 culture it is an unexpressed rule that your webpage should be centered and only be taking up a certain percentage of the screen width... Take for example my online shop, I couldn't care less about having my shop looking like a snail trail, dancing down the middle of my nice 19" wide screen... In my market, people don't tend to work with small screens, and whether they do or not, they need information available above the fold and immediately visible in order to make decisions...

    Taking a popular South African website as an example, kalahari.net, their entire site has been designed around a width of 800 pixels. That would mean that on my small 19" wide screen, just over 50% of the screen would be filled with information on my resolution of 1440x900 pixels...

    What would the site look like when browsed to on one of my 26" Wide TFT LCD's? At a total native resolution of 1920x1200 pixels, the poor site would look like a silly little afterthought on the left of the screen with this huge white space sitting there, taking over 58% of the screen into the the unused territory... This is a design fault in my eyes, one that could easily be rectified by having adjustable widths...

    This is but one of many design errors that can make or break a website... Graphics, logos, buttons, layout, menus; all of those to name but a few, can be used either to your advantage or to your disadvantage... It is up to you to decide how you want your site to look and function the way you'd like to use your favorite site, and use those sites as guidelines in having your site designed. Making it the prettiest website out there is not necessarily going to look the same in the eyes of your target market, and you should do proper research beforehand into both your target market, their likings and the way they think.

    A good designer should look at your market, and you as the forthcoming owner of that new site, must have a look at your peers and see what has been done and what can be improved upon. But, at the same time as sitting down with your designer, make sure his understanding of SEO is such that even though he doesn't offer it in his package, (most of them are BS anyway), it would be easy enough for a dedicated SEO person to be able to work on your site without having to charge you for redesigning it in the process.

  3. #23
    Site Caretaker Dave A's Avatar
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    At the risk of derailing the main thrust of this thread, the Rudco thread search engine performance makes a really interesting study.

    Google - no.2
    Live Search - page 2
    Yahoo - page7!

    Of course I'm pretty happy with the Google result, particularly if you look at the other sites on page 1 and beyond that we've managed to rank above at this point. But the Yahoo result has me somewhat mystified, especially for all the bandwidth Yahoo chews up here crawling the site.

  4. #24
    just me duncan drennan's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dave A View Post
    Google - no.2
    What makes it even more interesting and intriguing is the difference between these three search terms, "rudco", "rudco home loan", and "rudco homeloans". Dramatically different results.
    [SIGPIC]Engineer Simplicity[/SIGPIC]
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  5. #25
    Site Caretaker Dave A's Avatar
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    That difference I understand - it's to do with the thread title.

  6. #26
    Site Caretaker Dave A's Avatar
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    I've just had quite a funny moment. This call gets put through to me. A website design/hosting company looking to help me apparently.

    "Hi sir. Does your company have a website?"
    "Yes"
    "Can I do a free evaluation of your website for design, speed and search engine performance for you?"
    "By all means. Do you want the site address?"
    "No sir. Let me do a search by your company name and let's see..."

    *sound of breathing, keyboard typing and background music for about a minute*

    Click.. beep.. beep.. beep..

    I wonder when I'll get my free report?

  7. #27
    Platinum Member Chatmaster's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dave A View Post
    I wonder when I'll get my free report?
    I think you did get it
    Roelof Vermeulen (Entrepreneurship in large organizations)
    Roelof Vermeulen| Rock flaps south africa

  8. #28
    Site Caretaker Dave A's Avatar
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    Here follows a message received from Rene Steiner via Contact Us.
    Hello,

    I take it I’m communicating with the moderator of this forum (RKS)?

    I have been following, with interest, the thread started by Debbie a few weeks ago in which Steiner Graphics is cited as an example.

    I can live with the critique of my SEO skills (those can always be improved on). What I do object to is my personal and professional reputation being maligned in the following statement:


    “Having done a backlink search on Steiner, I couldn't figure out why the were linked to from Wikipedia for the term: Trepanation. Following the links, it seems to lead to sites that have been designed by them and left on their site for whatever reason. Why? Can't see the point in that, unless they are medical consultants/web designers... Wouldn't trust them either, all pretty pictures and no substance!”

    “Surgical Care at the District Hospital” was a project the World Health Organization asked me to take on years ago. It is strange, I admit, that it continued to be hosted under the Steiner Graphics domain rather than WHO’s but that’s the way it worked out. Up until a short time ago there was a link to “Surgical Care” on the WHO site itself. They were fully aware of it’s existence and did not ask me to remove it. The inference that I have somehow intentionally “left” the site online and done so in an unethical way to derive benefit for myself is just ridiculous. Quite frankly, now I’m tempted to just pull it because it brings me nothing. I leave it only because so many sites now link to it and it clearly seems to be of some use to people.

    “All pretty pictures, and no substance” --- well that’s a very subjective comment. You don’t know me, you don’t know my client base, you have no real way of knowing if the work that I do does indeed have substance other than the superficial images you see on my website. In the end, what I care for most is whether my client’s needs are being met – and apparently they are as they keep returning -- I only work on referral now. The inference that these people are somehow “clueless” is a bit insulting. Sure, most are unaware of the nitty-gritty of SEO but as a number of the participants on your forum have already pointed out this is not the only factor clients consider or for that matter treat as essential (as much as the SEO Taliban would like us to think otherwise). I must be doing something right.

    I now understand why some design firms just choose to go under the radar and make their sites only accessible to clients.

    I had to vent – this was bugging me – a lot.
    In my opinion this is one of the drawbacks of the Internet – people think that on the basis of a few cursory link checks they can sum up the essence of an individual or a company – that’s a sad commentary on the world we live in isn’t it?

    Take care.

    Rene V. Steiner
    no substance

  9. #29
    Email problem RKS Computer Solutions's Avatar
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    Hallo Rene, I'm not the owner of this forum, but seeing as your contact note was directed to me, and I was the one who made the post, I'd like to answer you here.

    ----
    The inference that I have somehow intentionally “left” the site online and done so in an unethical way to derive benefit for myself is just ridiculous.
    My words were:
    and left on their site for whatever reason.
    Nowhere did I state in any way that you were being unethical, I said for whatever reasons. I don't know you and don't know why you left it there in the first place, so I chose the words correctly in my eyes... "Whatever reason" could mean a billion different things, and not one specific reason as you seem to think...

    ---

    As for leaving the site to be hosted under your domain; I can't see the reason for it... WHO have their own site, pretty nice one too... Why would they leave something they commissioned on the designer site? It is of no benefit to them, and the fact that people are now pointing links to your site, only means it's been there for forever and got noted there... If it is on the WHO site, then you are taking away from their PR and traffic because Search Engines will penalize two copies of the same information...

    What is does bring you is a link from wikipedia, which strengthens your PR because of the deep linking into your site... I'm not saying your doing this on purpose, but it takes the main drift away from the people you designed the site for... If you designed a site for me, and found out it's not indexed by the SE's because of you leaving your old and already indexed copy of it on your site, I'd be slightly hacked off, to say the least.

    ----

    You are correct, I don't know you and I don't know your clients. But, and this is a big one, in todays competitive world everything possible should be done to make your website stand out and make it reachable by as many people as possible. I only followed a few links from your site, correct again, but if I was looking for a designer and knew a few things about SEO, I'd skip over you in a heartbeat.

    Having a good design, not only means the customer must be happy, but I truly believe that it should be the most effective marketing device for that company, and that includes having your site accessible to search engines in such a way that they can index the site and help get you noted when people search for services you offer... Please do read my entire post again, as everything has been set out in plain words, trying to bring a point across that would be hard taken if written in HTML/XHTML...

    I have pointed out the images pertinently, because of what was missing... Check my banners on the bottom of this page as well as on the main forum page, right click/properties... The one thing I notice in my simple pictures is both titles and alternative text, which wasn't present in your pictures on some sites. This would imply that the only info a SE has of that image, is that it is an image and thats that. If Google read this page, it would note my images, and tag it with it's title and it's alternative text. I cannot tell you how many visitors I've had to my site, searching on images.google.com, and finding their way to site...

    The other side of that is that when you use images to link to different categories and sub-directories, and you have not added titles/alternative text, that those links it follows, looses PR and the probability of a SE seeing it as a connected part of that site, greatly diminishes.

    ----

    Having a client who doesn't understand the nitty-gritty of SEO, is of no importance. A client comes to you in the faith of having a 24/7 online marketing presence, and looking at this from a prospective clients point of view, if my site is not open to search engines and links from the outside world, the what is the point of paying for it to be done in the first place. Companies go online in an effort to be noticed by a greater audience and to expand their business reach, having to go and tell every client you already have that you now have a website and they should check it out, is a waste of more money. The site should be indexed, it should be done in such a way that SE's can help those customers get their share of the market, without them having to go and pay for more marketing in regards to getting their website known.

    ----

    This is not a personal attack on you, and my previous post was never meant to attack you, but I pointed out what I saw and reported back to this forum, for who I cannot lie and for which I will be honest for at all times...

    Again, this is in no way a personal attack, and I can barely call myself a web designer or an SEO guru, but I have picked up a few things along my few travels through this wonderful thing called the internet, and I posted my remarks the way I saw it.

    Riaan

  10. #30
    Site Caretaker Dave A's Avatar
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    Personally, I'd be quite interested in Rene's views on the issue of incorporating basic on-site SEO elements into web design. Is this something that is simply handed over to an SEO expert or should site designers be thinking about this?

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