I’m an avid reader of Seth Godin’s blog. His latest post states that companies waste too much time on original web design. Your web site isn’t supposed to be a work of art. It’s supposed to be a window into your business for your customers. If you sell, then make it easy to buy. If you provide services, make it easy to understand what you do and how those services can be procured. Start with a site that you like, and have your designer build from there.
The only thing I’d add to his post is that you don’t have to limit your up front research to looking at existing sites. There are thousands of free or very inexpensive site templates that can be modified to fit your tastes. Look on oswd.org or Google "website templates" for tons of resources. Don’t spend time or money reinventing the wheel.
That’s true, the design should be functional rather than rich of “bells and whistles”.
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