Breaking the Rules to Create a Talk Worthy Web Site
January 14th, 2008 in Design Inspiration
by: Matthew Griffin
In the spring 2005 I decided that having a talk worthy website is a critical advantage for an independent web designer. That realization prompted me to build the latest iteration of Liquid Design Media—the web site for my design studio. All the top search engine marketing and usability experts would disagree with almost every decision I made in building that site. I had a splash page, I used Flash, and the layout was abnormal. But I didn't design it to impress SEO and usability experts. I designed it so that someone looking for a web designer would see it and say, "Wow...", and the competition would fade into the background.
It worked. The site accomplished exactly what I wanted it to and, In the process, an additional pleasant but unexpected result emerged. I discovered that clients who choose me because of my cool website are some of the best clients in the world.
They're already convinced that I'm an expert. The initial call usually begins with a shower of compliments—a great intro to an interview. It completely relieves the pressure of convincing them I know what I'm doing. I can get right down to the business of helping them out and skip over the awkward self promotion phase. Also, since the client is the one that put me up on the expert chair a greater trust is cultivated than if I clawed my way up there and took the seat myself.
I'm telling this story to make this point: Always take a step back and consider the purpose of a web site before you dive in. It's the conveyance of meaning and design that is the soul of a web site, not merely it's adherence to a set of laws. The SEO laws are good and helpful but applied alone, all they can produce is the same web sites over and over. If you need some inspiration, check out the new talk worthy web site by Meomi and make sure you mouse over all the little creatures in the peripheral parts of the design.
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Comments
Posted By: Jermayn on 01/15/08
You raise an interesting point that the website should be aimed to the target audience instead of just google. However in saying that I do think you can at least do the basics of SEO, usability etc that will help the business.
Posted By: Jeff Hipwell on 01/15/08
I have to totally agree. After going to collage for web design for 3yrs back around 2000, I switched to media arts and animation. To get my foot in the door at a cool, custom motorcycle paint and fabrication site, I created a website for them using more animation techniques then SEO ones. I now got local companies wanting only me to design their website and I didn't even want to make any more since I got hired at the shop. One bit of unasked for advice, I make sure my clients are running traditional media ads to drive local traffic to their websites. (gotta throw up a free plug for the shop: www.American-Colors.com - comments always welcome)
Posted By: on 01/15/08
Great comments, everyone. Thank you.
Posted By: Erica DeWolf on 01/23/08
Great point. You should always, always keep your potential visitors and customers number one in your mind to Google. If your site comes up #1 on a search engine for your search term, but is poorly designed for the user, the result will more than likely be a lot of pageviews and very low conversion rate. I love Google. But everybody should stop sucking up to the search engine and start sucking up to leads.
Posted By: on 01/23/08
Thanks, Erica. Yeah, sometimes we forget that visitors are people and not just numbers. If we don't design for people, we won't be effective.
Posted By: Ville Väisänen on 05/14/08
Hi! Thanks for this fabulous blog. I've been reading it daily since I found it. Sharing what you know, and that's lot, is really cool thing of you to do! Your Liquid Design Media site is so very, very cool as well. I love the way how you've introduced such a diversity there, at the same time maintaining consistent look and feel. I totally agree with this usability/SEO thing; I think it's somehow overrated, although of course being important aspect of any site. People tend to forget that technology is just a tool to present content, not the self-purpose.