Website Design for Wigan Small Businesses is rarely about design these days.  With the advent of Facebook pages for business and other social platforms, ‘design’ via templates, not to mention the newer services such as Wix, Squarespace and Macaw.  Website Design for any business around the globe is less about ‘design’ and more about technology management and customer service.

So although you may have landed here looking for a website designer for your Wigan, Liverpool or Manchester business before you go any further ask yourself these questions.

• Do you really need a website designer or do you need service that will provide you with something else?
• Do you need a service that will take care of your website and online stuff and make it work hard for you?
• Don’t you need to be getting on with business instead of pushing buttons on a self build website?
• DO you want to deal with a real human being rather than an automated system.
• Or … do you need still really need a web designer?

Some may say but aren’t you a web designer, the answer is yes I can design websites, but these days my role is much different and for small businesses I can be much more valuable.

[one-half-first]My point is this.  Just because you are looking for a web designer doesn’t mean you are looking for a DESIGNER of websites you’re more that likely looking for a good looking website that works for you and your business.  Having been in the industry a long time, I know there are thousands of templates to work with, tweak and customise and even to work up a more bespoke solution but this isn’t so much about design, again it is a case of technology management.  Make no mistake the people that personally facilitate websites today are multi skilled and very adaptable creatures and provide a great service in possibly the most competitive market ever, they should be valued much more than they sometimes are.[/one-half-first][one-half]

If you are more self motivated business person partial to a tinkering with technology, you can always ‘DESIGN’ a website yourself by using one of the above services, Wix offer some great plug and go solutions, platforms such as Macaw is a little more complex but all the same if you simply want to get a website live then there are thousands of solutions out there.  You won’t end up with a website you have ‘DESIGNED’ yourself, simply a website that’s live.  Or for some who prefer the less tailor made approach you can always opt for a Facebook business page – yawn.

Look a little further into the future and services with artificial intelligence, created to accept an array of material will no doubt further water down the need for a DESIGNER.

[/one-half]

---

 

Design is much more

With the best will in the world using a template or clicking the odd button within Wix is not design.  Design is a much more considered process, one that takes into consideration much more than how a website or any other medium looks and works.  

Design can be defined in the following way – a plan or drawing produced to show the look and function or workings of a building, garment, or other object before it is made.

Just in the same way you wouldn’t consider someone who works as a ‘burger flipper’  in MacDonalds a chef, then why do people consider themselves able to design when they do little more than apply a template or click a button on a platform such as Wix. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a MacDonalds burger now and again but I never consider it anything else other than fast food, cheap enough and filling, but cuisine created with love and skill, never.

McDonalds may sell the most “burgers,” but by reducing the burger to a fast, cheap, and easy symbol, they’ve opened up a wide chasm in the burger industry that only the smaller, more expensive businesses can fill.

So MacDonalds commoditized the hamburger, and today templates etc have commoditized the world of design for websites.  Getting a website live in almost all instances is about as close to ‘DESIGN’ as McDonalds are to cuisine.

‘Designers’ use skill, experience, knowledge, intuition and creativity, to weave a creation that fuses form and function whilst conveying the message.  Expending this amount of time, effort and creativity to come up with something that ticks all these boxes cannot be delivered in a few hours, or with a swift installation of a template and certainly not by shuffling elements around on a self build website system.  To truly have a website DESIGNED and implemented takes time, often a big team with many skills, and much more money than the starting price of sub £1,000 displayed on most ‘web designers’ websites these days.

So what are these people who provide a website design service?

The so called website design services out there are experienced and highly skilled technology managers.  Some are also DESIGNERS, but few I guess, rarely get the opportunity to truly design.  They may, as I do employ design skills and experience a long the way, but few I doubt will get the time and budget to sit down and really conceptualise, create, sketch and work with all the component elements towards a true piece of DESIGN.  Quite simply in today’s commoditized world there simply isn’t the time or the budget to DESIGN a website.

Don’t get me wrong there are many great website ‘designers’ in Wigan and surrounding districts and lots of very talented people out there, some are great designers, however in almost all instances the service they offer is technology management, implementation and facilitation.   The modern website ‘designer’ has to be amazing across the board, and has had to develop cross platform skills in both design, coding, customer service, technology, constant learning and of course be business savy enough to fight off the tsunami of global competition.

So as you continue your search for Website Design for Wigan Small Businesses ask yourself a few questions, what really are you looking for and I believe the answer will be somewhere along the lines of:

“I need a website that looks great, presents my business well and I don’t have to spend an age sorting it out, plus I want it to help us do more business”.

If it’s something a long those lines then think customer service and business experience, if it isn’t and you truly want DESIGN then it maybe a good idea to increase your budget and start to look deeply into your motivations for DESIGN in your business.

No matter what, the days of the website designer as we know it are probably numbered, the great ones will be snapped up by big business, others will diversify, some will move into parallel markets, and others will simply give up and move on.   The ones great at customer service, technology facilitation and technology leadership will always have a place in the online world, because it’s those individuals and companies who keep working hard at the coal face for you every day.

So if you are looking for a website for a small business, the choice isn’t so much which web designer, the choice today is more about your preference between human or automated system.

If you prefer human get in touch.