The new year is often an opportunity to take stock. For 2011, we chose to review the state of Web creation by focusing on the players in this market.
Indeed, unlike most other fields, web creation can be approached by professionals with very different backgrounds and perspectives. Which school does your Web partner belong to? Is it the best choice for your needs?
The “graphic designer” school
Often coming from fine arts-type training, many Web graphic designers come from the world of communication (brochures, signage, etc.). The younger ones come from specialized Web design programs.
To develop a website, they use tools such as Flash, Illustrator, or Photoshop.
Their strengths:
They create (in general) beautiful and original websites. In this way, they give the site and the brand an identity.
Their weaknesses:
They tend to favor visuals at the expense of organic search ranking and user experience.
They subcontract the technical parts, and cannot provide strong guidance for sites that want to offer more than a simple showcase (extranet, database, administration, workflow, Web 2.0 features, etc.)
The technical school
“Pure” developers master very specific languages and technologies. They come from technical IT backgrounds.
Their strengths:
Their technical mastery allows them to cover all needs in functional terms (databases, extranet, etc.)
Their weaknesses:
They are not capable of doing design, which often makes them subcontractors for integrators or graphic designers. They always try to use the technology or technologies they master, without taking the client’s needs into account. They have no skills in ergonomics or communication.
The opportunists
Opportunists use open-source CMSs to offer “quickly made” websites. With tools such as Joomla, Drupal, or Plone (which are excellent CMSs), they can offer apparently attractive sites at unbeatable prices.
Their strengths:
They know how to put basic websites online at low cost and very quickly.
Their weaknesses:
They make websites that all look alike, based on standard templates available on the market. They do not work on content, thus producing poorly indexed websites that do not convert. They are incapable of offering solutions that go beyond the standard features of the CMS they use (a well-mastered CMS allows you to do anything, but requires advanced skills).
The integrators
Integrators call on professionals from each field to build a website: the design is done by a graphic designer, the content by a copywriter, the technical side by an IT specialist…
Their strengths:
They produce high-quality websites at every level. They are capable of covering all business needs in the short and long term. Their broad vision allows them to provide guidance and proposals as part of an effective web strategy.
Their weaknesses
They are more expensive and offer fairly long delivery times.
The choice is yours!
