I have a Not good design? Heaven help me!

This morning I received a completely unsolicited email from someone I’ve never met, will likely never meet, and quite frankly am glad for it. The person said he had “examined my website” and found it to be…

A Not good design.

He then proceeded to list the things that go into a great website design:

1. Adding new pages to your navigation
2. Changing the size, colours, and fonts of buttons
3. Adding new elements like contact forms and menus
4. Editing the images on your homepage gallery
5. Choosing a different colour palette
6. Linking/embedding social media channels

Now he didn’t say which of the dozen or so websites I’ve designed in the last year alone, for myself and for clients who’ve paid me good money to do so. But whichever site he saw, evidently they were lacking these basic elements, which as far as websites go is like going outside without your pants on.

Come on, give me a little credit here 😉

But this email put me in mind of a conversation I just had with a brand new website design client. He was stressing over the pure surface aesthetics. “Can you make it look like this amazing website?” type of questions. I assured him that the surface aesthetics are the easiest part of any media project, be it a podcast, a book, a website, what have you.

The difficult part lies in the unearthing the deep motives, the “hill the person is willing to die on” that makes their website necessary in the first place.

In the case of my new client, we’re going to have a 1-2 hour interview where I’ll ask him deep and tough questions about himself, his business, why his business is necessary when there are hundreds more like it just in his vicinity, etc. This will become a long form sales letter for his product that new visitors will read, perhaps listen to on an audio player of some sort.

That’s it. One page.

I’m already in violation of my new mentor’s expert advice of “adding new pages…” but that’s what is going to work for our purposes.

Someday I’ll reveal to you what this new website is, along with what he’s offering. It’s going to be really cool if it indeed launches, and the guy seems to mean business with it after meeting him a couple of times to gauge whether he’s serious or not.

For now, I just wanted to share that email, and that sometimes it’s the ugly websites but with real substance in the message that are the real winners. Aesthetics are easily duplicatable; the heart and soul of its creator, not so much.

This is also not the worst time to mention I do offer website design and creation, so if you or someone you know is in need of a new website, just reply to this email, or share contact info for your friend/colleague and I’ll take it from there.