How to Evaluate a Web Designer’s Work
Seven Tips for the Technically Challenged: Tips 4-7
Tip #4: Determine if they’re inserting text as images.
Although using some images in a design is fine, excessive image usage creates Accessibility problems, as well as adds considerably to a page’s download time. You want to avoid designers who are unable to work with HTML coding to format text and instead create lots of little images in programs such as Photoshop or CorelDraw for a quick and easy substitute.
Navigation menus and content need to be rendered as text; these are the most important features of your web pages and need to be displayed quickly. If a page does not load correctly (i.e., the screen is inundated with those little “x” boxes), the user will not be able to use your services and most probably will leave your website.
Also, search engines indexing your site are unable to read text placed within images. It’s important to have as much information presented in textual form as possible so your patrons performing searches will be able to find the pertinent information on your website (instead of someone else’s).
You can easily determine whether or not straight text is used by attempting to highlight it, as you would if you were going to copy and paste it into another document. If text is unable to be highlighted, it has been placed within an image.
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This is text formatted by HTML coding.
Tip #5: See how their websites rank in search results.
No matter how much time is devoted to design, if users cannot find your website, you might as well not have one. A good web designer knows how to place metadata and title information in the header section so that search engines can index your website for their search engines.
Search engines to try: Google, MSN, Yahoo.
Tip #6: View their website(s) in at least two different browsers.
Because the computers and accompanying software your patrons will be using is as varied as patrons themselves, you want to make sure that a designer’s work is compatible with at least the major browsers: Internet Explorer and Netscape. Each of these reads coding differently, and it is important that a page’s coding is able to be rendered in either. There may be some minor differences in spacing or font sizes; just make sure that your patrons can still access your navigation and content.
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Internet Explorer |
Netscape Navigator |
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Besides formatting differences, the example above shows how the drop down menus do not function correctly for the patron using Netscape to view this page.
Tip #7: Find out what type of web editing program they are mainly using.
It is important to find out the type of program a web designer is using; this will give you an indication as to how up-to-date they are with technological innovations as well as the capabilities they will have in fulfilling your requests.
Avoid those who use Microsoft Word, Macromedia Flash, or Adobe Photoshop (or any comparable image rendering program) as their main web editing program.
Reasoning:
Microsoft Word has many bugs in it unique to Microsoft, making it incompatible with browsers other than Internet Explorer. Also, MS Word’s main function is to develop print publications; the web conversion elements of the program are geared for fast publication of straight text. MS Word does not facilitate and is not intended for good website design.
Macromedia Flash, although an excellent program geared towards producing websites with great special effects, creates pages with many Accessibility and display problems, not to mention being a nightmare for those using dial up connections. In addition, to load Flash pages, your patrons will need to download supplemental programs, which may or may not compatible with their internet browser or possible, base on the amount of memory their computer has.
Adobe Photoshop or any comparable image rendering program is simply that: an image rendering program. Your website should not be made up of images, but of text that search engines can index and that screen readers can read.
Don’t let technology intimidate you. You should be able to trust the web designer to work with your best interest in mind. The end product is about satisfying the needs of your patrons, not the needs of the web designer.