During our initial consultation with a potential client, we always access what functionality and design best suits their web site’s purpose.  Often the look of the site is the most important (photographers, artists, designers, models, etc).  Other times functionality is more important (retail sites, government sites, event sites, multi-media sites, etc.).  Both deserve a great design and functionality, but it is always important to know which one drives the purpose of the web site.  Here is an example of our experience with a client who learned the hard way how important functionality was for his website.

About a year ago, one of our earliest website clients told us that they wanted to allow another designer to take over the design of their website.  In an effort to save the client we asked why and what we could do to maintain their design business.  Their response was that the other designer offered to give them a more animated site and had “wowed” them with some Adobe Flash design that he had done. (Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages) We responded that we could surely add Flash “elements” to his site, but would strongly advise against making the site Flash based for several reasons including more costly updates, poor ROI for the cost involved in such a Flash heavy site, and that his favorite Apple products may not show most his site.  Our client was about to venture into having a Flash design done for EACH of his over one hundred products.  We advised that this was an extreme move that would either be a challenge to his designer or an extreme cost to him.  We could not talk him out of it so we assured him that we would be there for him if he needed us and graciously assisted him in getting his new designer all of the necessary information to begin.

-One Year Later-

Our client calls us and says “Well, you told me so!  Now I need you to take back over our website.”  As we predicted, the designer realized that he bit off more than he could chew.  There is no short-cut to good Flash design and it takes a lot of time.  Designing over 100 product pages in Flash was not something that the designer could do within my clients budget and eventually the designer stopped returning calls and updating the website.  It turns out that many of the site links were never alive and that many of the products were never fully activated on the site. Even worse, he could not show off his new website on his brand new iPad because all of the important parts were done in Flash!

We are now in the process of recreating a new website for the client and will be adding even more products to his catalog.  He now realizes that our advice was based on experience and that the functionality of his site is much more important than the “Flashiness” of it.  While we know how to make your design “Pop” as they say, we also want to make your business pop as well.

For more information on getting the best balance between functionality and design, contact Judge Media for your free website consultation.