usefulness of css for google crawler...
Most of us are not designing art pieces with our websites. We are designing something useful that the clients needs; whether it is an e-commerce site, or a simple branding site, your number one goal is to get your clients message out there.
Now that the web design field has matured, we now know which website structures work and which ones don’t. Keeping this in mind, there is no need to go hog-wild with your designs – you know what works already!
I have a two basic structures/templates that I can use in 99% of websites – left aligned navigation and centered web layout like I used for www.secretsites.com.
I use the HTML and CSS in these two sites over and over. I just grab a copy of the HTML and CSS pages and swap up the images, text and change some colors and voila, I got myself a professional looking, and well structured website in a fraction of the time!
Designing by tinkering
Web design by tinkering is when you sit down in front of your computer and you start building the website with no plan. You just start ‘tinkering’, trying different layouts, changing positions of images or your navigation etc … This is a recipe to disaster and pain, don’t do it!
You should know what your site is going to basically look like, and how it will be structured before you get near your computer! If you are trying some ‘experimental’ web design for fun, that’s ok. But when you are building a website for business purposes, you can’t be tinkering!
Dealing with the client
If a client start wanting to drop things here and there, that, in ways would ultimately break my structure, I tell them no! Some of you are probably saying, you can’t tell the customer that! The customer is always right! Well that doesn’t apply here because the customer is not an expert in web design, otherwise they would not be hiring you!
Could you imagine a patient telling a surgeon how they should conduct the operation! The same goes to web design, you have to let them (the client) know that you are giving them a website structure that works and changing it can break it.
Don’t get me wrong, you shouldn’t make all your sites look the same - they just should have the same structures.
Conclusion
I hope that now you can see that having a couple of web site templates will save you a ton of time and frustration. You can use your own, or use commercial website templates, both work.
You might also think about ways how you can apply the ‘80/20’ rule in other areas of web design and even other aspects of your life - it’s a great little principle! |
