Texelate's Blog

At last that moment of elation has arrived. It’s been a long time coming but finally your website is online. Although it’s easy to underestimate all the work that goes into designing and building a website hopefully you’re happy with your site and although the process was a little time–consuming—all that effort was worth it.

Now the site is up–and–running this is not the end. Quite the opposite: it’s the beginning. Amongst the flurry and excitement you get an email from your web designer (or web company) asking if they can have two things:

A link from your site to theirs (e.g. Designed by Texelate)
Your site in their online portfolio

You may ask yourself, is that a good or a bad thing? Well, there’s no yes or no answer; it really all depends on the circumstances. I maintain in most cases it’s a good thing. First, let me cover the core two instances when I think it isn’t appropriate.

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You’ve already got a site—that’s not the problem. The problem is for whatever reason, you no longer have a working relationship with your existing web designer but you still need someone to maintain the site and handle all future updates and maintenance. Surely, finding a new web designer is going to be easy? Maybe…maybe not.

Perhaps you’ve already asked many web designers and companies if they want to take control of your site and they’ve all said no—and you’re left asking the question: why won’t a web designer work on my website? Here I outline some possible reasons and how you can overcome them.

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There are a million and one ways why you might classify a website as unsuccessful; I discussed a few reasons some time ago. In this post, however, I’m describing a few generic website types that constitute failure.

The ‘amateur’ website

An amateur is anyone who doesn’t make websites for a living. Because it takes a lot of time—often years—to learn how to build websites properly an amateur with little or no experience is never going to be able to make one to the same standard as a professional.

Creating a website involves not only being creative and putting a design together; it also involves understanding the technologies that drive the website. Certain pieces of web authoring software allow the user to forgo learning these languages. The result is a sloppy, poorly built website that won’t properly factor in web standards and search engine visibility (among other things).

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