Thoughts from Paul Russell

You may have seen from my last article, Bad web design must be contagious, that there are many sites out there that are just plain awful. However, there are probably even more sites out there that are just average. An average website may look good, clean and presentable, it may offer all the important information about your company or product that is needed, and yet it remains virtually ineffective, and eventually you may start getting the feeling that your site has become stale and stagnant. So how do we tell when this time has come?

So why is it that around 70% of websites that I go to, specifically South African websites, are so poorly designed? Granted, the corporate websites usually look pretty good, but the local small businesses have websites that look like they were designed by their neighbour’s kid teenager or even worse, designed by a programmer or IT guy. (This is seriously no dig at you programmers out there, and if you are one of the few who have a knack for design, then please ignore that statement, as you are by far the exception to the rule.) Most programmers and IT guys are good at what they do and they should keep doing what they’re good at.