During the past 6 months, I have been asked by some small businesses to fix a few web sites that were developed by “High Tech Gurus”. In a couple of cases, fix meant start from the beginning and do it right. Now I’m not a programmer. I don’t even pretend to be one. But programmers shouldn’t pretend to be web designers either. The most complicated web site development may require a team effort between designers, programmers and copywriters.

Regarding the sites I was asked to fix, they worked great…from a technical standpoint but they didn’t sell visually or verbally. Two of the “custom programmed” web sites used, or should I say misused, an open source platform and charged as though they programmed from scratch. The designs were merely templates that came with the program. Shame on them.

Developing a web site isn’t rocket science. There are so many open source platforms that do a marvelous job. It takes some graphic design skill to make it look unique and copywriting skill to make it readable. It takes a little more skill to make the copy sell and help search engines get the site to the top of the results. I apply those skills for my clients. They are on the first page of the search results for their most important keywords. They also get a lot of business from their web sites because of creative arts not programming.

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