You can read countless articles these days about how “Web Design is Dead” and while there is a bit of truth to it, I believe it is more appropriately stated as “Web Design as We Know it is Dead.”
Designing a website has been demystified. Gone are the days where creating a website was like some magic sorcery. Many people have at least tried their hand at some sort of design, through an online web builder or perhaps through a company’s pre-designed web pages. With the pervasive nature of social media, people who in the past would not be near a computer, are now comfortable sharing and tweeting and the like.
The thing is though, most people who try online web builders discover that it is not nearly as easy as it looks in the commercials. “Just drop this here and move this here and viola, you have a website” is what the commercials say. Not so fast. This beautiful website that you promised me for free looks like a four year old’s finger painting, not what I was expecting. So a call to the customer help line and you discover that you need to pay something. It’s different everywhere, but twenty dollars for phone call assistance, thirty dollars a month for the premium plan, or let me work up a quote and we’ll get you in touch with a designer. Wow, not so free is it?
Now I am not saying that online web builders don’t have their place, some people find that it works for them and that is fine, but for many small businesses the offerings of a “free” web builder is just not enough. This is where making sure we, as web designers, can offer something substantially different and of value to our clients. Web design can no longer be, “here pick a template and I will customize it to your business”. New web design means understanding how your client's business works, who their customers are, and what they expect from a website. Clients want their own custom website, with its own feel, which is why they have come to you. Otherwise they would just use one of those free web builders and be done with it. New web design is now as much about customer service as it is about the actual design, so learn to interact with your clients, study their business and get to know the field they are in. Maybe even specialize in a certain industry, learning as much as you can about that industry and then promoting yourself within that industry. New web design is about people and relationships, not just HTML and CSS. Web design is not dead; it’s actually more alive than ever.