I remember, way back when I started my writing business, making the first “Clear-Writing” website. It was basically a left hand table for navigation, and right hand space to put the “stuff”. I coded it myself in notepad. It was nothing fancy, but it looked nice, and did the job.
For several years, my little homemade site worked well, but as I grew, I felt it really didn’t represent my professionalism, etc. I’m an “ok” web designer, but my skills are much more suited to 1998 than 2000-something. And in looking at competitor’s websites, it was clear many others were “nicer” than mine. So I hired out – my friend Kelly Rao of Web-Eze did it for me (I basically had her code one page, and I took it from there.) It came out great – it looks wonderful, it’s easy to take care of, etc. In fact, it’s the site I’m still using today.
And that got me thinking – that website is more than 5 years old. Which is an absolute lifetime in internet years (internet years are like dog years on steroids.) So last month, I started thinking – “gee, is it time for another update?” To answer this question, I looked around to see how I looked compared to others… and I was pretty surprised at what I found:
It is abundantly clear to me that web design is getting worse. Many of today’s “modern” websites, by and large, look like crap. The proliferation of the WYSIWYG / CMS-era of web design has churned out millions of cookie-cutter sites that just look bad. They look blocky, the text looks awful, they can’t space anything well (you should leave a space in between bullet points, etc) – it’s just awful.
My five-year-old professional copywriting website looks infinitely better than any CMS site out there. Even this site you’re reading, which started life last year as a wordpress template (but uses traditional HTML coding in the meat of the pages), looks tons better than most sites out there.
I don’t want to sound old-fashioned, but the move away from traditional HTML coding has really changed the web design business. It’s likely opened the door to a lot of people who really aren’t skilled web designers, and I’m guessing CMS sites are a lot cheaper and easier for the end user as well, but I have to say, I’m not impressed with the look. It’s akin to a stately old house versus cookie-cutter tract housing.
Personally, I’m not using CMS style websites anytime soon. This blog is as close as I’ll get. All else being equal, I really feel a CMS designed site will hurt you business-wise.
Any web designers want to chime in?
very nice post . interesting write also
Here’s two things I hate that seem to be growing.
First – Multiple pages when one or two will do just fine.
eg.
12 ways to Increase Business!
Read 50 words, click page two, read 40 words, click page 3, read 45 words, click page 4, repeat over and over until the last page.
I get that site owners (not YOU Dan) want more ad revenue but I leave if I feel you’re massively increasing the number of clicks without any consideration on the reader.
Second, Duplicated Ads.
A banner at the top for Kathy Griffin’s new Television series, a banner at the bottom for the same show, a skyscraper banner to the right and sometimes even a background banner and a popup for the SAME show. Thus leaving me with 20% of real estate space for what I want to read.
Any they wonder why people use Adblock.
Hmmm, I think saying “CMS-era of web design has churned out millions of cookie-cutter sites” is being a bit general about it all, it’s when people just keep reusing templates instead of designing that it gets bad.
I admit right now my site is a CMS wordpress site, once of my clients wanted one I had never done it before, so I redid my site to see how it worked, then I created a site for them.
I just discovered Expression Engine, it allows you to design and then code in html. You can then use their widgets to add a blog, feed, store, etc. etc. When this new coding engine on the market I think you will see a lot more original sites being developed again, with all of the features of the old templated stuff.