A bit too many clients ask for a great design to embrace their online presence. They would want the ‘wow’ effect configured into every square centimeter of their web page. The need for eye-candy does not seem to end.

But it really should.

Design is secondary. And design has a duty to perform i.e. to disperse the user’s attention is predetermined ways. I have said this before and I do not mind saying it again, it is that important.

Design is hardly the aspect of your website that is going to get people coming back; they may like the design, like it once or like it forever, but if the design is the only thing they like, they will not come back to your website, ever.

On the other hand, your website provides the users with what they want, and they will keep coming back, year after year. There is a reason that websites made especially for designers do not have, arguably, the best flash animation or the latest in CSS techniques implemented. What they do have is content that is relevant and designers keep coming back.

In my experience, clients would love to get to the nitty-gritty of design, ignoring the actual content of the website itself. The focus is purely on ‘looks’ and project delays are because of the back and forth of emails and design drafts. Seriously, design does not deserve this kind of attention. Design is important, yes. But not this important. Priorities need to be set straight before embarking on any project, and web development project is and should not be, any different.

I remember walking up to store owners in DHA Lahore, asking them if they would want a website for their store. I am talking ‘back in the day’, while still at college, six to seven years ago.

A lot of the times, people would respond somewhere in the lines of, ‘I have heard of them websites, tell me what it is and maybe I will get you to make it for me.’ The Marketing students reading this, take note, this was the introductory stage of the product life cycle and ‘theory’ like that. Anyways, I would tell them what it is and how they could benefit from it. (Yes, 6 to 7 years back, there was less benefit of an online presence for a local store in Lahore, and it was much harder than it is now to sell websites and web development. But the benefit for a website developed in Lahore for a local business was beneficial back then as well).

I did try to sell websites by being very cheap. I stopped doing that years ago. For a very valid reason of course; quality comes at a price. I put a lot of effort into making a website, I hire expensive programmers to code even the basic of codes to get the best out in the market. Of course, sometimes I mess up, but I know I can deliver, God willing, because the cheap guy hardly wins. At the end of the day, I don’t pay the expensive programmer just because he is expensive, but because he or they deliver on time and deliver what was asked after following best practices. Goes without saying, I learnt that the hard way. The very hard way.

Now, things have changed. Now people usually ask for a website themselves. Surely, the times have changed. Website development in Lahore has definitely picked up, with a lot of people offering web design and development services. At the end of the day, it will not be who is offering what, but it will be how are they servicing the customer. For as I still strongly maintain, business is about relatoinships and their maintenance thereof.