The real reason your last web site was a car crash

Who was responsible for your horrific old web site again?

You know, the one crowded with far too much information, most of it out of date, and navigation like a drunk describing the way to the kebab shop.

The one where one line is emphasised in italics, the next one in bold, before the floodgates open and red and blue type competes with underlining, CAPITALS, and multiple exclamation marks!!!!!!!

BECAUSE EVERY LINE YOU WRITE IS IMPORTANT ENOUGH TO BE SHOUTED!!!

The one where the headings style is inconsistent and there are more font variations across the pages than across the Anglican church.

The one where you’re spelling and grammer, is wronger.

And sometimes just fragments of

The one where you started a blog but couldn’t keep it up, or perhaps just put company news or press releases in there to keep it ticking over.

The one with the bad photos that have been stretched to fit a space or are a file type that most browsers don’t read any more.

The one with the revolting colours.

The one where more and more features and icons and menu bar items get squashed onto the front page so that it’s hard to know where to start and quite frankly nobody has any clue what you were trying to say in the fireplace.

That’s the one

Who was responsible for it again?

Your last web team?

Then you have my sympathy. How unlucky to have got stuck with the only web team on earth whose vision for a web site is like something that Damien Hirst would produce given 8 cans of fluorescent paint, some live chickens and a meat cleaver.

It must have been all their fault.

However, in the tiniest of possibilities that you, the owner and guardian of the site, might just, perhaps, have had a miniscule mite of influence over the content and how it ended up looking …

Then we need to talk before you get a new site.

It doesn’t matter how much smarter the new car is, if you don’t learn how to drive and you leave your junk inside it’s going to end up a dirty wreck and stop working.

Just like the old one.

The biggest threat to clear, compelling and useful web sites is not rogue designers or web teams. It is clients who won’t learn how to look after their content.

Agreed?