Design?

The other day I came across a site belonging a design company that just didn’t do it for me. Most design organizations, no matter what name they call themselves are well aware of certain things that need to be done to a website. Some of the key elements to looking good for the customer were pretty much lacking.

The landing page for the company was fairly well done. The portfolio of work provided was good also. The downside came when I wanted to check out the company blog. It was not that it was the personal blog of the head of the company, what irked me was that they specialized in web design and the head of the company’s blog had default blogger template #6 with the non-matching header from the corporate site on top.

When I went back to the main site I did notice that there was not a prominent logo for the company, nor a favicon. While I can understand some places not having these, it would aid in the company being easy to remember. It is hard for me to think of a successful company without those two things. Also the blog was not mapped to the rest of the domain, making me think I accidentally clicked a bad link before the second header loaded up top.

After the jarring contrast to the rest of the site appeared I sent an email to the info link provided and asked a few questions about the site. I stated that it felt slightly out of place and off-putting since that appears to be a default blogger template and they offer web design and custom blogs.

The response I received back detailed that the company wanted to show that people could use blogger blogs on their sites, and that it somehow showed it was to convey interaction on a more personal level. If anyone can explain to me how the default anything conveyed a personal connection then I’ll let that go.

The social networking aspect of business was the second justification given for the state of the site. Social networking is not the answer to every question. If you have to tell someone it is social networking, then it is not working.