Here's a question. Has anybody out there in the
SEO camp made the mistake of working alongside a designer, did you resort to shouting or even violence?
Back in August I had a long meeeting with a client about their new web site, they introduced a pet designer, their third in 6 months
My skills are
SEO, then development, then design, I don't tout my design skills as there are many brilliant designers, I would put myself as middling, but then there are so many templates to use its easy to look good!
Having sat through the meeting, I agreed to do the development and stated clearly that without significant input into the layout and content, the
SEO would fail. They decided they wanted a pretty website! The designer would lead.
3 months later, pointless arguments about text kerning and wrapping not matching their graphic representation and a mediocre site that compares poorly with standard templates and is progressively vanishing from the search results. What is worse is the MD anounces that he is unhappy that his site is not Number 1 for the term renewable energy. (Banging head against wall time)
In another example where I have worked alongside a designer from another company, yes it was frought, but the MD insisted that I led. After 3 or 4 revisions - do all designers think that what they do 1st time round is perfect and never to be changed? The overall agreement was that it was a brilliant, appropriate site, satisfied the user journey,
SEO, design, looks professional etc. Having been through that pain I would risk working with that designer again.
Looks like I am about to be asked to do the
SEO where some other company does the design and development and leads the project. The answer is a clear no-way! This other comapany's idea of
SEO seems to be limited to alt tags and some nice flash animations! (I don't exagerate and they promote themselves as
SEO experts) The tender document has stated clearly that the whole point of the site is online promotion!
So, here's the question, its fairly clear what my view is as to designers, what does everybody else think, in a web development project, where the aim is online promotion, who should lead the project?