Review my webdesign skills, should I create a webdesign biz?

Jdude217 · #1 (**permalink**) 11-28-2005, 05:56 PM

I'm very good with graphics, web sites, and ecommerce websites. I know I could make a great website with my portfolio and everything that I've done from the past but my main questions are:

1. Is it really worth my time?
2. Does anyone else do good with there web design websites?
3. Are they really profitable?
4. I don't have a lot of money, how should I advertise?

I've got many ideas for great websites but i'm thinking about starting a web design site on the side to make some extra cash. Just trying to see who all is doing it and if it can be profitable to me. The website company I work for is www.usflag.com, this is one of the new designs i have for them - http://www.usflag.com/SITE.htm

I also made these pages for them

http://www.usflag.com/monster/monster.html

Any comments/ reviews would be much appreciated, I'm just trying to see where I stand.

CJacobson · #2 (**permalink**) 11-28-2005, 07:11 PM

How successful you are will probably have more to do with who you know and how well you network. Even if your skills are top-notch, you still have to efficiently find clients. For example, being able to count on a steady stream of referrals from a marketing firm, a commercial photographer, a sign shop, or a graphic design outfit would really be a big plus.

"Marketing" is tough for web designers because there is so much competition. IMHO, you'll need a portfolio and testimonials... but their purpose is to help you close deals and to justify whatever rates you charge. You shouldn't rely on them to bring you business, and you shouldn't hope to compete with lowball pricing. Start building a network of possible references well before you quit your day job. Do a few free-lance (as in "for free" for friends) projects in your spare time...

Were you looking for a site review?

I think your "monster.html" is very, very nice - but it's not finished yet. There's validation and SEO work yet to be done (e.g. you've left out the image alt tags...) Some of the images are far from optimized. (Why should the file http://www.usflag.com/monster/Images/the_title.jpg be 19KB? You could probably reduce it to 4 or 5KB without noticeable loss of quality.) The whole site would impress me much more if you were using CSS for formatting instead of just for font management. (You use tables well... but using tables for page formatting isn't considered good technique anymore.) At 25KB, the HTML file really is a monster. You could reduce the HTML file's size by doing more with CSS.

ADAM Web Design · #3 (**permalink**) 11-28-2005, 07:23 PM

I'll be blunt and simple all at once:

If you have to ask this question to others, then you're not familiar enough with your competition nor do you have enough confidence in your ability to be ready.

Psmeg · #4 (**permalink**) 11-29-2005, 05:52 AM

I have to agree with Adam here. If you need to ask then going into business for yourself probably isn't the right thing.

I am 8 months into our design company, and it takes a lot of planning, organisation and dedication to run a business let alone incoroprating the development cycle into the mix.

Add to that actually getting business in, reputation building, networking, etc. and that gives you 20% of what it entails.

Just my 2p worth. :)

Regards

Psmeg

Jdude217 · #5 (**permalink**) 11-29-2005, 10:10 AM

Thanks for everyones input, I definently need it. I know I'm not ready to start a full blown business yet so thats why I come to these forums to learn. I do know that I have what it takes though. I've been designing websites and learning the industry for about 5 years now so i'm in no way a beginner. I kno there are still a few technical things i need to learn... so dont worry, i do not plan on quitting my day job just yet ;)

www.usflag.com has been around before I started working here and I've been begging my boss to let me re-do everything but he is afraid of change. I think I should remake everything in php's os commerce... ok cool, i just read up on img alt tags, Iv always wondered what that was called. My question though is how SEO works with img alt tags? If the file of the picture is named correctly and there is an img alt tag as a description it will do better with search engines? Also, I will start reducing the file sizes more, I just was worried about the quality... As for the CSS, I know that it makes everything a certain way all throughout the website but how do you mean i should use it for tables also? Im still a bit confused, im about to go to htmlgoodies.com to check up on it more, lol

CJacobson · #6 (**permalink**) 11-29-2005, 11:00 AM

Image alt tags are important for making your website usable by vision impaired visitors. They also are a good way to add keyword content to your pages, so you can score in search engines for more different keyword combinations and so you can improve keyword density and prominance of your most important keywords. AND, as a great big bonus, you'd be amazed how many potential paying customers will come to your site from Google's Image search engine.

Can you find your products on this page? http://images.google.com/images?q=u....=Search+Images

(Notice that even when you use the main Google search page for "U.S. Flag", Google provides their top three image-search results ABOVE all their other results!)

As for using CSS for page layout... you'll want to check this out: http://www.csszengarden.com/ . (You can surf through a bunch of different versions of the exact same page... they look radically different, but only because they use different style sheets.)

Jdude217 · #7 (**permalink**) 11-29-2005, 11:28 AM

great info, thanks CJ.