How many people would know about HTML5 and CSS3 if they didn’t try learn more about web design?

I’ve often thought that perhaps one skill of a web designer that most people (or rather, business people per se, that is) lack is the ability to get clients to remain realistic and true to themselves, and sell the benefits of doing just that. Brands are only driven by the characteristics of the people behind them, after all.

I was wittering on about my idea of what *brand* means to me personally on another post of yours. And I truly think that helping (particularly) smaller clients to show their true personas and strengths will simply make them more likeable to their target audience (i.e. those they’ll do business with, get along with, and do business with again).

There seems to be a fear of being “oneself” (in a business sense) on the internet that is rampant amongst anyone outside Fortune 500. Ironically, it’s the offline world that we often need to look to for inspiration sometimes. It’s more or less the exact same values that work well for a website as do for a small friendly newsagents that looks like a small friendly newsagents, a small friendly florist that looks like a small friendly florist, a swish hotel that looks like a swish hotel, etc.

Bullshitters usually get found out and their businesses don’t grow online because of it. It’s what I call Derek Trotter Syndrome.

This is why I put listening and discernment up near the top. It takes a brave soul to ask the same question twice, but often, we’ll get a completely different answer the second time round, once we’ve secured the client’s confidence and shown we’re out to help them achieve their immediate goals (I’ve never done client-facing work in web design, and haven’t even done that much web design — but this sort of a mentality transcends sectors, I think).

The number one goal of any web designer / consultant (in my opinion, at least) is to build a sturdy bridge between the client and their current and prospective customers. Everything else comes below that (again, this is only my opinion), after speaking at length with clients, investigating their target client-base, and looking into their current client-base.

Once all the above is down (on paper, at least), time to hit the SEO, I reckon

One significant difference used to be that serif fonts didn’t work so well on screen. Today, as screens are getting larger and finer, serif text is more viable.

Many factors are common. Line length, white space and tonal contrast all matter. Reversed text works poorly on screen as well as in print.

In the case of the large e-commerce stores you mention, I doubt many people come through the home page. Most visits certainly come via deep links from search.

Obviously, these rules simply don’t apply to web design. Interaction, clicks, “stickiness,” etc, are now all part of the design process. Web typography is a whole new world–what reads well in print usually doesn’t work so well in pixels. Plus, you have to completely re-think the use of color.

On almost all the major retail mega-sites (JCPenney, Target, Home Depot, etc,) the number of clicks required before the customer finally gets to the “buy” button is self-defeating and doomed to fail.

Your thoughts? Thanks.