I’ve been working on two small websites over the last week or so. Knowing some degree of web design is useful, because I refuse to ever be held hostage by a web designer.
I have a very specific approach to web design:
- I only use WordPress. I’ve tried Joomla, Drupal and some of the other content management systems, and I hate them all
- I only use standard themes, with minor styling / CSS changes. I don’t mess about with PHP code. I don’t ‘wireframe’ the website, or anything like that
- I spend most of my time working on the content
By working this way I can get a new website up within a week, and often as little as a day if it’s just a few pages. The sooner a site is live, the sooner I can start buying traffic and testing offers.
I believe this is the future of web design. There now has to be an exceptional business case to employ a web designer in custom design work. Content is the biggest conversion factor, so why waste time on structural issues?
If you’re not happy with your website, don’t approach the problem backwards. Spend most of your time working on content, and worry about the design later on.
