It’s been a while since I’ve written an entry in the Winning on the Web series.  Check out the previous article, The Problems with Rich Media, or start from the first article, The Best Sites Win.

Everyone knows someone… who knows someone… who knows someone… who makes websites.  Often time these close or distant acquaintances get asked by their friends and family members to design websites because they are cheap.   The problem with engaging a family friend for web development, is that most freelance web developers concern themselves only with creating and “internet presence.”  (Although, this applies to many large developers as well).  They have no concept of how exactly to use the web to generate more leads and close more sales.  This my attempt to describe just a few of the resulting pitfalls.

No Content Management System- Most beginning web designers use a software like Dreamweaver or Frontpage to create their designs.  They don’t understand the code that these programs generate.  Additionally, the site owner will not have the software or technical expertise necessary to edit such pages, so if a price changes, there is a new product, or you find a misspelling you have to go back to the web designer and ask them to change it.  This process is usually slow, expensive, or both.

No Analytics – Because they’re busy examining the navel of their own design and coding abilities, most family friend web designers don’t think to install analytics to help you track what happens on your website.  If you don’t know how many people come to your site, how they got their, and when they leave, that’s a big problem.

Broken Links- I frequently find that on such sites, internal links are broken.  This happens for a variety of reasons.  For one, your developer changes the name of a file and then forgets to update it on every link that references it.  Or they simply mistype a letter when creating a link.  Because they lack a quality control team, errors like these and others go unnoticed.

Poor Design- Not surprisingly, many freshmen (and some veteran) developers concern themselves only with what looks good.  They don’t think about usability.  In reality, people expect certain things to be in certain places.  If they’re not where they “belong” then it is assumed they don’t exist.  Unfortunately, many small time developers try to innovate with the wrong things, including site navigation and layout.  Most visitors won’t bother trying to figure out how to navigate around a site that doesn’t conform to standard web conventions, in the same way the wouldn’t try reading a book printed right to left, bottom to top.

There are a variety of other ways that your site can suffer if you try to save a buck or help a friend out by hiring and independent operator who doesn’t have the expertise and support of a team, but this covers some of the major flaws we see on a regular basis.  Hopefully none of these things can be said of your site, and if so, we’d love to help you out.

Do you think your site is awesome even though it was designed by an acquaintance?  Have you had a painful experience trying to get a relative to do what you wanted?  Please chime in!