101 things you never want to hear your web designer say
1. “I have this same song on my Myspace page. People love it.”
No they don’t. In fact, they probably mute their speakers, or leave his Myspace page when they hear it. Sounds like this designer is proposing the use of copyrighted material on your site, which could get you into hot water later on.
2. “We require 100% of the project cost upfront.”
This is a recipe for disaster. Be wary of any website developer requiring more than 50% of the project cost upfront. Even if he/she is well-intentioned, it could lead to your site being put on the backburner until other sites (with upcoming payments) are finished first.
3. “No one uses IE6 anymore”
Unfortunately, this designer has been misinformed, or just doesn’t want to spend the time it takes to make your site work on older browsers. LOTS of people are still using Internet Explorer 6. Around 28% as of April, 2008.
4. “We use Geocities to host our sites.”
While Geocities may be a good first start to someone brand new to web development, you don’t want to hear your designer say this because it indicates a lack of experience. While it may be user-friendly, Geocities hosting does not offer many of the options that a good webhost provides.
5. “Allow comments? How about a nice guestbook instead?”
Sounds like this guy is stuck in the late 90′s, or doesn’t know how to set up a blog with comment functionality. Guestbooks are a good sign of an aging website. Stay away from this guy.
6. “Can you make the check out to my mom?”
Wow. This guy really doesn’t believe in the banking system. To me, this should raise a flag of possible immaturity, and may result in a lack of accountability should things go wrong.
7. “What’s a good place to buy a domain name?”
This guy is an idiot. Run away.
8. “Do I validate? What, parking?”
Any good designer should at least know what validating your code means. A quick scan of your markup at w3.org should give you an idea of how valid your code is.
9. “Detailed stats are for sites with higher traffic. How about a nice hit counter?”
Without detailed stats(i.e. Google Analytics), you have no idea what your users are doing once they get to your site. Hit counters are pretty much pointless except for small personal sites and Ebay.
10. “Getting higher on google is easy. Just make your text blend with your background color.”
This guy likes to find ways to cheat Google. He may also be finding ways to cheat you out of your money. He is also uninformed, because that trick hasn’t worked in about seven years.
11. “Spinning logos are all the rage right now.”
No, they absolutely are not. Stay away from pointless animation.
12. “No one will ever see that.”
Someone will see it. This designer is lazy.
13. “But you said you wanted a site that looks like _______!”
Yeah, but not an EXACT REPLICA of it! This guy tried to take the easy way out by just stealing the site you liked, and changing the logo and text out to match your business. Fire him now.
14. “I haven’t had a chance to put my portfolio together yet.”
All good web designers should have a portfolio. If he doesn’t, he’s probably pretty new. Hiring him can be a risky move for your business.
15. “How much will this project cost? That depends on your budget.”
This designer is trying to milk you for as much as you’re willing to pay. You should try to find a designer with flat rate (hourly or per-project) site cost.
16. “Your homepage is just a place to describe the rest of the site.”
No. Your homepage needs to grab the user’s attention, and have important content on it. This is likely the first page of the site the user will see. You need to make a good impression.
17. “References? Sure. Here’s my mom’s number. And my cousin’s.”
This designer seems sketchy, because his only clients are his friends and family. He probably doesn’t have any “real” clients yet.
18. “You should’ve told me you wanted an “about us” page. That’s going to double the project cost!”
Things typically will change during site development, but a small change like this should not add very much to the project cost.
19. “I borrowed these pictures from another site. They’ll never find out.”
Well, they might find out, which means they can take legal action against your business.
20. “This page doesn’t need password protection. I’ll just put an invisible link so no one can find it.”
Google will find it. Google will index it. Then, everyone will see it!
21. “You don’t mind a few of my banners on your site, do you?”
Tell this designer that you’ll sell him ad space, but there’s no reason why you should have his banners on your site for free. You’re paying him for a reason.
22. “… Microsoft paint …”
If a designer says that he uses Microsoft Paint, this could be a sign of inexperience. Although, there may be some master designers out there who use MS paint, I would probably stay away from anyone bragging about using it.
23. “You want a contract? What for?”
A contract protects both your business and the web developer, and there is no reason why you shouldn’t use one for a web design project. Contracts have been an important part of business since the beginning of time, and any designer who doesn’t use them may more likely to take your money and disappear.
24. “A proposal? Ok, I propose that I make you an awesome web site!”
Proposals go hand-in-hand with contracts. It lays out the details of the project, the timeline, and cost. Steer clear of web designers who don’t submit written proposals.
25. “It’s actually more legible to use a text color similar to the background behind it.”
No, this is untrue. Text which has good contrast to it’s background is the most legible.
26. “I can have this site ready for you in about 11-12 months.”
This is way too long. You should typically expect your site to be ready in 1-6 months, unless you have an absolutely massive project. This designer could be looking to milk you for more money.
27. “I can have this site ready by tonight.”
This designer may be just sloppily slapping your content and logo on some random site template, and calling it a day. You probably won’t be happy with the results.
28. “People don’t mind popups.”
Everyone minds popups.
29. “Shopping cart? How about a nice Paypal button?”
Sounds like this guy doesn’t know how to build an actual shopping cart, and is desperately trying not to lose your business. Paypal is ok in some cases, but for other projects you need a real store and everything that comes with it.
30. “A site like that would cost (ridiculously high price)”
This designer might be trying to weed out clients who don’t have a high budget.
31. “A site like that would cost (ridiculously low price)”
This designer might be desperate for work, or may be trying to build his/her web design portfolio. Make sure to check his previous work before pulling the trigger.
32. “Your site is about New Orleans? Ok, I’ll put a crawfish, a Bourbon street sign, a guy playing a horn, and maybe even some flood water for a laugh! HAH!”
To me, this web designer sounds unoriginal, using the same cliche items that people have been using for years. This may work for some businesses, but your best bet is to find someone who tends to think “outside the box” (please forgive that overused cliche 
)
33. “Thank you for calling Blahblah Web Design. Please leave a message after the beep.” (repeat several times)
This guy needs to pick up his phone, or at least call his clients back. Fire this web developer now.
34. “I put your e-mail address on the site so more people can contact you.”
All he’s doing here is making it easier for e-mail spam harvesters to add you to their list. Don’t let him do this.
35. “Notepad makes it hard to do layouts. That’s why I use Yahoo’s Pagebuilder.”
PageBuilder is a tool for making very basic, unprofessional sites. If your web designer uses PageBuilder, he isn’t really a web designer.
36. “Meta tags are overrated.”
Meta Tags are very important for Search Engine Optimization. Don’t let your designer forget about them.
37. “HTML includes are a waste of time”
HTML Includes are a way to use the same piece of code on many of the site’s pages. More often than not, HTML includes cut down on development time, which translates to a lower project cost for you. Make sure your designer uses includes or templating systems.
38. “Our hosting service never experiences downtime.”
All webhosts go down at some time or another. Web sites are hosted on ordinary computers, which can crash at any given moment. Don’t believe 100% uptime web hosting for a minute.
39. “I put the majority of your site’s content in flash format. It’s animated!”
Great! It’s animated. Weee! One problem, though. Search engines can’t read text in flash, which can make your site rank lower on Google, MSN, Yahoo etc.
40. “This image is hosted on someone else’s site. We’ll just take it down if they say anything.”
This is called “Hotlinking” and it’s a big no-no. This can also leave your business susceptible to copyright infringement and bandwidth theft lawsuits.
41. “I found a good way to get inbound links. Trade links with other sites, then wait a week and remove their link. It’s genius!”
Inbound links from other sites will help your search engine ranking, but doing it this way will get you a bad reputation online. Why not make content that people WANT to link to?
42. “Your site probably isn’t making sales because there isn’t any AJAX on it.”
Just fire this guy, no questions asked. He’s milking you, not unlike a farmer does a cow.
43. “I disabled the back button so people will stay on your site longer.”
This is another HUGE no-no for your site’s reputation. When people click your back button, they want to go back. Let them do it.
44. “I made the outbound links open up in new browser windows, so people won’t have to leave your site.”
This will make your surfers angry. If your site is good, they will find a way to get back to your site. Don’t insult their intelligence.
45. “I made every page look completely different to show how unique your company is.”
This is a bad idea. Make every site on your page consistent with the others to avoid confusing your surfers.
46. “The social networking of your Web 2.0 AJAX widget will be tabless, refreshless, and asynchrous.”
This guy is trying to confuse you by throwing buzzwords around that he knows you don’t understand. Tell him to talk in layman’s terms for you. If he gives you an attitude, ditch him/her.
47. “Your site loads slowly because of all the high-quality images I used. You do want your site to look good, don’t you?”
Of course you do, but the site needs to load quickly or no one will stick around to see how nice it looks. Tell him to find a way to make it look good AND load quickly. If he can’t, then he doesn’t deserve your business.
48. “People will know what page they are on. It’s obviously the services/specials page.”
Chances are, people won’t know where they are unless you take extra measures to make sure they do.
49. “I put your phone number on the contact page only.”
If your business depends on phone calls, your phone number should be EVERYWHERE. In the page title, on the front page, in the footer… EVERYWHERE.
50. “I made the links look like regular text, so it’s not so intrusive to the reader.”
This seemingly well-intentioned designer may end up making your users angry. They are used to seeing underlined links.
51. “I made your contact form. Look how complete it is.”
Yes, you are asking my paint service clients what high school they graduated from. That’s complete… too complete. Only ask from your users what you need to know for your business.
52. “I put restriction on that image so it shows up smaller on the site.”
This is the lazy way of making a big image appear smaller. This often ends up pixellating the image, and doesn’t look as good as shrinking the actual image in a program like Photoshop.
53. “Look how cool this multicolored background is!”
Beware, a multicolored background against one text color could make part of your content unreadable. Keep an eye out for contrast.
54. “Those horizontal scroll bars mean you need to get a wider monitor.”
No, it means your designer needs to make the site work on computers with lower resolution.
55. “I put up an ‘under construction’ sign while I finish this section.”
Politely inform your designer that it is no longer 1999, and “under construction” images just don’t cut it anymore. Remove any incomplete content.
56. “I made you a javascript menu with dropdowns that have dropdowns which feature even more dropdowns!”
Too many dropdowns can confuse your surfers. Make sure your web design allows the user to find all content easily.
57. “No one will be looking at your site from a cellphone, pda, or an iPhone.”
Millions of people own mobile devices. If your site is popular, people will be hitting it from their mobile devices.
58. “I’ll start working on your site as soon as I finish this mission of Grand Theft Auto 4.”
There’s nothing wrong with your web designer being a gamer, but he shouldn’t have told you that. That’s disrespectful to you, the client.
59. “I typically only talk to clients in my own office.”
This web developer might be trying to make you come to him, so he can be in his comfort zone for the project negotiation. Tell him that if he wants your business, he will have to come to you. He also might just be lazy.
60. “Your site is ALREADY user friendly! Maybe you should get some smarter employees/clients/customers.”
This website designer is just being rude and disrespectful to you. Not everyone is a computer expert, and this designer needs to respect that. He needs to make the site user friendly for everyone, not just the tech-savvy.
61. “Do you want your site to be web 1.0 or web 2.0?”
This one is a bit touchy. This guy might be trying to milk you, or he could be offering you typical web 2.0 functionality like social networking. It’s best to make him make a list of what the differences are and run them by a popular Web Design Forum to see if he’s just blowing smoke.
62. “I do things only one way – my way. You hired me for a reason.”
This guy is bull-headed, and will only cause problems in the future. He’s not open to your ideas, and does not respect you as a client.
63. “I know what’s best for your business.”
No web designer knows your business better than you do. You’re good at what you do, that’s why you made it your business. This web designer is just being a know-it-all.
64. “Forum spam is a good way to spread the word about your site.”
Beware the words “spam” and “good” in the same sentence. Any kind of spam is a bad thing. Instead, make insightful posts at forums with your link in the signature.
65. “I don’t usually work on “mainstream” sites.”
Sounds like this guy works on a lot of pornographic, gambling, or sketchy pharmaceutical sites. Stay away.
66. “Check out this cool font I found for your content!”
If the font used on your site is not a typical web font, your users probably won’t have it on your computer, resulting in unexpected layout problems. This is a big mistake in website design.
67. “Your site will resize the user’s browser so it always looks the same.”
If your web designer says this, tell him “No way”. It’s rude to resize your visitor’s browser without their permission.
68. “You should force users to register so you can get more info about them.”
Well, this is touchy. You should give your users at least SOME information before asking for theirs. Also keep in mind that search engine spiders can’t read password protected content, so this could hurt you if you make your content members-only.
69. “Your users won’t mind if you add them to your mailing list.”
Yes, they will. And it could leave your business liable to spam lawsuits. Make sure your mailing list follows the requirements of the CAN-SPAM Act.
70. “Let’s make this text blink!”
Let’s make this web designer disappear!
71. “Your site should really have a flash intro.”
Unless your site is for a motion picture, rock band, or ultraviolent video game, you don’t probably won’t benefit from a flash intro. Most people will just skip past them anyway. Negative bonus points for your designer neglecting to put a “skip intro” button on your flash intro.
72. “ALT tags are only for old browsers that can’t display images.”
Nope. Alt tags are good for letting search engines know what your image is about. Also, a high rank on Google images can turn into plenty of traffic for your site!
73. “Let’s talk color scheme. I’m thinking Pink, Lime Green, and Camoflauge!”
I think that sounds ridiculous. Maybe try a Color Scheme Generator to see what might work for your site.
74. “These CAPTCHAs are so hard to read. Say goodbye to spambots!”
If your CAPTCHAs are too hard, you can say goodbye to user interaction, too. CAPTCHAs that are too hard will tick your users off.
75. “Check out all these cool WordPress / Joomla plugins I installed!”
This web designer is plugin-happy. This could lead to issues when you upgrade to the latest version of WordPress software, making some of the plugins no longer work. Remember, WordPress plugins are not set in stone. The person/group who creates a CMS plugin could just stop updating it, making all your hard work pointless when you upgrade to the latest version.
76. “Sitemaps are pointless.”
Blah, blah. This guy is lazy. Sitemaps allow an easy way for search engines to find every page included in your web site.
77. “RSS feeds will make people visit your site less.”
This is another touchy one. RSS feeds might seem like less people are visiting your site, when in reality they are reading your content through feed readers like Google reader. This allows them to read your site’s content at their leisure. Remember, if a surfer likes your site enough to add to his/her feed reader, he’ll likely be a reader for life.
78. “I only create tableless CSS layouts. Tables are for newbs.”
People have been using HTML tables for years, although recently it has been said that CSS tableless layouts are better. However, this guy sounds like an elitist. Tables have been used on the web for over ten years for one reason… THEY WORK. You can create beautiful sites with both tables and CSS.
79. “If you hide your adsense links, more people will click.”
Yes, but you might get banned by Google if you try to cheat the system. Remember, if he’s trying to cheat Google, he might be trying to cheat you.
80. “Let’s break up your content article into many pages. It’s better for SEO.”
This one is controversial. I think it’s almost always better to have all your content on one page. Making the user go to a new page for each paragraph of an article is a good way to make your surfers hate you, your site, and everything you stand for.
81. “Everyone has broadband these days.”
I don’t think this is true, although I couldn’t find anything to support my theory. Although standard dialup may be going the way of the dinosaur, there are lots of people using mobile services like AT&T and T-mobile to surf the net at speeds as low at 10-20kbps. If anyone has any information about what percentage of surfers have broadband, please let me know and I’ll add it here.
82. “People will know what this site is about.”
Sometimes we assume this because we know more about the subject matter than our readers do. Make sure that, at the very least, your page title describes what your site is about.
83. “Let’s put the important content toward the bottom of the site.”
Important content needs to be above the fold (the part of the site the user sees before scrolling down). You have four seconds to get the user’s attention before he/she is gone… make them count.
84. “ALL-CAPS TEXT REALLY GETS THE USER’S ATTENTION.”
Oh come on…
85. “I like to center-justify paragraphs of text.”
This is a surefire way to give your site an amateurish look. Tell your web designer to use columns and to left-aligh page content.
86. “I’ll just scan your logo from your business card.”
This should only be used as a move of absolute desperation, when the original logo has been lost forever or destroyed. If you are having trouble finding the original high-resolution logo proofs, try contacting the person or firm which originally designed it to see if they have a backup.
87. “Some users might find the navigation confusing, so I made a page explaining how it works.”
If your navigation bar needs a page to describe how it works, IT’S TOO HARD! Your users won’t take the time to learn a new navigation style just for your site. They’ll go back to Google and end up on a competitor’s website.
88. “I’ll put ‘Click Here’ on your links so users know where to click.”
Never say “Click Here” on your links. Here’s why.
89. “Putting tons of unimportant text is better for search engine bots.”
Hmm, maybe. It’s also a good way to clutter your site with worthless content. This will make your surfers angry because they have to sift through it all.
90. “Inline CSS is just as good as shared, external stylesheets.”
Not true. External styles are better because they make pages load quicker, separate content from design, and make maintenance much easier. More info here.
91. “‘Welcome to…’ is always a good way to start the text on the home page.”
Not true. It has been overused for so long that it now looks amateurish and unoriginal.
92. “Divider bars and horizontal rules are great ways to divide text content.”
Not really. You’d be better off using columns, and stylish boxes to separate page content.
93. “Can I call you back?”, followed by, “sorry I haven’t called. Can I call you right back?”
This web developer is too busy to call you back? Sounds like he might be trying to avoid you. Beware this guy.
94. “You want X? No problem!”, followed by, “I know you said you wanted X, but here’s Y. I think you’ll like it more.”
This guy took it upon himself to decide what you like without even bothering to ask you. Talk to him about this problem and if he keeps it up, fire him. Especially if his negligence results in added project cost.
95. “One of my other clients is a real (negative insult).”
This one is simple. If he’s talking to you about other clients behind their back, he’s probably doing the same thing to you behind yours.
96. “Nice doing business with you. Enjoy your new site.”
A good web designer/developer is never satisfied with a site. He should be mentioning other things that might help your site succeed, and telling you about them. For instance, after a site launches, he might notice that it’s not getting any traffic. At that point, I’d expect a good website developer to mention additional pay-per-click marketing, or link building campaigns.
97. “You like (sports team/politician/beverage)? So do I! Wait, you were just joking? So was I!”
This guy sounds like a real brown-noser. This might not be a good thing at times, but you want your website developer to be honest with you, and tell you if you are making a mistake. (For instance, if the client tells the developer he wants a spinning logo, and the developer shows the client an article stating why spinning logos are no good)
98. “This paragraph is important. Let’s make the whole thing bold/italic/underlined. Wait, no, I’ve got a genius idea coming in. Get this: all three at once!!”
This just screams mid-90′s web design to me. Steer clear.
99. “I’m going to break the ‘close’ button, so people can’t leave your site. “
This is always unacceptable. Don’t let him do it.
100. “Let’s just change the filename of this page.”
This is a bad idea, especially if any other sites link to that specific page. Why break any incoming links that might be pointing to that page?
101. I actually prefer Frontpage.
Hah. I couldn’t help myself. Frontpage gets a bad rap in the web design community, but you can still use it to make a nice site. It’s just so much fun to poke fun at 
Thank you for reading this article. I hope that it helps you make an informed decision on our Web Services. If you enjoyed this article, please feel free to go back to the web development articles list.
-Jeff Couret (Founder/Developer – WebNola)
