Websites - how to look professional cheaply

**geti-titanium** · 19-10-2009, 10:20 AM

My screen on this desktop is 800 x 600,

Can you change your screen resolution to 1024 instead of 800?

**Boo** · 19-10-2009, 11:20 AM

Probably. But I like it how it is. It is this res through choice - dictated by the size of the monitor and my eyesight. I'm certainly not going to change it to view web sites.

**katrina alexander** · 19-10-2009, 10:50 PM

Mr Site works brilliantly for me and I think it is incredible value for money - providing you add metatags and put the right SEO into it it actually comes up in search engines much better than alot of "beautifully designed" sites that look pretty but google will never find them on SEO. Having done alot of research on "professional" and highly expensive web design and build companies (from £3,500 to £12.000+ for a site) through my work for clients in a marketing consultancy role, I would recommend using Mr Site unless you have a good budget. You can always upgrade later when you have more money to spend - for jewellery sales I think it works very well indeed.

Apologies to those who read my post earlier - if you can find it - I can't! Hence rewriting it! Hope it helps ... Katrina
Katrina Heroys - Home

**Boo** · 19-10-2009, 10:55 PM

Your earlier post along the same lines is second from the top on the same page.

You can also find your own previous posts by looking at the stats in your own profile.

**jetlag** · 20-10-2009, 12:11 PM

I've been using Mrsite since 2006 for my online shop and have recently moved away to Actinic as mrsite just had too many limitations for a really professional looking needlework shop with thousands of products. The other thing about it that really annoyed me was the generated page names (1.html, 2.html, etc). If you moved your pages around, all of your links were instantly bad and that kind of naming is terrible for SEO.

However, it is excellent for beginners and you can get your website up and running in an hour. It's £35 per year, including the domain registration and hosting.

As for the 800x600 thing, there are many many websites that are fixed width at 1000px and only about 5% of internet users have resolutions set below that. mrsite sites won't be the only ones that will be a problem for you, I'm afraid. Web designers typically don't like dynamic pages as you lose all control over how your page looks if someone scrunches it up.

**Boo** · 20-10-2009, 12:22 PM

But web sites are supposed to be about content not layout. I reserve the right to view web pages exactly how I want - and I want my customers to feel the same way too. Accessibility seems to becoming an outmoded concern for designers and it really shouldn't be - it's a legal requirement to comply with the DDA.

I know that my own site resizes for the viewer and sometimes that might give rise to an ugly layout - but it actually works - my main concern.

If my customer - or potential customer - has vision issues or other disability concerns that dictate how they use a computer, I don't want them to be inconvenienced by my desire to keep the layout pretty. The fact that everyone else does it doesn't make it right.

I'm working on a commission now for a lady who is disabled and adapting the design to make it easier for her to wear and my attitude to accessibility is a significant factor in her returning to me many times for pieces.

**jetlag** · 20-10-2009, 12:43 PM

Well, that's partly true. Content is what makes you buy. But layout is what makes you want to bother looking.

Put it this way, if you walked into a shop and all the products were in boxes on a single crammed shelf, the content would be there, but you wouldn't likely want to come in for a browse because the layout would be rubbish.

In a brick shop, every customer coming in will see the shop the same way. In a click shop, every customer is wearing different glasses (firefox, netscape, safari, opera, chrome, ie5, ie6, ie7) with different magnifications (800, 1024 etc) and they have to cater to the majority.

The truth of the matter is, no website is going to please 100% of people 100% of the time. It's sad, but true.

**Boo** · 20-10-2009, 01:34 PM

You just perfectly illustrated the problem yourself - one of an incorrect attitude - designers treat web sites like brick and mortar shops - and they're not. They're so much more. Web sites are inherently flexible - but designers (spurred on by clients who don't know better, but their designer should explain this) design that flexibility out - the very feature that is of greatest value. And by flexibility, I don't just mean the ability of the page to re-size, but the way in which different software and devices can access the content.

If you want to use the analogy between on-line venues and high street shops - web sites would be like a store that automatically adjusts the shelf height to the maximum reach of each customer and your best lines would automatically be presented at eye level and aisles would adjust to the width of those of us that are broader of beam.

You can't directly equate on-line shops to real world ones - and shouldn't even try. Presentation is clearly important for very many users, but not to the exclusion of working well for everyone. Elegant web design is not just about colour schemes and imagery - it's about function and flexibility too.

**amazingbabe** · 20-10-2009, 02:34 PM

wow interesting stuff !!!

**jetlag** · 20-10-2009, 02:35 PM

Well, yes you can compare the two because retail is retail and the principles of "why people buy" are the same in both situations, but I think this discussion may be getting a little more emotive than I care for.

My point is that while it SHOULD be possible, it ISN'T possible to have a website that is all things to all people, particularly when you're talking about "web designers" who are actually jewellers or beaders or artists who are doing it themselves using someone else's software which will have inherent limitations.

I suppose if you wanted to shell out £10k for a professionally written site, you could get one that sized itself to the screen resolution of the pc it was being accessed on and new whether the user liked fixed width screens or dynamic screens and could decide how many products to show in a column based on that info or whatever. I don't even know if that's physically possible.

But, the question was "how to look professional cheaply". If you want to discuss why websites aren't all singing and dancing there are other forums for that discussion. I can direct you to several very good ones.

It's not about "web designer attitude" at all, it's about what is possible within a set budget. Web designers are artists too, and want their creations to be loved by everyone. But they won't be. Sad, hard truth.

For what it's worth, I also found it very annoying that you couldn't resize a mrsite page, but, for £35 a year, you take what you can get and it's very good at what it does (provides a cheap, reliable platform from which to launch an online business).