Indianapolis Web Design Blog

Yesterday I took a tour of the local auto industry - driving around town getting estimates for a paint job.

Stepping out of my clean and organized world of validating XHTML, CSS, and good design, I entered a world where it just didn’t matter. Before stopping by several shops, I went online and hit every website I could find. I found that roughly 50% or less of the companies I went to see has websites; and the ones who did, were terrible things; old table-based layouts using templates that may have been designed 10 years ago. Content was sparse, uninformative, and out of date.

Of course my eyes lit up as they always do at the opportunity - all of these companies in need of what I provide.

My outlook quickly changed however, as I stopped by each business. These independent business owners looked up at my arrival like I was bothering them, turned me away because they were heavily backlogged, or paid scant attention to me at all.

A well-designed and smooth-running website was the last thing on these people’s minds. Validating XHTML? They don’t need it. Their websites, where they exist, were like a discharged fire extinguisher sitting in the corner. They thought they needed it once, may have a nagging suspicion that it’s still important, but over the years they’ve done just fine without it.

I suspect this is pretty normal for much of the service industry.

Technorati Tags: web_design, service_industry, perspective

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 at 1:58 pm and is filed under Design, Indianapolis Area, Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.