Sobering Thought
This morning I was flipping through one of my "Best Of" design books, one of those annual collections of identity collateral from design studios and their clientele -- business cards, promotional mailers, letterhead, that kind of stuff. Most of these studios, and their clients, spent an awful lot of money on paper stock, fancy die cuts and lithography -- hence their inclusion in the book. Almost every piece contained a company URL, so for kicks, I launched a browser and started surfing.
From my best estimate, 60% of the 200 or so "featured" businesses were either out of business (nobody home at the URL), or had a "coming soon" splash on their home page. 35% had current, functioning web sites, but the site design had nowhere near the amount of attention to detail of their print collateral. The final sliver, 5%, had web sites with solid execution and clear reinforcement of their brand perfectly alligned with their "analog" material.
Blame it on the economy. Blame it on shortsightedness. Blame it on clients who overvalue print collateral and spend tens of thousands of dollars on business cards that won't reach anywhere near as many eyeballs as a good web site. Just imagine how long it would take to distribute, by hand, business cards to each and every visitor an average web site receives on a daily basis, and you get the idea.
Comments
In the span of one year a client of mine has had a shortsighted web site overhaul, print materials overhaul, and now another web design to fix the problems with the first site ....rather than spend the money to put together a real strategy and get it right the first time, many businesses piecemeal it willy-nilly for perceived cost reasons. A great CEO is not necessarily a great marketer, and neither are necessarily great brand strategists or designers. But they often think they can get away with cutting corners, or they tend towards being penny-wise and pound-foolish - spending lavishly on one-shot promo pieces, high-profile ads, or trade shows, as opposed to the more prosaic job of putting systems in place to get information out quickly, effectively, and *regularly*. Like content management systems, for one.
Posted by: AJ Kandy at June 11, 2002 2:29 PM
I work at a primarly print-design shop (shameless plug here - digitopolis.com), but has often done web-work in the past, and with myself on board, is committed to significantly more in the future. But our clients are very resistant to include their web material in their design thoughts. More than once, they've wanted 2 completely seperate design projects, with the web side having proportionately perhaps a tenth of the investment of their print collateral. Perhaps more frustrating are clients who will quite happily print URLs on cards, only to spend nothing on their sites, so they're directing potential clients to rather hideous sites, which can only harm them.
I'm finding great success, however, in calling up previous or current print clients, who have seen what a fantastic piece can do for them, and convincing them that the equivalent attention to their site will only do further wonders for them.
Unrelated, whenever I comment, my saved info shows up with the bottom half of the letters cut off in the boxes above this comment box, IE 6 on a PC. Mayhap there's something quirky in your style sheets, perhaps line-height, as the problem appears to be unique to this site.
Posted by: Stv. at June 11, 2002 6:00 PM
quick note - I have to second Stv.'s comment about line height problems in form boxes on IE 6 on Windows; that's what I am Forced To Use at work and since it auto-upgraded on me WDIK.org has not looked quite the same...
Posted by: ajkandy at June 11, 2002 8:15 PM
Another sobering thought is how many large ad agencies ñ the ones who are supposed to be the best at what they do and win all the awards ñ have the worst web sites around.
Posted by: Kristian Walker at June 12, 2002 8:41 AM
I can't agree enough--although I'm not sure it's such a recent phenomenon. I've always loved corporate ID, and remember getting a book of jaw-droppingly good design. Some of the letterheads had URLs on them, so naturally enough I fired up the browser.
What a disappointment! Out of about 20 sites, only two had tried to even *remotely* relate the look of their site & their corporate id--and those were poorly done.
What does this mean? I suspect that for small businesses, the web is still a mysterious thing, and they're not getting it any time soon. And that's sad.
Posted by: Ray Drainville at June 12, 2002 5:17 PM
