The Web Design Survey 2015 - Results

The results are in.

I asked dozens of web designers for feedback on the parts of their job which cause them the most problems. Because if copywriters are going to work with designers, we should know a bit more about the challenges they face.

Here’s what our colleagues in website design have to say.

The Designers

Before we get to the meat of the survey, it’s worth looking at who responded.

Job Role:

(“Other” roles included developers, business owners and digital art directors)

Average Experience: 7.6 years

What Does a Designer Do?

It seems obvious. Designers design.

We all know life’s not that simple. There’s a hell of a lot involved in getting a website into a state where it’s ready for launch. At the bare minimum, you need to design the site, code it, and add some text. So you’d expect web designers that can design, code and create content to have an advantage.

Services Designers Currently Offer

Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of respondents design websites. Those that didn’t offer graphic and print design services. But only a minority (35.14%)can actually create the content to populate their designs.

Services Designers Want to Offer

It seems like most designers are happy with their offerings. But some designers want to offer more – and it’s development, graphic design and copywriting that they think their clients need from them:

Most Wished-For Services:
Graphic Design – 35.14%
Website Development – 35.14%
Content Creation – 32.43%
Photography – 29.73%

Seems clear – designers want to be able to offer everything a client needs to get a site live. That seems sensible to me.

Designers and Their Problems

Everyone has concerns. And designers are no exception. Interestingly though, their major concerns with their career aren’t focused on what they can do, or the industry’s future. It’s the fact that clients don’t understand design:

It’s worth noting that not one designer surveyed claimed that there was too much competition for them to succeed. Very magnanimous.

Some Other Concerns:
“I need to emigrate due to a lack of investment in the UK tech industry”
“Clients think they know more about design than I do”
“No concerns at all ;)”

What About the Mills?

Copywriters hate content mills. It’s an established fact. But head over to Fiverr and People Per Hour, and there are thousands of people looking for bargain-basement design work. So how do designers feel about low-cost alternatives?

They don’t care.

Only 15% of respondents had been negatively affected by the bottom-end competition, with one lonely soul claiming that they’d actually benefited from the mills.

Delays, Delays, Delays

Everyone hates deadlines being missed because of delays. So I asked the designers what holds them up. Turns out that it’s their clients…

Biggest sources of design delays:
Poor quality briefs – 40.63%
Client can’t provide written content – 28.13%
Client can’t provide images – 12.50%
Client keeps changing their mind – 12.50%
My full-time job gets in the way – 6.25%
I need to manage my time better – 0.00%

With nearly a third of delays caused by a lack of copy for the website design, it’s no wonder so many designers want to branch out and offer content creation services.

The Conclusions

For those of you who follow mainly copywriters on Twitter, this will be a breath of fresh air. Designers are a positive bunch, unmoved by low-cost competition, certain in their own skills (if not their own prices), and happy to offer a range of services to their clients.

If website designers have one issue, it’s that they find it difficult to communicate with clients – meaning that most problems stem from misconceptions, or just being unable to let customers know what they need to do to ensure a quick, effective design process.

As problems go, that one’s easily solved. Spend some time thinking about how to sell your service, put together something to help with briefs, and make sure you keep in contact with your clients.

Happiness and contentment surely awaits.

Just One More Thing…

As a website copywriter, there’s one sum that leaps out of this survey at me.

100% of websites need content.
35% of designers offer their customers content (either themselves, or in partnership with a copywriter)
32% of designers want to offer their customers content.

So that’s a third of designers who don’t have any plans to fill the designs they create with the copy that’ll help those designs sell products and services.

That strikes me as odd.

Especially when you see that nearly a third of designers think that a lack of written content is the biggest single delay to getting a job finished.

What do you think?