Interview with Michiganwebdesigns.com

Posted on January 8, 2012 by Jason Sestak 2 Comments

TO READ THIS INTERVIEW FROM IT’S ORIGINAL SOURCE: CLICK HERE

Our chief editor sat down with Digital Designs creative consultants DeWayne Dailey to discuss how Digital Designs approached the process of designing their website.

Editor: “Hello Dewayne, Congrats on winning the #1 spot for best website in Michigan.”

Dewayne: “Thank you very much, this is a great honor for us as we greatly respect the members of Michiganwebdesigns.com. This has been and amazing year for us.”

Editor: “You mentioned this has been a great year? Can you explain?.”

Dewayne: “Absolutely! Well before we heard the news our website was voted #1 and that a few of our clients websites made the top 10 list, we were also informed that the MDAA voted us the #1 web design company in Michigan for the third straight year. So to say the least this has been a very good year for us and the customers we work for.”

Editor: “Congrats on the MDAA vote, we monitored that and saw you won by a landslide, looks like there was some stiff competition this year, I saw a few companies they listed this year I am very familiar with and I must admit I think they go it right.”

Dewayne: “Well thank you Trey, We respect all the companies on that list and feel they all do good work.”

Editor: “That is very political of you. LOL! Now on to the good stuff. Can you please give us some insight on what your approach was on creating the Digital Designs website?”

Dewayne: “Sure, What we wanted to achieve with the site was, we know that mobile devices are really making a lot of ground in the past year or so, and we used to use Flash animation a lot in our sites as we think the visual motion of Flash is very effective from a marketing stand point on websites. With that being said, Flash is not supported on Apple mobile devices and many others, plus almost all companies mobile sites are so stripped down and outright boring, so we wanted to create a site that is dynamic, rich graphically and still use animation that is exactly the same on the mobile and desktop platform. True we could have made the site more impactful if we would have made it a full flash site, but that is not a smart idea in the market today. The entire website is designed with HTML, Javascript and Jquery. If you pull our site up in IE6+ Firefox, Safari, Iphone, Ipad you get the idea it looks exactly the same. This is not easy to do now a days, but we pulled it off and the feedback we have gotten has been awesome!.”

Editor: “Yeah, the thing we noticed right away is the graphics and colors on your site, you can tell you have very talented graphics people at Digital Designs. The way your guys integrated a java animated header with the scroller underneath the header is just genius, and it is very optimized code too. The programmers give you guys props on that.”

Dewayne: “aaaaaaa. Thank you. We feel our graphic staff is the best in the business. I must not leave our programmers out of the discussion, I know we have the best programmers. I am not diminishing others out there, but we see it time and again, we create sites and backends for people sometimes at half the price.”

Editor: “Not to get off topic, but that is a bold statement. half price?”

Dewayne: “Yup, I will give you an example. This company I have gotten to know these guys well since we have worked with them, so I know they will not mind that I mention them. www.record-bin.com/index.php This company went to three other firms and asked to do their site. They got quotes for $50,000+ one was even $100,000. We did that site for under $25,000. They actually thought we were going to scam them when we came in so low, but the site is done and they love it! So when I say our guys are the best I truly mean that especially when you factor in our prices with the quality. I fell we are on top right now and we will do everything we can to stay that, and make our customers happy.”

Editor: “Well Dewayne I can see the salesman in you coming out, but let’s get back to the topic at hand. Our people want to know if they were to have you design them a website just like your what would it cost them. Awesome sites are great, but people want to know what they cost.”

Dewayne: “hmmmmmmm pause……….. Well If I had to put a number on it. I would say maybe $8,000.”

Editor: “Honestly?”

Dewayne: “Yup.”

Editor: “That is pretty impressive, when you look at the site in our top 20 list, I know some cost far more than that to produce.”

Dewayne: “O for sure, and in certain areas they are better sites for it. I would say for most businesses that do not require backend work or e-commerce, if you are in the $4,000-$8,000 budget, you can produce a site that will represent as well as any. If you look through our portfolio on the Digital Designs website, most of those sites are in the 4-8 range.”

Editor: “I agree that seems to be the magic number. I know you speak all over and do seminars on marketing and design, but our people would like to know your background and what qualifies you to make the bold statements you have made over the past few years.”

Dewayne: “Well I am not sure I would call them bold statements, they are just fact. I told myself years ago that I was going to do things right or not at all, and tell people the truth if they get mad or not, and sometimes people get a bit annoyed, but they always respect my honesty and sincerity. There too many fast talking salesman and unqualified web designers/graphic/programmer/whatever they are, and people spend good money with these guys and get nothing in return except a crappy website and their bank account is smaller. That really ticks me off!”

Editor: “I agree now your experience?”

Dewayne: “haha Sorry Trey, I started out almost 20 years ago as a graphics student working with Quark and Photoshop, and got bit by the bug. I left college and worked 12 hours a day or even more on the computer just learning Photoshop and quark. I also started playing with 3D animation and video editing. At 25 I started working for a Vitamin company and in 1 year became the VP of Operations and started one of the first E-commerce vitamin websites in the world. Through marketing this business through the internet site and TV we sold the business to a larger competitor. This allowed me to focus for almost 5 years on advanced self studies of marketing and internet technologies. Then I started World Medicom, it was a business for designing high level video effects and graphic design to market businesses. This was in a unique time in the marketing world as the internet started becoming more prominent so after a few years we started focusing more on web design and changed the business name to Digital Designs. Digital Designs has grown to be one the most respected web design company in American and we have clients from Fortune 500 companies to one man companies.”

Editor: “Ok Ok we get the idea, LOL! Dewayne if you can tell our readers one thing that they should look for when they are looking to hire a web design company.”

Dewayne: “Over the years we have had soo many people come to use out right mad that some guy or company designed them a site that was bad, and those people had no idea what a good or bad web design company was. The best advice I can give anyone is to site down with that company and say what websites have you done that will look like mine, and make sure that you get a contract of the work and that they specify the type of site and features of you site. Make sure you also have an out in the contract that is they cannot produce a site rendering that meets your satisfaction you can get out of the contract. Pay them for their rendering cost and get out while you can. If they do not agree to this then they must not have confidence in their skill to WOW you with their design.”

Editor: “Dewayne I would like to thank you for your time, we are out of time and I know you are busy. I hope are reader can take away something from this and be better prepared when looking for a proper website design.”