Can Ad Agencies Make a Good Website?

Ad agencies are typically full of creative people, who think web designing a snap. Not quite true. There are many technical and usability aspects that need to be addressed if your website is to look professional, and people who work in the print media are not fully aware of the nuances of a website.

Here is an example to highlight this:

We have a good, reputed Pune based builder as one of our clients, and they recently announced a township scheme. They had enlisted a big ad agency to handle all their marketing, and the client wanted us to implement the website for this project as per their design. So far so good. However, the first website design prototype we received showed the logo somewhere at the right hand bottom. While it may look novel and good on a printed brochure, it is certainly not a good idea for a website for the simple reason that we cannot control the resolution at which a browser views the website. While the designer can control the size of the brochure, it is not feasible to control the size of the browser's active window size.

Secondly, they did not want us to show all the relevant links on the home page. Their idea of the home page was to show only a few links and the logo in the right bottom corner. They wanted to do this so that the browser could 'whet his appetite' and then enter the site. We politely had to tell them that today's browsers were very mature, and unless they got what they were looking for on the first page, they would just quit. Ultimately, the client scrapped the whole design from the ad agency, and asked us to design the website from scratch. 

The second issue is with the copy. Many copy writers for the print media are used to long copy; with the web you have to be terse. 

The third common pitfall is that ad agencies use ample images - not a good practice while designing websites, where bandwidth can be at a premium. 

The bottom line is that ad agencies, though creative, are not aware of the practical limitations of the net. Unless and until they have a dedicated web designer, you should refrain from asking them to make your website.