For websites that have to both attract new customers, and sell to them, i.e. convert a visit into a sale or an enquiry phone call (rather than just being a cyberspace e-brochure as so many websites these days, and the only people who are ever going to go there already know your web address, and are already considering your services before visiting) then the last of the three skills, business acumen is arguably the most important.
It is crucial to understand that if a website has to sell, it should include appropriate business flow processes into the design, and funnel visitors through proven effective routes and methods to your ultimate goal of shopping cart sale, or email / phone call enquiry etc. You cannot just stick a collection of pretty pictures up on a business website and a phone number and expect it to just happen.
Unfortunately there are a good amount of web designers around, who maybe having come from a graphic design background have managed to acquire a little technical knowledge and are able to build websites for their customers and friends, using perhaps their own imagary and designs and then subcontracting the more technical work, Flash programming, database back-ends etc out to others and then putting these sometimes poorly thought out, and in some cases barely (business) functional websites live.
This is where the SEO Consultant comes in. As previously stated, even good website designers ae a very different breed to SEOs, because as good designers have strong creativity, SEO is more grounded in the world of maths and rules, and maybe even statistics. It’s certainly a technical overview of a website with a different set of criteria from the creative design people.
Beyond the “standard” SEO ruleset which most with even a vague interest understand these days, there is room for some creative manoevering in SEO but it’s generally much more akin to business analysis than to the more creative aspects of web design.
From an SEO perspective some website designers are a dream to work with, we were in email contact yesterday with a Spanish Company who make the most beautiful Flash websites as well as XHTML sites who we will be plugging in a big way when the time comes.
There is also another company with whom we cannot help but to contrast this experience with. For the sake of anonymity we will just call them “Flash Ibiza.” (because they build mainly flash sites, for customers in Ibiza) whom having demonstrated that they have no clue about SEO nor business website design principles, by building several poorly performing Flash websites for their clients, and who having admitted to us they have no clue about SEO by email whilst chastising us for approaching “their” clients with regards to SEO work, have then spent the xmas holidays trying to work out exactly what we do and how we do it (unsuccessfully, as search results will of course show very quickly ;).
They went as far as actually cutting and pasting our code whole, and just swapping our pagelinks for theirs (as demonstrated by their forgetting to remove one of our links and linking back to us by mistake 
and are now happily re-approaching all their previous customers again themselves for a second time (and payday) and attempting to offer a solution to their previous mistakes, but then delivering substandard, incomplete and ultimately ineffective SEO work through a basic lack of understanding of what they are trying to do.
Its an (un) fortunate fact that analytics and analysis will demonstrate very quickly whether a website is effective in it’s given task, and whether an SEO knows what they are doing, and this company have obviously yet to learn this. For their customers sakes I hope theyre offering money back guarantees, (but we would wager they are not) particularly as they are attempting to (re) supply services that they ultimately cannot deliver, ..some might say for a second time.
The lesson here is that web designers should design, SEOs should optimise websites, and the two should work together in harmony for the sake of customers wherever possible. Then after that its an SEO’s job to continue to optimise it, and a web designers job to design new websites. The processes involved in Marketing a Website are a world away from creative design, and only a very few web design professionals are truly good at both.
Here is a rare exception to this rule, and a truly nice guy, if you are in the market for a decent website in Ibiza we would thoroughly recommend talking to Pete @ www.kiwi-designed.com
This is why SEO Ibiza maintain an SEO demonstration website for all to see, please do visit visit, and try our searches. This site went live mid November 07 and so is brand new as far as the age and trust factors in Google, our keyword searches are available at the click of a link on the SEO testimonials page, and see for yourself see our first page presence in our target searches.
In the same way as hiring yourself a fat Personal Trainer would not be very confidence inspiring, we believe any serious web professionals, be they web designers or SEOs should be able to prove their abilities on their own sites before asking for your money to work on yours.
