easy to become a website designer?

Reggie_Rebel

It is a very saturated industry, so you may find it difficult to break into without a portfolio. First thing is to get yourself a site so that you can test, try and showcase a few things. Then it may well be worth offering a local company or two a heavily discounted website

InsideInsurance

pinpin wrote: »

Is this something someone can teach themselves in a few months?
I don't really know anything about it, but if he can do it, i'm wondering whether I can do it, too!!

"Web Design" covers a multitude of sins and there are people aiming at all levels of the market.

A small local company will typically be a jack of all traders (master of none) where they offer a basic level of most the standard sorts of things youd expect but that doesnt mean that everyone inside the company has such a broad range of skills.

You can teach yourself the basics of HTML, CSS etc relatively quickly. It takes practice to get better at them. If you start learning about things like SEO or cross browser compatibility then you may need to go back and relearn/ improve your skills in these things as not always is the easy option the best option.

Running a web design agency is totally different to being a web designer. Your skills then are basically business and certainly having had some dealings with bit multinational design agencies their senior management would probably think CSS is a Client Satisfaction Survey.

There are plenty of one man bands offering web design services in which case you have to be a blend of the two, unless you are subcontracting the work. You are also up against every teenager in their bedroom or thousands of teenagers in India etc who all can knock together a bit of code and so sell themselves as design agencies.

Caroline_a

You'll also be in competition with packages where people with a little IT savvy can make their own websites. I did my own with WIX, and it was really easy.

pinpin

thanks for the replies.
Like I say, i'm mainly just interested as i've never had a clue what to do for a job and don't have any imagination when it comes to 'career ideas', so whenever someone seems to succeed at something I always like to investigate.
I'd be the same if a friend of mine started a plastering business from scratchj for example. I'd be on here asking how hard it is to plaster!!

As suggested, i'm probably better off speaking to him directly about it (although not spoken to him in about a decade)
All I know is that he went from a crappy job to a trainee position in his first ever 'office job' as a trainee website desgner, and 6 months later he's quit, and he is advertising his services to build websites for local companies, and from what I gather through a mutual friend, he already has a fair bit of work.

It seemed odd because, without being mean, he isn't a particularly bright guy.
(I'm allowed to say this because i'm fairly stupid too!)
How can you learn enough skills to go out on your own 6 months after knowing nothing at all...

I'm gonna see if I can learn the basics anyway.
Gonna see if I can just build a site with a few pictrues and 'links' on it and stuff lol. Give me half an hour....

agrinnall

pinpin wrote: »

How can you learn enough skills to go out on your own 6 months after knowing nothing at all...

Perhaps he just has bigger cojones than you and is giving it a try in the hope that it works out. Or maybe he's even dumber than you think and he now believes he knows it all and will soon come a cropper. Time will tell.

szam_

Just because he writes websites for local companies doesn't mean the sites he writes are of a good quality - they may just be basic things such as web forms, or some contact details and a bit of information about a product or service on a few tabs.

I work with website code (HTML/CSS/JavaScript) daily and I've been doing it over a year now (I come from a SQL/VB6/Hardware & networking background). I've seen some pretty shocking coding from some quite big companies who come back to us after we've done what we need to do, and ask us why their site doesn't pass a compliance or accessibility checks when it's in fact their own code at fault.

Yes, I could create a good looking site given the time to do it. But could I write it to professional standards? Not for a long while.
Including accessibility features and such? Probably, but it's not something that wouldn't be quick and would take time learning about.
Would it pass W3C compliance checks? Yes, after a while of fixing any errors.
Does it work in IE7 and 8? Or even IE9? Some users won't venture off the stock browsers so it needs to work here and IE can be a complete pain sometimes.

However, once the first website is done to a very high standard, it becomes easier and quicker.

I believe anyone with a small knowledge of IT could build a basic site in a matter of days, some links, some text, some images etc after browsing W3Schools for a bit... but what are you going to do when you need to integrate log in forms? If taking personal data or payments, is the site PCI compliant? How do you keep sensitive data safe?

Is 6 months long enough to learn how to make websites? Yes.

Is 6 months long enough to learn how to make websites that have various interactions, such as logging in and users, and JavaScript features to boot? Not likely, no.

I don't mean to sound negative, but it's not all a breeze like some web developers may make it out to be. Those are likely a bit lazy and cut corners. If an easy to get in to job is what is expected, then you'd probably be surprised that a lot knowledge and hard work needs putting in to creating a top quality website - and they are only getting more complicated these days.

pinpin

Yeah. I'll speak to him anyway, but it sounds like another dead-end/pipe dream based on the general consensus.
Maybe i'll find somthing I can do one day *fingers crossed*

pinpin wrote: »

I'm gonna see if I can learn the basics anyway.
Gonna see if I can just build a site with a few pictrues and 'links' on it and stuff lol. Give me half an hour....

Made one, lol
Just text, a pitcure, links at the top that take you down to that part of the page when you click them, and one hyperlink that actually takes you to moneysavingexpert

InsideInsurance

pinpin wrote: »

6 months later he's quit, and he is advertising his services to build websites for local companies, and from what I gather through a mutual friend, he already has a fair bit of work.

It seemed odd because, without being mean, he isn't a particularly bright guy.
(I'm allowed to say this because i'm fairly stupid too!)
How can you learn enough skills to go out on your own 6 months after knowing nothing at all...

I'm gonna see if I can learn the basics anyway.
Gonna see if I can just build a site with a few pictrues and 'links' on it and stuff lol. Give me half an hour....

There are many levels of "web design" as I say.

At the most basic level you learn how to use a straight forward CMS like Wordpress, not much different from learning how to use Word. You then dont "design" the site but buy a straightforward template for around £30. You then take your customers logo, stick it top left, take your customer content and put it into the pages using Wordpress and 3 hours later you have "designed their site". You dont even need to learn how to set up Wordpress as most webhosts have 1 click install for it.

My cousin is fairly web/ computer literate but had never tried to "programme" anything. Within 5 hours he had his first ever website up there and because he'd used a "professional" template it did look reasonably good.

For the majority of brocureware websites this is all you need to do. It will probably not be SEO'ed very well, the navigation may not be perfect but it ticks the box of being a custom website for the client and as long as your price reflects the simplicity of it then you'll be ok.

The "problem" with being this kind of web designer is what do you do with those that actually want bespoke functionality and so is way outside of your comfort zone and how do you keep a constant stream of revenue. There are only so many local businesses that want basic websites. Though there are tricks of the trade to help secure long term income.

I would be more concerned of their business skills, ability to quote for anything other than basic brochureware/ ecommerce, to find/win customers etc than their ability to get a working website up onto the web

DalePie

I'm a web developer (Well actually an SEO guy TBH) so thought I'd answer your question.

pinpin wrote: »

How hard is it to learn to build websites and make a career of it?

To learn how to build simple websites, easy. To learn the tougher development type stuff is pretty hard and takes years to learn.

SEO / Social Media and Internet Marketing is another rabbit warren. That's why people get paid decently for doing it well.

pinpin wrote: »

I've been trying to think of career ideas for the last 5 years or so. I don't have a genuine interest in anything career wise, so i'm approaching it from a different angle in terms of 'anything' that I would potentially be able to do, as opposed to 'finding a career that involves doing what you love doing' which is often the advice given.

I work in a start-up environment where people live and breath technology and coding. You'll be up against these people during your interview, they'll win.

If you want to become a web developer then it has to be because you enjoy creating things, not because you had to choose something. Some of the guys I know are the smartest people you'll ever meet, most have Bsc Degrees and many have Msc / Phd's - they'll still give a rookie a chance don't get me wrong but being slap dash just won't cut it IMHO.

It sounds at the moment (Please don't take it the wrong Way) that your attitude is more "Slap it up in 5 Minutes" rather than what a professional web dev / designer would actually be like.

You might be able to fool the average SME owner but you'll need to change to venture further up the food chain. Sorry if that sounds harsh but it's true. I spend hours picking apart rubbish design jobs for my smaller SME clients, sometimes they end up having to pay another £££'s to re-build their site so it will rank on Google properly.

What I'm trying to say is that your friend is in business right now. Once local businesses realise his skills aren't good enough the work will dry up and he'll be back on the factory floor.

Learn the skills first, know what you're doing, take a college course or intern at a web dev agency or start-up. Then you'll understand what it takes to create an awesome website that ticks every box.