Puzzled by web design and services

I’ve been looking at a few sites offering web design and related services and I find myself puzzled, even a bit alarmed. This is not due to what I found (though in some cases it was) but by what I did not find.

I have seen absolutely no reference to content. Do the sites magically populate themselves? If not, who does it? If the client does, is there no consultative service to advise them on what and how to put the content in or maintaining it? If the client doesn’t handle the content, who does? If the web design company does, who handles the research, the writing, the editing? Have they a background in it? Are they good?

There were no references to social media other than “Follow us on Twitter” and/or something similar for Facebook. If a company is moving to or revamping an online presence, isn’t this a crucial aspect? Where do they get help, direction or advice on this?

I found a few web design/web services companies with URLs that required the www preface. Personally, I never use it anymore. I just type in something like writelife.net. No http. No www. I suspect many people are like me. If so, there are a lot of people going to a “page not found” message when they type in the web company’s address. I can’t believe that builds a lot of confidence in a web design company's awareness of how the web works.

I also found quite a few companies using dated language. In the world of business, marketing and technology, terminology changes almost daily and if you rely on today’s clichés you become tomorrow’s anachronism. Surely “offering solutions” is at least ten years old. I believe current terminology should be avoided at all costs but I do realize it is often unavoidable. But this puts the onus on you to continually assess your site and see where and how it requires revamping. In the online world, static means death.

None of the above is true of all web design sites. Hopefully, I just stumbled on a few that skewed my perception. It is worrying though. On the other hand, from my perspective, maybe it holds the promise of some work. :-)