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We have books and articles about website usability, the good offices of the W3C to show us guidelines and offer us tools for ensuring functional code, and a handy professional designer to put the ideas into action. But why do we need those, anyway? Why can not we just let the writers compose some prose, then the designer make a nice-looking site, and be done? Why need we worry about these technical details, W3C compliant code, and usable web design?

It is because we are designing, building, and writing for humans. And being humans, we are really rather limited in our functions and capabilities. We cannot get a memory upgrade, except in the movies. We are limited to a precious few items that we can hold in short term memory. If your site design makes demands that exceed our capacity, you have lost us and you may not get us back. We have limited patience, we humans, and if you trouble us with broken links and code that does not function, we will look elsewhere for the goods and services we seek.

Somewhere I once saw a coffee-mug with a cartoon, possibly a Far Side drawing, of a fellow with a big body and a tiny head holding up his hand and asking the teacher if he can be excused from class because his brain is full. And we are like that, really, even the best and brightest of us. We can only handle just so much complexity, especially up-front, in our limited short term memory. And then we are ready to move on and find a site that is easier to use.

That is where a professional web-designer comes in. They know how to make it all work. They know how to adhere to the guidelines of the W3C, ensuring valid code that makes a functional site. A well-informed professional will understand usability concerns and how to make a site that is clean and uncomplicated, and usable by all.

All of our customers are looking for the easy-button. They may not know it or even admit it, but they will not work too hard to get at whatever you are offering. Studies show that site visitors will not likely read your message if it is long and demanding. They will not stay and attempt to navigate your site if it is confusing or just plain broken. So we want to give them the easy-button, in the form of clean, functional, professional design. We do not want to insult their intelligence by making it obvious. We do want to respect their abilities and make the website experience interesting. But we also want to stay within the limits of our human capacities and capabilities.

That is why we need our experienced professional coders. A qualified designer can write valid, W3C compliant code that will work in all the major search engines. Such a site will respect the needs of those challenged by limited vision or mobility. A site built by a qualified professional and validated with the tools offered by the W3C will work for us humans, with all our limitations.