Web design courses are among the most popular continuing education and undergraduate courses offered at community colleges, technical schools and universities these days. You can also find web design courses presented by countless private firms, some of which are affiliated with software or hardware companies, or with other products used by the information technology industry.

Most schools have a wide range of web design courses that, when taken as part of a well-designed program will earn you a diploma or certificate as a web designer. If you find this is really your calling in life, you can then continue your education and gain certification as a webmaster. Website management and maintenance has become one of the leading growth industries of the early twenty-first century, as the Internet grows exponentially year-by-year.

Of course, web design courses are also offered through many universities and private companies on the internet.  Without ever having to leave the comfort of your own home or office, you can lean the necessary tools for effectively designing your website.  You may wish to look at the website of the firm offering the course to see if they can design a site any better than you are already able to do by yourself.

However, is this what today's businesses really need?  Many hundreds of people every day send e-mails and call the customer service lines of businesses all over the globe to complain, "But I can't find what I'm looking for on your website!"  Hopelessly lost and confused customers are ticked off fast. In addition, they will tell others about your ineffective website. Bad word of mouth spreads faster than the speed of light. 

A leading web designer in one of North America's largest cities, with decades of marketing and sales experience, points out that virtually all website developers lead with their technical expertise. They want to stuff your company's website full of every multimedia doodad and tap-dancing window known to information technology. It is not a video game, people! You want to sell product from your site.

The key thing most web design courses need these days, now that the technical specifications have been taken care of, is a comprehensive and compulsory marketing component, so here are some incisive questions to ask that newly certified webmaster in your firm's IT department before he or she lays a finger on a keyboard:

      -- "When the company needs to update this website, how fast and correctly will it be done?"

      -- "How much will the company have to sell to match the earnings lost while the site was down?"

      -- "For which companies have you worked in sales?" 

      -- "Have you ever run your own business selling something?  If not, where did you get your

          marketing and sales knowledge?"

      -- "Who is going to run Customer Service on this website? It had better be a sales and marketing

          specialist, who knows our product lines and can answer the customer's questions, online

          or on the phone, in 5 minutes or less. I don't want Customer Service time used up with

          complaints about the website. I want actual sales associates and managers doing Customer

          Service, just like in our retail stores."

      -- "All the Sales and Customer Service people, by the way, will be your testers on the website to check that it does what you web designers say it will. When they suggest an idea to drive more sales through the website, you had better listen and give them -- and me -- what we want.

          No excuses."

Impulse and/or trust are the two key forces behind any sale. A sales veteran, who now consults on business website design, recommends that web design courses focus on keeping the sales page clean and simple, with no links to go anywhere off the page for the first type of sale. In the section for the second type of sale, provide a Frequently Asked Questions button and links to brief notes about just the items offered for sale. The first will get new customers to buy and the second will encourage repeat customers, or those who like to be well informed before making a purchase. 

Web design courses should teach how to design pages that focus on the sale, customer tracking, customer feedback, how to get the customer feedback to the people who need to act on it, and a multitude of other sales tasks for the company website in the future.  These new web design courses could then be called Marketing Technology Design courses, with the focus on the marketing first, and the technology second. If there was ever a need for the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle in business, it is now, as the business of buying and selling goes global on the Internet.