Doing Research on Website Projects

It's important to hire a website firm that does their research - especially if you hire a firm that's not local:

• Wis. Web site image sends Capitol to Minneapolis
• Capitol offense: Building's in Madison, but skyline's in Minneapolis
• $1 million Wisconsin web site features photo of Minnesota
• Oops, That's Not Wisconsin

So the new website for campaign finance information in Wisconsin (cfis.wi.gov) shows the Wisconsin State Capitol building in the design but the skyline is from Minneapolis. It was a Connecticut based website design firm that did the work. Oops.

The website is using frames, has no SEO done to it and is not the best looking thing I've seen. Sorry for the rip but part of my job here at Webstix as Project Manager is to QC our work so I'm very often in that kind of mode. My team handles any constructive criticism well and turn out beautifully designed websites left and right. It's a team effort for sure. You need people doing SEO research for keywords, multiple designers working on designs, programmers and a website maintenance team.

And this firm got $1 million dollars to design the site. Maybe the Wisconsin state government should keep the taxpayers money more in-state instead. I know of a local website design company that maybe could have done it for maybe half the price (saving tax dollars) and done a much better job. :-)

And you'd think someone at the State managing this project would have noticed the error. It took a State Senator to notice it.

Doing research is important in any website design project. Make sure you hire a firm that's good at it and you can avoid this type of embarrassment.

-Tony