Job Lot: The website designer

By GRAHAM REID

Reuben Gwyn, age 31, who founded Spyders Play in Panmure with his partner, Samantha, and designs internet websites. Salary about $80,000.

Web design seems a relatively new field, what was your training?

We've been doing this since the beginning of last year. I have a background in design, particularly video production and special effects. I trained at ATI, worked for six years at Sky as graphic manager for the sports channel, then went abroad and did visual effects for a movie in London. I came back and had two years doing special effects and digital compositing on television commercials.

What exactly is web design and what sort of people come to you?

We deal mainly with small and medium-sized businesses. There are two main uses for the web, which is part of the internet. The net consists of sending data and e-mails. The web is basically a visual user-interface where the non-computer person can see information, pretty pictures, buttons with hyper-links to other sites and pages. Around 70 per cent of web use is people surfing for information. Generally our clients want to provide their company or product information to potential customers, locally and internationally.vp +9

What sort of people have you designed for?

We've done one for a health organisation where people can find information for what is ailing them at that time, through to providing on-line quoting for an insurance organisation, to photographers wanting to show a portfolio to people.

On your site you have flash, dynamic-html, and html options. What do they mean?

If you are creating a site being viewed by professionals with high-speed internet connections, you can push speeds to the extreme and offer fully animated video. That's flash. D-html is layer manipulation or database integration creating interactivity. And our standard html site shows you don't have to use multiple pages but rather you can have the site built on one page. It's a slower downloading time but it can be quite effective. We were just showing people that standard html doesn't have to be the same as you see on every other site.

How do you know if your design has been successful.

We generally hear the good feedback and often get testimonials, but obviously every site collects statistics from those who use it. We can view the logs and see how many people are viewing, how long they are in for.

If, say, a small upholstery business came to you and said it wanted its business, styles and patterns out there, how long to design a site for them? Is it pricey?

If we had everything given to us we'd probably spend three to six weeks for an average-sized site. Expensive? It depends entirely who you go to. A lot of people out there are into site creation because they believe they can make money from it. I call them wannabes, and they may have no design background and experience but use someone's small business as a training ground. A third of our work is redoing those sites because they aren't successful for the client. That might be $600 to $800 for someone.

Designing bigger sites with data-base integration and e-commerce start around $10,000. A quote might be $40,000 from another company. Quotes vary considerably.

Is business good?

We work from home but the house is on the market because we are getting too big. We have plans drawn for a new house which has a whole level for an office. We're also taking on another staff member. We have six months' work booked ahead so it's a matter of necessity, but we want to employ the right person. There are a lot of enthusiastic amateurs who don't have the design skills, and a lot of people calling themselves web designers with no actual design experience. Our aim, because of my background, is to set up a business which focuses on highly professional and well-designed sites.