Respect can be defined by many as an attitude, admiration, the state of being honored, to show consideration for, and treating with dignity. It is being treated with consideration, having regards for other’s feelings, and providing full attention by listening and hearing them.
Developing along with designing web sites can take having a lot of respect, especially for others.
Indeed, we can say that you must learn respect for yourself worth, before you can develop or give it to others. No question there. If you don’t have respect for yourself, how can you possibly think you’ll provide quality care or respect for your clients or other people related to the web industry?
The type of respect I’m referring to is the one you have not only for your clients and coworkers, but also for the average “Joe” visiting the site you are developing. Having respect for the visitor can mean a lot of things for a person involved with developing or designing a website.
How can you show to your visitors that you have respect for them even though you may never see or meet these few to hundreds of thousands of people?
When creating your site you need to consider honor and conforming to web standards. Accessibility, usability, and readability are key points showing that you do have consideration for everyone visiting and using the site, not just limiting it to a select few.
Try being a visitor to just the very first page of a website. Before your page ever finish loading the first few images, you decide to browse around for a moment. You’ve immediately notice that you cannot make any sense of the navigation menu. To make matters worse, all you see is a ton of blank boxes with x’s in the smaller box, and forget reading some of the text. You are having to chase around all the other little x’s so you can close out all those blocking advertisements, pop-ups, and flashing what not’s!
We’re not done yet. See them little bears dancing over there? Or how about Crazy Frog (better known as Axel F or The Annoying Thing) as he jams out to his song at eardrum exploding volumes on the corner of your screen?
- Crazy Frog, The Annoying Thing, or Axel F
Crazy Frog’s Original
Dj Crazy Frog
Oh and let’s not even mention the fact, that I the viewer have to parade around your maze you call a site to try to find an off button! This is the first page?! “I’m outta here!”
Oh wait?! Did I lose the element of focus here? Sorry, I’m a bit distracted. Yeah,I have to say, not the way I want to spend my afternoon!
Treating your website visitor with a bit of dignity, when developing your site, isn’t the only people you need to show consideration for. Providing clean, clear, fully understandable and documented markup behind the scenes for the site also shows respect for your co-workers or even future developers that may be handling the site at a later time.
You can also be and act as a respectable person by giving respect and being respectful. Don’t disregard when people contact you! Answer your emails back, immediately is best, but as soon as possible. It does not matter if it’s a passer-by, client, co-worker, or classmate. They have taken the time to reach out to you, and you should have enough decency to respond in a timely manner and not leave them hanging. Word of mouth spreads like wildfire, especially if it is the “bad” kind. It is hard to gain the trust and respect of others while building and keeping a long lasting relationship, but it is fragile enough to break like glass. You could be the breaking factor of a good relationship or possible business opportunity if you are not considerate of other people’s time.
Caring about others, your website content, presenting it well, and paying attention to even the finer details, such as spelling within your site, can reap lots of respectable benefits from everyone directly or indirectly involved with you. Joe is probably not going to be the only person to visit your site. One day you or your site may be recommended to someone very prominent in the web developing field and you want to try to make the best first, memorable, and lasting impression that you can.
Be conscious of what you do because likely it will effect you.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you – Matthew 7:12
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