Egypt's web design market, as an example for developing internet markets, holds much opportunity for graphic designers and/or web developers who are ready to embrace skills that are beyond their discipline i.e. graphic design or programming alone. My observation of the local Egyptian internet market over the past 5 years has led me to believe that in order to meet Egyptian businesses website needs, a web design firm or freelance web designer should combine three critical disciplines, namely graphic design, web developing and business-marketing.

Previously, up to 2 years ago, Egypt's internet market was dominated by pure web programmers, masters of code, but who retained knowledge of graphic design and even less of business and marketing communication skills. The result was a plethora of websites, that visually look quite naïve, no matter how quick they loaded or how tight their code was. Egyptian businesses approved because there were little other options

This led up to the arrival of a young generation of graphic designers who expanded their graphic skills to enter the internet market. Finally, websites had visual appeal, sometimes backed by audio, with the elements harmoniously laid out. A feast for the eye, but again, the code was not search engine friendly (i.e. potential customers could not find the site using key words or phrases), and the business communication remained lacking as web site structure, text and images were left to the clients to come up with. The result is great looking sites that would entertain but not sell.

So unless your web site is a showcase for art and images, what the market severely misses is not just a good copywriter or journalist, but a designer who approaches the site from a business point of view. Who is the target customer, to what extend is he willing to wait for a fancy website to load, what is the professional write up of all the text, what images would the customer emotionally connect with. These are just some elements that business-marketers would address.

www.webdesign-egypt.com shows the work of a web executive that focuses on the business angle. The client's portfolio show simple, clean and professional looking web sites, combining different budgets.