Setting Yourself Up: 5 Design Shortcuts That Will Come Back to Bite You

As a web designer, you're often asked to develop as quickly as possible – but here are five risky shortcuts you want to avoid.

Shortcuts are the name of the game in web design online – if you can spend five hours writing a script that might save you one hour of work six times, you do it. Still, there are some common shortcuts to watch out for, as they come at the cost of your project's quality.

1. “I don’t know where to put this CSS call, I’ll just add it to the bottom of the stylesheet.”
This is an irritatingly common oversight by designers of all experience levels - you’re running late for a push, and don’t have time to find the proper place to stick a call. It all compiles at the same time, right? What’s it matter?
What matters is three months down the road when you’ve done this a hundred more times - and suddenly, you have the same call cascading five or more times within a single stylesheet. Keeping stylesheets organized not only makes it easier for you to work with your code, but helps control unnecessary duplicate calls that will pad your code and slow your site down.

2. “The idea is simple enough, we can skip mockups and just design it in-browser”
The reason mockups were invented is because the above idea is never true. The brain of the client is a mysterious thing, and no matter how well you know the project, there is little chance you know it so well that you won’t end up doing duplicate work because of your hubris. Even when working on a project for yourself, once you have your web design online, it's easy to spot flaws. It’s a much better thing to notice this 3 hours into a pencil sketch, as opposed to ten hours into development.

3. “Development will be easier if we manage the site through FTP”
You know what else will be a lot easier? Losing everything. As most FTPs have no sense of file backups, you’re basically hand editing the only copy of your code in existence. Even daily backups risk losing a day’s worth of work. Furthermore, all your mistakes are immediately visible on the live site. Though schools and courses may teach you this method as a beginning step in updating a site, you're going to want to move to a code repository and a test host for any substantial project.

4. “No one is using [old browser], we don’t need to check it”
Someone, somewhere, is using that browser. They will also be the only person to email your client or boss with a screenshot of a grotesque looking page. That’s not to say you should support every browser - you obviously have to draw the line somewhere - but checking ahead of time and presenting your recommended support to your boss or client can save you from looking irresponsible down the line.

5. “We’ll work out the contract later”
No, you won’t. Clients unwilling to settle the financial details before a project starts are also the most likely to squabble about it after the work has been finished. This is the end all be all of putting the horse before the cart – careers can't be built upon “possible” payment, so until you’ve got a guarantee of rent payments for the next month or two, there’s no reason to start a project. If you lose a client because of this, trust me - you didn't want them in the first place.