But most leads on a web design team, if an angel came and told him, “It’s time to give your client some business strategy feedback” would turn around and say “Who me?”

I think there is a need for more web design firms that build in business strategy and marketing strategy reviews into the process of creating a site. In this post, Josh provides a great framework for communicating with the client about the core connection between web design and business strategy.

@Ryan…I added a section in the post to address your point.

Anyway, perhaps I was a bit single-minded in my description, but I would say the point you made is a sibling problem…the communication between business strategy and design strategy just isn’t happening as well as it should.

What isn’t clear from my post is that in my mind it is sometimes the designers responsibility to push back on the business strategy folks when it doesn’t make sense from a user experience standpoint to do something. I kept my rant solely on faithfully reproducing the business strategy in the design, but you are definitely right in that it isn’t always the right communication for users.

Number 2 to me would be the large amounts of pseudo-science running around web professionals. “This is intuitive,” “customers like this,”… oh yeah? Prove it!

The disconnect between intended message and actual perceived message is a problem, but mostly for marketers and art directors.

Anyway - nice post. You de-lurked me!