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Brick No87: An open note to web designers
By Matt Weston, Tuesday 3 August 2004 I certainly didn't get many donations from web designers after Tuesday's brick. Rachael Wyatt of Purple Dogfish was worried I was going to subtitle her feedback, "B;tch of the Week". As you can see, I haven't. Rachael's beef was this: " If you are a small business owner (a plumber for example) and you decide to learn all about web design just so you don't get ripped off - you are ripping yourself off. " A 5 page static site is about £450 plus VAT from our company and would take someone with no experience of HTML, CSS, or the Disability Discrimination Act weeks and weeks to put together in their spare time - even using a software package like Dreamweaver - which costs. " It draws away from the core business which is growing the plumbing business. In addition, most of the homemade sites we see are shocking. " Not the new estate agents What gives? In one fell swoop you'd think I'd tarred Web Designers with the same brush Estate Agents have suffered with for the last 20 years. And that really WASN'T my point. I've dealt with many web developers on many site launches over the last decade, and I've not had a bad experience yet. Nope. I didn't take the DIY approach to avoid the cowboys, Big Chief Scowls A Lot. And I wasn't trying to follow in the footsteps of Changing Rooms and launch some DIY revolution. (Oh, the guilt Lawrence Llewelyn-Bowen would feel if he could only see my kitchen). I wasn't saying everyone should Do-It-Yourself, and learn HTML code from scratch. I was just explaining the perfectly valid reason why I did. Why you need to get your hands dirty Just as I was trying to cook up a reply to Rachel, Gill Pritchard's name popped up in my inbox. Take it away, Gill: " Matt. Really enjoyed today's brick: as an ex-web designer, I know that some of my best (happiest, most loyal, most appreciative) clients were those who'd got their hands dirty with version 1 of their own site. " Now that really WAS my point. The biggest challenge of any early-stage business is figuring out exactly how you are going to sell your product or service to your market. And I strongly believe you need to devote at least 75 percent of your energy every week to achieving this. For business bricks, the more business owners we can get to sign up to receive these bricks, the better we'll do. So the website needs to really, really work. (By work, I mean it needs to persuade as high a percentage of visitors to sign up as possible). For me, I built my own website because I wanted to get my hands dirty. It's my job to get the site to work. Eventually (maybe later this year), I'll pay a savvy web designer to get the site to wow as well. But you don't have to DIY. It's not a straight yay or nay question: to outsource, or not to outsource? Instead, my position is this: it is your job to make your site (or any aspect of your marketing or sales for that matter) work. Sure, the experts can really help you make your site work (and they can definitely help you make it wow too). But never abdicate all responsibility and simply say "Build me a classy site" or (as Rachael recounts from experience) "See my advert in the Yellow Pages". Finally, remember Gill said she was an EX web designer? Well, now she runs Just Add Content, a service that helps you set- up and run ezines for your customers and prospects. And I should add, lest I forget: Rachael isn't really Big Chief Scowls A Lot (in fact quite the opposite). The reason I used her feedback was because she really knows her onions (or whatever the online equivalent is for that). Remember to sign up: back to top |
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