» Ten lessons I’ve learned building websites for small businesses

Ten lessons I’ve learned building websites for small businesses

I’ve completed a few projects for small businesses that have gone swimmingly and unfortunately a couple others that crashed and burned before we even got off of the ground. I had a bit of a headachy day recently in dealing with somebody who I bent over backwards for and who now flat out refuses to even return my emails. It can be frustrating at times, but I have the agility and patience of ten Gandhis. Err..yeah.

Anyway, so I’ve been thinking about some of the lessons I’ve learned in building websites for small businesses over the past months and wanted to share a few of these so others starting out are spared some frustration in learning what I had to learn and a few other random observations.

This article is mostly designed to be speaking towards website creators, but prospective clients and other types of freelancers should also gain an understanding by reading this.

1) Clients have different expectations

A garbage, cookie-cutter type of web design company can go into a meeting for a first time (often with a salesman instead of a designer) and show a prospective client a set of pre-made templates, have the boss pick one, and boom they’re pressured into making a bad deal.

Some of them will still actually charge by the page (believe it or not) instead of providing a simple content management system that can be edited by existing staff without touching a line of code. Then this unscrupulous company sets themselves up with a sweet long-term deal to edit the HTML on the page and the company pays out of its ass for years every single time they want to edit the site.

And the small business ends up accepting this because…

1) The initial price is cheaper.

2) The company decision maker can visualize the finished product during the first meeting and gain some comfort out of that.

3) The company doesn’t understand that things like CMSs exist.

When a quality web designer goes to meet for the first time with somebody, they’re not going there to show off some pre-made templates. They’re going there to discover as much as they can about the business and learn as much as possible about that industry so that they can design the best possible site for their situation.

In the words of Andy Rutledge…

If you begin to get into the project and the immediate milestones don’t seem to include a discovery meeting or a detailed discovery process with you and the designer/design team, it’s bad. This is a clear sign that you’re dealing with a clueless agency. It should be patently obvious; if the agency is not concerned about learning everything they can about your company, your specific business objectives, your desires, your target audience, your past, immediate, and ongoing marketing strategy, and everything else relevant to your business, they’re not capable of producing effective media for you. Leave them and find a competent agency.

Design is about solving problems and communicating effectively, it isn’t about shoe-horning random content into random prettiness. So communicating how you operate and explaining that you’re there to actually create something useful for the business using your expertise is important.

2) non-appreciation of delicious simplicity

These are some of the types of comments I’ve heard before when meeting with people and discussing design.

White space is wasted space.

Standard-sized text is bad because you can’t fit as much content on the page.

These pictures that my kid shot with his point-and-shoot camera are great! Plaster the website with them.

No, we don’t have the original. Just scan in this logo from a piece of paper and use that on the site.

I want the prettiest website ever! What do you mean that 9000 graphics on the homepage will make it take a minute for my customers to view?

Other than helping educate them or flat out refusing to work for them, I’m not sure what the solution is here.

One thing I’m trying to do beyond build up a more respectable portfolio is prepare a small booklet filled with progressions of various designs. Show the complex, horrible version first and show the simple, refined version at the end and highlight the benefits. At some point when this is reasonably complete I plan on sharing mine, but its not at the point yet where I’d feel completely comfortable sharing it with the internet.

3) Joey could do that for 200 dollars!

Here’s another great commentary on the pricing issue. and a lot of other interesting comments as well.

Money is important to any small business, so the idea of saving a few thousand or even just a few hundred is appealing to them. When you go somewhere and they tell you that their cousin/neighbor/grandfather’s pet goldfish promised them they could build a site for some obscenely low price, just tell them you’re paying for quality and expertise and walk away if necessary because it isn’t worth the headache.

Go to Craigslist and you’ll see oodles of web designers that are advertising 200 - 400 dollar websites. WTF.

4) Custom software development often isn’t an option

The company might say quality is more important than price, but paying for custom development to enhance their business is usually not possible. What they’ll usually want to do is buy some cheap PHP script they’ve found online instead of using something open-source that might be decent, performing custom development from scratch to fit the needs of the business, or even just paying a little extra for some decent software.

And far too often these crappy PHP scripts are covered with a mess of tables, mix business logic with presentation, filled with complex Javascript that breaks with the slightest modification, doesn’t have pretty URLs, etc.

I’m not sure if there’s a solution here other than having a great deal of knowledge of what good web software exists and being able to explain the benefits of building something custom for a business that saves them money in the long run.

5) Vampires suck

Vampires suck. Get it? LOL!1!

Most of the people I’ve worked for have been kind and generous and have even become close friends. But there are some that like to run you through hoops before hiring you, wanting free advice and even free work, and then disappear without even giving you the dignity any kind of response.

Understanding that this happens is necessary to maintain your sanity and faith at times and also illustrates the importance of getting a signed contract to at least partially protect you.

To any prospective client reading this. If you hire me I will run through a brick wall for you in trying to deliver the best damn product possible. But if you expect to try and take advantage of me and get freebies and waste my time, I’m seriously through with that.

6) Learn to say no

Listen to your intuition. If you think you’re dealing with somebody who is just there to kick the tires and get free advice and even free concepts and drawings, you’re probably right.

If you think that somebody is bull-shitting you, walk away. If you don’t get a contract or cash in hand after talking with them many times over and nobody there can make a decision, it is usually best to just run away.

Getting a fair shake from these people is worse than trying to squeeze water from a stone. The time spent agonizing over the project and earning the limited money you’re trying to make is better used marketing yourself elsewhere or working on personal projects or reading books about your craft.

7) Understand basic economics

I didn’t become a freelancer website guy because I love sales and am a master at convincing people to part with their cash. I did it because I love this and the freedom involved.

I think one important point is to make sure you understand economics, or at least enough to explain a few concepts that will often appear when discussing prices with companies.

For instance, when you’re proposing prices to them, and they tell you that web design company X promised them (what you believe to be) a lesser quality site for less money, you ought to be prepared to illustrate the benefits of capital investment and the importance of the long run. Have some examples mentally prepared before you walk in the door.

You can explain how you can generate more revenue for them in the long run with an easier to use, quality site and you save money by using a quality CMS that your staff can edit themselves.

8)Create extra revenue streams

Everybody freelances for different reasons. Maybe you want to spend time with the wife and kids. Maybe you’re not much of a morning person and don’t mind working late. Maybe you just hate not having creative control of a project.

But whatever the reason, you have the technical skills to build up various businesses yourself. Why not take advantage of this?

It doesn’t matter if you’re an illustrator, a programmer, or designer. Even if you’re not working for somebody, you still have the ability to create things to sell, like drawings or posters, or even just build up new businesses for yourself.

Always have at least one project you’re working on for yourself. I have two in active development and several more ideas and I hope to be able to launch at least one of these sites within the next few weeks.

9) Microsoft’s Paradise

There’s a famous old saying that goes something like “nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.” Same principle applies with the Borg today.

Because Microsoft is the 800-pound gorilla and is what is what everybody has heard of, there’s some kind of weird fetish with Microsoft’s products in business. Some of this may be practical as there is a lot of business software that is specifically designed to work with Windows or Internet Explorer. Some of this may also be because they’re unfamiliar with better and cheaper options available.And not only do many businesses insist on using Microsoft’s products, but oftentimes they’re also running Windows 98 and old versions of Internet Explorer instead of Firefox or some other alternative. It works for them (sorta) so I’m sure they think to themselves that there’s nothing gained in replacing it. So really, I’m just saying that keeping compatibility with older versions of IE (*gags*) is especially important when designing your sites for small businesses.

10) low resolution monitors

Because of a lack of finances, lack of interest in employee productivity, or whatever other reason, it isn’t uncommon to see older 800 x 600 resolution monitors in a non-technical small business setting. At least, thats what I’ve seen in 2 out the last 3 places I’ve gone to meetings at.

When you’re displaying your work in that type of setting, making sure that your site works without horizontal scrolling for that resolution is somewhat necessary. Whether you choose fluid designs or not (and I don’t like them to be honest), there are some beautiful fluid sites out there.

Ideally we’d all have wide monitors and ideally we’d all work for rich clients, but thats not what happens in the beginning.

And based on this point about low resolution monitors and a few other reasons is why you’re seeing this new design with this article, which I think is quite lovely and usable and is explained more fully in my website redesign article which will be posted soon.

Thanks. I look forward to hearing from others who have had similar problems and to share some advice. Some of what I’ve said may be obvious to some, but I had to learn a few of these points the hard way and that sucked.

Posted on August 30th, 2007 by Chris Papadopoulos.

Subscribe to the RSS feed, Trackback, or contact me privately.

Spread the Love These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Trackbacks & Pingbacks

Pingback by Information Rain » Random notes: my redesign, asoboo, some cool sites…. — August 30, 2007 @ 6:49 pm

Comments

inspirationbit (3 comments.) @ Aug 30

great list. I’m pretty much agree with all of the listed lessons, especially #3 and #6.

Thanks for the link love, btw.
Chris Papadopoulos @ Aug 31

Yeah, I think saying no is the hardest thing to do sometimes. Anyway, I’ve been following your Inspiration Bit site for a while now and your writing is often very useful and thought-provoking, so thank you.
inspirationbit (3 comments.) @ Sep 8

Thank you, Chris. It’s really nice of you to say so.

Would you mind installing Subscribe to Comments plugin, so readers could get email notices when a new comment to the post they’ve subscribed to has been posted?

For instance, I read your reply to my comment only today. With Subscribe to Comments plugin I would’ve read it much sooner
Chris Papadopoulos @ Sep 8

Thanks for the tips Vivien. I’ve been meaning to do a few things like that to enhance the site, so consider it done. (soon)