Cookie cutter site cost me a client - how do you compete?

I like what dlowe93 had to say:

"3. thanks to my father, i have access to full suite of professional tools, power and otherwise. i could build a house using his equipment.

trust me. you don't want me to build you a house. enough said. "

The cheap work often costs the client a lot in fixing, if it ever does work right.


I also started in the print business. I have worked in many areas of the graphics field over the years. I have seen many examples like the ones mentioned in this thread. And it is true, there's always the "average Joe" out there who will buy his design (whatever the medium) from his brother-in-law in trade for a slab of bacon. I have asked myself many times "what is a professional to do?"

Here is my advice, for what it's worth:


1. You need to determine what your work is worth, and stand firm. You are a professional. Leave the hack work to the amateurs.

2. Don't settle for less, and don't undercut yourself just to get a gig. I have found that if you do, you wind up with clients who do not respect you or your abilities, and it will be a constant up-hill battle. They wil also try to nickel and dime you to death.
Case in point: the last time I bothered with client like that, I cut my fees in half just to get the gig. The client never took me seriously, so he never put any forethought into what he really wanted in the first place; he was always changing his mind, second-guessing my work, griping about the cost, holding back on payment, and was constantly verbally abusive, at the end he was screaming at me in my own home. I had enough. I called my agent and had them cut him loose. Turns out, a friend of mine got the gig; he dumped the client after more than a year of headaches, and 2+ years later, the web site is STILL in the process of being built, only partially up and running, and as the bills continue to pile up, he is probably more abusive than ever. I decided that I wouldn't work for a client like that for ANY price. Clients like that are more trouble than they are worth.

3. Be willing to work hard and give it your best. The client is paying for quality. Instead of cutting your fees and cutting corners to get a gig, go the other route; charge them what you are worth, and give the client everything they pay for and more.

One of two things will happen:
4a. They won't appreciate you, and you would be wasting your time and talent. In the end they would probably bad-mouth you to their peers. Nothing is worse than getting bad-mouthed on a gig that was below your level of quality anyway, and that is likely to happen. If they do come back, they will want you to work for even less than before.
4b. They will appreciate it, in which case they will be a lot more constructive to work with. They will also come back (as well as recommend you to others)

5. Constantly be educating yourself and expanding your capabilities, so that you can stay competitive, and offer more service to your good clients.

It's tough to do, but don't panic; it is worth it. I cut myself loose from the deadbeat clients, the nickel-and-dime mongers and the abusive clients. I never looked back, and I am much better off and much happier for it.

Good luck. I am curious to see what else is said on the subject.

El Mwucko

The best answer that I can come up with for the original question - "How can I compete with this?" - is simply that you DON'T! Good quote from quasidandy - "But if they really believe that they'll get the same quality for the underbid, then they obviously don't understand the nature of this service, and could potentially be a huge pain in the ass client should you get the job..." - pretty much gets to the point; there is, and always will be, that sector of clientele that considers as top priority "economy" over quality. There is nothing that you can do about it, nothing that you can do to correct, counteract, or avoid it, and certainly, nothing that you can do to compete with it. As designers, artists, and professionals, the best that we can do is to have faith in the fact that (somewhere????? please????), there are still people who will appreciate a job well done. Nothing ever got noticed that was sent in a plain envelope, people! If you want to stand out, if you want to exert your presence on the Web, you must insist on nothing less than the best of which you are capable. Like fast food, form letters, and cookie-cutter websites, mediocrity will always be the norm. What we all must do is strive to present to the world that there is a choice to maintaining the status quo - there ARE companies, groups, individuals out there who recognize and are willing to compensate those who are capable of providing something above and beyond the "standard"; your job - FIND THEM! Good luck, everyone, and keep the faith; in the end, taste and good sense will prevail.

awesome thread, i've been thinking about the issue as well recently.

when i started doing web design in 1995, everything was
fairly new, pagemill 1.0 was still in beta. futuresplash (flash's ancestor) was still months away. at that time a co-worker wanted to start a web company with me and a few others. he was an attorney, fascinated with the web, the new frontier.

a few months later, after a lot of ironing out, a couple of free web jobs done for big potential clients, etc, he suddenly called it quits.

he had been working on a good potential website contract , a few thousand bucks worth... it was in the bag he said, because the person in charge of the project at the company was his brother in law. all that was left to do was to close the deal at a family reunion that weekend. instead... he learned at that party that his brother in law had decided to "do the company's website myself, because it's so easy and so cool".

that was the end of him. he thought to himself: "if even my brother in law bypasses me to do his company's website himself in his basement, there's no future in a company that designs websites".

was it the end of web design, right there in the fall of 95?

no.

i've been making a living off designing websites since then, for 7 years now .

i'm sure his brother in law's website sucked so bad, it embarassed the company. especially when they looked at their competition's websites. it must have taken months to complete, full of errors and bugs, with ugly animated .gifs grabbed left and right on the web.

times have been tough recently, even full-fledged web design shops have been feeling the pinch. i know because i've talked to some designers at web shops in town.

my advice: hike your prices another notch.

that's what i did on january first.

rock on!
[Edited by macmarts on 04-10-2002 at 01:34 AM]

I couldn't have said it better myself.

We have been thinking of similar subjects in our company lately as well.

First off- great article! Glad to see Flashkit posted it in their newsletter. Thank you.

I have been dealing with a client recently through reocurring gigs and have noticed that he is starting not to care how fast it takes, as long as it gets done. So I tell him about how long it will take and give him an estimated fee. I am starting to feel a sense that he is not going to want to pay for a higher quality "side gig" I do for him. So I feel somewhat pressured into dropping fees slightly. However, I feel that I should NOT do this, and no one else should. It is just like the posts have been talking about. Go the route of higher quality and charge a little more, what you are worth.

Just my two cents!

William White
E-Pro Graphics

Quote:

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Originally posted by dissector
For most sites I think design will become less important as navigation and interactions become standardised and websites will be differentiated by the services they provide rather than what they look like.

If you want to provide a service on your site, graphics and 'interesting' navigation won't add to the service but take away precious web page real estate.

Chris

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Whoa! Chris... I think that you have slipped waaaay out to left field on this. Some of the biggest benefits of the new tools, like Flash (any version) or CSS for example, are that the standards they provide lend themselves to customization ! The push is not toward a functional, cookie cutter web, but toward a functional, customized web. Graphics and 'interesting' navigation, displaying or offering content useful to their intended audience is the whole point of the evolution of the internet from Gopher to the World Wide Web. That is what the whole Netscape revolution was all about. I see no indications at all that things are going to be standardized in the way you suggest ... it is exactly the opposite. Just thinking about the potenitial of it all, and how entertaining the ride will be makes me tremble with anticipation.

in the future everyone will be a website designer for fifteen minutes.

Quote:

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Originally posted by jasonseale

I see no indications at all that things are going to be standardized in the way you suggest ... it is exactly the opposite. Just thinking about the potenitial of it all, and how entertaining the ride will be makes me tremble with anticipation. [/B]

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I agree that there is not much sign of standardisation as yet but it is definately coming. Think about navigation. No major website now will not put his main navigation down the left hand side, on a strip across the botton or on a strip across the top. Every company places their logo at the top left hand side of their site and the logo is always a link to the homepage. The search box is generally in the top right hand corner. Things like this. When a user goes to the site they know what to do because its the same everywhere. The actual shopping experience is still very unstandardised with different stores offering different ways of doing things (although the shopping cart idea seems to be catching on) but this will change with time.

A designer would be very useful making the company logo for the web page but a cookie cutter could sort out the rest quite easily - from navigation to the actual shopping and payment systems. Look at any predominantly retail site amazon, walmart, IBM, Compaq, etc and they contain very similar navigation.

For most corporations the aim of the site is to allow someone to make their purchase. People will have already decided they want something before they head to a site in general so it makes sense for them to be able to buy it a quickly and easily as possible. For this to happen they need standardised navigation. It is possible that they will include advertisements or educational material on their sites which will need professional design. I don't think this will be the main point of most sites however.

For some sites the actual main content will be advertising, entertainment or educational material. I agree that these will be highly designed and artistically produced. They are designed in the same way as TV programs or computer games are designed. This is the kind of thing that flash will be useful for for some time to come. And I agree that the ride will be very exciting. We will be able to deliver some amazing entertainment over the internet very soon. I just don't think that this will come in the form of interative shop fronts. Just my opinion, of course.

Chris

i would agree with you dissector, if it wasn't for the fact that these companies seem to have a very hard time. They're always in trouble for shady deals, laying off staff, annoying customers, going bust...

Tthis standardised style of website gets negative connotations, and it's companies that stand out that do best. In the UK for instance, the most respected and best performing mobile network is Orange, and their homepage is very customised Flash. http://www.orange.co.uk
OK OK they still have a nav-bar at the top but that's just common sense, titles of things have gone at the top for years, that's the way we read english.

Anyway, I'm just saying that in all areas of business, not just Flash, "standard practice" doesn't seem to be working, people want stuff that's special, so in the future, only sexy brands will survive. ?

I agree with has been said in total on this thread. The same panic went through still photography when I was in school. Here I was, spending over 20k pr year to develop professional skills at one of the best photography schools in the US, and here comes cheap stock photography, available via the web or cd. What would any of us be needed for?

Well the days of the monster studios are almost over, many of the multi-million dollar still/television studios I assisted for in school are breaking under their own weight, but talented photographers, to shoot professional custom work will always be needed. Once clients achieve a certain level of sophistication, the light comes on and they see the difference.

I guess my point is that you have to pay attention to the level of sophistication of your client too. My involvement in web and cd construction came 5 years ago from just enjoying building new ways to show my work. I am not be a professional programmer/developer, so I guess I am one of those bottom feeders when it comes to web work. But I can tell you that just knowing the tools is nothing without having the eye.
Best
upma

Things are always changing.
When the web started to become popular (say 1995 or so). People started designing sites 'professionally'. Any one who took the time to learn how, could do it. (generally computer geeks, programmers, etc..)
Then when the internet gold rush happened (say 1997 or so). There was such a demand for web design/development that any person who even said they knew how to do it could command a large salary or fee from some organization in dire need of a web site immediately. There was a huge group of people who were called web designers/developers. If you worked on the internet you were part of this group, no matter what you did or how well you did it.
Now after the bubble has burst (say 2000 or so). The playing field is evening out. You no longer have one big group of web designers/developers. You are now starting to see the niche markets develop. The low-end and the high-end, and even some in between.

Many others in this thread have made the reference to desktop publishing and it is very true. If you want business cards made, you can:
1. Do it yourself (cheapest)
2. go to your local copy center (cheap)
3. go to your local print shop (moderate)
4. Hire a designer (expensive)
5. Hire an agency (professional)
Maybe not exactly like that, but you get what I mean.

This same thing is happening with web design/develpoment.
A few years ago there was a level playing field and clients could not tell the difference between an amateur and a professional (some clients never will be able to tell the difference). We are now starting to see those lines develop.
Just be good at what you do. Whether it is high-end or budget, there are always clients for both.

Quote:

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Originally posted by smartalig

Just be good at what you do. Whether it is high-end or budget, there are always clients for both.

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You make some good points. I like the way you explained it. There are some really budget concious clients out there and we can service them too. It's just hitting the right price point.

I am so tempted to show this thread to the client who brought about the original post.

BTW. In reference to the last line of your post: Don't oogle over Google...

Cheers

Bear with me as I draw up this analogy.

The web has come along way. We are somewhere in the middle stages of it's growth. In the early days of BBS's, the web, and similar technologies leadership was easy to establish. $100.00 and you could be the guy with the connections in town. Now newcomers, have much less of an opportunity to get established. Why? The leaders kept thinking and strategizing. Microsoft is superior at this. This is why they want the net and more than likely they will have it one day if the law doesn't stop them.

Now you have open source. It's a unifying methodology. A competition the big boys want to smash but they can't.

IBM, Sun, and others I believe, is a sheep in wolf's clothing and is seeking a way to control this organization.

What makes open source powerful? What makes IBM, Sun and Microsoft powerful? Quite simple, money and/or unity draw loyalty from leaders and followers. People quite frankly are sheep. I think folks such as myself and you guys are somewhere outside of the flock and that's why you're developers.

The question in this forum really isn't how do you compete? The question in this forum is how do you organize.

I got some ideas, but I'm not established enough to present myself as a leader. These are some of the things I can throw out to you. Can another movement be organized? One that will benefit the customer needing the cheap site and will not deter you from drawing a good and substantial income? Can a subweb be formed? One that will take on .NET's and is similar to the open source model? My thinking is the open source model is primitive and needs development. I think a new model that pulls in all the seperate entities resulting from Open Source is needed?

Also a marriage needs to form. Content writers, artists and those who develop need to interrelate team-up. Otherwize, we are going to become sheep stuck with one channel to watch. That channel is the guy with all the money and what he wants us to watch-Microsoft..etc. Kind of like the history books are written by the victors.

Bottom line: Does anyone know someone out there who can do a task such as this?

I have read this thread with great interest and although I consider myself a web professional in that I am skilled up on most backend technologies i.e. scripting, ASP, PHP, CFM, MySQL, Flash, etc I do not consider myself a designer. Fortunately I know 1 or 2 designers and will turn to them for front-end inspiration as required.

I understand the problem of the template site generators (especially not being a designer) however I have got round the problem by designing a template site that I can roll out in a day or two.

I haven't had to use it yet but invested the time to build it due to losing one or two quotes to cheaper alternatives and I see it that if I think a job is worth sitting down to put together a proposal, I want to some some money at the end of it.
However, you have to be able to weigh up if the work on the proposal and the work required to build the site is going to pay. As stated before, don't do work that doesn't pay!!

I always generate proposals that give the client a number of site options:
Economy
Productive
Enhanced

I then highlight the business benefits/pitfalls of each option and show examples of competitor sites. This can invariably pushings an 'economy' customer to a 'productive'.

If the company opts for economy version always leave the door open for site upgrades as customers find it easier to palette 3 x $1500 payments over a year than one at $4500.

Happy hunting,

Steve

Quote:

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Originally posted by SteveRedden
I always generate proposals that give the client a number of site options:
Economy
Productive
Enhanced

I then highlight the business benefits/pitfalls of each option and show examples of competitor sites. This can invariably pushings an 'economy' customer to a 'productive'.

---

I like the sound of that. Would you be so kind as to show us an example of what you write about the benefits and pitfalls of each example?

Thanks

I know just what you guys mean. I have client who initially didn't want to go with my web/flash design services because he felt I was too pricey. Ended up using some outfit that charged him $5000 (more than I quoted) for the most horrible site I'd ever seen. The flash was Mickey Mouse and the copy vaguely resembled english. When I saw the site I sat him down to discuss it and he decided to scrap the whole project and go with me because I offered a full package. Usually you would expect the client to provide you with all the copy but they are not always good at it or don't know what good copy is.

Here is my secret. I offer a full package for my websites. I work with a brilliant copy writer who has an eye for design so he writes in sync with my work creating a unified design that really clicks. The client need only provide hard information and we do the rest. They are so relieved that they don't have to do all the detail work that they continue to come back and recommend my work continually. This keeps you on the edge. The service you provide is everything because that is really lacking in our society nowadays.

YP

Those were the days...

Anyway, Scott's right that if you don't adapt to the changing business environment, you'll just get bitter and be left behind.

The business owner is going to put their money where there is the most return.

Web Design Services are becoming more "self-help"..so either fish higher up the chain, or lower your prices for the small business arena who is more sensative to price point.

Hi Geoff,

A good example that springs to mind is a recruitment agency that has approached me recently about quoting for a site. My proposal included the following:-

Economy site - This can be thought of as a web presence static HTML, static graphics or very simple Flash usually company related info, contact information, etc.

Productive site - Online jobs database with filtering on a few fields, email this job to a friend, upload CV and company information as above.

Enhanced site - As with the productive site with filtering on more fields, keyword search, ability to create user account with favourites list, email notification of jobs which fit your job criteria, separate pages on your web site for your larger customers vacancies (makes 'em feel important) and if budget allows more eye candy.

Basically speaking it can be broken down in to:

Economy = Presence
Productive = Must have functionality
Enhanced = All the bells and whistles

There can even be levels within 'enhanced' to fit the budget, just start with the most important functionality then work your way down to the nice to have functionality.

I also find that throwing in some extras adds value to any work that you do.

Hope you find this useful,

Sorry Geoff,

Forgot to mention the benefits and pitfalls of the options I mentioned above.

Economy Site

Benefits - cheaper otion and web presence.

Pitfalls - static content so the hit rate will fade to nothing. The site does nothing to encourage people to return possibly require a prospective candidate to phone for updated job list, too much work. Little chance of return on investment.
Then show a competitors web site with a summary of the functionality incorporated in that site.


Productive Site - usually comes about from showing what the competition are up to after all business is all about winning business especially from your competitors.

Benefits - Dynamic content in the form of most up to date job list, filterable and upload CV (most job hunting is done from a candidates workplace). Viral marketing through recommendation with the email this job to a friend, more likely to provide return on investment.

Pitfalls - more expensive, needs to be updated (a site is only as good as it's content)

Enhanced Site

Benefits - Increased user experience, ability to create accounts for favourites allows a return path for users, email notification will enhance the candidate capture rate for vacancies and sites functionality compares to the big boys such as monster.co.uk (clients like to be compared to bigger companies in their sector). Makes clients feel special with their own page on your site, will create repeat business (you could potentially charge a small set up fee for this as well, who knows). Whole site more likely to provide a return on investment.

Pitfalls - Expensive, needs to be updated, email pruning may be necessary


Anyway, I'm all typed out so I'm off to bed.

Steve, man. Thanks for your contribution, it is appreciated. That is really useable stuff.