A business person who wants a good quality website will take the time to educate *himself* about what he needs before he goes to the firm to design the final product. It is not the design firm’s job nor responsibility to give a crash course on the finer points of e-commerce to everyone that walks in the door. Should they have this knowledge for themselves? Sure. But the very suggestion that it’s the *designer’s* job to provide this crap is lucridous.
It’s the businessman’s job to know his business and his market. Period.

Any designer who has actually spent time with a client can tell you that it’s like pulling teeth to convince them that they can’t get the same quality of site themselves by giving their 13-year-old nephew $50 and a copy of Frontpage. It’s like brain surgery to get them to provide their own content in a timely manner, without resorting to tactics like charging them regardless of the publication status of their site. It’s like the SETI Exploration Project to try to communicate to them that there truly is an entire set of marketing and user interface principles that guide the production of a best-in-class website, and to convince the customer to trust us enough to provide it. “Is there any intelligent life out there?” No.

The clients who are willing to take the time to *be* educated about web design are the ones who are already aware that it does take time, money and manpower to put together a good quality site. For everyone else who walks in the door, it’s a waste of time.

Then came the ‘Net. People would request the dumbest sounding things and very often their request never got farther than the techno-geeks laughing about it. The agency provided abysmal service in my view because we sat at our desks and waited for customers to submit requirements.

That’s where I see dozens and dozens of web designers today. If the customer is savvy enough to request a good web functionality … and yes design, standards compliance, etc. are but a part of a good design, then the customer gets something good. But if he or she submits a request for something dumb the designer either complies and produces something dumb in return or turns away the work, laughing.

More than one response uses a thought about ‘customers becoming more educated’. A successful tactic for a web designer is to become that educator. Find a business with a /crap’ web presence and teach them how to get more business and more profit by improving it … you can wait for the client to get smart, or you can be the one who makes him smart … trust me, education can be profitable. Make your own ‘requirements’ and fill the

I can understand from “web designers” the selling of the design or look & feel, but even some potential clients are still concerned with the “design” which is only a one small portion of a website. The web copy (or text) and marketing of the site are way more important.

Anyone can design a website, but can they sell it?

From the beginning post:

- How to attract people to the site in honest, proven ways (SEO that isn’t the usual rip off service at over $900 per month)

An SEO professional should do this.

- Tested navigation flows that convert visitors to customers

A usability expert should provide this testing as the site is being developed. And assuming that the client’s site is providing something new to customers, how can you prove that a particular navigation flow converts visitors to customers? People shop for different things in different ways.

- Proven marketing copy and materials that are compelling

Again, “proven marketing copy” is marketing that works for someone else. Will it work for your client? Maybe, maybe not. Materials like what? Email lists? Coupons? Print marketing? All of these are proven, but are they appropriate for your client? As for copy, a web designer is not a copy editor. Hire a copy editor.

- Tracking tools to test, refine, and expand what works

This is what business analysts are for.

- Partnerships with top ecommerce companies

Top companies like what? National? Local? Who are the top ecommerce companies–you mean like Cisco and Microsoft? I doubt those companies are going to “partner” with every design firm that hangs its shingle, but that doesn’t infer anything about the quality of the design work. What does “partnership” mean in this context?

- Documented methodology for generating sales on the web—backed up with actual case studies and results.

Again, this is documented methodology for OTHER people. Is the client just doing what other people are already doing? Will what other people have done work for the client? Maybe, maybe not.

This whole post seems to say that a web designer should be able to whip up a successful e-commerce site, visitors and all, at the demand of a client. Hey, if we could all do that, we wouldn’t need to work for anyone else, much less the client. The idea is ridiculous. The amount of study and professional expertise required to perform any one of these jobs well is a full-time job. Do you hire a chef to paint your kitchen, because he knows about what a top-quality kitchen should contain? No, you hire a painter. Do you expect that painter to whip up a five-course meal, just because he’s in the kitchen? Of course not. So why would you expect your web designer to be an SEO professional? Why would you expect him to be a usability expert? Or a marketer? Or a business analyst? Those are very different jobs with very different principles and focuses.

Clients always DO seem to think that they should just be able to plunk down their money, talk to one person, get a site, and watch the money roll in. Any one of us who’s been in the design business, either for ourselves or as part of a company, is well aware that it takes a hell of a lot of effort, trial and error, research into one’s audience, and just plain elbow grease and learning from mistakes in order to attract visitors and convert them into customers.

What that entrepreneur needs to learn (and so does the original poster, I think) is that it takes more than one person to provide the quality of product being described. Having a great idea and a check is not enough.

Many people, especially newbies, have the Field of Dreams “if you build it, they will come” model stuck in their heads. It doesn’t happen that way in the real world. Just like with any business, you have to clearly define a product, create a message so the need for or interest in that product is compelling to your identified customers, then pound that message into people’s heads. It is the product/message that gets them to the web site, not the snazzy web site that interests them in the product.

In the overall picture, the cost of creating and maintaining a web site is small compared to getting to the point where the client’s site goes live. If more clients saw development in the context of that big picture, there’d be fewer objections.

Another problem is that he is looking at designers/developers where he should be contracting an e-commerce/marketing consultant to handle the project. Many designer/developers are savy in these skills but they should not be experts, they should be expert designers and developers. Once again I suspect that the budget may be a factor here.

Maybe we can’t be everything to everyone, but if we can come up with a way to actually sell them what they want to buy–why not team up with a partner or two who to fill in your missing skills?–we’ll make more money.

People think websites are just code and graphics because that’s what they see. They don’t know to ask for anything else because they don’t know that it is there. It’s up to us to tell them, to demonstrate why it is worth their investment, and to provide it to them (whether we implement it ourselves or source it to someone who can).

If enough of us offered comprehensive, effective services, maybe clients would better understand why they need to pay for them. In my experience, the value derived from a site built by a less-expensive developer, and the value derived from hiring a “big guns” firm often does not exhibit much of a difference. Maybe the big firm looks slicker, but that doesn’t make it more effective.

If customers perceive that they don’t gain anything more by paying more, why would they?

Simply most designers are not well educated of web usability, usability testing, etc. They don’t even know what the line below clickable link is for, and why links must be underlined.

E-commerce is hard, and complex. If that client requires such a cogent, plain english description of how to make a successful e-commerce site, he’s going to be waiting for a long time. If there was a 10 step system to online success, everyone would be successful. Clients like this need to be told that it’s a long, iterative process and that they should start learning various aspects of online marketing and usability (etc) so that they can constantly improve the site. Sure, there are lots of things that can help, but it’s not going to be clear after one or two marketing pitches.

I agree with the above post which says that anyone who has these skills is probably running their own store. It’s not easy to find someone who can do end-to-end e-commerce and is available - it’s kind of unreasonable to expect that without having a $50,000 budget. Even then, it’s questionable.

Clients need to educate themselves all the time. They can’t expect to just ‘hire out’ the whole thing, write a check, and have a successful e-commerce site. If they try, they’ll probably wind up being a nightmare client to someone.

I don’t really understand the message of this blog. Is it ‘be everything to everyone’? It’s hard enough to be a master of tech, marketing, or design. Are you saying that everyone should strive to be all 3? Bad plan, imo.