This is the 11th and final installment of my series, Putting a Stop to Abusive Clients. I hope I’ve made it clear that the solution is not to continually complain and blame clients if they treat you badly, but to take responsibility and make the appropriate changes to your business practices.

An important “best practice” for your business is to have a system for selling your services and managing the sales process. When I first started out, I didn’t realize I needed a process, one with a beginning, middle, and end. Not having one meant I typically started off badly, fumbled around in the middle, and didn’t really know when (or if) it really ended. By not knowing how to close (end) the process by asking for the sale, I allowed it to fade into “maybeland,” which is the worst place to be when your income depends on whether you sell or not.

Having a clearly-defined process allows you to build in checks and balances, to define and manage client expectations. Not having one means clients can walk all over you—either unintentional or deliberately—and you wind up feeling abused. So here in a nutshell is the process I followed for many years … once I figured out I needed one, that is.

Preliminary Consultation

When I make contact with a potential client, the first step is to determine how viable of a prospect he or she really is. Rather than immediately scheduling a meeting, I’m going to have a preliminary phone call to determine two things:

1. Are they truly serious about the project?
2. Can they afford to pay for a top-end site like I’m going to provide, or are they just looking for the cheapest option available?

If you’ve read my 27.5 Must-Ask Questions for Consultative Selling, then you already know some questions to ask. I want to learn a little bit about the company and his business goals and objectives. At some point in the conversation, I’m going to ask some variation of this question:

“My prices start at $X,XXX. Were you prepared to spend that?” Unless I get a positive response, I’m not hurrying out to meet with him any time soon.

It’s tempting to skip this crucial first step, or to avoid asking the hard questions and just set up a meeting. But if you want to stop wasting time with prospects who aren’t serious, I highly recommend you don’t.

Preparation

If the initial conversation warrants a meeting, I’m going to do some research in order to be able to ask some intelligent questions. I want to walk in knowing as much as I can about the company, its owners, and their business model. In this day and age, there’s no excuse for ignorant questions like, “What exactly is it you do here?”

Needs Analysis

The heart of consultative selling is asking questions and actually listening to the answer (as opposed to thinking about what you’re going to say next). My 27.5 Must-Ask Questions for Consultative Selling are very direct and to-the-point, and it takes a bit of courage to bring yourself to ask them … especially the first time.

It helps if you don’t get down to business right away. Think of it like this: the questions you ask should go from general to specific. At some point you’re going to ask some quasi-confidential questions, like how much would he like to increase revenue. But a more appropriate question to begin with might be, “How did you get started in this industry?”

Before you jump into the deep end, you need to break the ice. I’ve heard it said that prospects who want to get straight down to business really want to get straight down to “How much is this going to cost me?”

Recommendation

At some point, you’ll need to turn the information-gathering conversation into a diagnosis. Once you feel you sufficiently understand the prospect’s business goal, needs, and objectives, you can begin to offer suggestions and solutions.

The trick is to avoid giving away too much free information. You do that by discussing the WHY, agreeing upon the WHAT, and ignoring the HOW. Forget about the technical stuff you love talking about. To get the prospect’s commitment to do business with you, you only need to establish and agree upon two things you:

1. What he’s trying to accomplish, his “big picture” objective
2. That you’re the one to help him accomplish it

Engagement

There comes a point when it’s time to close the deal and ask for the engagement. There are many ways to do this, but I always liked to ask a simple question: “Are you ready to move forward?” (You do this after you’ve discussed all there is to discus and recapped the entire conversation, asking if there’s anything that needs to be added.)

If your prospect says, “yes,” he’d like to move forward, you need to establish the next step. For a lot years, that meant spending several hours preparing a detailed proposal—that is, until I learned how to stop writing proposals to win business.

If you establish and agree upon items #1 and #2 above, then you ought to be able to obtain the prospect’s verbal agreement, conditional on price, without ever writing a proposal. Once you do, it’s a simple thing to prepare a cost estimate without turning it into a comprehensive project plan. Whether I did that on the spot or went back to the office depended on the size and complexity of the project. Once I had a price, I got back in touch to get his agreement.

Finalize

Now it’s time to finalize the agreement. If the prospect has agreed to the price, you return to his place of business with your final, written document in hand (based on everything discussed during the Needs Analysis and Recommendation steps), then sit down with him and go over every clause in detail. To prevent future problems like waiting to get paid when your client delays, making endless design changes, or avoiding the slippery slope of scope creep, you must stop getting walked on and set some boundaries. That’s exactly what you’re doing here, by managing expectation up-front, in a face-to-face conversation, instead of after the fact.

The Final Word

There are many ways to skin this cat; this just happens to be the way I skin it. You may develop a process that’s similar or completely different. Steal mine, borrow from it, or make up your own. But come up with one that works for you, then refine it until you get it right. It will do wonders for your business and will put an end to abusive clients, misunderstandings, and mismanaged expectations and once and for all.

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This is part 11 of the series Putting a Stop to Abusive Client Behavior:

1. Stop Client Abuse of Web Designers Now!
2. Stop the Abuse! 7 Steps to a Well-Trained Client
3. Stop Wasting Time with Prospects Who Aren’t Serious
4. Stop Giving Away So Much Free Information!
5. Stop Writing Proposals to Win Business
6. Stop Doing the Same Things and Expecting Different Results
7. Stop Waiting to Get Paid! How to Collect Even when Your Client Delays
8. Stop Getting Walked on and Set Some Boundaries Already
9. Stop the Slippery Slope of Scope Creep
10. Stop Making Endless Design Changes

In my series on Putting a Stop to Abusive Clients, I’ve talked a lot from the seller’s perspective. But before I put the final wraps on the series, I’m going to take a slight detour to discuss things from the buyer’s side of the fence. Let’s talk about how to get hired.

Over the past few days, I’ve had to post two different job opportunities; one for a full-time sales rep, and the other for some contract web work. The responses I’ve gotten have been interesting, to say the least.

One of the things I deliberately do is include both an email and my direct phone number as contact points. Which you chose may very well mean the difference between getting hired and getting ignored.

Within minutes of posting the ad for the contract position, I received a phone call. Shortly afterwards, I received a second call from another firm. Both took the time to find out my objectives and what I’m trying to accomplish before talking up their firm.

The rest sent an email with some variation of “check out my website“ and “call me back.”

Who do you suppose I’m considering?

Hiding behind Web 2.0

Recently, my son’s scoutmaster left a voice mail message about an upcoming Eagle ceremony for one of the other boys in his troop, and that his attendance was “mandatory.” The only problem was, all he gave us was the name of the church where the ceremony was being held … no address, no city, nada.

After a Google search turned up just one church with that name several cities over, I asked my son to confirm if this was indeed the right church. So on the day of the ceremony, he made phone calls and left voice mail messages, trying to find out. No one, not the scoutmaster, his patrol leader nor any of the other boys in his troop responded. Finally, out of desperation, he posted the question on Facebook.

Within 15 minutes, three boys replied. I fear this does not bode well for the future of our youth.

Too often, we use Web 2.0 tools to avoid direct interaction. For instance, it’s easy to hide behind marketing to avoid selling. Don’t fall into that trap. When I give you the choice, pick up the phone and call me.

Why would I say that? Two reasons. One: I’m really, really busy. When you call me, you get first-mover advantage, because you’ve taken a task off my all-too-busy plate—the need to follow up on all the emails responses I received. I really don’t have time to “check out your website,” and then “give you a call.” Besides, your website probably contains the same generic fluff as everyone else’s. How about you demonstrate why you’re different and why I ought to hire you? You can do that by picking up the phone and having an actual conversation with me.

Reason Number Two is: it shows me you have initiative as well as people skills. You see, if I really have a need, I’m going to want to talk with you to determine if you are someone who can fill that need. If I’m the one hiding behind web 2.0 tools, asking you to communicate with me via email or Facebook, I may not be a genuine prospect at all. I might be someone who’s merely “interested,” or not far enough along in the buying cycle to waste valuable time with. But if I’ve offered my phone number, than means I’d like to speak with a living, breathing person. That person could be you.

Here’s another tip: When I ask you to follow up if you haven’t heard back from me by such-and-such date, that might be a test. Calling me back shows me you want the gig.

What I didn’t mention is that there was a third firm that called; but he got the short straw—my voice mail—and never called back. If you have a genuine lead, keep pursuing it, even if they aren’t returning your calls. If you saw my desk, you’d know why I didn’t call you back.

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I’m a big fan of the SitePoint forums, and it’s not just because I write for SitePoint. In fact, I signed up a good five years before ever doing any work with SitePoint, so I’m allowed to say it. One of my favorite forums is the Business & Legal Issues one, however they have a forum for just about everything, and even better; they have a great community.

So, whilst looking through my favorite forum, I came across this questions from one of the posters. You can read the whole question here, however let me paraphrase;

Once you’ve sent the proposal what should we do? Should we wait and have the client go elsewhere, should we call back after a day or two, or wait longer. Should we not send it via email and personally hand it explaining everything to them so they are sure to know what they are getting, reducing the chance of them going elsewhere because they are not properly educated.

I’m glad you asked! There are three options available to you, and depending on the size of the deal, and what your take of the prospect is, you may want to choose the most appropriate, however here are my three suggestions, in order of importance.

Option 1: Meet and hand over the proposal in person.

This is a great way to ensure that the prospect has a good grasp of what you are offering. The important part here is try and get the actual decision maker in the room – remember, the person you may be sending your proposal to may in fact not be the person who decides, so ensure your proposal covers all the points and walk it through with the decision maker.

At the end of the conversation, don’t be afraid to ask for the business; something along the lines of ‘Do you have any further questions, or shall we discuss when we can get started?’ works best for me.

This option obviously isn’t the solution if the client is remote, or indeed the work is only small in value.

Option 2: Send proposal over by email and call immediately.

This is a great way to make sure that your prospect understands that you are keen to work with him/her. It also means you can ask them for a suitable time in the next 24 hours, so you can chat again on the phone (if they don’t have the time right then) to walk through your offering over the phone. This helps answer any questions and avoid any roadblocks, as does the above.

Option 3: Send proposal and call back a day or two later.

This should be the absolute last straw approach. If you don’t get through straight away, send them an email asking if they had any questions, and let them know you’ll try calling again in another two days. Keep this up for a handful of calls, or an answer either positive or negative. It reflects you are keen, and ensures you come across helpful as well.

Now you’ll note I haven’t offered the sales losers approach. I used to do this regularly years ago, and it’s definitely not the way to handle a proposal follow up; this one is don’t follow up. If you don’t follow up, you are demonstrating you don’t are about the work.

In this instance, you’d be just as better off writing a figure on the back of your business card and leaving it with the prospect at your initial meeting; it doesn’t say anything more about your professionalism or keenness to work with that prospect. Don’t be that sales loser – pick one of the first three options!

Good luck with that next sale!

Last week, I talked about the slippery slope of scope creep, which can begin with something as insidious the client making last-minute changes to your already approved design.

When a client has second thoughts about your design that far down the production road, chances are they were never fully-satisfied in the first place. Or perhaps some mysterious third party has suggested a different layout, color scheme, or functionality not originally discussed.

The trick to limiting the amount of changes is to nail the initial design as closely as possible to the client’s vision. That means you’ll need to ask questions. Lots of questions.

The first question I always asked was, “Do you have a particular design or layout in mind?” If a client had a pre-conceived notion of how they wanted the site to look, I wanted to know beforehand. Whether they did or not, I asked for examples of other sites they like and why they liked them. If they had an existing site, I asked what they liked and disliked about it.

The next thing I asked was about their competitors’ sites—which they liked, which they didn’t, and why.

One technique that helped was to ask the client to list a number of adjectives describing the look and feel they wanted for the new site, such as “corporate,” “conservative,” “artsy,” or “elegant.” Then I listed about 100 different words and asked the client to circle the ones that best described their company.

I hear a lot of designers complain about “not being a mind-reader” when they don’t come up with what the client had in mind. But you don’t have to be clairvoyant; just ask the right questions.

Only once did I create a design that was completely different from what the client wanted. She expected “artsy,” and I gave her “corporate.” But it was my fault; I wasn’t thorough enough with my design brief questions.

Now comes the time to present your mockup to the client. Assuming you nailed the design, any changes should be minor. It’s fine if the client wants his logo “3 pixels to the left,” but how many times will you allow that?

If you read my 27.5 Must-Ask Question for Consultative Selling, then you know it’s important that you identify all the decision-makers and ask the right questions. Well, now you’re going to repeat that process to “close the deal” on the design of the site. Just like you gained agreement about doing business together, now’s the time to go back and forth until you gain agreement on the design.

And you thought the “selling” portion of this project was over.

Regardless of whether you allow two or twenty design changes, make sure your client knows your limit long before this stage of the process. Regardless of what number you choose, setting a limit doesn’t mean you have to strictly enforce it. We all want our client to be pleased; setting limits lets you rein in those who never seem to be.

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This is part 10 of the series Putting a Stop to Abusive Client Behavior:

1. Stop Client Abuse of Web Designers Now!
2. Stop the Abuse! 7 Steps to a Well-Trained Client
3. Stop Wasting Time with Prospects Who Aren’t Serious
4. Stop Giving Away So Much Free Information!
5. Stop Writing Proposals to Win Business
6. Stop Doing the Same Things and Expecting Different Results
7. Stop Waiting to Get Paid! How to Collect Even when Your Client Delays
8. Stop Getting Walked on and Set Some Boundaries Already
9. Stop the Slippery Slope of Scope Creep
10. Stop Making Endless Design Changes
11. Stopping Abusive Clients: The Complete Process

Last week I suggested you treat your clients like children. Studies have shown that children are happier and feel more secure when they know what their boundaries are and what’s expected of them. Your clients will too.

scope creep /skōp krēp/ noun

1. changes in a project’s scope after the work has started
2. a creep of a client who keeps asking for free changes

Scope creep often starts out as small and seemingly insignificant changes or additions to an already approved design or feature. Sometimes, the changes become so numerous that the project becomes a former shadow of what it was originally intended to be. If you’ve never read Matthew Inman’s comic, How A Web Design Goes Straight To Hell, take a few moments to have a good laugh (or cry), and we’ll continue.

In a perfect world, clients would approve your first design without asking their mother’s opinion of it, never request a single revision during the course of the development, and send you an expensive gift basket when the project’s finished. They would never ask you to keep adjusting the size of the header graphic until it became so gargantuan and ugly that you considered putting your worse competitor’s name in the footer instead of your own. Nor would they request you make all their product shots into animated gifs, or that you “fill up all the empty spaces” on the site (whatever that means).

If only we’d all listened to Wikipedia, perhaps we wouldn’t be in this mess:

This phenomenon can occur when the scope of a project is not properly defined, documented, or controlled.

That’s what I’ve been trying to convey throughout this entire Putting a Stop to Abusive Clients series, except I’ve added one more step, so the process look like this: define, document, discuss, and control. Here are some things to define.

What’s Included; What’s Not

Make sure your client knows exactly what is and isn’t included. Are you providing SEO services? If not, be sure the client understands that you are not guaranteeing he rank well in the search engines. Otherwise be prepared to have that awkward “I’m not on the first page of Google” conversation a week after you’ve launched the site.

What about copy writing, site updating, technical support, and training? How about copyrights—that is, who owns the website once it’s done? Remember, what seems like an unreasonable expectation to you and me may seem perfectly reasonable to the client. Just as children don’t fully understand the world around them, neither does your client fully understand the world of web design and development. Help them do so, by setting clearly-defined boundaries and expectations.

Eleventh-Hour Design or Programming Changes

An all-too-common scenario is a client who approves your mock-up, then wants changes after you’ve built the site.

If you fail to manage this expectation up-front, you become the “bad guy” when your client demands to know why you won’t comply with his request. You’ll find yourself explaining how the process of converting a Photoshop design mockup into a working “HTML” site means starting from scratch—none of which will he understand or even care (nor should he have to). All he’ll understand is that you’re being unreasonable.

The simple, two-part solution is to first break the project down into phases and require a sign-off for each, like so:

1. Design Phase
2. HTML Coding Phase
3. Programming Phase

Then, discuss the Photoshop-to-HTML conversion problem before the project begins, not when he wants after-the-fact changes:

Mr. Soon-to-be-Client, let me explain how the development process works. It’s broken down into three phases: a Design phase, a Coding phase, and a Programming phase.

Due to the nature of web development, it becomes very difficult to make changes to a previous phase once the project’s moved into the next one. For example, once you’ve approved the design I’ll create, it’s very difficult to make changes once I’ve began the coding portion. It’s almost like starting the project from scratch. Does that make sense?

So here’s how it works. I create an initial design. We’ll go through three round of revisions. That should be more than enough to nail down what you want. Once you approve that design, I can’t go back and change it, unless you’re willing to pay for the extra time involved. The same applies to each phase.

This gives you the opportunity be the hero instead of the bad guy. Let’s say the client does ask for some after-the-fact changes, and agrees to pay for them. You get to decide whether or not you’ll charge him. When the project’s over and you’ve been paid in full, you decide that the changes you made were insignificant, so you send him a refund check in the mail. Remember that expensive gift basket you wanted? Well, guess what you’re getting next Christmas.

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This is part 9 of the series Putting a Stop to Abusive Client Behavior:

1. Stop Client Abuse of Web Designers Now!
2. Stop the Abuse! 7 Steps to a Well-Trained Client
3. Stop Wasting Time with Prospects Who Aren’t Serious
4. Stop Giving Away So Much Free Information!
5. Stop Writing Proposals to Win Business
6. Stop Doing the Same Things and Expecting Different Results
7. Stop Waiting to Get Paid! How to Collect Even when Your Client Delays
8. Stop Getting Walked on and Set Some Boundaries Already
9. Stop the Slippery Slope of Scope Creep
10. Stop Making Endless Design Changes
11. Stopping Abusive Clients: The Complete Process

Do you ever feel like no matter how many hours you work, there’s always more to do? It’s very true for many of us. I’ve worked 70 or 80 hour weeks before, and felt like I still have more to do, the same feeling I get when I work only 40 hours.

Part of this is because we always have low importance items on our ‘to do’ lists. Another part is that we, and particularly entrepreneurial types who freelance or own our own businesses, like to be kept busy all the time.

The problem with that, is when you are working 60 hours every week, much of your time may not be as productive as it could be – you may be tired, there’s too many tasks in the air, or you are distracted with other pressures. If you take a look at any one of those sixty hours, you probably weren’t as productive as you would have been if you had only worked 40 hours that week.

I’m currently enjoying the fourth week of four day weeks in a row. In Australia, we’ve just had three public holidays over three weeks, and the other week I took a day off. Did the world stop spinning because I was at the office less? No. Did the amount of work I had to do in less time increase? Yes.

In fact, I’d go to the point of saying that the 35 or so hours I did in the other days were more valuable, because I had to make more decisions about what to do, and what not to do. I still managed to complete all the very important parts of my role, and crossed off all the less important yet still needed tasks too. Sure, I didn’t get around to all of the low priority items; however I can delegate a number of these to others, or just not do them.

I remember reading about Parkinson’s Law a few years ago. In 1955, Cyril Parkinson started an essay he wrote for The Economist which begins ‘Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.’ Wow, he must have known the Internet and other technological interruptions were on their way!

Now, I’m not suggesting you should immediately reduce your hours to four days per week, however, I am suggesting you find ways to reduce your hours. It could be that you work a number of hours more than you probably need to. Start by reducing your week by a few hours, and see what the effect is. Those of you who freelance will probably find this actually easier than those of us with employees or bosses to consider.

If you’re still not convinced, consider 37signals. They went from being a small web team working on client projects, to being a very profitable and well known web software company through working part time on their projects. The founders often speak of working part time to do meaningful work. Embrace Constraints, an article from their book, Getting Real, covers this well.

So here’s my challenge to you for the next week. Set yourself three hours to do that task that usually took you four. At the end of three hours, stop and assess. Is the result from your three hours of efforts still good enough? Maybe instead of four hours, it’s that important one hour task that you can resolve to complete in 40 minutes, or perhaps squeeze an entire day down to just six hours. The point is, if we reduce the available hours we have for a task, amazingly the majority of the time it will still get done.

Imagine doing that to a number of tasks each week – you get more work done in less time, meaning more profits for less effort. You’ll be more focused, you’ll certainly be better at determining the importance of tasks and you’ll have more time to enjoy life away from your desk. Sound good? Take the challenge, and let me know how it went.

Your timer starts now – good luck!

Coinstack Image via Shutterstock

With over 93% of people using search engines as their first point of research, it goes without saying that search engine optimization is important for any web property. Here are some other interesting SEO-related statistics:

• Over 70% of clicks go to organic results.
• 75% of people don’t click past the first page.
• The top 3 results get up to 60% of organic clicks.

But for a lot of people, there just isn’t enough time to go out and learn the ins and outs of SEO. Or there might not be available budget for a SEO consultant either.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t do anything about SEO.

This post will walk you through 6 must have SEO changes you need to make to your site. They aren’t too difficult to implement and will help increase your website’s search visibility.

1. Domain Canonicalization

Sounds complicated, huh? Don’t worry – it’s not.

Try going into your URL bar and entering the non-www and www version of your site. If they both show up as http://yoursite.com and http://www.yoursite.com, you have canonicalization issues. All you need to do here is 301 redirect the one that has less links to the one that has more links. You can use Open Site Explorer to determine which page has less links.

2. Title

The title is one of the most important on-page SEO factors so make sure you get this right. Generally, you want all of your titles to have your target keywords in the front and have the site name in the back. For example, look at how Zappos structures their title:

Shoes, Clothing, and More | Zappos.com

Follow this structure and you can’t go wrong.

3. Breadcrumbs and Related Links

Internal links help structure the strength of inner pages so take advantage of them. Think of your site as an ant hill with water pouring down the tunnels. Ideally, the water would flow through all the tunnels to fill them all up. Breadcrumbs are a great way of creating internal links, here’s an example of what they look like:

In addition, linking to related articles or related products (if you’re an e-commerce store) goes a long way in telling the search engines that these inner pages have some importance as well.

4. Robots control

Many webmasters like to use the robots.txt to block portions of their websites. As an alternative, try using the ‘noindex, follow’ tag on pages because this will allow the link juice to flow freely throughout your site. Using the robots.txt basically creates a black hole for link juice – it stops the flow. For more information on how to use meta robots, check this post out on SEOmoz.

5. Alt tags

As of today, search engines still have difficulty discerning what an image is about. Make sure you use alt tags when you add images so search engines can crawl the text. By doing this, each image you upload with yield some SEO benefit. Remember: No alt tag means you won’t get credit for the picture.

Here’s an example:

“img src=”http://www.evergreensearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/zappos-breadcrumbs.jpeg” alt=”zappos breadcrumbs” title=”zappos breadcrumbs” width=”326″ height=”186″ class=”aligncenter size-full wp-image-674″

6. User Generated Content

Whether you own a blog or an e-commerce store, user generated content is a great way to boost long tail search traffic to your site. The additional benefits include adding more engagement and building trust on your site. Over 62% of people read online reviews which means if you have an e-commerce site, you’d be shooting yourself in the foot to not include user generated reviews. These will help increase conversion rates plus help you generate content on your product pages to help increase organic traffic.

If you have a blog, you can get great user engagement from your great content. The result: lively discussions in your blog comments section and added content at no cost. UGC is a scalable form of SEO that most webmasters should not miss out on.

Conclusion

SEO doesn’t have to be hard. While the industry is rapidly changing every year, there are still a few timeless SEO laws that still exist. Pay attention to those laws and make the simple changes outlined in this post to give your organic traffic a bump. Once you work out all the kinks on your site and are doing the most important things efficiently, you can dive into more heavy lifting SEO tasks. Until then, just get the basics right.

What are some must have SEO basics that I missed?

Magnifying glass image via Shutterstock

As the father of two boys, I’m continually amazed and confounded by the difference in their personalities. My oldest tends to go with the flow, but my youngest always feels the need to push the boundaries. One day, he’ll grow up and become your client.

How are you going to handle him, when he does? As parent, it’s my job to define the boundaries and let them play within them. Your job, as a web consultant, is not so different.

Am I suggesting you treat your clients like children? To a certain degree, yes. Children do not have a complete understanding of the world around them. When left to their own devices, they tend to make foolish choices. Likewise, when a client steps into the world of web design and development, they have an incomplete picture of how that world works and may have unrealistic expectations. Bill Cosby once said that with 200 active two-year-olds, he could conquer the world. A single over-active client can overrun yours. It’s time to set some boundaries.

Don’t Assume Your Client will Read the Contract

Boundaries and expectations live or die by a written contact. Don’t assume the client will read yours.

Signing the contract without reading it? Seriously! You are legally obligating yourself to my terms here. Make sure you understand them. It’s great that you trust me, but we’re still going to have an awkward conversation when you do something not allowed by the agreement.

- Michelle Gower, author of How to Fire a Client

You can avoid “that awkward conversation” by sitting down with the prospect, face-to-face if possible, and discussing each point of the contract before he signs.

It’s not as nerve-racking as it sounds. Let’s take the issue of getting paid even though your client delays sending you content. You accomplish that by setting up a payment schedule, rather than attaching payments to production milestones. Here’s how to have that conversation with your client.

First, discuss the project timetable and let the client see that the projected completion time is 60 days (or whatever time frame you’ve agreed upon). From here, it’s easy to transition into the reasons why a project can get behind schedule:

Mr. Prospect, one of the problems I often encounter is busy clients who end up delaying completion of their site because they take too long to send me written copy and images. It’s usually not intentional, but I end up waiting weeks or even months to get paid when that happens.

To prevent it, my contract stipulates that final payment is due in 60 days. That means, if you don’t send me the content I need by then, and your site’s not finished because of it, you’re still agreeing to pay me. Did I explain that clearly?

Each and every aspect of a site design has the potential to be miscommunicated, misunderstood, or assumed by your client. Here’s an example of a client who assumed that something I left undiscussed was included: setting up all the domain email accounts on his office computers. He didn’t know how and, after all, I registered the domain for him. (What a pain; I hate doing that stuff, especially when I get stuck doing it for free.)

But where some see problems, others see opportunity. From that point forward, I asked each client whether or not they could handle this internally. For those who needed help, I sub-contracted to my cousin’s networking business (marking up his fee slightly). After that, he got to keep them as a client, if they needed more work.

And, as an aside, when I started asking the same question about copy writing, I found that clients would pay extra to have me provide this service.

Consider some of the “abusive” behavior we’ve discussed throughout this series: scope creep, endless design revisions or technical support, clients deliberately stalling to delay payment, client site modifications after-the-fact. What parameters can you set to minimize or prevent these, while still providing the client with enough latitude to accomplish what he wants? Draft a policy for each and write down what you will say to the client. Sitting down and explaining each of these points has never been anything but a positive experience. I’ve found that the other person appreciates this and understands completely. Besides, you just saved him or her 45 minutes of reading and translating your legalese gobbledygook.

In my next (and possibly final) installment of this series, I’ll discuss some of these behaviors and give you suggestions on how to address each one.

Image credit

This is part 8 of the series Putting a Stop to Abusive Client Behavior:

1. Stop Client Abuse of Web Designers Now!
2. Stop the Abuse! 7 Steps to a Well-Trained Client
3. Stop Wasting Time with Prospects Who Aren’t Serious
4. Stop Giving Away So Much Free Information!
5. Stop Writing Proposals to Win Business
6. Stop Doing the Same Things and Expecting Different Results
7. Stop Waiting to Get Paid! How to Collect Even when Your Client Delays
8. Stop Getting Walked on and Set Some Boundaries Already
9. Stop the Slippery Slope of Scope Creep
10. Stop Making Endless Design Changes
11. Stopping Abusive Clients: The Complete Process

In January of this year, I traveled to our New York sales office to conduct a week-long sales training session. Mid-week, one of the newly-hired reps made a follow-up call to a client she’d sold adverting to the week before, reminding him to send the ad content.

Not only did her client eagerly email his logo and photos, he also sent her a text message, letting her know he’d done so, because he knew she was out of the office all week.

Is that a common scenario for you, clients enthusiastically sending content in a timely manner? I didn’t think so. Her off-handed comment after she’d read his text message was: “I train my clients.”

The advantage to newspaper or Yellow Page adverting is that there’s a deadline. Clients know if they delay, they risking missing the publication date. With the Internet, no such urgency exists. But you can create a sense of urgency by implementing Action Step #5.

Action Step #5: Stop Attaching Payments to Production Milestones

What this Solves:

Waiting to get paid because of client delays

Our industry has fallen into the trap of attaching payment schedules to production milestones. I once waited seven months to get paid for a site that was 95 percent complete, sans content—all because I didn’t require a deposit and foolishly stipulated “payment upon completion.” It took some time to figure out a better way, but once I gained some experience, I knew I could produce a custom site within 60 days, tops. So here’s what I did.

First, whatever document my client signed (i.e., contact, proposal) included a project time table:

• Apr 1: Client provides all content
• Apr 10: Developer presents site mockup for client review
• Apr 10-30: Client reviews design, requests changes; developer submits revised mockups
• May 1: Client approves final design
• May 15: Designer presents working site for client review
• May 15-30: Client reviews site, requests changes; developer makes revisions
• Jun 1: Client approves site

Next, I structured by payment schedule like so: one third up-front, one third in 30 days, and final payment in 60 days. If all goes well, you’ll notice that the client will be approving the final design approximately the same time payment #2 is due; but, again, it’s not a milestone. Dragging his feet on approving the mockup doesn’t mean he gets to drag his feet sending me a check.

Perhaps the client still hasn’t sent the content; but I used stock photography to create a design, so I’m still good. I’ll use the 30-day payment benchmark to remind him I’ll need content very soon.

At the 60-day final payment benchmark, if I’m the one who’s behind schedule, I can choose not to invoice him just yet. But if the site’s incomplete due to his inaction, he’s getting a bill.

Most clients delay because they’re busy, but some delay intentionally. One developer had a client who purposely delayed final payment by taking weeks to review the site. Another had a client who refused to pay the full amount upon completion to insure the developer would provide technical support. If you’ve not been paid a dime at this point, you’re in a poor position to demand payment, because you risk losing it all. If, however, you used my three-step payment method, you already have two-thirds of your money. If things go south at this point, you have a lot less to lose.

Remember my story of how I waited months to be paid because one of my first clients took so long to send content? Years later, one of my very best clients asked me why several pages of their site were incomplete. I told her because her predecessor never sent content. She seemed surprised and assured me she’d send something right away. I’m still waiting … but not for my money.

This is part 7 of the series Putting a Stop to Abusive Client Behavior:

1. Stop Client Abuse of Web Designers Now!
2. Stop the Abuse! 7 Steps to a Well-Trained Client
3. Stop Wasting Time with Prospects Who Aren’t Serious
4. Stop Giving Away So Much Free Information!
5. Stop Writing Proposals to Win Business
6. Stop Doing the Same Things and Expecting Different Results
7. Stop Waiting to Get Paid! How to Collect Even when Your Client Delays
8. Stop Getting Walked on and Set Some Boundaries Already
9. Stop the Slippery Slope of Scope Creep
10. Stop Making Endless Design Changes
11. Stopping Abusive Clients: The Complete Process

While escaping your ‘evil’ boss and starting your own web design business may sound like a dream, in reality it can be a lot of hard work!

Here Paul Boag, world renowned web designer, speaker, pod-caster and author, introduces his new 12-part video course, in which he  shares his expert advice, top hints and tips, gained through over 10 years in the web development and design business.

Enjoy … and if you’re interested to see more you can:

• Order the full 12-Part Video Course
  OR
• Grab the full Video Course, PLUS a 390-page ebook, Collection of digital templates, and more (in the Kick Start Your Web Dev Business Bundle)

Build a Successful Web Design Business, part 1: Selling Your Services from SitePoint on Vimeo.

Call it what you want, but there isn’t a webmaster out there who hasn’t “borrowed” an image at least once. Maybe you just didn’t have the time to scour through Flickr for a free-use photo, or perhaps there was one particular image you just had to have. Given the virtually infinite number of photos on the web and small presence of most sites, who would ever expect to get caught?

Last June, Google quietly introduced a new feature called Search by Image. This search tool provides a powerful reverse image search service similar to TinEye, but with more robust results. Search by Image finds copies of images at the usual Google speed. Simply upload a photo or paste a URL and Search by Image will pull up all the sites using the photo, including modified and resized versions. Google touts its new search feature as a “jumping off point to explore, examine and discover.”

Sounds great, right? Well, what if a photographer wants to “explore, examine and discover” unauthorized use of his photos, i.e. the adorable cat photo you just couldn’t do without? The Wild West Web isn’t quite so wild any more. The chances of being held accountable for misusing photos are higher than ever. Webmasters and bloggers should take  a careful look at how they use intellectual property and consider the potential liabilities for misuse.

What Counts as Unauthorized Use?

To keep things simple, if you use something without permission, you’re committing copyright infringement. This of course excludes images in the public domain or under a Creative Commons license. A photo does not have to say “Copyright 2012″ for it to be subject to copyright. Intellectual property is protected by copyright law as soon as it’s created, regardless of whether or not the owner registers a copyright or displays a copyright notice.

Searching for Creative Commons photos on Flickr is the easiest way to find high-quality photos of everything and anything for your site. Just remember that you must obey the terms of the license, which require you to credit the author and may exclude commercial use. Creative Commons licenses terminate for the user upon any breach of terms. Websites that use Creative Commons content but don’t credit the author are committing copyright infringement– it’s as if the CC license never existed at all.

What Do I Have to Lose?

Many website owners, especially bloggers, don’t feel liable for copyright infringement because they think the use is “not-for-profit” and/or unintentional Such was the case a few weeks ago when I contacted a blog network about its unauthorized use of a portrait of me. I sent a friendly email requesting a steep but fair license fee from the blog network, which likely earns millions a year in advertising revenue. The legal representative I spoke with, who should have been well-versed in copyright law, had the audacity to tell me I was owed nothing because her company’s use was “not-for-profit,” but also because of the exposure my work received!

In the end, we agreed on a modest settlement, but this is something that never should have happened. A few minutes of searching for a Creative Commons photo and correct use of the license could have saved the company several hundred dollars. Under US copyright law, a registered copyright holder is entitled to a minimum of $750- $30,000 per infringement. Image owners with unregistered copyrights (the vast majority of web images), may only collect actual damages or profits (see 17 USC § 504)

Note that the burden of proof for actual damages is relative low. An image owner could use a standard licensing fee as damages (which could run several hundred dollars), but only has to prove  gross revenue (not revenue directly from the image) to receive damages. An image owner can subpoena you for earnings records. Seeing as even basic legal services cost $100 or more per hour, it’s probably in your interest to settle copyright infringement claims privately, even if you end up paying a few hundred dollars for a $4 stock photo with no registered copyright.

The point is, you should spend your time blogging and building your business, not dealing with litigious photographers. The statute of limitations for copyright infringement is normally three years after the event in question, but since Internet publication is an ongoing event (new copies are created whenever someone loads a page),  the statute of limitations doesn’t expire until three years after an infringing work is taken down from the Internet. As a website owner, this generally means you’re liable for any image you ever published without permission. And with Google Search by Image, it’s easier than ever for image owners to find you. What wasn’t a big deal in 2005 should be a major concern for webmasters in 2012.

Take Action Now to Avoid Liability

Your first step should be to take down any copyrighted photos on your site. Luckily, there are more Creative Commons and public domain photos available than ever before. You can find great photos for your digital works without breaking copyright law. It might take a few more minutes, but you want to spend your days maintaining a great website, not fighting copyright infringement claims, right?

Just because you’re careful about copyright law doesn’t mean everyone else you work with is. Consider what else you can do to cast an umbrella of protection. Make sure your contributors understand what’s at stake. If you outsource web design, make sure your designer has obtained proper authorization for any included pictures. I’m dealing with a situation right now where a web designer included one of my photos without permission in a design. I don’t think the client will be amused.

Keep in mind you can always ask image owners for permission. I enjoy seeing blogs and other sites use my photos, which is why I license many of my images under Creative Commons. Webmasters have both an ethical and legal obligation to ask for permission when necessary and follow Creative Commons license terms.
So, why not take a few minutes to take care of any “borrowed” photos? Hopefully this sort of content doesn’t make up a large portion of your website. There’s a new sheriff in town, and his name is Google Search by Image.

The news is all over the web; that social network approaching their IPO, have spent a little coin buying a smaller social mobile app. If you haven’t heard, Facebook have just spent one billion dollars buying Instagram.

That’s a tidy sum of money indeed.

Even tidier when you find out there are only a dozen employees, and they haven’t made a dollar in the traditional product or service sense – it’s free to use and there isn’t even any advertising.

I wrote about Instagram in Issue 592 of the SitePoint Tribune just over a year ago. The article highlighted that they had managed one million users and $20 million of funding in just their second month. Instead of writing that piece, I should have actually been flying to San Francisco and asking for a job!

So, what’s the trick to creating an application and selling it fifteen months later to the world’s largest social network for a cool billion? Well there may be no easy checklist, however, here are a few pointers.

Build something simple. Instagram, Twitter, heck, even Facebook when it started, were simple in their offerings. If users can’t explain what it is in a minute to a friend, they’re not going to get it themselves.

Borrow from others. Sure, Instagram was fairly original in their approach, but it wasn’t like there wasn’t other photo sharing sites before 2010. They coupled photo sharing with social (just like Flickr) and then they added mobile to the mix.

Get great press early. Within weeks of their launch, Instagram had enjoyed really good reviews from influential media who raved about their product. They pitched their product to the right writers and influencers within days of launching it.

Surround yourself with smart people. Instagram networked with folks like Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey early, meaning they were on the radar of those who watch people like Dorsey. Don’t underestimate the power of ‘who you know’.

Build something attractive to other businesses. What makes Instagram worth one billion dollars is what Facebook was prepared to pay for it. They saw the value in Instagram as a complementary product, something that will work in with their own offerings well (Facebook is a larger photo sharing site than the Yahoo-owned Flickr by many a mile).

Be fun. Instagram wasn’t just about posting badly taken mobile photos – they had filters, making these medium resolution images works of art with a push of a button, making it fun for their users.

Get serious funding. Instagram showed they were serious by getting early funding which was impressive from the start. Sure, they could have got away with a two million dollar investment, but having a 20 million dollar funding injection shows they were serious form the very start.

Keep it simple. Even now, over a year later, the product is still fairly simple. Sure, they added hashtags and more filters, but the interface and the product pitch remained the same in the simplicity of it.

Avoid cannibalizing. They could have started adding revenue models within a few months, but holding off taking the quick bucks has been an important part of the strategy. Look at Twitter, who didn’t make a cent for their first three years. If they had added advertising or paid accounts at the start, they would have cannibalized their user base, and would have turned early adopters away in droves.

Keep spending in check. Sure, they had nice offices, but they didn’t spend those initial funds on private jets or hiring one hundred engineers. They kept it small and kept their costs fairly low in comparison to others – this makes their balance sheet look very attractive to would-be purchasers.

I look forward to hearing how you’ve raised your own billion dollars by using these tips – remember us little people if you do. Good luck! Oh, and Kevin and Mike (Instagram founders), my original article must have helped that sale price, surely?

I had a client meeting today, though it was a different than usual. I had the distinct privilege to be working with a committee on a web design project. Yes, some of what they say about design by committee is true, but by sitting in on their meeting, I was able to gain some unique insight about how clients approach a design project. It really brought into question how we go about our interactions with clients, and how we the designers are doing it wrong, or at least could be doing it better.

A little background:

I work for a university as a web designer. If you’re not familiar with how the education system work, it’s like any government department, where committees are, more often than not, the way decisions are made, and work gets delegated.

I’m building a website that is going to incorporate a few objects from a dozen or so organizations on campus, and so a dozen people are involved in the process. I meet a person in charge of the project, get the information I need, and got to work. I designed a mockup quickly, there really aren’t a lot of pages, and the website should be somewhat persuasive. I decided to essentially make it a one page site with four sections, each linking to their respective pages. One long main page with a fixed bottom bar for in-page navigation and 4-5 other pages. Pretty simple I thought.

I meet with the same person again and they like the design. Then the committee had their meeting and the response was that they generally liked the design but there was some “confusion.” I didn’t really know what that could be, because the design was so simple, but I agreed to come meet with them and go over some things…

What I Found

The confusion was generally caused by people’s inability to understand the Photoshop mockup. But it went even deeper than that.

If a person has never seen a mockup before, you really shouldn’t expect them to understand all of the assumptions you the designer are making (and there are many). Such as:

• What content are links and where they go
• How the page looks in a wide browser (no there won’t be white space on either side of the design)
• How the content will look when scrolling and in smaller viewports
• Any type of animations or hover states
• Internal vs external vs in-page links

Another problem, which still amazes me in 2012, but many people, especially over the age of 40 have only a very basic understanding of the internet and how to use it. They manage, but in the most clumsy, awkward way imaginable. Most people can’t tell you what browser they use, they press in the “internet button.”

But the biggest one is: What about the design can change and how easy is it to do. Clients, rightly so, have no concept of how a design is made and how hard it is to change something, or how long it will take. So they do one of two things.

Instead of saying what they want changed they say they want you to change the content of an area. Not because it should be changed but because they don’t know what it would take to make the change they really want. Or they come out and say it. How about you move this over here. Which may or may not be better.

The real problem is that the client cannot get past the mockup in front of them. They have never played with interface design and have no idea what is possible. So any changes they try to make are housed in the narrow confines of what is on the screen before them.

And maybe you are thinking, you want it that way. You don’t want clients causing you to start one completely. But the problem is, we as designers aren’t really solving the client’s problems. A website has a purpose aside from bring functional and looking pretty, and the client knows more about that than you do, yet they are forced to use your mockup, to solve that problem. For the client it’s like trying to assemble a complex toy for their kid and the instructions are in a language they cannot read.

A Typical Approach

What do you do when you work with a client? You make them fill out a questionnaire. You sit down with one or two people and try to figure out what they need. Chances are good that you don’t get it quite right but you agree to work together. You probably check out some of the competition, maybe a few other website to see what else is out there.

And then you make the big mistake. You start designing. I do it, we all do it. We have a good meeting. We have some ideas already forming in our minds, so we pop open Photoshop, or a sketchpad, and start working on the mockup.

By doing so we are seriously reducing the chance of creating a successful project. We could make an amazing looking design – the colors, fonts and imagery all look perfect. The layout is functional and easy to navigate, but does it really solve the client’s problems and do you address all of their needs? And not even that, how can you make a mockup without any of their content, or even knowing how much content there needs to be?

In reality, you are letting your client down. You may come up with the best way to organize and display the content you were given in a pleasant looking way, but it may not be the best content, the best implementation of that content and you aren’t spending all of your design time and page real estate address the most important issues the company may be facing.

We are presenting what information we were given in the best way we know how but it isn’t the right information.

Visuals Prevent Clients From Expressing Their Needs

Clients have a hard enough time trying to communicate what they need but put a mockup in front of them and it just became impossible. They have no experience communicating design ideas with anyone and have now forgotten why they wanted the website in the first place. They get stuck on the little details like the size of the logo and background colors.

That website had a definite purpose when you first met with you but from the time the client sees that mockup it just becomes a process of moving pixels back and forth. What happened to that content that was supposed to be so important?

Those Dreaded Last Minute Changes

The worst thing you can hear from a client at the end of a project is “I talked to so-and-so and they feel the main photo area should be at the bottom”. You try to explain that making that change is a bad idea or out of the scope of what was agreed upon in the contract but really if the client understood why you designed it the way you did there wouldn’t be this problem.

The reason clients drop these bombs on you is because you’ve both moved so far away from the problems the website was supposed to address. You laid out the site that best fit with web standards and a way that looks pleasing and functional but the client doesn’t know why one area is above or next to another. The client is happy with how it looks but they realize an important goal isn’t being met but instead of just saying that, they try to explain it to you through the design, and they fail miserably. Causing frustration on both ends.

You’ve based your design choices not off of solving the clients problems but what works best with the content you have. So you defend your design because you did do it the best way possible and the changes the client asks for probably are making it worse. Communicating through the design is causing the project to be less effective than it should be.

How The Process Could Be

We as designers are at fault for the problems that arise late in the design process. We have led clients to believe that the design comes before the content. That the design is somehow separate. When really the entire site should be completed, in writing, before the design ever begins.

Start With A Series of Problems

From your first meeting you should layout the purpose of the website, what problems must it solve? Make a list of everything the client would like to accomplish and what their company’s goals are, then order them from most to least important.

1. We need to launch a new product
2. We aren’t selling as much as we should be online
3. We don’t know our customers
4. Our support team is understaffed and gets the same questions every day
5. Product B should be selling but it isn’t
6. Our reach doesn’t exist outside of X area

What you are doing is finding real problems your design will try to solve, and you are putting it in terms the client understands. You are also making the cost of your services worthwhile. The client isn’t going to the website store and picking out one they like the look of. You are an integral part of the problem solving process, working to increase exposure, sales, brand recognition and profits. Your services have real, definable, value.

Find the Best Way to Solve Each Problem

Don’t think in terms of just a website. A website can do a lot of things but it cannot do everything. Brainstorm solutions to each and every problem. This should be done alone and with the client. See which ones can be done from within the website. Those will be the focus of your design efforts.

If a large website currently exists, a content audit may be in order. Check every piece of information on the website against your list of problems and solutions. If it isn’t mission critical, consider removing it.

I would strongly recommend getting the content written for the website at this point but I know how we designers are. You’ll probably get to work on the mockup. Which is still a better place to be than if you hadn’t spent the time finding the real purpose for the website.

Revealing the Mockup

When it is finally time to show the client the mockup, go over the list of problems again, in person. Show how you went about solving each one with your design. If the client(s) start to talk about the design, try to steer the conversion back to the problems and have them describe their changes in relation to them.

If the client says, “I don’t like the blue background,” explain in regards to the solution to a problem, why you chose blue over green or red. “Your main competitor is green and we felt red wouldn’t resonate with the target market.” If they are not satisfied with the answer have them come up with another solution that doesn’t involve design.

Even when working in a committee, if you can keep the conversation about problems that everyone can understand, you can keep people’s design opinions out of the conversation a little more and focus on issues everyone can talk about. This allows really solutions to be made, or at least gets you looking in the right direction.

Nothing is ever easy but when you don’t define the problems in terms everyone can understand it gets a whole lot harder. Clients have no business worrying about design, they hired you after all. So don’t let them get caught up in what you do best. Find out what they really want and need and you both will be happier in the long run.

It’s 2012 and the technological age is in full swing. Every person and his dog wants to take advantage of the Internet and the glorious opportunities that it presents us with. Unfortunately, what this means is that far too many people are branding themselves as “web designers”. Because there are no barriers to entry into the web design industry, this has resulted in a saturated market.

This is the story of how I entered the web design industry and, despite it being so overcrowded, how I made a success of my small design studio. Without trying to sound like a pompous primate, I would like to help further the web design industry by letting you in on, or reminding you of, three of the lessons that have kept me afloat in this competitive industry – lessons I had to learn the hard way.

Starting Out As a Web Design Wannabe

Picture this: A 15-year-old pale-skinned, pimple-faced teenager who believes he can accomplish anything. Through family connections, our brace-faced young hero gets the opportunity to design a website for a local school. He has no prior web design experience but is confident that his supreme skill in Space Invaders could translate into a great looking website!

The result?

As you have probably guessed by now, that naive young boy was, I’m ashamed to say, me. And that exemplary piece of art you see above was our first ever website.

Now you’re probably wondering how I went from that monstrosity to running an even remotely successful design studio. The truth is we didn’t. At least not immediately. It took a number of years and one sudden realisation before we could ever hope to succeed in an industry where practically everybody was better and more established than us.

Our sudden Realisation

After embarrassingly having decided that our first website was pretty darn awesome, and quite a bit of fun to create, my business partner – another spotty teenager – and I, decided we could totally start our own web design business. We were going to be millionaires!

For a few years after starting said web design business, we picked up the odd client (“relative” would probably me more apt) who was on a low budget and we thought we were doing rather well. We had discovered the magic of Content Management Systems and started creating terrific template-based websites. We didn’t care that they looked exactly like 431 other websites on the Internet. Nobody would ever know!

It wasn’t until a few years ago that we sat back and it dawned on us that we really weren’t making any impact on the market whatsoever. Our websites were mediocre. We had no real purpose. We were yet another boring “web design business” trying to take advantage of the technological age and consumer naivety.

Fortunately I tend to be a rather stubborn person. If I hadn’t given up after our first attempt at a website, I definitely wasn’t going to throw in the towel now. This prompted me to take a long hard look at what we were doing and why we weren’t doing well at all.

3 Key Lessons Learned

What followed was a period of intense self-examination. We closed up shop for around 6 months while we analysed everything we had done until that point and compared it with what the designers who were better than us were doing. We also did some research into other web designers who weren’t doing as well as they had hoped for.

Over time, we realised that we had made some critical errors in our initial endeavours into the web design world. We needed to adjust or we were going to have to shut down shop for good.

These are the things that we found successful web design agencies were doing around the world that we weren’t:

1. Stay Up To Date With Technologies and Trends

This is something I cannot stress enough. The number of self-acclaimed web designers (including ourselves) who were still designing websites using old coding techniques and technologies was astonishing.

It is vital that you keep abreast of the latest trends and technologies which are emerging in your industry. If not out of passion for your work, surely out of a need to survive? Mostly you will find that the news in your industry can really be quite exciting. I’m known by my friends to be able to rattle on for hours about the latest design and marketing trends. Do they care about what I have to say? Probably not. But your clients will.

With web design, the generally accepted practices change frequently. Browser architecture and support is updated almost daily. (Yes Mozilla, thank you for the 17th new version of Firefox this month.) You need to be adapting to this change.

HTML5 and CSS3 are fantastic developments and are being supported by an increasing number of browsers and devices. Mobile development and responsive design are some of the most talked about design trends in the last 6 months. If everybody else is talking and learning about these developments in your industry, shouldn’t you be too?

2. Differentiate Yourself from the Crowd

This is perhaps the most important thing I have learned about being in a competitive industry and marketing in general.

You need to make sure you stand out from the crowd. If you are doing the same thing as everybody else, the chance of a potential customer picking you out of the crowd is slim to none. If, however, you are doing at least one thing better than your competitors then you are giving clients a reason to choose you!

This one thing you do differently/better than other web designers is called your Unique Selling Proposition – a term you will likely hear marketers spray around generously. You could create your own USP by doing one of the following:

• Having the lowest price
• Having the highest quality product
• Excelling in areas where others fail (e.g. customer service)
• Targeting a specific niche exclusively
• Offering anything unique

In our case, we decided there were far too many general web designers and that we weren’t going to succeed by targeting anybody and everybody who needed a website. We decided that the way forward was to specialize in creating websites and branding for a specific target market/group of people.

Because my passion lies in small business and entrepreneurship, I decided that I wanted to target the small business/entrepreneurial niche. While every other designer was offering web design to every person who needed a website, we focused on making sure that our entire business model was crafted in order to make sure that we were the best web designers when it came to creating websites for a new startup or small business.

The results were astounding. We have become known over time as the go-to guys for new business branding and websites and that is exactly what you want to achieve in order be memorable and successful in a competitive market. If potential clients remember you as a solution to a specific problem of theirs, you are going to bring in a whole lot more business than you would have, had you not decided to be different.

To sum up: Establish your business’ USP. Make sure your clients know what that USP is. Profit.

3. Under-Promise and Over-Deliver

This is something I have learned more over time since we reinvented our design studio and business model. Once we were actually bringing in clients, the concept of under-promise, over-deliver became a lesson that has served me well each and every day when dealing with those clients.

Advertising in the web design niche is expensive. If you’ve run an Adwords campaign targeting keywords in the web design field, you will know this all too well. It stands to reason, then, that you would want as much word of mouth advertising as possible. Right?

How did we begin generating an enormous amount of word of mouth referrals? By exceeding customer expectations, each and every time.

It is human nature to want to tell your friends and relatives about something truly great. If you are over-delivering on your clients’ expectations, you can be sure that somebody is going to hear about the amazing customer service they received or the top quality product they got for a really low price, or the free logos you designed for them along with their websites.

I’m sure you can understand why this concept is so effective, so why not put it into practice? I’m sure you will see great results, just as I have.

Ending Up as a Successful Web Designer

After months of self examination, research and brainstorming, we reinvented our business completely. We adopted an all new image, work ethic and philosophy as we set out on our mission to become the small business branding and web design authority in our industry.

It would be amiss of me to say that we have achieved this goal, or that we are even close to achieving it. We have, however, transformed our web design business from something mediocre into a quality service that people are willing to pay good money for. The 15-year-old web design wannabe progressed into a successful web designer by incorporating, inter alia, three important lessons into his web design service:

1. Always keep learning. Don’t rest on your laurels!
2. Establish a USP. Be different from your competitors.
3. Under-Promise. Over-deliver. Always exceed expectations!

These are all things that can be done without spending a single additional cent. There is no reason why you shouldn’t begin doing all three of the things I’ve spoken about above and absolutely no reason why you can’t be a successful web designer as a result.

Sometimes all it takes to be successful is for a person to swallow his pride and improve what he has to offer.

Thumbs up image via Shutterstock