Nobody needs web designers.
What have we done? What has “web 2.0″ brought upon us? The web is maturing and democratisation is on its way. This is why non-techs are making heaps of money over the web with blogs while having 0 knowledge of the way it all works. Mind you this is great as the web is now open to everybody and people are using it as easily as possible but some things are really hard on us web designers and web project managers.
We are family!
Buy computer, get broadband ADSL, surf! This will turn you into a web expert. It is true story that a lot of web designers face the problem of having people who use their own experience and have the “my kid made his own website” syndrome when faced to web professionals. Below are some of the glorious things I personally heard.
“My boyfriend spends hours surfing the web and is a huge Internet consumer, and he says that this website is crap”. This is what I once heard from one of our SAAS managers in a company where I used to work. She was good at selling the web service but when it came to criticising any web designer’s work it was the boyfriend that got into the picture just because he spent hours over the net.
“I have led the reflection over what my website should be doing. I only want people having the same level of approach to my business as I have to surf my site. Others can just sod off. I know it is easy to filter them. I am a pioneer and not a follower, so I will not accept SEO oriented text and I want my site to be WOW but not use the same codes as others. I am used to the web, I surf all night and I want to be on everything that a person types in terms of keywords on Google. Build a website that seduces me!” All this nonsense is what I have been hearing from… a private school director in need of a new website to bring in new recruits!
“We want a paper archive (800 PDFs) on our website. I believe it is an easy add.” This one came from a director preparing a huge conference.
The problem.
The underlying problem in all this is not that these people will end up having websites that will not work or will be the opposite of all the objectives they should be aiming for along with the loss off money, it is that web designers have made things too easy. Actually, they have not made things too easy but they have made things look easy from the outside.
This is the core of our work, building tools that accomplish goals but in a specific way: being user centred. The sole fact that the tool is user centred means that the use of the website must be thought out beforehand and that the user navigates easily and has a great experience and accomplishes the goals without feeling the technology lying behind. We all did a great job and succeeded in this endeavour but the problem is that a majority now thinks that if the front-end is easy to use, the back-end’s implementation must be as easy.
This also runs for web project management where, for some clients it all boils down to choosing the titles of each navigation tab or SEO experts where clients just end up saying “stuff the damn thing with keywords as well as our competitor’s name and we’ll get the first place on Google”. All seems too easy now.
No way out.
I won’t be getting into the details here but apart from the horrors I hear in my day job, the Web Design Bureau of Mauritius does get its share of eccentric demands everyday. However, a great resource to see what type of incongruous thoughts clients have is Clients From Hell. So what happens now? How do web designers and all work with such type of people?
Well, major web design blogs have lists of personae of the type of client you should avoid. For others, it is experience that makes it all. You see the client, you judge him/her at the first contact and you run off if necessary. Just don’t waste your time. It is sad to say so but if one has to spend precious work hours trying to educate a client, that person should leave the business. This said, it can be done is you work as an in-house web designer.
Let’s talk about this.
Do you think we made a mistake in making things look so easy? Is there a way of changing client mentality (which I think will never change)? How do you/would you react in such situations? What is YOUR view of the Internet, do you think that things look too “easy” now?
About the Author:
Sachin D. Brojmohun has extensive experience in terms of graphic design, CSS integration, usability and accessibility as well as in SEO. More about him and the Web Design Bureau of Mauritius here: Web Design Mauritius.
Hi there.
I see some great points you have brought up and would like to add some comments to them.
Like you say people on the net with their templates and what not are making web design look so easy.
But for me when i design a web site it is a very long and involved process. I get a brief and spend a long time researching and asking the right questions to the client. I could easily just go and get a template and say i am done. But i do not i research how to best advice the client on what web site i can design to give him exactly what his looking for. some websites require mind blowing designs and animations and some need to just be simple and functional. a web template or inexperienced i surf the web so now i know how to web design will never give the client the same satisfaction that an experienced web designer can give a client.
Twitter: sachindb
says:
Thanks Ludovic. I agree with you that building a website “professionally” calls for more serious things such as very well defined specifications and our own aim for client satisfaction. This is what I wanted to stress upon. Let’s look at our job from the other side of the mirror. We’re striving for a “better” Internet with better usability and functionalities but all the pondering that a call to action button has undergone just ends up being a trendy little thing on various websites. This shows that people are sometimes really fickle.
Anyway, client satisfaction will remain the main objective of our business as you clearly put it.
Twitter: samudary
says:
Great article Sachin.
It really was an inevitable fact that the end product of web development would become simpler since we are trying to create interfaces that simplify user experience. Yeah our job looks so easy but its something that we will have to work with and find unique ways of educating potential clients. We must admit that web development on a whole is becoming easier as we find more unique and efficient ways of creating designs.
I don’t completely agree with you about running away if you encounter a client who needs to be educated. With my experience, my clients normally welcome the additional knowledge. I guess it depends on the client’s personality.
The truth is that without talented web developers, the internet would go to the dogs.
Twitter: sachindb
says:
Thanks for your great input Robyn. I’m not stating that we should be in “jump-start” mode for a run off everytime a client has to be educated but, as you spotted it, depending on some clients, it sometimes becomes veeeeerrrrrry difficult to bring them on. In my case, the only way to educate my stubborn client was to educate the people around him. He then felt that he was missing something and his curiosity is actually winning on him. There’s still a long way to go though.