[thelist] What do clients look for?

the head lemur headlemur at lemurzone.com
Thu Jan 22 12:44:04 CST 2004


> >> To what extent does a web developer have a responsibility to say "no
> that's
> >> too trashy" if it's what the client wants?

None.
In a straight money for stuff deal, it is your responsibility to give the
client what they want.

The bottom line is how good can you sell?
The only reason that I mention this is that you have already decided that
what the client wants is 'trashy'.

Trashy is a client handing you a 98MB powerpoint, and wanting to have All
the whizzing, buzzing, noisy stuff on the web. After a revolutionary
dialectic, (which included a whizzing, buzzing, noisy demo that came in at
79MB code and images, only working reliably in IE 5.5 with an initial
download time of around three minutes,)  the client got a site without
whizzing, buzzing, noisy stuff, that came in at 1.25 mb over 15 pages,
loaded in less than 10 secs on a 56k modem, that increased their business
300% in the first 6 months.
But the above was an excruciating education  and a hell of a sales job.

I understand all too well that early on, it is more important to get the
job, to build the business to the point where you can say no.

The overwhelming majority of sites we do for money involve getting the
client's business on the web to increase their sales to pay our bills. The
smallest part of the web design biz actually involves coding. Ask anybody on
this list who has been in business for 2 years. It's tax time.

You may need to re-examine what the client wants.
In order to make that happen, you need to examine what you said you could
do, and what effect your skills and knowledge can impact the difference
between elegant and trashy.

The crux of the biscuit is offering alternatives that move the client to
accept the difference between what they want and what you might want to say
at some point 'I did that".

the head lemur

blog: http://theheadlemur.typepad.com/
Community: http://www.evolt.org


























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