[thelist] What would you do?

[Gina K. Anderson]

Sender Address Domain - sitediva.com

Bart,

|Not so much our company's privacy as a waste of my, and possibly others', time.

What makes it a waste of time if you like a designer's portfolio enough to
consider using him/her as your website designer and desire a quote or proposal
from them? I'd like to know which (if any) of the questions I listed earlier is
a waste of your time. What do you think a designer needs to know in order to
give you a quote or proposal for your website? I'm truly interested, many
clients don't want to give feedback such as this.

|If we were as involved and knowledgeable about what we wanted (and had
|more time), we'd do it ourselves.

Actually, knowing what you want and knowing how to build it are two different
things. I'm not asking a client to be knowledgeable about building web sites, I
want them to be knowledgeable in what they *want*. Knowing that you *want*
visitors to be able to subscribe to an online mailing list that will mimic your
paper newsletter is different than knowing how to write the program to make it
work and how to link the program to the web page so that the user can actually
subscribe and receive it.

We as designers can't know what you want. We can only make suggestions as to
what we can do--but we can only do that if we know what kind of company you
have, what products or services you provide, and how you interact with your
customers 'offline'. If you don't send out paper newsletters, and you don't
*want* or need a mailing list set up, then it's a waste of everyone's time to
present the idea or include it on a proposal or quote, just in my opinion-other
might feel differently.

I understand most clients are not knowledgeable about what can actually be done
on the web through a web site, but knowing what types of information you want to
include about your company and products on a web site or whether you want to
sell online or not should not be a difficult task--and it's what we need to know
in order to make a quote.

Regards,
Gina