The State of the “Web Design”
Filed Under: Comments, Customers, Design
I subscribe to various industry newsletters, and I have to agree whole heartedly.
The crux of his disillusionment is that web developers’ “highly trained skills have been commoditized by market ignorance.”That is, clients don’t understand the web, so they fail to understand what they need, and don’t have the knowledge or the ability to identify what they need. The client also lacks the ability to differentiate the “right” solution or developer from a poor one.
As a result, clients often end up with a poor solution to their problem, because they go with the cheapest solution. This cheap and poor solution inevitably fails, and it’s another black mark for the entire industry.
I’ve seen this happen 100 times before. Cheap doesn’t mean good. It means cheap. These web sites simply don’t have the resources allocated to them to ensure success. The Web is not a case of “build it and they’ll come.” It’s a case of build it, promote the heck out of it, provide entertaining, ever-changing information, and they may come — and then they may stay.
So what’s the solution? As PMichaud points out, major education of the entire market would be nice. But that’s not going to happen.
Maybe a standard accreditation system for web professionals? I think that’s impossible — there are simply too many variables across too many markets.
There is no real solution. Some clients will always take the cheap option, just as some clients will always understand that allocating more resources to a project may enhance its prospects for success. And there will always be web developers who don’t provide the best solution.
It’s up to the web developer to work within the parameters of the industry — great clients, idiot prospects, slow payers, big payers, tough competitors, red tape, fast changing technology … and lots more.
These are the same challenges every business faces. We need to adapt, and make it work, or fizzle out.
Source: SitePoint Newsletter Tribune #387
I just realized why this industry sucks
The state of the “web design” and to a lesser extent the web development industry has been a source of frustration to me for many years.It always vexed me that the success stories were rarely related to the quality of output or anything like that, but more often were narratives of a system that someone developed by which he could churn large volumes of passable product, or enabled others to do the same (LogoWorks, for example).Certainly, the low barrier to entry created and exacerbated by desktop publishing and hacked copies of photoshop have contributed to the market saturation by the writhing tumult of mediocre (and worse) service providers. But that’s not the whole picture.Wide availability is only half of the equation: the other is our lemon market. Basically, people consuming our service cannot distinguish quality, and therefore low quality offerings demand prices equal to high quality offerings, all things being equal. That means that our highly trained skills have been commoditized by market ignorance.Ours is worse than normal lemon industries, I’m afraid. In our case the bulk of crap isn’t peddled by unscrupulous vendors looking for a quick buck and a schill to scam it from — the crap is provided by well-meaning amateurs who believe the hype. The market is so rife with unprofessionalism, that even those within it take years to sort the wheat from the chaffe.Most people who suck don’t realize they suck, and most people buying sucky service don’t realize they’re getting sucky service!The solution on a large scale is education, but it’s not realistic until there is a market force that tends to push consumers to become educated. If a customer could drive a logo or an e-commerce system 75 miles per hour with darling, little Cindy-Lou strapped in the back, you can bet they’d want to make sure the logo has decent brakes.
The fact is that the risk is just as real, if not as immediately life threatening: skimping on marketing or essential software systems is a great way to doom a start up. You might lose your life savings, or you might have to explain to little Cindy-Lou why Santa isn’t coming this year — you might just have a venture that fizzles quietly.
That fizzle is a problem, because when a venture fizzles it normally isn’t spectacular like Enron — it’s normally an almost imperceptible, little squeak that goes something like: “I just decided it was time to move on to other things,” or “the market was too cold, I got in too late, oh well.” It’s never: “I started with a half-baked idea, I didn’t take the time to research the market, I didn’t invest what I should have in infrastructure or marketing, and therefore I failed to make this venture a success.” We find it almost impossible to attribute failure directly to our decisions and actions.
So here is where the dark synergy of ignorance and attribution bias forms the frothy, putrecent brew of market failure: Jimmy, on the same day, buys a car and a website, both for $1,000, both from Honest Bob’s House of Used Cars and Web Design. Both products are delivered, and off Jim goes. In a month, the saw dust that kept Jim’s junky car running finally lodged itself hopelessly in the gears of the dying vehicle, and the car simply stops moving forever. Jim cannot travel any further — the car’s failure is clear, and Bob’s trickery is revealed. The market or the courts or both will take care of Bob’s shady car business.
Jim’s web site, however, has also failed insidiously. It drives the few visitors who find it into the hills, never to return. The one person who tried to get the shopping cart checkout to work, never got the product, but thanks to faulty coding, his identity is now for sale in a Nigerian black market. In a few months Jim will grow tired of the “slow market,” and quietly stop paying his monthly hosting bill, and the site will make that tiny little squeak I mentioned before: “Market’s slow, the internet isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
That’s why it behooves all of us to look at ourselves long and hard when we fail, or when our clients fail. It wasn’t the bear market. It’s not “just time.” Statistically speaking, this probably applies to you, dear reader:
You suck at web design. You are not qualified to design web applications. Your business idea will fail because you didn’t think it through, and you hired the cheapest guy from a country you can’t point out on a map to implement it. So you have a choice: you can cry about it and crawl under a rock, or you can stand up and do the hard work of educating yourself so you can stop taking half-assed stabs in the dark at the riches and glory that you claim to want but have taken to the path of least resistance to get to.
Here’s what you need to do: pick your field of interest, and test your metal against the best. Put your design work in front of a harsh critique; you could apply for a job at a good studio with your current portfolio just to see what they say. Put your code up for review on a geek mailing list or try to apply for a job somewhere that they only hire super hackers; again, just to see what they say. Pitch your business idea to a major venture capital firm.
This experience will be humiliating, enlightening, and ultimately invaluable. It only takes a moment to open your eyes.
Source: Sitepoint Forums
Upcoming New Year
Filed Under: Comments
I have decided to make a few resolutions, or goals for the upcoming year. I want to learn Ruby on Rails, AJAX, JQuery, CSMS, get another shopping cart under my belt (Magento). Become a WordPress goddess. Advance my PHP skills.
Never take on a cheap ass demanding client. Thankfully I’ve never had one, but have had potential clients try to dicker prices down. I refuse to. I have been able to identify unrealistic expectations and just flat out refuse to deal with clients like that….the sun and moon for peanuts.
Get a raise at work. A significant one. If not look at my options.
Awards???
Filed Under: Comments
There is a local company that is promoting themselves as award winning. Well the award they won they won by default because no other company submitted their business to it for consideration. And I hate to say it but there are several typos and grammatical errors on their website.
Now I and my employer have won legitimate awards for our work.
St. Croix Economic Summit
Filed Under: Comments
I wished I had gone. Currently St. Croix really doesn’t have the employees to bring technology (web based, e.g., e-commerce, etc.) to the forefront here. My boss thinks I’m the best in the US Virgin Islands (tech/design, etc.) and I have to agree. The 49%/51% split between right and left brain makes me perfect for web design and development.
Other developers/companies are always missing something. Bad code, bad/poor design, poor execution, usability issues, completely missing META tags, CSS errors, and so on. Now I will admit to some of the work I’ve done is not what I would have like to have done (hated the design and/or color choice).
Collection of Funds
Filed Under: Comments
I almost had a cow this morning. Well a small one. On the front page of one of the local newspapers was a headline about a local vendor demanding payment from a local government agency. The company that sent out the press release (according to the St. Croix Avis) was Vast Imaging and the principal of the company is Ivan Minarik. The government agency in question is DLCA.
Now having someone owe you for work performed is not a pleasant thing, but Vast Imaging certainly should have handled it better. Now to be honest would you want to do business with a company that would do that to a client? I sure as hell wouldn’t. They should have hired an attorney and filed a claim/suit in court.
I may have further comments about this. What where they thinking??? Duh!
Now I know what I charge per hour and how long it takes me to accomplish tasks. But $80,000 for less than a year’s work, and I’m sorry but it would have been prudent not to continue to perform work when you’re not being paid.
