Recently I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how our clients view us and how they respond to our price quotes for their projects. I’ve concluded that web design firms are the new auto mechanics—clients are afraid they are going to get ripped off because they don’t understand what goes on under the hood and they fear they will get a bill for $1,000 for something that actually only took 5 minutes to do.
What makes things even more confusing for our prospective clients is the vast range of quotes they get when shopping. Without further ado, I present my list of “You might experience sticker shock if…”:
… You’d Rather Do it Cheap Instead of Right.
I can’t tell you how many times this scenario has played out: Client meets with us and half a dozen other web developers. They like our work and our philosophy, but another firm or freelancer “underbids” us by a significant amount, so against their better judgment, they choose the other guy.
One month later they are back at our door very unhappy with the company they chose. Don’t be that client. Save yourself some money by having us do it right the first time.
… You Think of Your Website as a Commodity Rather Than a Tailored Solution to Help Your Business Thrive.
If you think a template or a pre-cast, out-of-the-box solution is what you need, then it is likely you are in the wrong place. Your business has unique needs and should communicate a unique message. We don’t re-invent the wheel on every project, but we do tailor our work specifically for your needs.
… You Think Web Development is Easy.
It’s not. Trust me.
... You Don’t Value or Respect the Complexity of the Code and the Amount of Time That We Put Into Creating an Effective Website.
Every website we build consists of hundreds of lines of code. One out of place semi-colon can bring an entire website to its knees. Writing code requires time in order to do it right and time to debug it and time to test it. So respect it.
… You Don’t Have a Valuable Problem to Solve.
So you’re telling me that Tom and Sally are spending 30 hours a week processing orders. If we could reduce that to 4 hours per week, how much would that save you? If we could increase sales of your flagship product by 20%, how much would that be worth annually in net profit? Those are valuable problems that we provide valuable solutions for.
… You Don’t Want to Tell Us Your Budget.
No matter how simple a website, we could pour months into perfecting every detail and function and word. And we could come up with amazing features and functionality and then tweak every line of code for optimum performance for even the heaviest site traffic. But obviously, not everyone has the budget to pay a team to spend months developing their website and building out specialized functionality.
So if we know your budget, we can put together a website tailored to your needs and your budget. We don’t want to know your budget so we can match our estimate to it—we want you to be happy and we want your experience to be one that is completely satisfying. So, we make the utmost effort to define the scope of a project within a budget from the very beginning.
It’s why relationship is important to us
Because so much goes into designing and programming a website, and because you want to get the most out of your budget, we do a lot on the front end to better understand you, your business, and your needs. We use an intentional relationship process to help you understand every facet of our design process and to let us understand what you are actually wanting to accomplish through your web design. Contact us when you are ready for your first website or when you want to redesign your existing one.
