This week the Norn Iron web designer Grace Smith scored a very palpable hit with an excellent blog post, Why Web Design Doesn’t Cost £40, where she tackled a problem common to many web designers: clients who assume that the costs of professional web sites are determined by DIY software and third-world outsourcers, not full time trained practicioners in their own cities.
Her post tapped into a vein of utter frustration which runs through the whole profession. It seems that if we are not being expected to do bespoke design, SEO, and e-commerce sites for prices which would not pay the council tax, we are losing potential customers to designers who are willing to do so. These “competitors” work to lower technical standards, lower levels of professional integrity, and lower expectations. And still, the customers keep rolling in for them.
But here’s the thing.
As a professional web designer, you are not competing against the £40 web designers.
In fact, they are doing you a favour.
Like all sectors, web design has an up market, a middle market, and a bottom market. You do not want the bottom of the market for clients. And they do not want you for a designer.
Think about it: do you really want to stake your business on people who think £40 is a reasonable price to spend on business promotion?
Do you really want to build a portfolio on businesses which do not value themselves over £40?
Do you really want to spend your billable time explaining concepts as basic as copyright law, contractual liability, and for that matter, the minimum wage?
Do you really want to be engaged in a constant dumbing down of your prices, your skills, and your abilities to compete against people using rainbow hit counters, table layout, and no contracts?
Of course you don’t. That is not what you went into web design to do. And yet so many of us feel slighted when we lose business to overseas outsourcers and package deals. We should not feel that way; in fact, we should feel just the opposite.
If a potential client goes with a third-world middleman outsourcer instead of you, do a jig.
If a potential client taps their nephew to make them a site on a “free” service covered in banner ads instead of you, praise your deity of choice.
If a potential client chooses a restricted package deal specifically because your pricing offended them, breathe a sigh of relief.
You have dodged a bullet. You are free from suffering headaches at a wage that will not earn enough to buy the aspirin to fix them. You are clear to hone your skills and your services for clients who really mean business.
Your real competitors are the local design firms who are charging more than you. They are the ones getting the better customers. They are the ones making more on one project than you earned in your first year of business. They are the ones building relationships based on continual up-selling, not projects based on restricted packages. Yes, we mock those design snobs working in glass offices with “contemplation pods”, but they didn’t afford that city centre mortgage by catering to hobby businesses and clueless dreamers.
These are the firms you should be aspiring to compete with – and perhaps, one day, join. These are the firms who should cause you grief when you lose business to them. Not no-name, no-face, no-balls nobodies.
Set your pricing structure so that it frightens away the bottom of the market. Low pricing structures only appeal to low-value businesses. Medium to high value businesses look at a low pricing structure and run the other way. They expect to get what they pay for, and they won’t hire someone who values their abilities at a hobbyist rate.
Sharpen your professional and personal brands. Make it clear that you are somebody. You are not merely an automaton pushing pictures around a screen. If they want someone to do that, they know where to go.
Become someone whom others compete against. The best part? You’ll become a damn fine web designer while you’re at it.
Excellent addition to Grace Smith’s piece. Especially about pricing out the time wasters. You really ARE better off without them.
A really refreshing, optimistic look at this subject Heather. More designers in general need to adopt this way of thinking and maybe the “people using rainbow hit counters, table layout, and no contracts” will start to fade into oblivion. We can hope, right?
You’ve got it right, Heather. And I would add that spending time on those who are looking for websites at less-than-minimum wage prices is a serious business error because it takes away from the time you should be spending on marketing your services to those who will appreciate the value of what you have to offer.
Hi Heather,
Great post! I am in the an unusual position of specializing in real estate web sites hosted by one Canadian vendor and in knowing almost precisely who my competitors are: about a half dozen people listed as approved vendors by the web site hosting company. I also have a pretty good idea what these people charge, which typically ranges from about 15% to 50% of what I charge.
One of my biggest challenges, especially before the real estate market crashed along with the U.S. economy, was dealing with dozens of people inquiring about my services every week. Since responding adequately to each lead required an hour or so on the phone, I was just overwhelmed with responding to people who, for the most part, thought US$500 was a lot to pay for custom web site design and were a complete waste of my time.
There’s a certain irony in dealing with real estate agents who would expect me to pay them $10,000-20,000 to sell my home, yet think I’m going to build them a kick-ass web site for $500 so they can sell MORE homes.
Over the last few months, I’ve re-written — or had re-written — all the text on my web site to make it very clear — without actually publishing my fee structure — that I only work for well-established agents and brokers who expect to pay premium prices for fine design work. As a result, I’m a lot less stressed out than I used to be, and my work volume doesn’t seem to have suffered.
I really enjoyed the article. The clients that I’ve lost have been to BS’ers and actually acquired 3 clients as a result…let’s just say they were happy.
Personally, I won’t dismiss a job just because it’s low budget. Since I do WordPress development almost exclusively if their budget is tiny and if they are willing to work with a pre-existing theme (and I send them links to them and they are good looking or premium themes) then I’ll do it. If not sayonara!!!
I’d always wanted to do a photography site and found a client via Facebook (FB friend) where someone recommended Intuit (oh, gag me with a spoon) and a friend said they’d do it for him. I posted to stay away from Inuit and if he was interested in working with me just send a message.
We used an existing theme that was just modified slightly and a paid plug-in and I was able to do it for less than half of a typical 5-6 page website.
Great post!
A client at the low budget end of the spectrum is exponentially more likely to want the world and its sister for the budget they have – they see it as ‘all this money they’ve given you’ as opposed to a fairly low recompense for a valuable service.
Middle to upper markets generally have a set budget in mind and understand the value therein. Difficulties can still arise in these projects, like any obviously, but at least you’re getting paid to troubleshoot them.
That said, you can be lucky with a low budget client and it all gets done as swiftly as can be… but how often is that the case?!
In the end, it’s all about having the gumption not to haggle or be brow-beaten down in price. It’s easier to have a lower limit of what you will take for the job if you have a full understanding of what the job will cost you to actually do. Depressingly, with the smaller ones, I bet a lot of the projects turn out to be making us a loss.
Thanks to everyone for such great comments.
For various reasons, in the three years since I started my company I have dropped four clients before concluding their projects. Direct verbal abuse, harassment, and nonpayment from the clients were the causes of two drops, and the other two were simply bad fits. I’ve just added up on a post-it note the sum total I did not receive from these four clients as a result of not concluding their projects. Added up together, the sum is less than £1000. And really, that is ridiculous. The common thread through all these projects was that they were token-fee or charity/favour projects. Wee simple projects with the best of intentions from both designer and client. In return, I got headaches, inconveniences, personal attacks, unpaid expenses, harassment, the hassle of a court filing against a client in one case, and nothing to show for any of it either in my design portfolio or my bank account.
As the saying goes, these days, I don’t get out of bed for less than £1000 unless the new client has been referred by an existing one. It is simply not worth it otherwise.
Thanks for resurfacing this post via Twitter – I hadn’t seen it before, hence my very belated comment!
I agree absolutely that in almost all cases taking on a project for less than at least a month’s salary is asking for trouble. Clients with low budgets and no experience of what’s involved in a custom website build tend to assume they are paying you a lot of money, will submit endless change requests in the course of the project, and will be reluctant to pay till every single ‘i’ is dotted and ‘t’ is crossed to their absolute satisfaction. I’ve been down that exhausting and thankless path more than once. Actually, I have found that the higher the budget, the lower the client expectation! – serious businesses and organisations have done their research and have an inkling of the work involved in developing a quality site.
I do agree however with the comment above that we should sometimes consider low budget projects. Some worthy organisations simply don’t have the money to pay a commercial rate, and I don’t believe they should have to look to inferior providers: they provide an important service to the community as a charity or small local business, and I reckon deserve a decent online presence. I’ve undertaken a few such projects and the key has been securing the client’s agreement to the use of a content management theme that requires minimal customisation, the drawing up of a clearly defined contract, and payment of up to 75% of the fee upfront – sounds a lot, but essential when the budget is small! That little process has worked for me anyway.
Hi Justin,
Thanks for the kind words.
The important distinction to make is not necessarily low budget businesses, but low value businesses. What’s a low value business? An organisation which either makes no meaningful contribution to the economy or which is not being run on a truly professional and competitive basis.
Some examples of low-value businesses: the local restaurant owners who still had the place decked out in eye-melting 1980s decor, hadn’t done any marketing in over a decade, and had a dial-up connection on their office 486 that they used for personal email only, and thought this was all very cute. The service business which turned out to be one of three mini-businesses a woman runs to give her something to do because her husband makes a massive income. The mum who makes £3 crafts to sell at the farmer’s market. The business owner who bends your ear for professional guidance which he will pass on to his mate who built and runs the company web site as a favour. Any client who takes over nine months to deliver six pages of basic written content.
None of these people were ready for professional web design services, and none of them really deserved them.
They will, however, contact you if they perceive that your business positioning is “low value”.
Work with low-budget businesses – by all means – but make sure they really mean business.
Yes, thanks – I think that is a crucial distinction. I certainly agree that those businesses and organisations are not serious and we should indeed steer well clear.
Great advice as always Heather!
I do think it’s important to make the distinction between low value and low budget, as both you and Justin say. I have a few low budget clients, but I only take them on if they’re a referral – it’s too risky otherwise.
With referrals I find it’s easier to set expectations at the level their budget dictates, usually along the lines of customising an existing theme.
Maybe we should set up a system to vet potential clients? Something like a credit reference check, but investigating where they’d rank on a scale of “great client” to “pain in the backside”.