Selling Web Standards
I have had many conversations with prospective clients who admittedly know little or nothing about how to create a website. All they know is that they want one. As you would expect, one of the first questions I get is, “So how much is this going to cost me?” At this point I immediately start explaining why what I do is different from they guy down the street that just bought a copy of Dreamweaver or GoLive.
I start by talking about the sites I develop having faster loading pages, lower bandwidth usage and optimal search engine placement. I stop short of uttering the word accessibility before eyes start glazing over. Inevitably, the conversation always turns back to cost.
I know of at least one project I wasn’t chosen for recently and it was solely based on price. The business in question now has a shiny new website chock full of nested tables ad nauseum, <csobj> tags and text hidden in images. The W3C Validator would break down in tears if it saw this URL coming its way. Here’s a nice snippet from the end of a page.
<br>
<br>
</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</div>
</csobj></td>
</tr>
</table>
<br>
<br>
<br>
</div>
</body>
</html>
Fancy stuff, eh?
I’ve read and re-read Kevin Potts’ great article, Why Your Client Cares about Web Standards. He makes some great points and concludes that any client given the evidence would be silly not to go with a standards based site rather than a bloated table based site. But is the cost of developing a standards compliant site going to be less than someone who can whip up a few pages using a WYSIWYG editor?
So my question to you is this…how do you explain to clients that are stuck on the bottom line cost that its worth paying a little more for a standards compliant site? And how willing are you to lower your rates to get business?
Comments
19. May 2005
You cannot talk to customers, unless they know a bit about the subject, about technical stuff. Not to mention that if they aren’t big / public sites they don’t care about accessibility or saving bandwith. So what’s left ? Maybie some Seo arguments. I’m stuck with the same problem to argue vs the guys down the street seliing / building useless sites.
19. May 2005
Maybe try to sell them on the fact that they can have more customers because the page will look the same in each browser. Since they are concerned about their bottom line if you can show them by “cheaping out” here that they might lose customers you might win them over.
Plus with the advances in marketshare Firsfox and Opera are making you got proof. Not to mention, by going with standards you save them from having to redo the site when the new “extra” markup is added to the browser.
Or maybe offer a quick and dirty design for lower cost?
theAdmin
19. May 2005
I have never really had a problem swaying a customer toward the standards side of things. Every proposal I write details that SEO and accessibility are part of the code and cost nothing extra. Who is going to argue with organic search engine optimization? Add to that bandwidth savings and faster load times and it’s usually a no brainer.
Many of my clients are non-technical and just don’t care; they want something that looks good whether it’s written by hand or in FrontPage. Most are intermediate in their skills; one recently asked if he would be able to edit the XHTML even if he only knew HTML. I’ve found that offering detailed, patient explanations of new technology (like CSS) helps win the confidence of potential clients.
19. May 2005
I wrote a longish piece , so I put it on my own site. But basically I think if you can show them the utility of a standards-based design, they’ll buy into it. Ask yourself, why do you want to do a standards-based design in the first place?
21. May 2005
I’ve found that most people I talk to are so far from being technical that common sense reasons such as those mentioned above still don’t work. Believe it or not, I had one prospect tell me he didn’t want his site to rank well in search engines because he had enough business already.
I’ve started to include an analysis of a prospect’s current site if they have one as a way to show how much page loading times can be improved.
I think as Kevin said, the best thing you can do is clearly explain the advantages of standards based design in non-geek speak. I feel that many of the prospects that I’ve converted into customers chose me not necessarily because they understood everything I was talking about, but because they were comfortable with my ability to deliver a solid solution.
24. May 2005
It really boils down to trust and common sense. If your working with anyone that does not have both of these I would recommend adding a couple hundred dollars to the over-all price in the hopes that the client will go down the street.
People that want to pay for a Yugo and get a Ferrari while claiming ignorants are anything but short of understanding the common sense of, “You get what you pay for”. I say, don’t waste your time. Put your effort into finding smart clients.
Cody Lindley
24. May 2005
Agreed Cody. Its funny that most people know little about how their website is designed and developed, yet they think its easy and shouldn’t cost much.
Another funny prospect story. I was working with a business who had me register a domain name for them but then kept stalling on the hosting setup and site development. They kept trying to nickel and dime me saying they could gets things cheaper elsewhere. I took this as a bad sign and didn’t bother trying to keep their business.
And the kicker in all this? They were neurosurgeons! Who bill at about $1000 an hour I’m sure and perform surgeries that cost into the six figures. Some people have nerve (no pun intended).
21. September 2005
I have had these conversations, too. And not only with customers. But as well with the old-school webmasters. They say “I can build a website from a template, I can create website using some application and it’s just easy money.”
So, they create that sh!t, make without any worries good cash and no-one cares.
Now, I’ve taken a quest. I am going to make a website that wil be chosen by Web Standards Awards as the site of the month.
I have to do that if I want to survive. And it’s a good argument when customers hesitate and are questioning in fee.
The other day I showed to future-customer my website in cell phone and she was amazed. I told her in order to get a outstanding website, you have to put some real money in it. It’s not just a website, it is ART.
I hope people will understand that what we are doing. We are good guys and we deserve more respect.
R.
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