Clients should know it all!

I have noticed an increasing aggression towards people who request their site be designed for free/cheap. While I understand the frustration as it feels as though these people devalue the hard work that goes into creating a unique site, I don’t personally see it as being their fault in thinking that creating a website is a lot easier than it actually is. Because of this I thought that I would look into the reasons why it is easy for people who don’t really understand web design and development to believe that creating a site is a snap.

wysiwyg / drag and drop

These tools have been around for a very long time, I remember my very first experience of creating a website being a drag and drop editor by Homepages back in 1998. All I had to do was drag images and text boxes to where I wanted them on the page and it would place them there. It wasn’t till a few weeks later that I decided to look at all the gibberish code that actually makes the website work, up until that point making a website to me was easy because it only took a few seconds in my Homepages editor.

Now if I hadn’t taken a real interest in web design back then, I wouldn’t of looked into how websites really worked and I would still be under the impression that a website takes two seconds to put together using a wysiwyg editor. With this being the case it is easy for me to see why some people out there might think they are paying simply for a professional designer to create nice looking graphics and then spending a few seconds making it into a website.

Create Your Own Site Sites

These sites are nothing new, pay so much a month, choose a domain name, select a template, add your images, add your text and voilà a website. Hardly any effort goes into creating a site this way and for very little cost to the person using them, so it is easy to see why anyone who has used one of these in the past could think that they are hiring someone to simply make some new graphics and then going through the same process that they just have.

The industry as a whole is at fault

Ok so those two examples above show how someone who doesn’t know about web design could quickly build a site themselves. While they do show how some could take a web designers role for granted lets take this one step further…lets look at how the web design industry itself easily causes the average internet user some confusion.

Bidding sites

Bidding sites are where designers try to undercut other designers prices in hopes of getting the job. Often when I look at these types of sites I think to myself how is it possible for anyone to create an all singing all dancing e-commerce site for £150. But this does happen and anyone who stumbles onto these sites with very little knowledge of the processes involved will think that the going rate for an e-commerce site is £150.

Spec work

A little like the bidding sites, only this time it is try before your buy. Spec work is best defined as producing something for a potential client with no guarantee that you work will be chosen or paid for. Designers battle against each other displaying their designs in hopes that they will be chosen and paid for the work that they have done.

The logic in this could be seen as, if designers are willing to do work with no guarantee of getting paid why wouldn’t they design something for next to nothing if they are actually guaranteed some money.

Free/ super cheap mass-used templates

I will start this one off by saying I really have no problem at all with templates, they can be useful and they are a great way for designers starting out to create something for their portfolio that could then benefit someone else as well. However many times when I have been contacted to do a site they expect that a unique design should only cost a little bit more than one of these cheap templates. Its not until I explain about the differences between a template and the processes involved in creating a unique site do they understand why it will cost a lot more money for something custom built.

Students/ just starting out

Working your way up a ladder in your chosen profession isn’t anything new, neither is making a little bit of cash while going through school/college/uni. The problem here is that to get work normally means undercut prices, this leads to those looking around for a designer to think “well if John the freelancer is offering a full e-commerce website for £400 maybe I can shop around and get it cheaper”.

Now I’m not saying that there is anything wrong with charging less when starting out, as lets face it no matter what job you’re in you start out on a low wage and work your way up to more money with the experience you have gained.

If you don’t ask you will never know

I think the above header speaks for itself :p

It doesn’t happen in other professions!!

This is a statement I hear a lot from other designers who are fed up with being undervalued by people who ask for a cheap site. While it is true that you wouldn’t ask someone in certain professions to do the work for free, you might haggle over how much the price is to try and get a better deal and save yourself a bit of money.

In closing

I guess what I am trying to say with this article is simply don’t take it to heart and get worked up over someone who asks for a site to be created for next to nothing. The Internet is global and different countries have different cost of living making it easier for them to charge less, so to someone with limited knowledge in this area this could look like the going rate for a site. Plus if other designers are willing to bid next to nothing to try and get a project or even design the site before even getting the job, it is to be expected that some will think that all designers do this. We really cannot expect everyone to know everything about how to build a website and as such we cannot expect them to understand how much time actually goes into building a custom website.