Slashdot Mirror
Attitudes in IT - Mediocrity Wins?
podo asks: "I've spent the past two months of my life working almost full time on a PHP/MySQL based web site for a client. Today I received an e-mail from the client point me to a similar web site set up by a competitor. 'Doing exactly what we are doing.' The site in question is not doing what we are doing, they have no dynamic content, no web forms, just e-mail addresses. They scarcely have any content (I counted only four HTML pages) at all. The client is chastising me for taking a long time and because the other site is 'much more impressive visually' than ours. Has anyone else found themselves in a situation where their painstaking work is compared to work which is a showcase for mediocrity? How have you dealt with such clients who fail to see the difference between a shoddy rush job and real quality?"
It's called The New Jersey Approach.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
The site in question is not doing what we are doing, they have no dynamic content, no web forms, just e-mail addresses.
Yes, but was that in the specs? Or was that something you voluntarily done for your client? If the client's requirement was "a simple Web site showcasing our products and allowing people to contact us", then he's right in pointing out that some things can be done cheaper and faster. You might have implemented scalable multi-processor algorithms for error-checking the text in the Web form, what does he care?
there's nothing you can do if your client is this dumb. I wouldn't waste the time trying to explain it. Just give up.
"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it." Mark Twain.
Keep in mind that clients rarely know what they want until they seem something tangible, be it something you develop for them, or something they see.
Regardless, satisfying a client without a very detailed spec (which they sign off on) is a very difficult thing. It's never good enough, or is never matches their conception of what they were looking for.
Always, always, always, have a spec document that details exactly what they're getting for their $$$. Then, when they bitch and moan about what you gave them, point at the document. It's not a fail-safe way to do business, but it will help you not get sued. It also helps prevent scope creep, which if allowed will impact *your* bottom line, not theirs.
In my opinion, this points to a decided lack of a proper design phase in you development process.
Does the client really not know enough about the design of what you are building for them, that they have made such an 'obvious' mis-comparison with the other project?
Design is more than just 'its going to work this way', its also 'its going to work this way, because'
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I think you missed a word: visually. A good layout and visuals are not about coding and they require a totally different set of skills.
Only a plumber would care mostly about plumbing when buying a house. Most people will first judge on how it looks and how they feel it would be like to live in it.
Could it be that your client is right? I mean, if your pages have a beautiful back end, but a front end that looks like processed yak's droppings, isn't there a good chance that a prospective customer will go for the more 'professional' website?
You might have an amazing database engine, but if it is not visually appealing, there is still a major issue.
To sum up: Customers like shiny things. Make it pretty.
Objects in the blog are closer then they ap
The best lesson any developer can learn is to make sure you have a good graphic designer on your team.
:S
Sadly, it has been my experience that flash always beats substance. My bosses/clients have always spent all their time niggling about design, layout, and color selection, rather than the actual functionality
That way everyone is happy.
Erm, I don't want to sound harsh, but web design is not just programming.
The best designed web sites 'visually' that I've seen are made by photoshop and illustrator speciallists.
Not too much programming there but some times they have content too. Not functionality necessarily, but the content is still there.
Oh, yeah. It's happened to me many times in the past. The key is to:
1) Write a report explaining the importance of each and every piece of your project;
2) Schedule partial presentations at least every other week;
3) Write another report showing the weaknesses of your competitor, and providing information as to why your project (and in consequence, your client's project) is technically superior.
But don't forget that from a layman's point of view, prettier is almost always better (and the case is not necessarily true).
Utinam logica falsa tuam philosophiam totam suffodiant!
I wish it were the way for me... I still have clients asking why i'm not using that animated .gif they emailed me..
ugh...
Then you can explain to the client in question why "visually impressive" means absolutely nothing if the site is functionally inadequate.
Have fun.
This sig no verb.
Two months full time is a lot of time. Could you please be more specific? What features took so long? Does she get paid by time or project?
No -- it's not.
As many others have already pointed out, this was a design flaw. Apparently there is some disconnect from the user (client) and the developer. The developer is creating something different from what the user is expecting, wasting lots of time.
If the above isn't true, then the developer hasn't created a valid requirements spec which can be shown to the user to explain the difference between "crap product X" and "your product". Needless -- it sounds liek the client/user isn't being involved nearly enough.. where's the ongoing UAT?
Ask the client "Do you want mediocre? Cause that's what that site is, in the final analysis, and I can have it do exactly that if you want, but in the end it'll be mediocre - and I don't think that's what you want."
This sig no verb.
Are you confused about the difference between "quality" and "features"?
"Quality" and "features" are not exclusive.
Negative extremes of these two are "over-engineered" and "bloated"
Would you code in triggers even if your project didn't need them, or merely insist your DB had them in case you might need them? (Smells like over-engineered)
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
For example, you state they only have 4 pages of content - how many do you have, etc.
There are a number of things about your post that strikes me as a bit odd. For example... when we bid projects we give a firm one-time price and a firm one-time delivery date. These are always adhered to - come hell or high water. Of course, changes to the specification can cause changes to the price and timeline, and our clients are aware of that - but as long as no changes are added to the original requirements document we ALWAYS meet our deadlines. Your post tends to leave that kinda open ended (I've given two months of my life - well, didn't you SPEC THAT OUT?).
Secondly, a MAJOR part of our client relationship is TEACHING THE CLIENT what a good website is, etc. Since almost 100% of the sites we do are heavy cgi-bin coded sites (C) with database handling, image processing, etc... there are many factors in such sites that require us to teach the client why one approach is better than another approach. THIS SHOULD BE DONE UP FRONT - NOT AT THE END. You have committed to an approach, but it doesn't strike me that you have educated your client as to the pros and cons of your approach.
Step 1: Discuss the clients needs with the client and show them examples of a number of solutions and outline to the client why each solution is better/worse than the others.
Step 2: Have your client give you feedback on which approach they wish to take, and why. Keep in mind how the site might progress in the future.
Step 3: Deliver to your client a detailed specification that outlines the site, the engines, how they work, how navigation works, how the site graphics look and feel, firm FIXED price and timeframe to delivery. Include periodic goals to show the client (we actually allow the client to critique the design while it is in progress)
Step 4: Create said site, in said timeframe and for said price.
At this point, it doesn't matter what the competitor does or did - the CLIENT was offered all the solutions and all the pros and cons and was properly educated as to why each was good / bad. OBVIOUSLY the competitor also selected one of those solutions - if they didn't, you left one out of your explaination. But assuming that you did your work correctly - than the client will ALREADY know the competitors site sucks (or cost a boatload more) and they will know why.
Most likely the call you will get from your client is *hahahahaha, check out the crap that the competitor did - man are we glad we went with you*.
Ok, Have you worked out the requirements for the site.
I mean, if you have lot's of fancy features you should easily
be able to point that out to a client. If the client doesn't
want or need those features but just wants what he saw on that
other site, something probably went wrong in the
requirement/specification phase of your contract with the client.
Good specifications on what to do must be present.
And you should estimate the time,effort and price on the job
to the client. That's how it usually works.
If that's what the customer really wants, take the 10 minutes to grab the competitor's static HTML, change the phone numbers and e-mail addresses, and deliver an "alpha" project. Keep the 2 months of coding you've done- it will come in handy elsewhere, perhaps even for the same customer when he realizes his static website ain't gonna do the trick.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
And the resolution is the same in every case: either the consultant over-estimated what the client wanted (in which case, the consultant is in trouble), or the consultant has to explain to the client that his so-called alternative really isn't that great.
Nothing to see here ... move on.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
How have you dealt with such clients who fail to see the difference between a shoddy rush job and real quality?
Well, what I always do is
1. pout
2. kick my dog
3. drink
4. be curt and surly to my wife
5. think about whining to Slashdot
Best Windows Freeware
Ask him what color he wants his SQL database.
If he says "I think mauve has the most RAM", run like hell.
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
What the company actually wants is a simple program that is fairly static and simple. But when they hire a someone to program it they will tout it as extreamly important and needs everything. Speed, Usability, Flexibilty, Runs on any platform, Easially upgradeable. Just to see if the developer will flintch. My favorate line was "Lives depend on this product! It is not like any program that you did before where falure will only cost money, Failure in this application could cause people to Die!" (This was from a towns fire department wanting a Crystal Report Report to manage the Departments Payrol and keep track of the previous incodence they went to.) The important thing is to readthrew the tought and get a good plan before hand on what they really want and use your skills to ask questions on anything that you might think they need. Don't assume you know what they need ask them before and get a good project layed out before them to approve. And if they did point to X application that is has less features you point to your project specs and go You told me you wanted XYZ feature in this. This application didn't have XYZ.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
And what pisses me off more is the fact that a lot of clients order something extremely high-tech, and then they completely ignore the "using it" part, calling up once in a while asking why it's not working.
A counterquestion: Have you ever been forced to use low quality applications designed for multipurpose messing-things-up because it's easier for people with no programming knowledge to maintain than specificly designed applications that it takes less time to write? (For the record, I'm talking about Access + Visual Basic versus anything else.. my suggestion was PHP + MySQL)
Then concentrate on layout, but in the first place:
Make shure you have the fsck**g content for the site.
Then go back to refining the layout.
The backend should never take two whole manmonths for a single customer.
No wonder you have bitching customers.
It seems likes your trying to make this all porpose General Application for a group that needs a simple application. If they want the all porpose application that will let them do everythin then they will go to microsoft and get stuck on one of their application which is often way to complex for their needs. Thats why they want a custom program that is small but yet big enough to do what they want and thats it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Tell me, did you just choose a random post to reply to, or was that intentionally derailling the conversation before it got started. Either way, it makes you look like a fool.
Did you point out how much spam that would engender?
Your mistake was in the initial eval/quote stage of the project. The geek in you assumed the client would want and/or be better off with a dynamic design.
In reality, your client wanted fast now over quality and lower long run costs.
Also, if at THIS point in the project you have to explain to your client what you are doing, you didnt "sell" the project properly to begin with.
----- LoboSoft specializes in Digital Language Lab
Speaking as a long time consultant who runs into this all the time - it's not a case of quality vs mediocrity, it's a case of ignorance. :)
The problem is conveying the value to someone with no foundation of knowledge to build on.
In this particular case I would use real-world examples of how your implementation is better. E.g. "If you decide to do XYZ or ABC or whatever down the road you can with my design because I've taken the time to analyze your needs and plan for the future. The site you're looking at would cost more in the long run because of the lack of forward-looking infrastructure."
That said, I would definitely see about partnering with a good graphics designer to make your site just as pretty (or more so).
Looks sell, ask any beautiful woman!
G) if you don't like dealing with customers, don't work freelance.
The problem with this option is that in many cases it's no longer an optional option- it's work freelance or starve. Permanent private sector IT jobs are going overseas or bringing in low-wage-slaves to do them, and permanent low-skilled jobs are going to "undocumented" workers. The only thing left is freelance, retraining, or government- and government/retraining can take a year or more to get into.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
The parent was pointing out the interesting French employed, not making a comment on the article.
That's why I don't do web design. Customers want webpages that look nice and shiny and are completely devoid of functionality or standards-compliance.
What they get is graphical artists running Windows NT servers out of their homes and webpages that aren't supported and never work properly.
I don't care if there is money in it, I won't do it.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Last example was the web site that I built for my sister's opera singer (my sister is a manager).
I built a complete publishing system in PHP / MySQL that supported downloads, uploads, media clips, fan club, automatic emailing based on calendar events and geographical location (and user's permission), etc. etc. etc.
Then I was told 'Thanks, but we want flash'.
Lesson learned- more sizzle and less stake.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
If the client thinks that the competitor's site is more visually impressive, maybe it is. The client is the boss; they are paying for the work. Sure, you may have a fantastic back-end, but if the site looks dreadful, the client -- and, to a large extent, the target audience for the site -- isn't going to care.
Maybe you should have spent half of your two months working on the front-end design...?
Not only a plumber would care a lot about plumbing when buying a house, but anyone whose home has been flooded and their property damaged.
The "blame" lies somewhere in the middle here.
Home buyers who don't care about the quality of the plumbing are just asking to learn the hard way.
People who want a website but want it quick (and without any maintenance system behind the scenes) are asking for trouble later when they can't keep it updated.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
... have a problem for every solution.
If you hate what you are doing, or are incapable, the only honest thing is to stop becoming vicitm and starve to death.
If somebody with enough education to be designing websites starves to death for lack of work, they deserve to starve.
Still I want to see proof that people are starving to death for lack of jobs in the US IT industry.
Whinning, whinning and whinning is the only think I see here....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I had to comment on this one having gone through this with a customer myself in the past.
Let me bring in an old analogy. In my High School, the Cool/Rich kids had Ford Mustang GTs (5.0 litre V8 at the time). The car (so they thought) turned heads at school.
About a year later, a kid started showing up to school in a Mustang as well. Of course, he talked about how he paid for it with his own hard cash and 'Mommy/Daddy' didn't buy it for him. Upon closer investigation, we found out that the his car had a 4 banger. Learned later that he stole the "5.0" from another Ford Mustang and swapped the LS with a GT as well. Other than that, from the outside, not much looked different. From the inside...well, I'm sure I don't have to say how evident it was that this was, in fact, not a 5 litre V8, but a (1.8?) Litre 4 banger. (Put simply, it was the lowest end Mustang made to look like the expensive one)
I use this analogy when selling. One has to realize that both aspects are important. The site has to look "slick" because in reality, the customer you're dealing cannot recognize anything else. And it has to be functional because if it's not, you're going to hear from the customer well after you've sold your product, you won't get recommendations as a result of it and other technical individuals will bash you on Slashdot.
The last time I was in this predicament, I explained the situation and said "I'd be happy to put together something like that for you. It'll be done in a day or two, but I won't put my name on it, and I don't think you'll be happy with it."
"God is dead!" - Nietzsche
"Nietzsche is dead!" - God
Wow, you've never written any big websites, have you.
However, to hopefully help you out of this mess, here is some light reading that you might find useful:
1) Read Don't Make Me Think (not on safari yet) by Steve Krug. It's the best web usability book out there and will take you all of two hours to go through. His usability testing alone would have found your problem earlier.
2) Read Eric Meyer on CSS(no safari) to find out how to make your site look better. If you can find/afford a designer, use them, but learn how to abstract your design from your code and your life will be much easier. (If you like it, there is More Eric Meyer on CSS (safari) as well.
3) If you're trying to do public sites, I've found Submit Now (safari)by Andrew Chak to be an excellent read. It's common sense, but its good to be reminded.
I hope this helps, and good luck salvaging the gig.
.. is the correct spelling.
Worse yet, an inappropriate operating system.
Perhaps you just found out what your client wants. Unless your client asked for features that require dynamic content, web forms, and the like, maybe you've been gilding an unnecessary lily.
Even if you think the client is ordering mediocre design, your job is to provide the best mediocre design you can.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Design is more than just 'its going to work this way', its also 'its going to work this way, because' ...
Yes, exactly. No matter how smart you are, you must be able to prove your smartness to critics or else it's not worth anything.
>> LIVE BY THE REQUIREMENTS.
Absolutely. But it is your responsibility to make sure the client understands what will be delivered when you meet the requirements. Part of your job is translating requirements-speak into client-speak.
After being burned (as the client) I learned to schedule a session whose only purpose is to have the client outline for the designers what he thinks the requirements mean. Tends to clear up a lot of confusion before the real work begins.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Well, to be perfectly blunt, this sounds like it was entirely your fault.
As with any contract labor, you need to be specific and entirely up-front about every little detail and put it in writing. This goes double for dealing with non-techies.
If you had done this, you would have already established that your CLIENT WANTS/EXPECTS lots of bling-bling and if you wanted to get the job, you would have given it to them.
Also, you would have laid out your timeline for accomplishing the site that THEY WANT.
When you focus on what YOU WANT, you will never be able to please your customers more than just a hit and miss frequency.
So, my advice is read, understand, and apply Dale Carnegie's advice in the book "How to Win Friends and Influence People" on your next project and you will be a success.
Some clients just don't have the budget for a big site. First, to pay you to make it, and then to maintain it after you're done. $20k might be a typical development cost for a good site, but not if it's an intranet site for the local donut shop.
The important thing is figuring out what will best suit their needs before you're 2 months into development. Suppose that 2 months cost them $20k, that's a lot of money compared to say, hiring a guy for 2 days, one to talk design, and the other to produce 4 pages. You've gotta try to explain their options in terms of cost. A two month site is probably not going to be even twice as effective as a two week site, but will cost four times as much. And you'd be surprised what you might be able to pull off in two days, if the needs are well understood.
You didn't understand what the client wanted.
Probably, your skill set is not appropriate to the
needs of the client. They want a graphic designer
to create a visually impressive collection of views.
They don't care about middle logic.
Just get the truth out on the table, and everyone
will be happier in the long run.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
Otherwise, you cannot under-promise and over-deliver... ;-)
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Yes I've dealt with this one.
First, if your client doesn't appreciate what you are giving them, you are either giving them too much or not selling them on what you're giving them.
Giving them to much - there is no point in giving your client something they will not appreciate. If you can't get them to appreciate it, it's not worth your time to develop it.
Not selling them - If you are dead set on giving your client something they don't value, you have to convince them that they need what you are offering. This is an uphill battle, this can be a full time job.
They key is to find out what your client truly wants, and then build that for them. When a client doesn't know what they want, you're in big danger, those are the kind of clients who won't appreciate what you give them (they can't appreciate it if they don't know they want it) and who will come to you with new bizarre requirements late in the project (they feel they haven't asked for much up to this point).
---
I support spreading santorum
Put together a list of differences between what you are putting together and what is on the website in question. Make the list detailed as possible, things that are obvious to you are clearly not so obvious to them. E-mail the list in a polite manner to inform the client of the differences, and that yes, if they want to drop any of these features it will simplify and speed up the development process. Then they can decide if the extra features justify the extra time.
User error, execute?
Ah -- indeed you are correct. I didn't notice that -- sorry for the confusion.
From your description, you are talking about different expectations. Most of the other posts already addressed the issue of needing good graphic design (which is a different skill from coding), client needs (which you address in the project specification including delivery time), etc.
Have you meet your agreements? Has the client? Are you doing something the client doesn't need because you think it would be neat to do X regardless of whether the client needs it? Perhaps the client is pointing it out to renegotiate price or for some other reason besides the quality of your work.
My suggestion is that you need to work on the relationship and get better communications going with the client. The fact that you are having this kind of conversation in email is a tip-off. Criticism should be brought face to face. Perhaps it is just a question and not even criticism - if so, you have the opportunity to sit down and sell what you are doing and explain all the neat things it can do that the other site can't.
Once you have talked about what the client is expecting, made clear the agreements you have made and made an honest effort to figure out what the issues are and address them, then you have done all you can do. If you still have this going on - then you fire the client. No one has to work for a jackass.
hmm. maybe that should be someone else's job. this other person could take the specifications from the customer to the engineers, and then from the engineers to the customer.
wouldn't that make everything easier?
this is just a placeholder till i send back my real sig from the future.
As someone who's spent a good chunk of his career working the strange and murky waters between IT and their corporate customers, take my advice: This guy's advice is right on target. Pay attention to it.
Remember, a web development business is not a place for you to geek out. It is a business. If you can't run a business, your coding skills are irrelevant.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Sure, if you've got the person. Whoever it is, they need to be conversant with both the client's business and the design business.
I've sat in more than enough unhappy meetings between client and software firms for this lifetime. Far too often, the customer is ticked off because they didn't get what they thought they asked for. When the techies respond, "That's the requirements said.", I know that they sent someone over to the client's office for half-a-day to ask questions and write requirements. The specs were massaged and passed to the developers, but the client didn't have a clue what they said or meant. Why? Because the software firm forgot how to run a business.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
There are only two types of IT people. 1) Those who think everybody works for them, and 2) Those who think they work for everybody. In my experience the Type 2 IT person is only successful if they are very, very skilled (generally in areas beyond IT), but more often it is a recipe for failure.
It might be because your client is interested in business value, not programming. Get used to it, the business world wants to make money, not code.
If you really do mean Design though, I fail to see how this is relevant. All that matters to the client is what the site does for him and his customers - which should be in the requirements spec.
The first web site I ever worked on was for a realty company. We weren't the greatest graphic designers in the world, and we never claimed to be, but we gave them (IMHO) a pretty good site that worked well and did all they asked. It was standards-compliant, displayed well cross-platform, accounted for those with disabilities, and did the job effectively. We leave the company on less than spectacular terms.
Six months later, they've replaced most of our hard work with web pages created in Microsoft Word. Thankfully, they hadn't yet found the <lamejoke> tag I had unintentionally left in one of the pages that they had given us the text for... Unfortunately, they have left our company's name on at least one page of the site. I didn't want to be associated with lame Word-generated pages.
Six more months later, all of our code is gone. They have replaced the CGI scripts with a technology so obscure that none of us had heard of it, and NONE of our browsers supported it. All this for a realty company.
Now, several years later, someone has set their pages up with some obfuscated JavaScript and some ridiculous use of iframes. The front page alone has 54 HTML errors and 3 CSS errors. A quick check with Bobby shows around 100 accessibility problems on the front page alone. The new page was written in FrontPage, which explains why they use a rather large (kb-wise) repeating background image that is completely invisible to the user.
Sigh...
There's nothing you have that they can't take away: Absolute zero, Gentle Jack, bottom line.
Sometimes we as programmers think up neat ideas which would challenge us in our work and suggest these ideas to a client who has approached us regarding a proposal. If you're working with a small business where your contact is the business owner or a non-IT oriented type then your best bet is to make a business case for the features you suggested. How will the feature you recommended make your customer more money? If your business case is good and contains no technical details, your customer will likely be contented to wait out the remainder of your development time, assuming you're on time with your deadline. If you're dealing with an IT manager, you may want to lean towards technical information (though not entirely) as they will be more interested in your schedule than the business potential, though this doesn't sound like the your case.
Either way, keep your business case short and make sure they know you didn't use their time to create it. Something like "After supper last night I was thinking about your concerns and came up with this.." may be in order.
Best of luck,
ASA
Do you drive some simle, shoddy compact sedan, or a two hundred and fifty million dollar Moller flying car? Why did you pick the crappy one instead of the state of the art?
The next lesson you need to learn in business is that crappy stuff that works "well enough" is actually MORE valuable to most people than something extrodinary.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
We all need to realise that as techies / designers / purveyors and exponents of highly-specialised knowledge we have a duty to educate our users and clients to ensure they know what their Pound (Dollar, livestock, shiny pebble, whatever) is buying.
Yes, the client has an objective they wish to achieve but it is we techies that must accept the responsibility to inform them of the many and various pros and cons to each approach in delivering that objective. That is the only way the client can make an informed choice.
If we do this right and do this continually we will one day have a technologically informed populace and the days of coding and designing for ancient and out-moded platforms will be gone, there will be no more moronic users to anger Tech Support and all will be as light, heavenly singing will fill our ears and all things good will happen to all. Can I get an Amen on that ?
my 0.02 anyway.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
Instead of posting on slashdot, how about getting the job finished ;)
The whole reason why your working on the web is to make it pimp. If you were working for ICANN then you can afford to pen beautiful ideas. Your end product isn't a fantastic piece of code it's eye candy for the end user. Don't reinvent the wheel, save that for your personal sites or your site.
I have to disagree. I have done quite a bit of web work for my company. We are a software and engineering company, and these pages are used only by in-house staff. I have spent months writing backend applications, and minutes on the front end. Maybe they don't have any animations or massive visuals, but they are very functional and fast. If I was doing this for outside users, I would probably spend some time "prettying" (is that even a word??) it up, but nowhere near the amount of time I spent on the backend. I really don't think you 've worked on any large-scale web sites, or done web work that was for something besides just displaying stuff. We have 4 people here that do all of our backend web coding, and one who works the front end stuff, he spends a fair amount of time waiting for us to be done before he can finish up, not the other way around. I'm not familiar with the apps you mentioned, WebGUI or Zope, but I really don't believe they can do very complex custom tasks out of the box. Perhaps your point is true for certain types of web sites, but it certainly is NOT a factual blanket statement for all.
Take Care
Liberalism...the next best thing to thinking.
Many people have said "Maybe you didn't take the customer's needs into account" - but that's only one half of it. (Besides, only you know whether you did or not. We don't. For all the rest of us know, you already did your homework thoroughly.)
The competitor's site, does it work? Does it do the job? And does it have flash, or any code that breaks other browsers, or takes an age to download? (Also ask the same questions about your site)
Now if it's a well-written easily-loadable site, then maybe you have a problem. If it's an "All style, no substance" site then it's they (and your client) who has the problem.
I've seen so many (commercial) websites out there which look good, but either contain too much information (flash, etc) or not enough (the "Merely a list of e-mail addresses" scenario). Maybe it's just the Geek in me, but both of those kind of site are prone to make me start checking out competitors' sites. And let's not forget the "This site requires IEx.0 or higher" and refuse to load in another Browser situation.
I suppose the best thing to do is do a "Style and Substance" comparison chart on both your site and the competitor, and also weigh each up against whether it does it's job. Also take into account scalability. If their's scores higher, then maybe you should rethink your design. If yours scores higher, then write something stating all the reasons why your design is the more appropriate - but be prepared to rethink anyway if they won't budge.
TiggsTiggs
"120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
As others have commented, it sounds like your project has a number of problems. First off, you've got issues with scoping and specing your project before hand.
What you also have to remember is that clients have different motives: some will lead the uptake of technology and be interested in ground breaking ideas. Others will only adopt technology after its proven and others will lag behind.
What you have here is a customer who is interested in presenting an image to the customer that is consistent with that of companies in the market place. If you want to sell more to him, you either have to educate him about the benefits of your new systems. (which lagards might not care about) Lagards are more likely to be driven by a loss condition than a gain condition that is to say: Company A has a website, we better have one like theres too as we're losing out!
Working with something thats a bit more cutting edge and exciting is wonderful. But most companies aren't looking for technology to differentiate from the competition. It's right to be interested in presenting the companies with different options and indeed to push for one solution, citing your experience and expertise. But, the cold fact of the matter is that many customers believe that they know best. Generally, they are unwilling to accept a long process and they want to see results. There will always be that tension between a developers desire to plan and the urgency of the business.
Reading between the lines, I think your concerned about how this project looks to future clients. You might be thinking you haven't differentiated yourself in the employment marketplace. If this is the case, show a little humility and rack it up as a case of being a team player and doing whats right for their business. Although it might not seem like it that teamwork quality of doing what is best for the group is something that employers look for.
Well here's one book that should be in any web designers library. What makes it nice is that it uses actual web sites as examples, and point out the good and bad about them. Bridging the gap between practicality and theory.
No, no it wouldn't. And it especially wouldn't when compared to Lisp. :)
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
You hit the nail on the head when you said you're paying for the appointment -- you're not paying for a prescription. I'm a doctor, not a dispensary. Patients come to me for my interpretation skills, and my ability to "realign" their body. Sorta like a good mechanic. The customer comes in and says "something needs fixing, and I don't know what it is or how to fix it", not "I need oral doxycycline, 100 mg doses, enough for 7 days of twice-a-day dosage".
Web design is similar, in that you have a customer who doesn't know how to "make it happen", but they're certainly entitled to say what they want in the first place. Its up to the vendor (in this case the designer) to make sure they understand what the customer wants. And if designer thinks they know better, they better make sure that the customer understands and agrees.
A good analogy would be if you ordered something at a restaurant... you wouldn't want the waiter/waitress changing what you ordered or adding extra items without discussing it with you, would you?
Or, to return to the medical arena, if a patient came to me complaining about a sore throat, it would be wrong of me to do a gynecological exam, a CAT scan of their head, or anything not related to the throat issue -- unless I've expressly explained to the patient why I need to do additional procedures, and they've expressly consented. In fact, if I did, I'd expect to be censured, or possibly sued.
Post both urls.
The server that stays up the longest - wins!
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
I was involved in a simulation project for a chain restaurant that saved them $54 million over the next few years according to their own computations. The first time we showed the simulation to the president of the company--and mind you, there was vast quantities of kick ass technology on display here--his only comment was that the icons for one of the food products didn't show enough cheese. Partner up with someone who likes to make things flashy. He'll bring in the checks and first-time customers, and your technology will bring the reputation and repeat business.
I wish I had clipped and saved the column I saw some years ago in a controlled-circulation publication, I believe it may have been Industrial Photography. It's a very old problem. The columnist described it as how to deal with the client who insists that you could save very large amounts of time and money if you would only provide just very slightly shoddy work.
His answer went something like this: "I am a professional. I am exactly as good as the last job I have delivered. All my work is of professional quality, always, and I do not compromise or scamp my work for anybody, ever, because that is not what professionals do."
He went on to say that a professional must never do shoddy work and must always be willing to risk his job when asked to. He argued that it was committing career suicide to ever have shoddy work in public view with your name on it.
One of the characteristics of a professional is a sense of responsibility to "the profession" and to fellow professionals, as well as to the person who is writing the check.
I expect to get flamed by replies from people who write checks or who have been indoctrinated by people who write checks, and I don't say he was 100% right, but there is an ethical dimension to professional work.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
sorry, i was trying to make a reference but no one recognized it..
something to the effect of
I deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don't have to. I have people skills. I am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?!
this is just a placeholder till i send back my real sig from the future.
Obviously, if you just give him the same thing as what that other site presents, he'll regret it. And, you'll regret it as it probably doesn't really cover his needs. You need to find out what he needs. Then, present it to him as a clarifying document so that he can see what you're doing for him, and if he agrees with it.
Use that other site as a base and start talking to your client about what he finds good about it. Then, find out what he finds missing in that site and yours (if you have something he can see). To fill in the puzzle of his needs, you need to pump him for requirements, and avoid giving him more sugar than he can handle. It wouldn't hurt to put together a diagram of his business process pertaining to the site. But, if you think it's overkill, at least put together a Functional Specification (really just a list of things he needs the site to be able to do) that describes what the site should do as part of his business. This can be the beginning of a contract that you and your client can come to agreement on, and anything else outside that contract is out of scope until the next revision. This will reduce some of the annoyance in dealing with a none-technical person who also happens to hold the purse-strings.
= 9J =
http://www.highveldcs.com/ (making people copy & paste might avoiding killing this ..) ?
If it is then I hope you designed something more visually appealing and usable for your client. It may provide the information via a neat-o program but it's not easy on the eye.
I got it, and I believe you have my stapler.
i hate pansy republicans
In my case, I was working on contract, but the company chairman had told me that "as soon as [some legal stuff happens that were keeping them busy], we want you to come to work for us full time running engineering. In the meantime, we'd like you to do our new website." I told them what I planned to do - a full content management system, and they agreed to it. No contracts though...
I also took a verbal description of their proposed new logo and did the design and graphics for it. It's a complicated, animated graphic and it took me a long time to do it. They still use the graphic, three years later.
He paid me for the first two months of work, but complained that the site I was working on was not done yet. I showed them the skeleton of the site, which was operable but didn't have the fancy graphic design and pull-down menus etc. done yet. This kept them OK for another month. (I had other projects I was working on for other clients, as well.)
Finally, after I had worked two months without another check, and things were working fairly well, I showed them the latest version. (This was before the raft of content management systems available now was out there - I built completely from scratch, except for the pull-down menu javascript) The chairman screamed at me over the phone, refused to pay, and etc., etc.
I later talked to a friend of mine who worked there, and he said the chairman had no clue about how the site worked. What he wanted was a 1/2 dozen static pretty pages like you might get using Dreamweaver. He had no idea what content management was about, and didn't care. My friend agreed that what I was doing was the right strategy for their needs, but there was no way anyone was going to get this through the C's head.
I considered pursuing the issue, then dropped it. IMHO, the logo alone would have cost them what they paid me. Looking at their site recently, they are using a static copy of the layout I built for them, with some minor improvements. C'est la vie, I'm glad not to do business with them any more, and I shouldn't have let the C make promises about future stuff.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
The posts above are dead on when they say "get a good graphic designer on your team!" By the same token, that also means that you have to develop the entire site with this graphic designer in mind, who no doubt is NOT a programmer.
My wife and I have done a number of collaborative projects with her on design and me on programming. The first time we did this, it was an unmitigated disaster because I had not taken into account the necessities of "plugging in" the design after the plumbing was done; think of this like putting down a lathe for all of the plaster to stick to after you have run the plumbing and electrical--without the lathe, the plaster won't stay up, and consequently everything looks like crap.
The next time around, we based ALL of the pages' formatting on CSS. By sitting down and spending an hour laying out what elements were going to use which tag, we saved ourselves a lot of trouble. That way, I got to completely ignore the design, and she was able to set up the look without us screwing each other up, and if a change needed to be made, it took a minute or two as opposed to an hour of fiddling.
Have a look at CSSZenGarden for some great examples of how this kind of design approach can really make life more beautiful.
Don't Panic!
Where would I find one of those here in the basement?
clients rarely know what they want... ... is a very difficult thing.
...will impact *your* bottom line, not theirs.
satisfying a client
Then, when they bitch and moan...
So if I understand corretly, and correct me if I'm wrong, dealing with a client is alot like dealing with my wife?
I'd rather be sailing...
I know how the internet works. You don't.
I know how graphic design works. You don't.
I know what people want from a website. You don't.
I know how to apply technology in ways that will maximise the benefit that you get from your website. You don't.
I know what will get people to read a bit further, to click on a link, to buy something from you. You've never even heard of the golden ratio.
Now, given that I have all this knowledge and the ability to apply it, who would be considered the snotty, arrogant wanker? The person who knows all trying to advise the one who knows nothing what will work and what won't?
Or perhaps the person who knows NOTHING!!! trying to tell me how to do my job? And then getting on his high horse and throwing personal slurs around because I dare to suggest that I know better?
OK. I used to have an account ages ago, though I seem to have lost it. Oh well.
As a little bit of background,
I'm a geek, I suppose. Though not really. I've been using computers since I had a pong station, and whee, was that vic 20 ever something when I first got it....
I, sadly, am too poor to have managed a Degree, being cursed with poverty, singleness and an american birth certificate. (as I have seen mentioned in this topic) I have spent my whole life working to stay alive. To answer a comment I saw earlier in this post, people DO starve out here in the real world, you know. Some of you apparently seem to not understand this.
All I have going for me is the fact that people around me seem to think I am very intelligent, and I do find that there doesn't seem to be any given thing I cannot learn. So, If you're one of those pedigree-checker types, feel free to skip the rest of the message.
I've worked up and down the scale of technologies, from metalworking to coding and electronics. This gives me an interesting take on things, I think.
When I do freelance Web Design (I do, and am always glad to have the jobs, because the amount of money a guy makes doing this work is ridiculous, considering that a retarded monkey can write web pages, in fact)
I start it off with a very simple measure, which might not have occured to all you 'tremendously educated folks':
First, I make them lay it out for me visually.
No matter how mych of a tyro the Client may be they pretty much always have some familiarity with SOME sort of program. Usually Word, Powerpoint, or Excel. I tell them to lay it out to me , visually, in a doc, xls or powerpoint.
For those rare people who have not even this level of expertise (They ARE out there, though what the heck they want with a website has always evaded me) I have them literally draw me a picture. No, I don't even care if they use crayons.
This pretty well short-circuts any of the common layout conflicts I have seen occur.
Secondly, I subject them to a series of questions.
They have to be phrased in that I call "Client-Speak", a turn of phrase I have developed over the many years I have dealt with this.
Basically it's all HOW you say it.
For instance, You, as a web developer, are often wont to use statements like "And would you like a form, with associated form-handler? and would you like that information emailed, stored in local DB or both?" Pretty straightforward and specific, right?
NO. That whole statement is total gibberish to most of your clients. They might nod and go, "Oh, yes, we need that, definitely!"
What's really going on in their heads is usually a little more like this . o O ( What the hell is THAT? I guess we need it or something, or he wouldnt mention it... I better agree just to not look stupid...)
I find that I get far far better results speaking in more collloquial terms, like, for instance,
"So, are you ever going to need to EVER hear from any of the people who view this page? and if so, Do you want just an email, or do you want what they said saved somewhere else too?"
Or, "Oh, well, if you want to actually SELL things, directly off the page, that makes it a lot more complicated. You DO know that it'll cost a LOT, and take extra time, right?"
as opposed to "Well, we'll need a shopping cart applet, a database backend, and an account at paypal or something similar... This all raises cost and deadline requirements hugely"
Works like a charm.
At least, when I do jobs, I never have these problems anymore, because I follow these two simple rules.
I dunno. Like the other guys says. I think rain is wet, what the heck do I know.