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More Isn’t Always Better – Webmaster Secret #3
This has many applications for Small Business Webmasters. It applies to everything from design principles, to site organization, to site features, to bells and whistles, to the services you offer as a webmaster.
We have a rule for this:
If it doesn’t increase revenue in a measurable way for the client, then more isn’t better.
In fact, if it fails to meet that test, then more is WORSE for a small business website. And more very often costs more, but returns little or nothing.
Every feature you add to a site comes with a burden of upkeep and maintenance. So adding things just because you CAN, is not a good enough reason. Showing off your latest tricks is not ever part of a wise webmaster’s game plan.
Many bells and whistles come with a price of decreased compatibility, lowered search engine friendliness, and an exponential increase in initial costs which cannot be justified by the corresponding increase in ROI – if there is one at all. In fact, the decreased compatibility and lowered search engine friendliness can completely obliterate any positive ROI for many situations. Weight it carefully in dollars and cents, inform the client of your conclusions. They may still choose to waste their money, but if they do, it will be an informed choice, and not something they wandered into because you failed to protect their interests.
The same principles apply to your own business. Often, consolidating the kind of services you offer can allow you to produce better, and more cost effective services, at a higher profit. This is one of the keys to our success. We pay attention to the things that are both a better deal for the client, and more profitable to us, and we then revise our services so more things fit that criteria.
We have reduced the site types we deal with on more than one occasion, when we did an analysis of the changing industry, and our changing skill levels, and realized that a single line of services was taking more time, and causing more unnecessary cost for the client. Since they also had better alternatives, and keeping a bad choice open just so the client could choose a bad choice, is just not a smart business decision, we have closed down service lines on mulitple occasions based on what was in our best interests, and in the best interest of the client.
We have also reduced some of the other items we work with, when we found one method that outperformed every time. There simply was no justifiable reason to continue to offer less productive options. See, for many things, you can’t charge more for an inefficient item, the market won’t bear it. So YOU take the hit in productivity. For many kinds of services, you can streamline a system with one service provider, while others will cost you in features that are not present, functions that are disabled, and processes that do not reliably work within those service environments. Hosting is a BIG one here. The same process can take 10 minutes on one host, and two hours on another, just due to fussy things that don’t work as expected. We’ve had the difference be as much as 10 hours, on a simple dynamic site install, between one host and another! It WAS a simple process on one, but anything but on the other.
Consider carefully what is NEEDED, to keep your business sustainable, and for the client, consider what they NEED, to grow their business in the most cost effective manner. Sometimes you have to give up choices, but often, when you condense to LESS, you end up with MORE, in time, earnings, predictability, and performance.
That is worth putting some thought into.
Clients Always Say… Webmaster Secret #2
“I want a clean and simple looking website.” Another thing they say, but which means different things to different people. I’ve had dozens of clients say this, and you never quite know WHAT they mean by it. Here are some translations:
1. I want lots of white space.
2. I want a design with a white background and very simple accents.
3. I want a design with sharp edges, no shadows, no background graphics.
4. I want a design that has very little navigation.
Now, usually they mean just one of those things, sometimes more than one. But every client means something different when they say it, and if you assume they mean the same thing you do, you’ll strike out on the first attempt.
A clean design means their interpretation of order and simplicity. Sometimes that conflicts with the needs of their site – it is increasingly common to have a client who needs an incredibly complex site with multi-layers, to want only a single navigation bar, or for someone with a combination infosite and cart to want a two column layout with big boxes and large text. They simply do not realize how much space things take, and that if you want to put hundreds of things into a site, you have to have a place to put it all.
Sometimes good site organization, using multiple menus in uncluttered ways for sites with a lot of content is the key to making it appear simpler than it really is.
Achieving a “clean” look, then, becomes a blend of understanding what the client means, and working with their needs to balance what they want, with what they actually need.
It ain’t always easy… But it is usually possible to achieve a satisfactory result.
Clients Always Say… Webmaster Secret #1
“I just want a simple website.” They almost all say that. But they rarely mean it. This is not a negative thing against clients, rather, just an attempt to explain one of the psychological oddities you run into over and over as a webmaster. Understanding this can help you gauge a client’s needs more accurately, and to not make assumptions that will cause you to get it wrong.
They say it because:
1. They don’t understand what they really need to promote their business. Many business owners still think they just need one page.
2. They want to make sure you understand that it is a small budget project. Almost a subconscious manipulation tactic, if they can make you believe they only need something simple, maybe you won’t charge a lot. They tend to say this even when what they need is really very complex.
3. It looks simple because many other sites have it. They have no way of knowing what went into those other sites, or how complex many things really are. “Simple” to them means that they see it enough that they think that it has to be commonly and cheaply available – though this is often not true online.
So when a client comes to you and says, “I really just need a SIMPLE little website.”, don’t start pricing and planning until you find out what they really need, and do some education about what works online, and what does not.
Because almost every client says it – but only a small fraction actually know whether they mean what they say or not.
A Jungle in My Window
My view of the back yard is obstructed by green. This is a good thing! I have plants over a foot tall in my hydroponics system. Currently have about 70 plants in it, and we will add about another 20 sometime over the next few days. Working on building another system to hold about another 80 also. That oughta be enough to keep us in lettuce and broccoli at least.
Most of the plants are in early stages of growth. The lettuce is big enough that I can rob it of a few leaves for a salad each evening – somewhere around 15 lettuce plants are big enough to do that with. The broccoli raab is almost ready to sprout some buds – about eight plants growing like fury! Half the plants are still very small though, barely started, many still in the two-leaf stage, some finally sprouting a second tier of leaves. The chard has half-sized leaves, about 5 per plant, but is not ready to be able to use – the few leaves I could gather would not be enough to be of value yet.
The big stuff is finally big enough that it is now difficult to distinguish individual plants. And some experimental bush beans are turning out to be more like pole beans without the tendrils, weaving their way up through the other plants, finally forming buds that look like they may be blossoms.
After working so hard for it, and waiting weeks and weeks to get this far, it is satisfying to be able to selectively harvest once a day. But I am impatient for more of it to bear, because I need SO much more than once a day! And the kids need it too.
So right now, I look at this as a beginning, but know it is not the whole thing. Still much work to do to get it to do what we really need it to do. Overuse at the moment could postpone that day, so I reluctantly restrain myself from grabbing salads whenever I need.
Logistically, is it possible to provide for all of our veggie needs this way? I still don’t know. Because I don’t yet know how long growth takes in this system, or how much each is capable of bearing, between those plants that bear repeatedly, and those that bear once and need replaced, and all of those that fall somewhere between.
I am already planting once a week, a new round of about 20 more plants. Eventually we may need to step that up. There is the garden for the summer also, which will take the burden off the system temporarily, though I am CERTAIN my daughter will want the indoor bug-free ones instead of the outdoor grown ones!
No point to make, really, just a ramble to give you an idea of what is happening with it, and what our results were.
Can You Do it for $20?
A prospective client asked me that yesterday. I said no… Our price is $25.
Sometimes I say yes. This time I didn’t.
He then said, “Some other companies say they can do maintenance and hosting for $20.”
I replied, “They cannot do for $20 what we do for $25, and we cannot do this for $20.”
Sometimes I come down in price – we sometimes have a little wiggle room, we sometimes are able to negotiate with a client to reduce services that they do not need as much, or we sometimes can see that a particular job will be worth doing and will pay us back if we come down on one price.
But this time I could not. This particular service is already stretched to be able to offer it at $25 per month. And it offers a ton of value. To come down would mean running into problems as we overstretched ourselves.
I have always had the confidence to say no when I knew I could not come down on a price. But this is one of the first times I have been able to boldly say that the value made it worth it – and it honestly does make it worth it. That felt good. I recommend trying it!
If you have thought out your prices, and there is wiggle room, there is nothing wrong with negotiating. If there isn’t though, sometimes you just can’t do it. When you can’t, it is easier to be bold when you know your prices are worth the value.
If you are destitute and have more time than money, you have nothing to lose by coming down even when you know it is worth more (and sometimes we do so for reasons of kindness – when we choose to help someone out). But if you are in a position where doing so will cost you over time, it isn’t wise to do so, especially in situations where the client can probably afford it if they understand the value.
The Nameless Faceless Merchant
“Please”, she said, “I don’t want my home address on my website. My husband is in law enforcement, and I don’t want people to be able to locate us.” I suggested she have a Post Office Box. “No”, that was an extra expense, she didn’t want that. Just a store, with a shopping cart.
“No name on my site” another client said. Competing with large faceless corporations, her only advantage was being personal, and she did not want her name public.
Many of our clients buy into the myth that Private Domain registration is a good thing.
In this highly competitive market, all of these are fatal. Consider:
If you are a small company, people want to know who is behind it. You can rely on your reputation like Dell and Wal-Mart. You have to give them some idea of who you are. Your name is essential. Your reputation is more about YOU than about your company name. Someone needs to be able to Google you and learn enough about you to know if they trust you, or at least read a bit to see if they think you are someone they might want to do business with. This is especially important when competing with large and impersonal corporations – being someone approachable is your only advantage.
Paranoia about your name being on the web is not a valid reason to keep it off your website. It is already out there. Not using it on your website won’t make one bit of difference to anything except your ability to sell. If you are going to have a business, this is the cost of doing business. Because frankly, a website without a name has only the minutest chance of every serving the purpose of helping you earn.
You MUST have a mailing address. Even a post office box. If a customer has no place where they can serve papers in the event of a dispute, then they won’t buy!
Private Domain registration has been used by every scammer in the world. If you use it, you look like one of them. Besides, it doesn’t really protect you, does your business more harm than good, and can potentially cause some very serious problems.
If there are three merchants on the street, two whose faces you can see, and a third who wears a mask, who will you buy from?
Web business requires the maximum degree of possible transparency. You don’t have to post pictures of yoru kids or give your home address. But you have to have a name, and a mailing address, and as much validation of those as you can get. Without them, you are wasting your time and money.
A Gift of Radicchio
I think a lot about vegetables lately – because I need quite a bit, and they are expensive in Wyoming. I am often surprised at how the Lord answers prayers, and try to make the most of it even when the answer isn’t what I really wanted.
I went out this morning to check to see if the strawberries we planted last summer were greening up yet – a friend said theirs were, and I was surprised because it is early for Wyoming. We had a mild winter though, even finding spinach plants that had managed to winter over – quite a few, in fact, and discovering more every day. The grass and dandelions are already making a comeback in the garden – the weeds grow long after the edible greens die, and they come back sooner in the spring too. So weeding starts before the ground is even fully thawed it seems.
Today, in last summer’s lettuce beds, I found some red heads poking up from the dirt. A plant that had grown leafy last summer was forming small tight heads – distinctly red with white veins. Close inspection and a nibble on a leaf proved it to be Radicchio.
I hate Radicchio. But I had prayed for vegetables, and here was Radicchio – something I had not intentionally planted, would have pulled if I had seen it last summer, and certainly did not ask for now. Our mesclun mix has 6 things I like, and three that I do not like. I do not like curly endive either, but it is distinctive enough to yank out the minute the leaves start to frill, and the arugula that makes me gag is also easily recognizable early on, and therefore erradicated without hesitation. The Radicchio had been green and red last summer, and had disguised itself as red lettuce, thereby escaping extermination.
Now I knew it for what it was. It is early spring. It will be many months before we have vegetables in the garden. It will be weeks before the plants in my indoor hydroponic system bear anything worth mention. Here was this vegetable, volunteering to grow NOW. Pickable and eatable, NOW. It demanded respect… and it plead for me to acknowledge that I had asked, and had been given.
I do not like Broccoli Raab really either. But it grows fast, and produces well out here. I find I can tolerate it, even come to enjoy it, if it is steamed, rinsed, and then sauteed in garlic butter. It has a similar flavor to Radicchio – sharp, bitter. If Broccoli Raab, then why not Radicchio?
So I searched out recipes – many of which made me want to cook more! One of which I have the ingredients for (important when many call for items I’ve never even seen in the local grocery stores), and which I can actually eat (many call for cured meats or cheeses that I cannot have), and which I think I can whip up and enjoy with dinner.
So I am heading to the garden to harvest some of the unexpected Radicchio, hoping I can like the gift I have been given. Trying my best to make lemonade of lemons.
There Are No Fireflies in Wyoming
In the book, the family crossed Wyoming, and stopped to camp one night and caught fireflies. The author could not have known… It was obvious she had never been here, or if she had, she had not noticed that one thing. Because Wyoming has no fireflies. Plenty of mosquitoes… none of which have lights on the end. Of course, if you grew up where fireflies were a common thing, you might never realize that someplace else did not have them!
It is details like that which only those who DO know will notice. But when they do, you lose all credibility!
This is pretty important if you write for a living. But I think there is a broader application also. We often make assumptions based on our own background and experience, and never realize that they may not be accurate for other situations.
We may make assumptions that are incorrect in client negotiations, in assessing an unfamiliar target market, or in networking situations. They can be embarrassing, or even disastrous for our business.
Sometimes we make those assumptions about our own skills or expertise, due to lack of experience, and end up muffing the job. That is REALLY embarrassing.
The most important thing that experience teaches us in this regard, is to not assume things, to research more carefully, so we don’t try to catch fireflies in Wyoming.
Why Would ANYONE Judge VALUE Based on Hourly Pricing Alone?
About a week ago an overseas outsourcing company contacted me through a venue that I frequent. Since I was looking for a coder for a specific database conversion project, I asked them for a quote – they had told me that it could be done for $10 per hour. I send them the two databases, along with instructions about what needed to be done. I knew it would take me about 5-6 hours to do it. It was not work I liked doing, so I was interested in outsourcing it.
Their quote came back for 24 hours of work, at $360. Hmmm. That isn’t $10 per hour…. And it is more than triple the maximum amount of time that I’d allote to the project.
I then contacted a regional coder – she charges $85 per hour. Ouch! That is a LOT compared to $10 per hour! Or even $15!
But, she could do the work in 2-3 hours. Hmmm…. $170 to $255, instead of $360! Which one is the real bargain? Especially when you consider language, cultural, time zone, and legal recourse limitations.
Even when you are comparing local with local, hourly rates are just NOT a reasonable basis of comparison. The best way to judge, is to ask for a list of included services, and a flat rate, or at least a firm estimate. Any experienced professional can give that, and a newbie can still offer reasonable guarantees that it won’t go over a certain amount.
Often, higher hourly rates pay for the following:
1. Reduced legal recourse risk. It is easier to recover from people who are within the same country as you, or who are in a country that has reciprocal agreements with your country.
2. Easier communication – time zones, language and cultural differences, or inexperience on the part of the technician in communicating with clients can all cause communication barriers, which equate to lost time or poorly done work.
3. Better tools – Better tools mean better quality output, and faster work speeds. The right tools can shave hours off many kinds of tasks, so hourly rates become meaningless when you are trying to compare the cost of one service that is done manually, and one that is done with better tools to do it more efficiently.
4. More experience – this means both faster output speeds, AND better quality. But it also means that an experienced professional has knowledge of “gotchas” that might bite you if you work with someone who is less experienced. For example, in our industry, there are certain things that municipalities or non-profits of certain types have to do with their sites, or which they cannot do on their sites, which are different than the standards required by small businesses. Experience protects those entities from potential lawsuits.
5. More Accurate Applicable Charges – One company may charge for research time, if they lack experience in a certain area, another may not. One company may charge for negotiation time, another may not.
6. Less Lost Time – Higher quality and accuracy can be worth paying a higher hourly rate for, because it saves you in the long run. If a lower hourly rate means work has to be redone, it costs you even if you don’t have to pay for it directly.
7. Attention to Different Kinds of Details – Often higher hourly rates are charged for higher risk projects because there are more details to attend to. Simple projects do not require this, but complex ones may. Often, as a business grows, so do their risks, so a service level that was appropriate for a startup may not be appropriate for a larger faster growing business. Higher risks almost always mean higher hourly rates, but they also result in more protection for the client.
There are MANY good companies who charge low rates. There are MANY new businseses and service providers who can do a very good job at a fair price. This is not in any way a condemnation of lower priced companies.
Rather, it is an encouragement to actually compare the REAL price, and the REAL VALUE rather than making a knee-jerk reaction based on the appearance of price, by using a number which is actually meaningless.
It would be like saying “A car that gets 35 MPG is better than a car that gets 12 MPG” without comparing anything else, like the reliability of the car, the size, the intended purpose, or even the side the steering wheel was located on!
Judge price and value based on factors that really matter, and you’ll find that what appears to be the lower price, often isn’t!
A Rant About Grants
Who spends $3000 to get information on getting grants, but will not invest that much into their business instead?
We’ve been getting grant applications lately from people who are TOTALLY unprepared to operate a business, and completely uncommitted to their business! How do we know? Because they have NOT done what is OBVIOUS to even TRY to start their business!
Instead, they have come to our website, filled out our grant application, and tried to persuade us that they are deserving of a business grant, when they have not done anything to even start their business. Not all of our applicants, but many of them.
Here is the reason I am so frustrated over this:
They are not even READING what the grant IS!
We are getting people who are asking for MONEY, even though our site clearly says, in many places, NO MONEY IS AWARDED.
Most of them do NOT need a website! Don’t even WANT a website, but since they did not read the grant information, they are clueless about what they are even applying for!
So these people, who want an offline business, which they could bootstrap if they were smart about it, are sitting there talking about their dream, applying for grants so someone else will give them their business. Most of them could get started if they’d just start doing something. Start small. Start bit by bit and work toward it. Do SOMETHING productive other than just running around looking for someone to fund it for you.
The great irony is that some of them have PAID MONEY (often a GREAT DEAL of money) for information on getting grants. In some cases, it was enough money that they could have started their business if they had been smart about what they spent it on.
It is peculiar to me that they will spend money on a supposed shortcut, but they will not spend the same amount of money on a more sure way of doing it.
So I’m puzzled at human nature today. If you just stick your hand out and expect it to be filled, no one will ever consider you to be deserving. You’ve gotta do what you are capable of doing. I am going to have to find a polite way of communicating to these people that they got taken on the grant information, and help them to understand what it takes to REALLY have a business.
‘Cause I ain’t going to hand you money. And I’m only gonna hand you a website if you’ve worked hard already and can indicate to me that you will actually do something worthwhile with it.
Answering My Associate’s Question
She’s launching a new service (quite a good one actually). She wanted to know if she should set a cap on how many she would take on. Each client pays $25 per month for a specific service. This was my answer to her:
No, do not set a cap, but do some planning instead:
It is good to figure out how many you can handle, BUT… beyond that, your task is not to LIMIT it, but to figure out what would be needed at the next level.
- At what point would you need help?
- What things could you systemize to speed up and thereby increase the workload? This is the first resort usually because it is free, just takes smarts.
- What things could you automate? This is the second option if it costs to do it, first if it can be done without additional cost.
- What would you outsource? This entails a breakdown of the tasks involved in the whole service, and figuring out which ones you WANT to do, which ones you COULD outsource easily, etc. Remember, outsourcing is the THIRD choice!
- Whom would you outsource to?
- How much could you afford to pay them per task, and still profit?
It is good to do some calculations on that now, so that you know what your direction is when you get there, and so that you can start laying groundwork for this as you get 10, then 20, then 30 clients.
If you want to grow your business, as my associate does, then planning when you outline a new service, can help you know where it can go, and help you avoid overwhelming yourself at a later point. You’ll know when you need to adjust, and HOW you need to adjust, so that growth happens more smoothly and service delivery continues consistently.
Norwex Sites Go Public
This past fall, a delightful lady from Canada contacted us about creating “replicated websites” for her downline. We told her we could do much better than that, and provide them with a site they could make changes to themselves, so they’d get indexed by the search engines. We moved forward, and have since sold several of the sites to her downline.
The sites are now going public – so anybody can purchase one if they are a Norwex rep. We provide custom design and help with the most technical parts of the site personalization, so we don’t do as much for the sites as we do for a full site build. That keeps the pricing lower than our normal websites.
We’ve felt pretty good about this, because it was an opportunity to do something we’d known we could do for a long time, but finding the right client was difficult. Our programmer is finishing the auto-install script for them, which will make the process even faster for us, and keep the pricing stable for the site owners.
This has been one of those pivotal contracts for our business. One that has opened all kinds of doors, and has caused me to think about business differently. It laid the groundwork for our Kit websites, and for our franchise. Before this, I didn’t really have a good concept in my head of the kind of value and training we coudl provide with our franchise, or whether we could offer work referrals. With this project rolling forward, all of those things became clear, and possible.
It has also got me thinking differently about coding our own solutions, and customizing existing solutions. There are more possiblities now, and they are more affordable because our resources are more fluid.
Often, when an opportunity presents, we don’t see at the time where it can take us. This one felt like a good thing, and I knew it was a key to growth. But I could not have predicted the way in which it would open my mind, and how it would change our business to open up more possibilities that I had not yet thought of, or thought possible. Thing is, I had this kind of contract partially thought out three years ago. Then I put the final pieces together about a year ago. It took time after that for it to bear fruit, but when it did, the payoff was well worth the wait. I find that many things that we do are that way. It takes a good deal of time to bring them to a point where they pay, but it is worth it when they do. Often the benefits are broad spread and unexpectedly good.
From that, I encourage you to stick to it. Keep working on the details until you get it right. Move on to other things, but keep it open and alive in the background if it does not yield results right away. Often some things just take time to “ferment”, and when they do, the results are incredible.
Details about the sites are in the sidebar, under the Downline Sites website link.
Gardening doesn't have to be that hard! No matter where you live, no matter how difficult your circumstances, you CAN grow a successful garden.
Life from the Garden: Grow Your Own Food Anywhere Practical and low cost options for container gardening, sprouting, small yards, edible landscaping, winter gardening, shady yards, and help for people who are getting started too late. Plenty of tips to simplify, save on work and expense.
