Credit or Blame

If a client makes money this week from their website, I get a thank you, and raving compliments. If a client site slumps and doesn’t earn, I take the blame for providing them with a lousy website. That is the drawback of being a web professional – good, or bad, we get the credit or blame.

Problem with that is that we can only influence some things. A client just re-hired us to rework some on-page copy, and some title and description tags. Two years ago, she came to me with a site that had just tanked in Google. We went through and recommended some very simple changes. Two weeks later, she was at the top of Google again, where she stayed. I can’t really say that what we did even had any effect. It is possible that Google would have put her back anyway. But we got the credit, and more work because of it.

Early on in the web game, I realized that we could not just build a site and walk away. That if we did not continue to do some hand holding and to be there to help with traffic issues, not just design and technical issues, that we’d lose clients long term. So we started to figure out how to offer that stuff long term. Our client sites work much better when they know they can come to us for stats analysis and marketing suggestions any time. And we might as well throw in some simple stuff with our maintenance fee, because the fact is, if we don’t, we get the blame when the site fails to earn, and we lose clients in droves, and have a harder time getting more, as opposed to when they WORK, and clients recommend new clients.

So I realize there are some things that I SHOULD take the blame for, and many things I can influence.

I do find it amusing though, when things just happen, over which I did not actually have control, and I get the compliments or complaints.