Websites That Don't work
Just lately Karen has been spending more time on the internet than usual. Amongst others she's seen her share of sites for bathroom, kitchen and bed manufacturers. What she's noticed is that there are very few that are well designed. None of them appear to make the stressful job of moving house any easier. There seems to be a mix of bad design and plain poor usability. As an example, there's a site which offers an online quote for the removals. You have to move through each room of the virtual house and add the items you own. If you have three coffee tables you click it three times. Each time saying ok to the JavaScript prompt. Who in their right mind is going to sit and click that many times simply to get a quote? Why not simply have a checkbox next to each item and an input box for the number you own?
Then there's Alladin's Architectural Antiques. Whose "how to find us" page is plain useless.
Karen suggested last night that I "cold call" some of them and offer my services. Is this a good way to create business? I don't know. I only hope that the rush to get a website will soon be followed by a rush to get a decent website. Karen is probably typical of most users. She often turns to me to show her what she's done wrong. More often that not she's done nothing wrong. It's the fault of the web developer.
I'm no Jakob Nielsen but show me a website/intranet and I'm sure I can find fault in it. If there's one thing the English are still good at it's finding faults and complaining about things...
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I honestly don't know how a company would take to your calling them and basically saying their website in inadequate. At the same time, if you end up using one of these companies, you may be able to redo their website as the conversation could come up when you are discussing pricing and the like.
Last year, when shopping around for catering halls for my wedding that will take place next year, this exact scenario happened. One of the halls my fiance and I liked, {Link} has a "coming soon" page. In our discussions of pricing, I mentioned that I would like to redo their website as it could promote business. At that point, I met with the owner of the catering hall to discuss the what the website would cost and how we could use that as credit for the wedding. Of course, as you can see from the website, I didn't choose this hall and in return, I was no longer wanted to do the website.
Doug's suggestion sounds good. You are restricting yourself to one client per market sector, however, if you barter that way.
If you're going to cold call, the trick is to have something positive to sell - rather than just telling them their web site is crap.
I recently came across an interesting article on selling accessibility ({Link} You could follow a similar tack.
We have a bloke in NZ that is currently talking about the same thing:
{Link}
His "Hall of Shame" is here:
{Link}
If you are going to cold call, you might want to invest some time and mock-up a basic html page that illustrates some of the improvements you would make and demonstrate this too them. I have found that small business websites are generally built by hobbyists or people new to the industry and in most cases, the owners of such websites are not aware of how they can be made more efficient or standards compliant. Most just want some sort of presence as all of a sudden they have a domain name that matches their business, at the cheapest possible price.
I agree, it's not about telling them their website is poor, it's about how you can improve it.
Also, a great deal of these companies would *like* to put an online catalogue up, but find that keeping it updated is the hard part.
Most websites that have tried, usually revert to something more static that essentially just says "your're better of coming into the shop".
With what you know - you are in a position to change this.
Jake, what you want is a third person to make the two companies aware of this discussion (i.e. a disinterested party like me to mail them) so they can see for themselves that you're straight up, so you wouldn't seem like a shifty cold caller, giving you some credibility. (You may also want to remove this post from the discussion).
Hey Jake
Should you cold call them? Absolutely! What have you got to lose? You have to put aside your developers head and put on your salesman's head.
Forget phoning for now though - pick local shops and check to see if they have web sites then have a wonder round. Face to face is always easier, plus it's free, plus you can show them lovely print outs of what nice sites you design look like, plus it shows you've made the effort to go see them, plus it shows you're a nice young man and not some slimy salesman. They're less likely to brush you off out of hand.
If that fails, try writing to companies further afield. How can you describe a nice web site over the phone to someone who may not be very keen to start with? You can say visit "www.rockall.co.uk" while we're talking - what if they've not got a pc at work or use the same phone line for internet and phone calls? What if they've got a customer in?
Write them a nice letter or send them an email. Make sure it's personalised so they know you've visited their site. Mention their business and products in it (Mr X, we'd love to help you sell your chairs / tables / cars / blow up.., etc, etc). If this sounds like a ball ache then two words for you -"mail merge". Send them a print out or picture of a generic sample site you knock up. Give them a rough idea of price, leave it a day or two then call and follow up.
You have a strong advantage in what you do - most people you contact will want a better web site - you just have to convince them that it'll be cheaper and easier than they expect, plus a good money spinner.
Blimey I've ranted on a bit. I'm sure you can't tell I'm at work, bored, waiting for 6pm to do a change that could have been done quite happily during office hours. Pah!
I've just been feeling the Accessibility meme moving around the industry lately - seems like an awakening of sorts, folks finally realizing user experiences with a website shape user views of a company.
Nah... I guess this stuff has been around for a while... seems to be more prominent lately, probably a result of the market (us) trying to sell more to make up for the 'less' we are getting paid as things continue to settle in the wake of the 'bubble'.
Cheaper, better, and faster is the mantra... but without any 'better', your cheaper and faster probably won't mean a whole lot.
{Link}
In regards to Jake's last two paragraphs. One of the things i've heard said by a "usability professional" is that users don't make mistakes, websites do. I think that's quite true.
My company had a miserable web site but the group responsible for it and our senior executives thought it was great. Without being asked I put together a summary of a few select sites to contrast the user experience, aesthetics, and compliance with known standards. Most of it went over their heads. They kept looking at it from their perspective. I updated the presentation to contrast how users actually want to use our site and it became more clear that they need some professional help.
In my experience most traditional "brick and mortar" companies of good size have weak web sites. Contrast with internet startups who realize that they live or die by the quality of the user experience and ease of use. Consider how much time and effort went into designing most showrooms - product placement, the presentation, lighting, the flow as you walk through... most companies take great pride in the store/brand image and invest accordingly. Convincing them to treat the web accordingly and to enhance what they have could be hit or miss on a cold call. I would suggest treating this like a preparation for a job interview... research the audience, visit the company store, take pictures and screenshots, contrast web/store inconsistencies, differentiate competitors, try hard to find a contact on the inside, and then invest some time creating a quick demo site that showcases your capabilities/concepts and understanding.
Cheers!
I am not a web site developer, but I have had a number of approaches about having web sites built, most are filed under B for bin.
The ones I have taken note off are ones that show something definitive such as a sample web page for example, along with an idea for cost.
Or on one occasion with a definitive list of possable tweaks, which highlighted how it would improve customer satisfaction and ROI, this last fact also included the cost again.The chap had obviously put in a fair bit of time to prepare the cold presentation, but it did make me sit back and look at it, not something you would really want to be doing to that depth, but if you could find a away of screen shoting a site, with few pointers as to what you could do (probably from some sort of template list) and a idea of costs involed, be along with how it could provide a return.
If you are having to do some selling of your self can I suggest you contact your local Business link or college for a communication\selling yourself course, they can be quite useful.
Good luck
Jake - slightly off topic but after watching the channel 4 programme - Risking it all {Link} they mentioned they spent £4,000 on there website {Link} - yes the guy did look professional (well certainly his camera setup did - but is there any point having multiple camera lights + digital SLR for pictures my phone could have taken) but I think the site only consists of 4 pages - so maybe worth looking at new businesses as a possible angle.
£4k???? For that?
OMG. OMG. OMG.
Man I should so be a freelancer! I doubt it even has any sort of CMS at the backend either!
That's amazing!
Oh and BTW I've got professional camera lighting equipment - cost me £30 second hand, and a pretty good DigiCam, and I have long hair and are young and hip - man I should so have £4k in my pocket now!
Yeah, I saw that Mark. They knew how to spend money! I can imagine 4k is a whole lot when you're working for a pair of ladies like that. The amount of time needed to get it right would soon swallow that up. Whether they got it right in the end was another things. At least their business seemeed to be doing well.
Thanks guys for the feedback. I'm hoping it will never come to this approach but it's not looking good at the moment.
Hi Jake,
My employer, due to internal politics, paid an external web developer to develop a 4-page recruitment site that I could have done better myself.
It cost £4000+, didn't work in anything other than IE6, and consisted of just HTML and a few photos - which the company provided...
Suffice to say, if we could all get work like this on a regular basis, we'd be driving sports cars and spending 6 months per year in the Bahamas....
Lee, if your boss has any more crazy ideas, then sign me up. We'll do it joint and have 2k each! muahahaha!