The Outdated Site Dilemma

In the SitePoint Forums, cereal_girl asks the question, “How do we get it through to clients that a web site requires a commitment of time?”

cereal_girl develops CMS sites for clients, hands them over … and then wonders if they’ll ever be updated.

She goes on to ask, “Do we care that most clients never really do update their easy-to-update sites? Is it right to just take their money and let their out-of-date sites chase clients away?”

I once had a client come to me with the stupidest idea ever. It was so stupid that I had to leave the meeting for a minute to compose myself! It was simply idiotic, and it still makes me laugh to this day (5 years later).

After much debate in the office about whether we should develop the site for this guy or not, we decided we had to. After all, what if this guy was a genius ahead of his time? What if he had amazing energy and skill to make it a huge success? What if the idea was brilliant but we just didn’t “get it”?

We developed the site and did the best possible job for the client. It failed miserably.

We make numerous pitches to clients to develop sites they can update and manage themselves. Many clients insist on this. It’s a huge selling point for us and many other web developers. But of all the sites we’ve built that can be updated by clients, I’d guess that just 1% are ever updated.

cereal_girl, we need to sell clients what they need. But we also need to sell clients what they want. The only thing a web developer can do is provide the best possible solution for a client based on a thorough assessment of their needs and wants.

If the client doesn’t take full advantage of the asset we provide, that’s not an issue for the web developer –though we need, as businesspeople, to be continually assessing how our solution fits the client’s needs, and continue to make recommendations to improve their business.

[Source: sitepoint.com - Oct 2007]