Part I of III

I don’t like sales people. When a sales person’s lips are moving, I assume they are lying. I realize this is not a very rational, or realistic thought process most of the time, as typically they are just trying to help. So why do I have this inner defense mechanism that keeps me on edge? Well, I guess one just has to look around and they can see where my paranoia stems. Whether its mortgage back securities sold by Goldman Sachs, the local mechanic who likes to rip off their customer, or the scum that just conned granny out of her life savings via email, fraud is everywhere, and is an unfortunate reality of life.

In walks the ugly paradox monster, because guess what readers? I have to act, often, as none other than a Website and SEO sales person. Seems like a bit of a problem, to actually be something that you distrust and dislike. Perhaps I can use my distaste for this necessary activity to my advantage? Lets view what activities cause my distrust in fellow sales people, analyze them, and make sure we don’t give off these negative signals when we are doing our part in the world of “sales”.

Nickel and Dime, Hidden Cost, Eye Glass Syndrome

I have nothing against Ophthalmologist in general, never met a mean one, and I am all for good eyesight. However, I have to say my experience after the examination part, the part where I actually get to pick the frames for my glasses, can be a bit frustrating.

Lets say I find a pair of eyeglass frames I like, and lets pretend that they have a price tag associated with them of $70.00. So you tell the nice helper bee, “hello, I want these eye glasses”, and the nice helper person sits you down, and starts the “buying process.” Ever notice, when you go to actually buy the eye glasses, you get to sit down, across from the person selling you the glasses? It is a similar setup to buying a car, or signing a mortgage loan. Why is this? The cost of these glasses to be quite frank is about 1/3 of my weekly grocery bill, and last time I checked, I didn’t have to sit across from the cashier on a little desk as she rang up my 3lb. bag of generic “Captain Crunch”. Well my friends, the answer is all in the details, and by details, I mean hidden costs.

So here we are, ready to spend our $70.00 on eye glasses, and then the little helper person says, “Do you have children?”  Indeed I do, I tell the helper person, being a proud, and sometimes boastful father, I am about to go into a diatribe about how cute my kids are, when I am suddenly interrupted by a forceful sales pitch. “Well then, there is no doubt you are going to need our scratch resistant coating, otherwise, if your children so much as pick your glasses up, they will forever be ruined.” Well, the helper person has me, lets face it, my kids are cute, but can be destructive little dings-dings sometimes. There is no doubt that at some point they will indeed pick up my glasses. I haven’t even answered “yes” or “no” and the helper person is already writing my consent for this $50 purchase of the “Scratch Resistant” coating on my bill.

The nice helper bee then asks “Do you drive at night?”. I answer with a yes, not often, but it certainly happens. “Well then, you are going to need an anti-reflective coating on the lenses, otherwise, the glare can cause a dangerous situation at night, where your vision can be impaired by the glare from other car’s headlights,” and again her pen goes into battle with my bill, and she successfully carves out another $35 charge for this, the 2^nd necessary coating.

The helper person gives me a smile as she asks yet another question “do you go outside in the sun very often”. Ah ha, I think to myself, I got her this time, I spend most of my time indoors, and have even earned the nickname “vampire” from my wife and a few close friends. I confidently answer “no I don’t” on this one. The answer doesn’t seem to please her, and she is forced to put her ink laden weapon down, momentarily saving what is left of my poor bill.

Needless to say, this Q and A with the helper person went on for another 2-3 more “Coatings” of one kind or another, until my bill went from $70.00 to $210.00. So what’s my point? Well, if you are a manikin who lives in the controlled environment of a department store, you can get glasses for $70.00. However, if you are a real live person, who moves around, drives, and lives life, well, those $70.00 glasses are pretty much useless to you.

Don’t do this to your clients or potential clients. One of your jobs as a salesperson is to listen to the client, and be upfront about the charges and services you think they may need. Don’t sell them anything they don’t need, and just include everything in the original price that is necessary for the base product to function.

Case in point, when we give out a base price for a Content Management Website ($850.00), we include title tags, description tags, keyword tags, our SEO addon for wordpress, keyword suggestions based on their industry, google analytics, and submitting the site to the major search engines in that price. Why do we include these services in the base price of the website? Well, unless you tell us otherwise, we assume you want to be found on search engines. A function of your website should be basic SEO steps to try to get your website found on search engines. The basic functioning necessities of a product or service should be up front and baked in the cake. There is no reason for me to sit across from you on a little desk and say: “so, now that you have purchased this website, do you, ever want anyone to find it? Ohhhh you do want people to find your website? Well then, let me just find my pen here”.

Part II coming up in a few days…

Over the course of the last 10 years working in the Columbus Web Design community, we have dealt with many different types of companies and people. We have seen the customer that just says “I want something that is eye catching, and I like the color red” and has no further input, all the way to the client who knows exactly what they want, and even has a graphic example for you, with associated hex values to boot.

The latter clients, the ones who know exactly what they want, are obviously not an issue, as they have done all the heavy lifting for you. However, the guy who wants something “eye catching” can be a formidable opponent, if you don’t know where to start.

So how does one get the details they seek from a client who doesn’t really know what they want? Let’s take a look at 5 things we have learned over the past 10 years in web design, that will hopefully help everyone out a bit.

1) Ask the client to show you some sites they like to use.
It might be yahoo, espn or some other fairly generic monster of a website, but it is a starting point. If the client is showing you a website they use, they must find the website enjoyable and somewhat easy to navigate, otherwise they wouldn’t include it on the list. We usually start by looking at the navigation. Is it dropdowns, rollover effects, graphic heavy, does it hold state, is it wide, thin, etc? Other things to look for when they show sites they like/use, how many colors are there? Is the website loud, or clean? Is it photo heavy? Is the header large, with imagery, or is it thin, clean, and soft? Does it use icons? Is it fixed width or does it flex with the browser? Does a movie pop up as soon as you arrive, or is it more text based? Any and all observations that can be gleaned from these client provided websites can help you find the design your client is looking for, even if they aren’t sure what that is.

2) Define the navigation – use a sitemap
Is this going to be a 50 page website to start off with, that will be expanding quickly via a content management system, or is this a pure internet marketing website, that the client never envisions will be larger than the 5 pages they are going to start out with? Pin down the answer to this question, and start to get the “parent” categories penciled in. It will help you and the client determine the logical size and best placement for your navigation. It will also help to stimulate navigation concepts (or the necessity of) for sub. navigation and footer navigation. If there will be drop down menus, don’t forget that part of your design, needs to include the “look and feel” of these menus when they are hovered over. As an added bonus, you should include a sitemap in all of your final websites anyway, as they offer some value toward SEO, so might as well get it started early in the process.

3) Ask the Client what imagery represents their business
This is assuming the website design will include some use of photography. Further, that the client needs to use stock photography in place of custom, professional photography. Well, in this scenario, it is best to ask the client what imagery they imagine when they think of their business. It may be people in suits at a meeting, or it might be a duck flying over a river. Whatever the answers are to this question, can be a great way to get a grip on what the client wants to see, and may provide you with some further design inspiration that you can run with besides “eye catching and red”.

4) Submit the design to the client, as a graphic, embedded in an html document
When you show the client the website, you want the design to present exactly how it will present when it goes live. When you just create a graphic design, and then forward it as an email attachment, you are not giving the client the full effect of how this thing will look when it goes live. Let’s say the design you are submitting is a fixed width web design. Well, this said, you have a whole other design element that you need to focus on, and present to your client, which is obviously the background that surrounds the site when it is opened in a large display setting. You cannot accurately depict this as an email attachment; you need the client to view this in an actual browser. On the flip side, if you are creating a website that will expand and contract with the browser, you need to illustrate to the client how the header/footer will look as they expand/contract to different browser settings. This little tip will help you avoid the dreaded “that’s not how it’s suppose to look” from the client when the website goes live. We have found this also tends to save some time, which can be used for other website activities, such as SEO.

5) Schedule a design meeting with the client after the first round of designs
I cannot stress this enough when dealing with a client who isn’t sure what they want, but assumes they will know what they want, once they see it. Don’t let them get away with a “No I don’t like that” or a little bit of “I really like a more reddish red, you know, like the shoes on Boots from Dora the Explorer”. You now have something that they can look at, love it or hate it; you now have a starting point. Get a nice solid meeting, for if nothing else, the work you have done so far, can and should be used as a stepping-stone toward getting this client satisfied. If possible, a nice face-to-face meeting is best. Get the client to talk specifics about what they hate, or what they like, and try to find out why. Look for a pattern, it might be that they like small icons, or black outlines on everything, or drop shadows or flying geese, it could be anything, but by golly this client likes something, and it is your job to find out what that is and make it look good.

Do you have any tips for helping your clients get the right look and feel for their websites, let us know, leave us a comment!

Our considerations in our ratings were: Price per photo, membership fees, quality of photography, usage rights, and effective searchable database (can we find what we are looking for). With all this said, here is our list of what we find to be the best of professional stock photography choices for web design on the internet.

#1 – The winner: http://canstockphoto.com

We love this site. It has a very large database of high quality images. The stock photo quality is great, and the search feature is very accurate and complete. Best part of all, no membership fees, and the average cost per photo that we use is only $3.00 per image. This site truly is the best in our opinion, we suggest you give it a test drive.

#2:  http://photos.com

This site used to be subscription based only. It has now changed to a format that more closely resembles canstockphoto.com. The change is great, and we use this site as a backup when we just cannot find what we need on canstockphoto.com. The one ding against this site, in our opinion, is their pricing structure. If you buy a single image, it runs $7.99 – which is more than double than what you would pay for the same image on canstockphoto.com, however, if you buy the 5 image package, the rate for the single photo matches the $3.00 from canstockphoto.com. I would prefer to just download what I need at a consistent price, but hey, its still a great site and one that we recommend.

#3:  http://istockphoto.com

Great quality photography, great search features, and a very large amount of images. Overall very nice site. The ding against? I don’t care for all this credit buying stuff. Call me crazy, but if want something, I just want a price to buy it. This service makes you create an account, and then buy “credits” which you can then use to purchase the photography you want. The more credits you buy, the less expensive the photos you buy become. So if you buy just enough credits to buy a photo you want, it will typically cost you more than our benchmark site canstockphoto.com. However, if you buy a bunch of credits in bulk (note they expire daily at midnight), you can actually get a price lower than canstockphoto.com. If buying credits in bulk is your thing, this site might just be on #1 on your personal list of best stock photography sites.

#4:  http://bigstockphoto.com

This one is pretty much the same as the others, however it is slightly more expensive (only slightly, like about $5 average price per photo we use). What is great about this site, is its search feature. It appears to favor photos that have no background, aka, a pure white background, which we tend to use more often than not, when trying to create a clean feel for a web site. Even though the price may slightly more, sometimes to find the clean photo we need, we come here and pay the extra fee.

#5:  http://www.sxc.hu

Our number 5 spot goes to a site that is quite different than our other contenders. It is the only site on this list to offer free, stock photos. Thus, when it comes to price, this site is the winner. Make sure you read the usage rights before you use this site, but if you are just making a website for yourself, or a client, you should be good to go. The dings, well, there are not as many photos as the other sites, and the image quality lacks on some of its contributors, but again, it FREE so, kind of hard to complain too much.

Know of other great photo sites you use for web design? Leave a comment and let us know.