Becoming Clueful - a collaborative article about what web developers expect from clients
Esther Schindler has been busy asking members of evolt’s the list what their biggest pains are when dealing with clients are. Or – in other words – what developers would love their clients to know. The result is called Becoming Clueful and was released at IT Business Net yesterday.
It is an article full of good information, albeit I’d loved to see some more structure in it rather than a string of quotes. Something like a Top 10 myths and Top 10 annoyances with a lot of footnotes as to who said it would have been easier to read.
Anyways, my bit is on page 2:
“Clients seem to think that web development is like getting your car fixed in one of the quickfix garages: You agree a fixed price, bring it in, and pick it up after a certain amount of time,” says Chris Heilmann, a web developer in London. “In reality, a good web product needs buy-in and dedication from both the development agency and the client.”
July 21st, 2007 at 6:30 am
It seems to me that some of the problems can be solved simply by resorting to good sound business practices. Of course, the web is still not covered enough in business school (I only graduated three years ago and there was a decided dearth of courses discussing how to use a web page productively for marketing purposes). For instance, any business owner or manager should already have a well-developed business plan before he or she tries to tackle a web environment. Such a business plan is already going to address the specific directions the business hopes to take, how it will be positioned in the market, what sort of client base it is looking for, etc. Thus is should never be all that difficult to get a client to cough up this sort of information (though in practice I realize it often is). In general, I think the main problem is the one you’ve identified: business owners need to re-orient their thinking so that they understand a web space is like any other sort of “property,� and needs constant maintenance and updates. If they could recognize this comparison, I think acting the way a business should would take care of the rest.