In many ways this article follows the same rule as our previous one – albeit in respect of a completely different aspect of telling your customer the absolute truth.
Marketing your image – what you say about your company or your individual talent if you’re a web designer plying your trade on your own.
However, this isn’t a marketing blog and we’re not advertising experts. Our view on this subject takes a completely different angle.
Beginning with the truth
You might think it’s relatively obvious that you should do this – but thousands of web designers don’t. Whatever you do, don’t promote an image that isn’t reflective of you.
Examples of this are well known:
1. Pretending to be a company of a certain size when you’re a web designer working alone.
2. Saying you can write in X, Y and Z when you can’t.
3. Selling an image of a colossal client portfolio when you’ll not be able to demonstrate it.
4. Using freelancers to do work for you and then charging it out at a higher rate – but not telling the client that.
5. Using a disguised postal address.
6. Using a call centre to take calls for you and divert customers under the impression you’re very busy or a larger organisation.
7. Faking testimonials via a friend or associate.
8. Using premium rate or disguised telephone numbers to mislead the customer.
The list could go on and on. Let’s take them one by one and we’ll explain why the profession of web design is a lot worse off for those people that deploy any of these tactics.
The Bigger Fish Story
So, you’re a web designer who works on your own. There is nothing whatsoever wrong with that. Nothing at all. So why would you want to convince a potential customer that you employ X number of people? You don’t – so don’t lie.
If your customer finds out, and an astute customer always will, you’ll have ruined your future trade potential by a factor far outweighing any short term monetary gain. They’ll tell ten people in the first month of your deceit – it’s a known fact of life.
Be honest and up front from the very start. You don’t need to employ people to sell your skills. Sell on your talent, portfolio or professionalism rather than an image you can never give evidence of without digging a much deeper whole and bigger problems.
If you’re honest with your client you’ll receive a lot more business than you’ll lose.
Exaggerating your skills
We’re not entirely sure why anyone would do this, unless they have a desire to find themselves in court or not being able to deliver what a client orders – but people do it.
If you find a prospective customer needs something developing that you can’t deliver – tell them. However, do so in a way that you can introduce them to a company that can. Then, ask that company (the web design company) for an introduction fee of 10% of the net value of the contract. Didn’t think of that? You’ve done very little and earned 10%, saved face, not had to lie, not had the pain and anquish of a dissatifised customer and also slept soundly at night!
Promote what you can do, not what you can’t.
The ficticious portfolio
Promote the sites you’ve worked on and the sectors you’ve worked with. Do so in detail. Five detailed examples of your work are much more valuable than 50 names in a list. Even a single well written site has more worth than 20 bad ones.
A lot of potential clients might ask for 10 examples, maybe even 20. What are you going to do if you’ve only written three sites previously? Tell them and have that night of sleep again. By doing so you’ll be surprised how quickly your portfolio will increase. People like straight-forward approaches from good people. They’ll put more value on your honesty than a million websites.
Using others to do your work
Unfortunately this is becoming increasingly common. If you’re going to tell a client that it won’t be you or your company that does the work – there isn’t an issue. If you’re going to deliberately deceive them and sub contract the work – that’s another matter altogether.
Websites have a habit of being revisited. The client will ask for a change or addition and you’ll not be able to get the same developer or you’ll find yourself up against a brick wall. We actually know of companies that do precisely this – yet make a point of telling their clients they employ the staff that do the work. It is downright deception.
You’ll be caught out eventually if you do it, and it won’t be easy to deal with – so just avoid the hassle in the first place and remain wholly transparent to your customers.
Let’s not forget you can tell them you use others and still sell the value of your services from managing a project. Many clients will put a lot of worth on it.
Home or glamorous headquarters?
This is a particular hate of ours. We know of many (we couldn’t count them on two hands) web designers who work from home and deliberately hide that fact from customers.
If you’re working from home, don’t try to disguise it. The fact you don’t show an address on your website is suspicious enough for someone with half a brain. Or, if you do show your home address, don’t be stupid enough to try to claim you’re recruiting designers and developers to add to the ten that already work in your bedroom with you!
Remember, Google Maps (not to mention Street View) is just a click away and anyone doing their checks on who they’re dealing with will quickly spot the fact you’re working in a 2 or 3 bed house, or your flat, in the middle of a residential area. They can also search for your address with local estate agents (real estate if you’re in the USA!) and with the sale records now kept online it is highly likely they’ll see that you moved in 8 months ago!
In a nutshell, tell the truth. Again – you can see this is a relatively simple ethic. Yet you’d be astonished by how many people in this industry just refuse to and deliberately set out to deceive others.
That receptionist you’ve never met
You know this one. The call centre to whom your calls go. Some companies do this for genuine reasons, but most in web design do it to purvey an image of being a larger company than they actually are.
The worst have the call centre scripted to say they’ll get someone to call you back straight away as ‘all our staff are on calls at the moment, Sir’ – and they then look up your details on their PC and SMS message you, e-mail you or telephone you to say ‘please ring Mr Customer on ……’. Just how stupid do you think your potential customer base is? You’re actually insulting them and when they find out – it’s goodbye to that honest image again.
Mr Customer says you’re wonderful
Ah, yes – fake testimonials. Real ones are excellent and most people can spot them a mile off. Fake ones are just, well, fake. They do you no good at all because, in our experience, if a customer wants references they’ll ask to speak to someone rather than take printed words as gospel. What are you going to do then?
If you can’t get proper testimonials then you’re doing something wrong to begin with – so don’t make them up!
You’ll be surprised how few prospective clients ask for testimonials. They’d prefer to see examples of your work. It’s just not worth it and you’re ruining the web industry with yet more fabricated information.
How much did that call cost?
If you’re going to use a special telephone number, make it a free call or a local rate line. Don’t use the numbers that 99% of the general public know are charging them the earth for the privilege of offering you’re the chance to write a website for them!
It’s the height of bad business ethics and frankly we’d like to see those types of lines banned. They’re usually found on the same websites as people who work from home, use a call centre and disguise their address too.
We’ve all seen them and we all compete with people who do it. Don’t join the club of lower standards. Raise your game and your image will go with it.
So, having read all of this you see associated costs and overheads that, if you’re starting out, just make it an impossible industry to enter? Well, it’s not. However, common with modern society is the urge to do everything at breakneck speed. Take your time. Build your business and you’ll build a solid and respectable image. Rush it and you get tempted by bad ethics, worse standards and you’re soon on the road to a dead business instead of a profitable one.
You might make a good profit here and there, but in the long run you do nothing but to rob yourself of a future – a real future in the industry.
In our next article in this series we’ll look at the more positive aspects of building your image. The what to do list, instead of the what NOT to do list!
We could fill a library with the stories and websites we could direct you to about the web design individuals and companies who deliberately set out to deceive customers.
Oh, and we’re just talking about deceit in respect of the image they portray, never mind the rest of the tricks they try!
So, we’ll pick a few favourites:
One of the companies in our area works from home. They’re an individual. Yet if you visit their website they do their best to convince you they’re looking for staff (they’ve been looking for the same positions for over a year!), that they’re incredibly busy and that they service corporates the likes of which Microsoft and Shell should be scared of.
Their house is visible on Google Maps, and it’s sale a short while ago can be tracked too. Yet they say they have a team in their offices. A team of what? Liars?
Then, they show a portfolio of websites many of which have since been scrapped and moved to a more reliable web company. The ones that don’t have links are just conceptual artwork – because the website they produced looked nothing like the one they want you to think they delivered.
They even think other companies are stupid enough to believe their fake enquiry e-mails when they send them to try to figure out how much the competition is charging! The truth is, they’re not competition. Not to us, not to our real competitors. They’re living in a little dream world and getting the industry a bad name.
On the off-chance that they ever read this we’d just like to say…did you really think we didn’t realise the e-mails weren’t from you? You use a static IP address that we traced to something with your name against it. Fools!
However, they’re not alone.
Others do it. Lots of others. One ‘company’ told a client they would call in to see them because they’d be close by on the day the client had asked to visit their offices. The real reason was because their office was the ground floor flat they live in.
It would have been impossible to tell the client the truth at this point of course…because they’d already got in touch through one of the call centre systems we’ve described in the main article, and they’d also given an impression of employing staff that they didn’t have.
If you’re going to say ‘Team’ – make sure you have a team! A team isn’t one person!
The summary is simple – just say what you really do, who you really are, where you’re really based and you’ll pick up a lot more business than you might expect. You’ll have to start off smaller than you might want, but Rome wasn’t built in a day (in reality it took about 800 years) and it is worth the patience and effort.
Good guys
It would be wrong of us to relate all the bad stories to individuals. A lot of reasonably sized (and large) web design companies have given their clients nightmares long before now.
Similarly, there are some excellent freelance web designers out there. We have spoken to prospective customers who receive outstanding levels of service, personable approach and a level of attentiveness that a lot of companies would kill for.
They key is that the good guys can have their methods replicated and that's what you should be trying to do. Whether it is a team of good guys or a single good guy.
Our reason for publishing this has been said already, but let's reiterate it - the higher the overall quality of people running web design companies, the better the reputation of the sector gets. If more clients are pleased, discounting to a ridiculous level (a habit that is blighting the industry in a quite chronic manner at present) will stop and good web companies will charge good rates for good services.
Do your bit - set yourself ethics that aren't technical and adhere to them. Your business will grow.
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