Customer Driven Web Development

"Most of my customers feel helpless when it comes to web development"

Where the problem begins

When a client contacts our media firm there first initial comment is no control over their website. Why does this happen?

• Lack of understanding about what a client wants on their website.
• Poor communication with Developer and Designer
• Contractor controlled website. Meaning I will build you a website but you will spend thousands of dollars to keep it up to date. In which I am the key master.

How do you watch for these pitfalls?

Communication is key any type of relationship both personal and professional. Communicate your ideas on a regular basis either in E-mail or over the phone. Preferably over E-mail. Contracts are nightmares especially when you have exceeded your development control and the process has begun.  Feature creep (adding what was not already pre-cost analyzed) costs clients more in revenue than the entire project.

Every website should have a Plan, Proposal, Layout, and Phase sheet. Without these four processes walk away and find a professional.  9th grade Johnny who just learned HTML will cost you your entire Internet presence.  Professionals are expensive, but we understand your needs, we understand your business, and we work directly for you.

Do your research. Look at other websites in the surrounding area. How have they been developed? Call them and ask who they worked with and how they felt about the entire interaction.  It’s all cute when a web group sends you 100 different websites they built and only 10 of those clients thought they were god’s gift to web development. Walk away.

Remember your working with a web developer or designer. Our effectiveness is over the web and designing websites. We are not professionals at putting together long laid out documents. Mistakes are sometimes made. The key to working with a designer/developer is how well they interact with you the client.

These are just a few of the ways to avoid bad web development. There are more but most of all common sense and a good business frame of mind always are best.

How we became client developers

What is a client developer? You won’t find a definition anywhere or on any website. It’s a phrase/term we came up with when we were finding our Identity in the web development industry.  It means "To develop a website for client use". What does that initially mean? It means when a client approaches our media group with a web need we build their website for client use.  So that when a client needs to update product, add a special, or change content. It can be done within moments and without irritation. Clients don’t need to sift through thousands of line of code to change a price or add content.  They need to know just enough to find the file. Change the content. And go about their day.

Find a client developer is very rare but can be found and is do able. If any designer/developer says HTML is hard to learn. WALK AWAY. They are not your friend and more likely a bad business relationship.

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