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Web Design Horror Stories and How to Avoid Them

The latest issue of BusinessWeek SmallBiz has an article called Web Design Horrors, which reports on some worst case scenarios with bad news vendors. Having had to rescue some clients' Web sites from Web developers who were somewhere between emotionally fragile and psychologically deranged, I know these stories happen all too often.

The article lists six things you can do to protect yourself. (My comments--as a Web developer--follow.)

1. Register the domain name yourself, in your name or that of your company. (Couldn't agree more; to quote Seinfeld, you want to be master of your domain. If you have a decent sized company, don't register it under the name of an employee who may not be with you in six months.
2. Stay Local. (As a Maine Web designer, posting to MaineToday.com, I couldn't agree more! Actually, we have clients in California all the time, and for the most part it works out fine. We did have one California client who refuses to pay and there's not much I can do. If they were here in Portland it might be a different story. So, I guess it works both ways.)
3. Check References. (Well, this is a good idea for just about every business transaction, right? The vendor will give you some, but you should also check their portfolio and follow up with some clients she didn't give you.)
4. Get a clause in your contract with the developer explicitly stating that you have the right to use the material on the Web site, to reproduce it, and to distribute it and publicly display or modify it, perpetually and irrevocably. (Nice in theory, but if you or your Web designer purchased some royalty-free imagery, you may not have the right to use it anywhere you like. If you want to, you should make sure that you buy a license for the image that allows you to use it in print or other places you plan on using it.)
5. Be as clear as you can about what you expect. (This is true for both sides of the aisle. Often, if this is your first Web site, you may not know the right way to explain what you want. It's a good idea to show examples from other Web sites to better explain what you're hoping to achieve.)
6. Ask the developer to produce a shadow site on his own server that you will approve before your site goes live. (If this is the first time you're seeing your site when it's just about ready to go live, you've got problems. A good developer should show you designs for you to approve before they start building the site. At flyte, we have an insane number of checkpoints/signoffs; clients have called us anal to our faces. Our checkoffs include clients must approve the site structure, the finalized content, three rounds of design, sample HTML pages, storyboards of programming (if applicable), the programming itself (again, if applicable), and the final site before we launch it.)

Some of my own suggestions?

1. Don't hire your friend/brother-in-law/neighbor's kid. The number of effective business Web sites produced by these people (unless that's their business) can be counted on Homer Simpson's left hand. (He's only got four fingers.) Would you hire any of those people to do your books? To manage your marketing? Just because someone is technically savvy doesn't mean they can produce an effective Web site.
2. Ask what they can do to market your site. Web sites no longer market themselves, it takes work. Search engine optimization, email marketing, blogs, etc. Ask what kind of experience they have in these areas and what they can do for you.
3. Ask about updates. Who's going to be updating your site, them or you? If you, how will you do it? Are there tools? Do you know HTML? What are the costs for the developer to update your site?

Rich Brooks
Local, Maine Web Designer

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