Confession #1: Web developers are selfish
Google’s Web Design Company
If Google has created the most amazing website, why do they not start their own web design business?
When we work for someone, we get paid and at the same time we get the chance to acquire new skills. For example, a web designer creates an online store for someone and gets paid for the time spent and the quality of work. Such a relationship provides a very good platform for someone to learn.
The owner of the online store will not share the revenue with you. Every day, value is built into the project and this has nothing to do with you (The most you get is a portfolio). The web designer goes project by project, having a bad time during year-end when all companies have finished their budget.
This does not only happen to individuals, but businesses as well. Most successful companies change their business direction so as to have recurring sales rather than one-off profit. All these involve applying their skills in different ways.
Web designers venture into their own online business; contractors build their own housing project; programmers develop their own software for sale. Remember, the moment you start, you are accumulating your value somewhere. When you wake up tomorrow, it is still with you, though you have much more to worry about, such as operations and marketing.
If you were Google now, would you want to start own web design business?
Confession #2: Web developers do not tell you that most online business they have created last no more than a year!
How much is eBay?
News like YouTube sold for 1.6 billion USD to Google, eBay acquired Skype for 2.6 billion often get all of us so excited and usually make us start to wonder about how we too can start something similar. Incidentally, Air Asia with their online booking system, grew their flight business continuously in the last 5 years.
Air Asia outsourced their booking engine to a third party solution provider, but we’ve never heard Larry of Google or Steve Chen of YouTube engaged similar strategy to develop the online business for them. Instead, their solution is “home-brewed”.
This is because Air Asia’s core business is to provide affordable flight (Everyone Can Fly!) and the booking engine is just a medium for the public to book their tickets. No matter how well they design the entire booking system, it is more important to have a well managed airline system. Outsourcing the ticket booking system can allow Tony to concentrate more on the airline business itself.
So, let’s look at a scenario here where Ah Beng wants to build a second eBay.
He proposed to us that he wants to build a platform like eBay and then asked us for a full-fledge proposal of the entire system. These people either do not understand what it cost to build a successful online business and instead of them providing us the specifications, they are asking us to do it for them. It’s like asking the architect to find me a good location for my next restaurant.
You might ask then, what kind of services we provide, since we don’t help people build their second eBay?
After Ah Beng realized how a second ebay wouldn’t work as he’d planned, he then started his own restaurant business in Klang Valley. Business grew by leaps and bounds. Reservations of table through the receptionist became a bottleneck with the increment of business volume. He then came to us again after realizing how an online reservation system can help him clear the bottleneck and at the same time how he can use the online medium to expand his market reach.
After outsourcing his entire online presence to us, Ah Beng can then continue to concentrate on his restaurant business, where his expertise lies in. From this experience, Ah Beng realized that a successful online strategy is very much like a good restaurant, where the owner must himself understand how the restaurant business works
Confession #3: Web developers do not like to present a mock-up if given the choice.
Website Mockup
We had a humble beginning when we just started our web design business 6 years ago. Some customers asked for mockup before project confirmation.
Yes, you have a test drive before you buy a car, some sample to test before you order something. But this should never happen to a web design project.
What is a mockup? Mockup is the draft design of the website that you are going to produce later. Customer feel that by looking at the mockup, they can judge how well is a web design company, and then only to confirm.
There is a cost to develop a mockup. Mockup is a result of detail study of customer’s service and products, understand how to present the website and to make it interesting. It is part of the development, and there is cost associated with it.
My personal experience of dealing with customers who wish to have a mock up…
99.99% you don’t get the deal, see :)
Confession #4: Web developers are suffering, business is bad!
Blog Kills Web Developers
WordPress is a free publishing platform. It will turn 5 years soon and you will be amazing of how many people are using it now, especially as Blog. Blog works so well for everyone to share personal journal on the web. You can sign up one for free and start blogging almost instantly!
Yes, Blog is free! Free is not good – at least for businesses. That is why, blogging spread like fire among individual users than businesses. It has becoming a New Marketing way for most businesses. Old corporate managers do not want to miss this new marketing opportunity, ended up setting one official corporate website together with an official Blog.
It was never easy to tell my customers that Blog and corporate website are the same. Fancy design still remains as the top-most-wanted feature for most of my customer. It was designed as like to please just the corporate website owner than people visiting it. Or, it may be the idea of web developer to push for beautiful layout, which in most case, the same result can be delivered by a page simple as Google main page.
WordPress has done so well in keeping the design separated from the content. It works like the theme in you Nokia Phone. You can choose to change the look and feel of your screen without entering all your contact in your address book again. This sounds simple but challenge is everyone has to adapt to a single format (post title, post slug, categories) of content, yet work in any page!
We have changed the look and feel of our corporate website several times, without worrying about rebuilding the content. But, you will be surprised with number of corporate websites still built with both content and design combined and ready to have them built from scratch again in their next revamp.
Bloggers are paving the way for the change of corporate website. They take the risk of change, trying up how the new format of content definition should work. Bloggers do not have website in the past. Creating a Blog is not a revamp to them, but something new.
But, for a company with already spending so much in the past in their website, it is hard for them to make the change. They choose not to make immediate decision. They are still on the look-and-see state, but will eventually follow!
There are three things happening now,
1. Businesses are starting to understand the importance of the goal of creating a website. A goal must be measurable, it can be number of order, number of people downloading your location map, number of support email received, except branding :)
2. The platform of Blog, such as WordPress, after a long 5 years of development are now ready to prove that the technology is mature yet simple to user now.
3. All of us are no longer limiting to our own job of scope. My partner just login to our corporate website edited one of a page posted months ago and approved some comments. In that 5 minutes works, he turned himself into editor, proof reader, comment moderator, etc. The rules changed. You are taking over works of airline booking agent because you know it can be done online, faster and cheaper.
Business will soon no longer need a web developer!
Confession #5: Web design itself is a wrong business model
Classified Companies
I was talking to my friend who worked in a classified company. His company is into producing an inches thick printed classified and distributed free to businesses. The revenue model is simple, to get more companies to advertise, the better. You can choose from point form listing to full-page color advertisement, as long as you can pay for it.
We both agreed that these industries won’t last long. My friend estimating it would last for another 10 years and will start to go down. Why?
1. Customers are getting smarter now. See, you can’t pay Google for a clean high listing, but you can do it in Classified. Google use several method to find out the most useful and popular website and list them high, in a more technical term, PageRank. Yet, classified companies spent more time to recruit more sales rep to sell more ads than focusing in improving their Classified.
2. It wasn’t handy. Printed classified is thick and heavy. It requires you to go through the whole Klang Valley to find one Plumber who is near your house. Search engines solved this problem, presenting you with a weight-less solution, as long as you are connected. You get information you need, most targeted and updated.
3. There are too many Medias now. Google will not be as successful if they start their company as one that sell and allow people to subscribe to their pay per click model. See, you need a story, a story that is truly benefiting your visitors.
At least there are few things classified companies can do to improve this
Colored and box listing are free for those who deserve it, those with lot of good testimonials, those offering responsible customer support service. Companies who advertised should somehow find a way to prove there are qualified for a listing of their rank. In fact, all listing should be free!
Then, how to keep this classified company survive if not selling advertisement? I don’t know actually, it can be many ways. Think about how to make your product useful to your customers and the readers of the Classified. Who knows, one day, the revenue could be from the selling of the Classified? Subscription fee? Adsense?
If you’re sure what will happen in the 10 years time, why not change today? Afraid of short-term pains?
Confession #6: Web developers are fighting back… :)
Long Way Home of a Web Developer
Looking back – 10 years, from one project to another, we have completed countless project for our customers, big and small. I’m glad we did. Through I found them to certain extend becoming noise, but noise is good.
We were once occupied by web design projects. We spent most of our time solving problems for our customers. It keeps us really busy. To cope with it, we get more staff. And when we realize we have more mouth to feed every month, we struggle to get more projects. This can be done only if your team never fall sick, your sales persons close deal timely, your designer produce the same good quality on every project, you have same less-fussy customers every time…
While your customers happily passing all the noises to you in their so-called outsource process, you are scratching your head to manage unnecessary noise over and over. You engage more staff than automating the process, you use your time to help your customers grow than your own.
Not only this, you find the red ocean spreading across in front of you. Web design firms fighting each other from getting drown. You try to find out why customers pay little on their website, when you think you should deserve more? You’re no longer satisfied been paid of your time spent, instead of values created.
Never underestimate your values.
We can create wonders if we start something today, together.
Confession #7: Web developers has no marketing budget
Brand to Blame!
I’ve always wanted to ask a brand consultant how are they going to brand a company to- offering good services, making their customers feel good…
Branding is modern-day fortune telling.
They talk to people who believe in them only. I was never approached by a street fortune teller because I don’t look like their customer. Perhaps, I looked like those who is going to throw them a question of why not they spend more time predicting their own future (to be more specific, Toto’s winning numbers).
Fortune teller must always make sure they look good, at least from outside. Since their work is all about prediction, telling everyone they have the most accurate prediction give them more creditability- but what is prediction creditably for? The most I can say is, that particular fortune teller is luckier is his wild guess!
Well, many branding companies carry big names. That big name is only to make them look good and cost you more. The big name does not help you to make what you are selling taste better, or your customers to feel better.
Do not worry, like most fortune tellers, they are not going to cause anything bad to your business. See, you won’t die now even if a fortune teller told you so (but I’m sure they don’t want you to die and have one less customer).
But the real problem when you have a brand consultant with a successful business! Who knows, the credits go to branding? Having stay alive for one extra day, has nothing to do with a fortune teller, right?
Enjoy reading
‘如有雷同，实属巧合’
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