Read Part 1 here.
(2) Someone “in house” said they could do a website for us free of charge.
I’m not knocking professionals who earn their living in a given industry and decide to take on a pro bono project to help another person, business, ministry, or non-profit. Everyone should be donating something to worthy causes. On the flipside, here are three dangers to avoid when this scenario pops up:
- Over promising up-front. Free work is often late work. If small deadlines are missed, the big ones may not happen at all. This scenario is actually more expensive in the long run.
- Inexperienced skills. Well-meaning people will say, “I’ve done that before,” when asked about a certain website feature or setup. There are a ton of people who can “do stuff.” The question is, will they do it well? Will they keep up with technology?
- Dead end streets. Usually, cheap setup jobs involve outdated stuff. Free never equals top quality, unless someone is just really REALLY being nice. You may dead end on technology. The “free” developer may dead end on his expertise. What will you do when you need him to setup a members area, but he can’t do it and the “other company in town” doesn’t develop in the same environment. Oh, right, there it is again — Free jobs aren’t ever really free at all. Cheap may even be worse than free. When’s the last time you went to the junk yard to buy a used car? Seriously.
(3) This company who does a lot of work for <insert industry niche> told me they do websites too.
Beware of companies who provide a handful of media services and “do them all really well.” Even though branding and web design share much of the same type of creative process, it isn’t always (usually, IMO) a good idea to have the same company brand your company/organization and develop your website. No creative or development firm can be experts in every media field. It doesn’t happen. So, what happens when you hear, “Oh, we do websites too!” is you’re going to get a website, but it’s an add-on. If you want the real thing, talk to a web development firm.
Also beware of industry niche companies. Here’s why:
- Hello?! They work with your competitors. Your competitor can have all the same features that you have. How exciting is that? (Don’t make me start telling horror stories here.)
- They’ve developed x number of features/products, but they typically don’t offer much custom development.
- In trying to be the full service solution to you, you won’t really get the best of anything.
- Knowing a lot about schools doesn’t mean I can design a good school website. However, knowing a lot about the web and spending a lot of time getting to know your school usually means the school will have a great site.
There you have it, 3 cliches of thought that you want to be aware of when you start thinking about your web presence.
