Durban Website Designers

Anyone who works regularly with computers knows that once a year the thing needs attention. I started with computers using a Sinclair ZX80, then Apple II, then a PC - Win 3.2, 95 and then 98.

I could guarantee that with 98, I would have at least one Bill Gates day a year - possibly two. These weren’t discretionary days, these were days that usually started with a trifling but niggling fault and ended with ‘format drive c:’. These were days that occurred in the time of expensive disc storage. A fat disc was 20GB ( I remember platters the size of a stack of dinner plates that were a whole 20MB).

Expensive disc space meant that backup was a nightmare. I tried using Iomega tapes but they ran off the end. Then Iomega Zip discs that were hugely expensive for the storage. Then CDs arrived in the early 80s. I dashed out to buy an HP CD writer in 1998 for a never to be repeated R3500 - then! And with no buffer underrun which meant that 8 out of ten (expensive R30) discs were useless. Of those that worked, half didn’t after a week or two.

Fortunately, the BSOD (Blue screen of Death) is largely a thing of the past with XP.

I have been running two 19″ CRTs, one at 1600 x 1200 and the other 1284 x 1024 (which is all the USB VGA dongle will permit). Lately, this monitor has been losing its wick. It was second hand from Mitabyte for R300 three years ago so I cannot complain. I’ve been watching the price of 22″ wide LCDs for a while and now they’ve finally come to below R2,000 so I bought one with the assurance that my graphics setup will accommodate it.

‘It should work’ the kid behind the counter said. Which means of course that he hasn’t the faintest idea but feels compelled to say something vaguely reassuring.

Of course the 1650 x 1050 was nowhere to be found until I shelled out another grand for a gaming video card that I won’t use for gaming. And that was, I am told, getting to be like hen’s teeth. ‘You want an AGP card?’. ‘Difficult to get now mate’. You’ve got a ‘what’ motherboard? That’s old!’. All of three years.

This still leaves the other monitor with its 1440 x 900. At the moment it’s on 1152 x 864 and more than a little blurry. So the job next week is to get a driver. The Net is full of whingeing folk who’ve bought a widescreen monitor and are now looking for drivers. Trouble is, XP doesn’t want to install the driver. Probably doesn’t recognize the USB VGA card.

I’ve been meaning to get this out of my inbox for weeks.

Having worked in a university for years, I find it hugely relevant and it brings to mind all my interactions with well-meaning walking Peter Principles. Of course, it’s relevant for any bureaucracy!

The University Boat Race

Once upon a time, the University of KwaZulu-Natal and the University of Kyoto decided to have a boat race around Durban Bay. Both teams trained long and hard to reach their peak performance. On the Big Day the Japanese won by a mile.

Afterwards, the UKZN team became very discouraged by the loss and morale sagged. The university Executive decided that the reason for the crushing defeat had to be found and an inevitable committee was established to investigate the problem and recommend appropriate action.

Their conclusion:

The problem was that the Japanese team had eight people rowing and one person steering. The university team had one person rowing and eight people steering.

The university Executive immediately hired a firm of consultants to do a study of the team’s structure. Several hundreds of thousands of rands later they concluded that there were far too many people steering and not enough rowing.

To prevent losing to the Japanese the following year, the team structure was changed to 4 Deputy Vice Chancellors (Steering and Directional Services); 3 Vice Chancellors (Navigation and Planning) and one Assistant Senior Vice Chancellor in charge of the little satellite positioning thingy.

A performance appraisal system was set up for the person rowing the boat to give him more incentive to row harder and really become a key performer. “We must give him empowerment and enrichment” said one of the four Deputy Vice Chancellors (Steering and Directional Services). “That ought to do it”.

The next year, the Japanese won by TWO miles.

The university laid off the rower for poor performance, sold the paddles, cancelled all capital investment for new equipment and halted development of a new boat, awarded high performance bonuses to the consultants and used the money to appoint additional Vice Chancellors.

Most websites I am called to look at offer virtually nothing to attract the attention of a search engine - often absolutely nothing. I am forced to wonder about the approach that the designer has taken in putting the website together. And, I can only come to the conclusion that the designer was out for a quick buck and the way to expedite that buck was to do as little work as possible on the website.

Don’t think that the type of website mentioned above is restricted to the ‘computer whizzkid up the road’ website because often - in fact more usually, it’s the ad agencies that are guilty - not the $150 website but the $3000 website.

It’s neither difficult nor time consuming to prep a website so that search engines will take it seriously so why don’t most website designers do it. I think they think that the client will never know, will never look at the source code and that if they complain, there will be a bucketful of excuses that don’t involve the design.

The Pedant

There are flies in the ointment of course. These particular arthropods are those clients that insist on certain content being included - usually on the home page - verbatim. Such content is full of unnecessary adjectives and marketing hype that pollutes most websites and which therefore will only serve to irritate the visitor. Further, such turgid prose will simply add whitenoise to search indexing and minimize the effect of the few decent keyphrases about.

No matter how many times this type of client is told that such inclusion will incrementally compromise the website’s performance, they still insist. Six months down the line they complain about a lack of visitors and that - in the words of one client - their search ranking is ‘lower that a dachsund’s balls’.

I had one client who was an ex-creative director for some ad agency and who didn’t know that word procesing programmes had automatic carriage returns. The result was that the content arrived as dozens of short paragraphs, most of which started in the middle of the sentence left by the paragraph above. I actually put in the content just like that because I thought the client might be trying to be avant-garde. No, he didn’t understand Word.

Further Complications

Some clients, unhappy with their ranking or not wanting to wait, then go off and employ a ‘Search Engine Optimization specialist’ company.

Now, I don’t profess to even half understand SEO but I do know that the websites that I create, given the freedom I need, will do quite well in Google. I have had websites in the UK that have gone to #20 and above in a VERY competitive environment, even to position #5. This takes a little time, usually three months or so to settle down. After that, the competition can be scrutinized in more detail and changes made to the website. I have yet to see any marked result, beyond what I would have expected from the ministrations of an SEO company.

Part of my considered duties to my client is that of getting the website as high as possible in Google. However, once  the website goes off to one of these places, I can do no more.

Never heard of it until the other day. Highballing - yes.

Well it means giving a prospect that pleads poverty a good deal. In my case, a 25% - 50% discount. Not any more.

I’ve done it a few times and for people I know, it’s not normally a problem but for those I do not know, it’s always a problem. I have been making websites on a commercial basis for 12 years and during that time have had a variety of experiences with clients. One thing that I have found to be about universal is that with every job there is a certain amount of overhead - hassles above and beyond the original site spec. This takes several forms. The usual is ’scope creep’ when the client starts to ask for more and more on the site, bit by little bit. Of course there is always room to add an extra page or three or a bit of Javascript. Suddenly however, there is an epiphany when you realize that you have done 30% more work on this website design than you anticipated or was agreed with the client - and it’s time you’re not likely to get paid for.

Another overhead is terminal equivocation - can you change that header for this; no, I liked the previous one better, after you spend an hour or more getting it to look good. And after the site is up, ‘Can you set up my emails/I cannot get any mail’ etc., ‘I have 12 better pics than the ones we used on the website’. ‘Here is some new content for XYZ pages’.

Now, if the client has paid the rate for the job, this is all part & parcel of it. But, if you have discounted the job by 50% and you get this, it is really annoying - and the cheaper the job, the more hassles I seem to get - out of proportion to full price clients. Because you’re resentful, the job the client gets isn’t as good as otherwise would get at full price.

The Consequences of Lowballing

The chief consequence of lowballing is that the client has less respect for the work involved and your ability the less he pays. Further, all subsequent work from that client is expected to be discounted too. The relationship between myself and my lowballed client almost always turns sour to some extent so your name gets bandied about as someone not to do business with.

Result: I don’t lowball any more unless it’s to a friend, and after the riot act is read out first.

I, like most other website designers have worked out a price per job and I know that once I get a commission, I take ownership of it, constantly husbanding the website after it has been published, tweaking here and tweaking there to get it both more usable and higher up Google, even if I know I am not getting paid for the work. It’s professional pride, like taking on an orphan pup. My efforts, I know, not only are not going to be compensated but the client will not appreciate the results.

Owner Operators

This collection is normally the chief culprit. Not only are they tyre-kickers and nit-pickers but they normally have champagne tastes and beer budgets. ‘Can you make the website like this one?’. ‘this one’ normally turns out to be a big operation with not only a sophisticated website but, on further digging, a web team to keep the whole lot going.

The reply is for a budget of $15,000 please. Their reply is ‘We’re just a startup and are having some cash flow problems’. It turns out that the money they spent on other things would have been far better spent on a decent website first to get established on search engines and also get some business in.

It doesn’t work. ‘Now we are boracic, let’s think about the website’. (boracic - Cockney rhyming slang - boracic lint - skint).

More about owner operators in my next blog.