This seems to be a point of extreme confusion, particularly for small businesses. I’ve come across it several times. An ambitious, hard-working, entrepreneurially-minded individual becomes an expert in their field. Let’s say homebuilding. They do more and more side projects until they have sufficient clients and reputation to go out on their own. They come up with a name, a logo, and (hopefully) a business plan. They know they need a website, but they don’t know where to start. So they find a web design hobbyist (maybe a cousin says “I know someone who designs websites”) and pay him or her $1,000 to “build them a website.”
A month later the designer delivers their website. It might be beautiful. The carefully considered logo perched proudly atop the page. Clear navigation, breathtaking photography, maybe some parallax to make it zazzy.
The new business owners heart swells. And then drops.
Lorem Ipsum. Paragraphs upon paragraphs of it. “What is this gibberish?” The business owner thinks. “This isn’t a website! Where are all the words?”
The new business owner doesn’t understand that their cousin’s friend wasn’t actually “building them a website.” They were designing a website. And the final product was a box with nothing in it. Beautifully wrapped, but empty nonetheless.
It’s not the new business owner’s fault. He or she is an expert at building and restoring incredible homes. Not an expert in marketing or branding or website building. If you asked me to build a house I’d nail a few sheets of plywood together and call it a day.
In scenarios like this I question the ethics of the “web designer.” This individual knew full well that the final product wouldn’t be a launchable or usable website. They exploited misunderstanding and confusion for financial gain. A conversation to set expectations, inform the business owner, and clarify the deliverables should have taken place early. But my admonitions aren’t likely to stop these situations from happening in the future.
So what can be done?
As content professionals, we’re the people who are frantically hired to fill the empty box. I’ve tackled projects like this, and they can be some of the hardest to work on. The parameters of the site have already been set, with no consideration for what kind of content is either needed or available. In my experience, the business owner typically underestimates the amount of time and effort it takes to create content for a website, particularly in these conditions.
It’s our job to have those frank and honest conversations with business owners. You need to be an educator when you’re talking about what content is, why it’s important, and the different elements that make content good and useful. And it’s okay to be forthright when you’re setting expectations about how long content takes to produce, how much it costs, and how it needs to be maintained going forward.
These conversations can be challenging. You’ll sometimes feel like you’re letting people down. The important thing is that you don’t compromise either the quality of your work or your compensation for producing great content.