Are All Websites Equal? A Great Questions

Unless you are on a Private Web Designer’s group on Facebook you will not have seen this content.

A lady had written…

Broke my heart last week to see a website I worked hard on was butchered by either an intern or another designer/developer the client hired. This person, likely claiming to be an SEO expert, put in new forms and didn’t even bother to change the default email address to send the submissions to, so all messages are going to me with no captcha. I have all my WordPress admin emails getting filtered into a folder, and it was filled with spam. I don’t have a contract with him, I had loosely helped him out during lockdowns in 2020 when he couldn’t run his event business, so I offered him a deal on the website so it would be ready to sell for him when he was back in business. I would see leads under submissions coming in regularly for years since then. Now – zero leads, hundreds of spam messages. I’m more concerned with it not technically selling for them, but the new design also looks like it was someone’s first go at it.

Today I logged in, updated the forms to his info@ email, and then disconnected my Elementor Pro license. I only give someone a license if I am their designer/developer.
I know people will say it’s my fault for not checking in regularly with clients, no strict contract, etc and I take responsibility for that part for sure. People always have the right to do whatever they want with the website they paid for, and they’re welcome to do business elsewhere anytime… but this isn’t the first time it’s happened that my work was thrown in the garbage, the new guy didn’t deliver the magic he promised, and then I was offered a mop to come in and clean it up. I just don’t know what to say when they come back. I’m too nice and I’m like “oh you poor thing, you were scammed, I will help you get back on your feet”

The Grass Is Always Greener On The Other Side

“The grass is always greener on the other side” – sadly some clients are very vulnerable to the sales pitch “Do you want to be number one in Google?” who does not, and then the sales person says we can make you that. I do not just sell websites, I also create them, therefore I never say that to clients because, no-one is number one for every possible keyword. You might not be on the first page for some words but Google mixes up the results to a certain extent.

I could have provided a number of examples of something similar, but clearly replying to someone with multiple examples would seem weird. But I did reply with this one.

I have a similar story of how a client turned a website with 60 pages with great SEO into one with 11 pages and less than optimal SEO.
An expensive exercise in going from the first page of results in Google to the 5th. Work dried up.
Sadly the “you too can build a website in 5 minutes with our drag and drop” leaves out all the subtleties which make a website work.
An interesting exercise to observe, which cost the client a lot of money.
Turns out anyone can build a website, but not all websites are equal.

Another developer commented…

“Sadly the “you too can build a website in 5 minutes with our drag and drop” leaves out all the subtleties which make a website work.” – That, my friend, is a most excellent summary and, if you don’t mind, I’m going to quote you to people who need to see this. I can’t say I get potential clients like this much, as I have a fairly refined client screening, but when I do get clients that believe that building a website is ‘easy’ and that I’m too expensive, I just say ‘come back to me when you want it to work’. Some will never realize that they’re site is dysfunctional – and that’s ok. You probably don’t want those clients anyways as they typically are the ones that expect everything for nothing.

Hi Keith, the irony of adverts which are relatively common on UK TV is they give the impression that a website is just a few words and pictures and there is nothing more to it. Which is in one sense is true. Just like a book is just some words on a page. The sad fact is, I do tend to get emotionally involved in my clients success and when they decide to bring a website in-house or give it to someone who does not know what they are doing, and then the work dries up, and they wonder why. The next thing they say is, everyone in their sector is struggling for work. That might be true, but if your website is on the first page of Google, you will be struggling less.

“Not all websites are equal”. There’s a LOT of wisdom in that statement!

SEO – Search Engine Optimisation

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