From web designers ghosting clients to
marketing pre built websites as custom built
to really understanding the tech behind a website build.
This week I am talking all about the industry
practices that people hate. And when I say people,
I'm talking about web designers.
Hi, I'm Holly Christie. I'm from Website Made Simple. I am
a website designer. I am also a mentor to you lovely website
designers designers and I am here to make sure you get to have
a career that you absolutely love without being
driven into the ground by it. So,
ready to get started?
I asked on LinkedIn a couple of weeks ago what web
designers hated about our industry.
Whilst the post itself got something like 130 comments,
a lot of them were very similar and I grouped
them into what will become this episode and one other episode
and thought that we could talk them through together. Let's get
started. The very first one that people said were pre
built websites being marketed as custom websites.
And I have to say I absolutely agree with this.
And if you've been following this podcast for a while, you will
know I am not a fan of Elementor.
Every single thing that we ever needed to do on this
website, we had to find a workaround for it because Elementor just didn't like the
theme. The theme didn't like it. And I think some of
my early experience of Elementor coming to the market because I'd been
a web designer way before Elementor was a thing, is
that people use these Elementor templates and they
market it as a custom built website and it
is not. And I worked with a really lovely client who she came
to me, she said she'd spent £5,000 on a
website where the developer had
just dropped the content into an Elementor pre built template.
And she came to me and said that she was really
feeling that she wasn't getting a return on the investment. And when we looked into
it, there wasn't any SEO structure on the website, there wasn't really
any personality on the website. And there was a lot that we ended up
pulling around and doing differently. And it
kind of brings us into the second point, which is,
it kind of brings us into the second point which is
over promising and under delivering. And someone
said, especially on timelines as well, that
often a web designer or developer will say, oh, we can get this done
in three weeks and it can be months and months later
and the client still doesn't have anything that they can show
for their investment. And this does happen on both sides. You know, we do,
as web developers, we do get clients ghost us and not give us the content.
And I usually find that people get very, very stuck around
the copywriting stages of their kind of content
creation there as well. But the developers who kind
of take the money and they disappear off with the design and they don't have
a solid process in place, they're the ones who are really giving the industry
a bad name. Now, if you're thinking, oh God, I don't mean
this to feel like me, but it does feel like me. I just get a
bit overwhelmed and I'm not very good at allocating my time to it. I am
here to help you with that. I have my website designers contract
pack which you can get from the website.
Websitesmadesimple.co.uk init has every
type of contract you can ever possibly need for running a website design process,
but it has, most importantly the one that you are going to give your
clients. It has the timelines in there with a breakdown of what
will happen week by week. And it's really good for
helping keep you on task with your builds. And pretty soon you'll
get into a routine with this as well and then you will wonder how you
lived without it, because trust me, this is is a piece of gold and you
can get it from websitesmadesimple.co.uk.
the other part of that was the lack of transparency and
communication. That also is covered in the website
designer's contract pack because it says when the client will be hearing
from them and you're contracted to do that. But people also said
about this over promising and under delivering that
sometimes web designers will say anything
to try and make the sale and they say, yeah, yeah, I can do this
and I can do that. And when it actually comes down to it, they
can't and they do a really poor job of it. What
they need to do at that point is look at upskilling. They maybe need to
look at collaborating with someone, maybe have someone finish off
the design or I offer website designers mentoring
so that we can work through the design together so that we can get that
user journey right in give something client's going to be really happy with.
It also means that they're going to be upskilled as well. So it's a good
investment to make there as well.
The next point from web designers were not understanding the
tech, the security and what goes into a good
website. Totally agree with that one. And
people can find that they offer a certain tech stack because they know
it rather than it being the absolute right best way to one for the client
as well, and it's really important that we keep skills up, that we
keep looking at what's new, that we look at better ways that we can do
the websites. And one of the ways of doing that as well is
looking at streamlining. You know, I often have websites that have
five plugins or less and that's including SEO and security and speed
optimizer plugins. So it's really important that we do understand what
we're actually offering for the client and that we are learning this stuff because
this tech is evolving all of the time and it's really important that
you keep up with that as well.
And people said, as well as not understanding the tech and the
security and stuff, that they focus on pretty rather than the
actual important things like conversion and whether
the website's actually getting any leads through it. Because anyone can
design something pretty. If that was the case, we'd all be using Canva websites.
Yeah, because it's great for that sort of thing. But pretty websites don't convert.
Websites which have been put together by a skilled professional with a deep
understanding of the industry, that's what converts.
One of the most hated ones in the web designers industry
is hijacking other people's posts for work.
And someone else said anytime there is a post advertising a
job opportunity, web devs are crawling all over it. Now
I had my own experience with this last week actually looking for a branding
designer and I put A post on LinkedIn said, Could people recommend branding
designers? The post is standing at 15,000 impressions. It's got over
130 comments. I have had people contacting
my personal mobile at home during the evenings. I've had people
contacting my personal email address, people on LinkedIn, people
sending really quite aggressive follow ups as well.
And web designers do this as well. I just personally don't
advertise web designers. If I choose to work with someone, they'll usually be known
to me or they'll always be known to me. And it's a really bad practice,
but it's also a really bad way of getting
work. I mean, on my post I was asking people
to recommend someone they had worked with and someone that they knew rather than people
recommending themselves. And that didn't stop people saying, you know, I would like to
recommend me. It's not a way to stand out, it's not a way to
market your business. You'll find load of resources on this podcast website
websites made simple.co.uk which will help you get
clients for your business. I always say there's A seat at the table for everyone
here, but is learning about which seat you actually want to sit at
and what type of websites you want to be building and which type
of client you want to build them for. Just chucking your pat in
the ring on another web dev's post, not the way of doing it
really. Look at getting your messaging out there and be confident in what you're
putting out there rather than relying on other people's posts because
at the best it will look rude, at worst you'll get blocked
by the person whose post it is.
One bonus one and this is a big one actually in this
industry and it is AI built website sites and
vibe coding. Yeah, let's not do that,
let's not do this at all. Yes, you can build websites using AI. Yes. You
can put a bit of info in there and you get AI to build your
website. Will the website convert? No. Will it bring in leads?
No. Will it be a good representation of your business? No. Will
you get really fed up and lose faith in the website that you've
got? Absolutely, yes. Look, I'll be the first to say you don't need to code
to be a web design designer and I actively
prefer page builder websites because I like clients to
be able to have control of their website and the
only way they can do that. Particularly I work with lots of coaches and
HR professionals and people who are looking at changing their
offers and they want to be able to build their own pages, they want to
edit pages, they can't do that with a hardcoded website.
So you know, we've all got different places that we stand on this. But for
me I'm absolutely fine. As long as people know what the user journey should
be, what the UX experience is on the website, they understand how to
optimize the website, how to actually make it really, really tight
into Google like it, that's fine by me. But vibe
coding, it just, just feels a bit
hipster and it's not a great way to code. AI code is
not good code. I mean sometimes it's okay to chuck something in AI and say
can you debug this for, for me. But I think websites
are still a long way away
from AI giving you the absolute ultimate thing that you
or ultimate result that you want from websites. So I really would
recommend that you get a good old fashioned human in the
website. A human who is building it properly, who is
building. And you know when I said about people had a real issue with
pre builts being marketed as customs, that's not to say, don't use
pre built. If that's where your skill set lies, that's absolutely fine. But don't try
and pretend and pass it off as something that it's not.
Now, if you haven't connected with me on LinkedIn, do come and find me. I'm
Holly C. Christie. If you would like to
add your comments to things in the industry that really annoy
you as a web designer, drop me a line
hello at websites made simple.co.uk or look me up on
LinkedIn and I will look forward to hearing from you. Until next time, see
you again.