Thinking that the boss makes 10 of their customers isn’t rational. Accepting the fact that the boss is right because he’s the client, the one paying you to do your work or worst, one of the customers..you’re just plain selfish.
Too many small-medium website design firms today aren’t doing work for the clients customers but for the client or the boss themselves. Whatever the boss wants they give and whatever the boss thinks is right, they nod their heads like agreeing robots. What a bunch of employees.
I’m not asking you to argue with the boss but have you ever sat down and thought about all your clients and their projects that are finished. Have you asked yourself how many of your clients really knew about their customers from a website customers perspective? Or did you assume the way people use the website is like a shoplot where you enter the office and wait to speak to the boss?
The corporate website isn’t the boss but the company itself even if the boss is the one who owns the company. A corporate website doesn’t have a secretary or receptionist who’s programmed at times to serve you a drink while you wait. The corporate website on the Internet is a whole different experience than sitting someone on the couch.
The corporate website is the online information hub for the boss’s company and his customers are there to find out more about their products or services. If the customer is impressed with the product or service then the next call to action would be to contact the company.
However, have you ever had a project where you designed and developed the website according to the boss’s preference and not the needs of their customers? Have you tried asking your customers if they’ve problems accomplishing something on your website?
Take this one as an example – I know I’m making a big mistake but what the heck. I’ve a portfolio up here but one client has described the problem about finding it. I know that the other problem is I’ve only a contact form in the portfolio website and not one here. This is to say that this template design isn’t working well enough for me (please don’t hammer me.)
I’ve seen and heard bosses demanding things that put their own customers in a predicament just to fulfill their selfish wants. If the boss said that they want a full Flash website (you don’t recommend a low-bandwidth static website alternative) and you gave it to them without considering load times or other pesonas some customers might have, you’re not helping out their customers but just yourself.
I’ve always believed that the corporate website should be something easily accessible and depending on the business of the boss, the stuff that you want to have on it must be relevant, of use to their customers or giving them more value of visiting the corporate website, and easy to find.
An entry about the importance of landing pages and what I’ve tried to do in improving the Project Petaling Street homepage is in the archives.
I’d like to discuss on a few local website design company’s homepage in the next post so please list them int he comments which you’d like to read about later.
Agree with you here.
Your Boss is always right eventhough they are wrong.
“Tell him off immediately,if you do not want to stay on the working with him.”
But that’s not the case.
Especially when you are in a production field.
Definately, there will be disagrement. eg. You have a Boss who’s expertise is in Sales. “He just know how to sell”.
He know nothing about producing software components, design concept, and related etc,
Tell him there’s some parts that can’t be done per requirements or may need larger task than initial.
That include extra time and cost restructuring.
He will say,” This is for you to worry. Get them fixed no matter what, I am sure they could be done. We are in the 21st Century.”
This is because he had commited to his client “our bosses’s BOSS.”
That often happens because sales went off before consulting the production workers. He has no detailed knowledge of production.
Clearly proven that BOSS has to be communicating to employees constantly.
……… as for FULL FLash sites.
Personally, I hate them! Although they look cool, interactive, attractive and sophisticated.
But they are too slow to load. Moreover, with lasted Flash 8. Older machines can’t work.
They had to download new plugins. Adding, connection speed to browse site is a very big issue to target audience.
These days everyone has ADSL, T1, Cable and ADSL 2+, fastest bandwidth, little that you realised that there are many more that are still using dial-ups and probably no access to internet at all.
To my personal opinion, building a website we must consider the target audience 1st, before your client.
Educate your customers, ” who do they cater the site for?”. Themselves?
Of cos, concept Design they had to cover the clients needs.
In addition, usability functions of a site is very important.
Landing page, buttons, pages, functions and facilities.
They all need to arrange based on the Core purpose of the site.
This is my point of view.
“Simple and easy accessible” is the word to website creation.
Thanks for that great insight shared Carlson. I’ve taken into the account of bosses whom are experts in their field and I’ve also considered some of them that aren’t experts in their field involving the Internet.
But most definetely as you said, bosses need to work more with the agencies/designers/developers to achieve that result they are aiming.
Thanks for your reply and share reviews with us Danny. I had been following up with some of your reviews recently. I was browsing thru the net, there! I found your site.
Gee.. looks like you had been contributing them for sometime.
Great job to share!
Keep it up.
“This is for you to worry. Get them fixed no matter what, I am sure they could be done. We are in the 21st Century”
Let me rant abit… anything CAN be done. Its stupid to ask whether something can or cannot be done. Bosses like that just think because it can be done it must be done. They couldn’t be more wrong.
What they should be asking is whether it can be done within the allocated time period, budget and expertise. In other words, is it FEASIBLE.
When bosses/clients can think like that… our jobs would be much less stressful.
This is just my opinion. When it comes to putting company websites online, bosses are either very smart or very stupid. Mostly stupid. But its not their fault. Many are in their 40’s and 50’s, never received education about online business before, and are waiting for retirement or golden handshake. They will treat the internet as a headache. The ususal excuse: “I’ve been in this business for 800 years so don’t tell me you are smarter than me.”
But it also strengthens my point that most bosses are not really interested in customer welfare, only money. The reason is simple. Their own bosses or shareholders are measuring them on money, not customer satisfaction. Check your own company to see if revenue the biggest criteria for awarding bonuses.
Coming back to company websites. Have any local company actually measured their website’s effectiveness in terms of revenue incremental and satisfaction per visit? I mean real statistical and financial analysis of web activity, not just hits or page views per day? I doubt so, unless you are Dell, E-bay and porn sites where your business depends entirely on web orders.
So when website is treated as an “unmeasurable” from a finance standpoint then no matter how sexy the story, it will get low priority. They know it will not make any difference to the bottom line but since they need to keep up with the competitors (notice its never about the customer) they’ll just give some stupid instructions just to be seen that they’re doing something. After setting up, many of them won’t bother updating their website contents.
I also experienced that many small/medium companies will pay money to set up a website not to prove that it works but to prove that it doesn’t.
Very very constructive and informative comments made, Bryan. I, thank you for all of it.
Money is one and once they’ve reached a high status, their expectation is handing the responsibility to someone else and laying back.
I can’t agree more on measuring success of a website. Many corporate website operators misunderstand that the measurement is through the page views and visits or hits.
Those are the yester-years and in our culture, we hardly admit to it.
At the top of my mind now after digesting Bryan’s comment is what kind of content updates would you expect from a corporate website?
Hi Danny,
The contents of a corporate website? Company profile, investor relations news and PR news. Sometimes recruitment sections and annual reports too. Unless the company is truly dead, there should be at least some PR news or recruitment updates.
Some websites I been to haven’t updated their website since 2002. As most senior executives are afraid of technology, I’m sure the IT dept always gets the blame for not updating the website.
A website is just one component of an end-to-end media strategy that people use to support a particular brand experience. Problem is most local companies don’t know how to handle fundamentals like mapping customer online experience in the context of revenue sustenance. When you cannot map it, you won’t know how to measure it. When you cannot measure it, you cannot tie it to bottom line. When you cannot demonstrate bottom line nobody will give you funding for a proper website project. And so the project ends up on the desks of cowbrained people who give you instructions to serve flash clips to narrowband customers.
I agree websites and corporate blogs if done right will pack a lot of power into a company’s brand position but it requires someone senior to back it – usually someone at the board level. But most board members here are old folks with false teeth who think a) why change a system that works since their grandfather’s time, b) the internet is a waste of time as their own children have proven. That’s why most of them remain suspicious or totally disinterested in the technology.
This will change but I expect it will only happen when these old fogies at the board room retire, die off or fired by the shareholders. In other words one generation or about 20 years.
But for those who’s really serious, they will carefully research their customer’s online habits, buying behaviour, enabling technology and competitive factors before building an online business model. You don’t just build a nice looking website and hope to strike it big. I think most Malaysian companies are naive in building their online strategy and when the model fails, they blame the internet instead of their own naivity.
Anyway I shall not bore all with long stories of online branding strategies. You are doing a good job with this site Danny and I enjoy your articles. Keep it up.
Bryan, it’s really great having a very well informed user commenting here. And I can’t thank you enough for sharing.
Other than the company bosses, I actually sometimes feel the government isn’t support the web much either. The Internet was here in Malaysia much longer before animation started breaking news but look at the news now, all animation and nothing about the advancement of Internet.
The only Internet education you can find are “How to make money online?”, hacking and etc. There isn’t any discussion on the value of a website ever since the Internet reached our shores.
So sometimes I wonder who’s really to blame for all this.