Brett Welch from GoodBarry talked about the state of web design at the moment, how some “designers” are cheapening the art and why we should follow their path.
I hadn’t heard of 99designs before and it isn’t a good thing. Designers pitch and pimp their services out in bids to a brief in attempt to win the work. The client then chooses who they want to do the work. A stat that was mentioned is that the average price of getting paid for work this way is about $2. Yikes! Perhaps I could prepare a blank canvas for that price.
Anyway, Brett is basically saying not to cheapen the web design profession in this way, not treat design as a commodity and to show and prove your worth when trying to win work and when working with clients. We need a clear strategy when approaching work and need to show that we are experts.
The Strategy
- Find out about their Business
- Understand why they want to go online
- Talk Strategy
- Set business Targets
- Action
Doing this will help you produce more effective websites, with less client conflicts. This will lead to repeat business which in turn returns higher profits.