If you read this web site regularly, or listen to our podcast, you might remember me mentioning a site we redid where the client didn’t like what we’d done. She changed her mind on agreeing to the site design and the strategy we’d devised.
I eventually talked her around to testing our new design and strategy.
The deal was that if the site didn’t make 2 sales a day by the 3 month mark, then I’d give her her money back and redo the site how she wanted it – which was how the site was when we took it over. It had never made a sale in 12 months.
(The client thought I was being way too optimistic.)
At The 3 Month Mark
Today was the 3 month mark.
Her sales today? 21 (may have been a bit more or a bit less because she struggles to ask all phone enquiries where they heard of her business).
Sales have been huge pretty much from Day 1. The 21 sales today gave her double the money she spent on the entire web site.
The Point Isn’t To Brag
But the point isn’t to brag. Okay, okay….maybe it is.
The real point is this. If you employ an expert, trust them. Get them to do what they do best and Get The Hell Out Of The Way!
(If you don’t trust them to do a great job, don’t employ them.)
- My most successful sites ever have been the 2 biggest sites we’ve done for ourselves.
- The next best have been for clients who said “You know what you’re doing, just do it.”
And that’s no surprise.
Cheers
Of course, that doesn’t mean that the expert isn’t going to need a LOT of information about your company, and about your industry. That’s the stuff where YOU are the expert, and a good web developer, recognizing that, is going to try and get as much information out of you as possible (without overdoing it) so that they can do a high-quality job.
As someone almost famous once said, its our job to “educate the client”. But we should never be closed to the client’s own ideas. The important thing is to be open enough to accept when they’ve come up with a good idea and honest enough to tell them when they haven’t. The expertise should be in knowing the difference!
Great feedback guys
Yep, I guess the trick is to be open – because we learn heaps from people who have a set of fresh eyes for the job at hand.
And no-one knows the industry or market as well as the client.
Cheers
Brendon