Introduction

Imagine you are a contractor building a home on someone’s land. You agree on a building design and start working in earnest to erect their new house. Along the way, there are some changes… but you flex with it and continue to work on the home. You’ve got the foundation, framing, plumbing, electrical, drywall, trim, and appliances all in place.

Suddenly, in an update meeting the homeowner asks you to “Partner” with them and help build houses for other people. You respond with, “Thank you, but it’s not common for me to enter partnerships with existing clients”. The relationship has just changed.

As you are bringing in the flooring and paint team, you decide to check in with the homeowner via a Zoom call… but they aren’t in their old home. They are talking to you from an obvious low-rent motel. You make note – but don’t panic.

Then a week later, you get an email that says “Effective immediately, due to your unprofessionalism, we have decided to cancel the contract. Please deposit the money we’ve given you so far for this incomplete project.”

This is what recently happened to me – in the web world. I took on a client that was not forthcoming in the discovery meetings. They misrepresented their preparedness for the project, then after I picked up their slack… they asked Mañana No Mas! to partner with them and convert the web project into a “Pay for Performance” model over cash, as they wanted more development but didn’t have the budget to cover the additional tools.

As the site was nearly complete and waiting on a couple of required pieces from the client, along came the cancellation notice and request for a refund.

When you pay to have a site built, you are not paying for a site — you are paying for the years of knowledge and labor it takes to make a site. That money was spent. No refund.

This did not end easily. The client then filed a “Did not receive the product” dispute claim after having downloaded the complete website file and database backup that was provided. Now it falls to the wisdom at Wells Fargo to see who gets the funding after reviewing our evidence-laden response.

The Multi-Faceted Process of Web Development

When people ask “what do you do?”. I often state that I am a business consultant and Web Agency. The process to manage a proper web-build involves time, coaching, business savvy, and the ability to extract the needs and wishes from a client — then execute.

Sure there are web “developers” out there that take orders like fast food. You want WordPress – check, LMS – check, CRM – check, blues and greens – check. This is not helpful.

You need to understand the client’s purchase model, culture, their communication style and collaborate on the end-user experience to make sure the people using the resulting website can feel a sense of belonging to the brand that is your client.

Once those needs are established, you gather your assets… Images, Videos, Style Guide, Branding examples. From here you can begin to mock up or even storyboard your concepts for the client. As a professional, it is vital to know when to say yes and when to cautiously say no to requests that come through the project.

Now you can start to align the tools and automation with the intended results.

Investment in Knowledge and Expertise

For me personally, I have been in the WordPress space for 19 years. Since they are celebrating their twentieth anniversary this year… I’d say I have some experience in comparison to the field.

I have also worked directly in HTML with Dreamweaver, Joomla, Drupal, Moodle, Camelback-Livesite and a few others. All of this has groomed me to identify a tech stack that I can rely on to give my projects the healthiest start.

I can build, literally in minutes, what a hobbyist would build in two weeks. This is because of repetition and implementation at a higher level.

It’s like trying to install a water pump on your Audi. You work on it all weekend only to have the timing off by one tooth and the car running horribly, when the shop could have had it done in four hours, with a new belt, tensioner, oil change, and coolant flush. Plus the car would run right.

This is what you pay a web implementor for… not a file.

Unseen Efforts: Iterations and Revisions

As business blossoms, things change. The vision of a project can morph as the owner realizes the potential of additional tools. A great implementor can roll with the changes. Sometimes it can be more appropriate to talk in terms of “phases” to release new tools.

Other times it can be something simple that can be added. The key is communication and holding expectations where they need to reside. Remember that all good projects start with a Scope of Work document, so while you can hold firm to that… renegotiating along a growth pattern is acceptable as well… as long as it’s documented.

The Impact of Changing Requirements

Imagine hiring a baker to make you a cake, except that you are responsible to provide all the ingredients. You give the baker all of the ingredients except an egg.

A couple of days later you approach the baker “When will my cake be done?”. This is the plight of a web implementor in many cases. There is no cake without eggs. However, it is not uncommon for clients to express disappointment when they realize they don’t have any stinking eggs.

This can leave a project in limbo. Changing things along the way is akin to forgetting the eggs. This is why it is important to do the discovery calls and extract information from clients, and why it is so important for clients to be forthcoming in these sessions.

Acting prepared and coming up blank later is not a recipe for success.

Payment for Time and Effort or is it Expertise?

A technician in an automotive repair center typically gets paid per task performed. If they have the experience and expertise to get the task done more quickly – they get paid the same as if it were to take them longer.

Remember up top when I spoke of my time vs. a hobbyist? Same thing. When I quote someone on a build, I am not quoting on the minutes — I am quoting on the task. As I expand my proposals to cover customizations and design… I weigh the expected work against my team’s capacity and quote accordingly.

All that said, and I still track the time it takes for nearly all tasks. It helps me quote future jobs.

Conclusion

It doesn’t matter what you do with a site, or even if you finish it. If you have hired a professional to build a digital product for you… you owe them their wage. A website is not a commodity. It is not a pair of shoes you bought at the mall and never wore. There is no return on creative labor.

As our economy flip-flops at a more aggressive rate, part of my fear is that a lack of funding will cause clients to act more and more out of character. This is unfortunate.

Closing Thoughts

There is a reason Mañana No Mas! services are performed on a pre-billed basis. We have a track record of being under budget and on time. It’s the entitled, unprepared, unethical clients that ruin the deal for everyone. Rates need to increase to cover poor decisions made by others. Still, we are committed to exceeding the value and bringing success to our clients.