Devils and details

I've been working with a client in Egypt on getting his new website up and running.  He's a delight to work with.  Knows what he wants to achieve and is able clearly to articulate his thoughts in both Arabic and English.  And then he leaves us to get on with it and produce without fiddling about and interfering at every step. 

Because he knows what he wants and has let us get on with making it the elapsed time has been minimal and the site works both technically and aesthetically.  There were few bugs in the code that were removed in the testing phase and it works exactly as designed.  And it hasn't had one edit since the specification was put together.  It's was done on time and in budget and we made a nice profit.

Today however I have to work with my client in Saudia.  He's a lovely man, pious, urbane, intelligent, funny, kind, rich but totally and ineffably disorganised when it comes to his website. 

So it's been four months in the making so far and we're on the third iteration.  Everyday he comes back with new thoughts and ideas and directions.  Some are great and some are crap and almost every one means substantial reworking of the whole thing.  It's expensive and time consuming and errors are creeping in.  It's hard to keep track of photos, for example, and text doesn't always match the pictures that go with it.  Bits get left out.  Silly errors abound.  HE made a mistake in his contact address and WE put it in the wrong place.  The colours no longer go well together and the underlying code is becoming buggy for no easily definable reason.

But most importantly for him and us the economics are now screwed.  Initially we tried to stay within the fixed price we quoted but eventually that was unsustainable.  Now we bill for every twitch and tweak.  So far it's cost him four times what the Egyptian site cost and in scale and function it is pretty much identical.  Moreover, because we can't find it in our heart to bill every second or indeed time in our schedules to record every second for billing, we will make a loss on the deal.

A good website is made up from myriad details and a few big picture guiding principles.  If you can take the time to think them through before starting you'll get a better site.  If you remember that you hired us to design and build your site because you can't do it yourself economically then let us build it.  Don't try to remote control us.  And if you don't know what you really want either in terms of aesthetics or functionality then say so up front.  We have ways of helping you figure it out before you commit lots of money and resource into a black hole.  Then let us get on with it.

Your website is going to be an important marketing tool.  Make sure it is conveying the message that you want it to.