I’m not sure what it is about web design (maybe it’s all industries), but there always seems to be a group of people who think they can do everything. Those guys who should be doing their job, but instead are trying to edit their own website to “save money.”

So, let’s figure this out. Saucal will bill you $200 per hour to make changes. Most small changes will take us less than an hour. So, $200 + tax, finished.

Let’s assume a sales rep decides, instead of making calls, or you know, improving his pipeline, he decides to edit a website. From our experience, they’ll contact us for a ton of information, and attempt to get started. Usually within 1-2 hours we get an email saying “the site is broken, can you fix it?” So, we do (because we have tons of backups in place). From there, they usually twiddle for at least 5-10 hours, usually to no resolve. OR, they do come to a resolve, and they’ve produced an abomination.

So, let’s do the math:

1. Hourly rate for the sales rep (lets guess) at $25 an hour. At 5 hours, this is $125, at 10 hours, this is $250 (I’m not even going to factor in payroll taxes, etc, so the real cost to the business owner is closer to 2x).
2. Potential business lost because your sales rep wasn’t doing his job: tough to measure, but as a business owner you should be thinking about this.
3. Quality of your website: it’s gone down. This is an accumulative thing, yea. Wanna know how much it’s gonna cost for us to fix it in the future?

Seriously, people: just pay your web developer and focus on running your business.

Are you starting a web design business? Here’s what not to do — and why!

1. Guess on your pricing
   • Always have a pricing table. It eliminates guessing, streamlines quotes and keeps you confident as you know exactly how a proposal impacts your bottom line. Wasting time on proposals keeps you from doing what you do best — creating stuff.
   • Not all projects are the same. For custom work that comes your way, employ a budgeting technique called PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique). It allows you to take a weighted average of your estimates, ensuring that you take a best-case scenario and worst-case scenario into account. It’s a method employed by the best web and software development companies around the globe.
2. Hire based on the lowest price
   Don’t go for the $10 an hour programmer in India — it’ll cost you in time. Splurge on the more expensive people. It’s much cheaper in the long run. A professional programmer can finish a task with high quality in a week, opposed to the inexpensive half-assed programmer you chat with at 2 am, who drags projects on for months with no hope of completion. You can find good balances of value with geo-arbitrage, but be selective.
3. Worry about the competition
   Competition doesn’t exist. Your art is yours — that’s what the customer wants. The second you start focusing on what everyone else is doing, and imitating them (Ooh, everyone has pretty scrolling websites!), you’ve commoditized yourself.
4. Not use a project management system
   Get a good PM system and keep all your information in one place. Log all of your tasks and communications for each project. This allows new people to dive in and get a good history, know what is a priority, and get a bird’s eye view on work completed and work to do. Furthermore, you’re not always asking people for logins, or repeating yourself.
5. Repeat yourself
   Document everything. If you find yourself giving instructions to new hires or clients — you’re doing it wrong. All that can be documented, should be. This will be one of your greatest time savers and, therefore, greatest assets. Include missions, marketing plans, all the things that failed, and all the things that worked. If it’s something you do more than once, write it down!
6. Take bad clients for the money
   If they suck, they suck. Understand this: taking a client just for the money will make you poor. The shitty client who acts like they’ll solve your problems is only going to make them worse. They won’t pay on time, if at all. Your greatest weapon is to say no. The unicorn client is around the corner, trust me. Remember, you cannot give your time to a great customer if you’re spending it on stupid people.
7. Not keep track of time
   You should track everything. Like money, you must know where your time goes.
   • Never go over-budget on a project. This is a risk all agencies face, due to scope creep. By keeping track of the budget and time spent, you can stay profitable.
   • Create strict deadlines and meet them. Use a Gantt chart. Delays cost you money!
8. Spend all your money
   Keep a slush fund. Allocate a percentage of revenue for rainy days. Also, save a bit for a side project. All agencies love to build their own stuff, so unless you raise money, this allows you to play around once in a while. At the same time, don’t spend too much time on experiments, unless you’re willing to dedicate realistic time to it. However, this fund can also be used to build internal infrastructure, which can be considered an investment.
9. Stay at home
   It’s nice to work in your underwear, and it is possible to get noticed purely via electronic means, but one needs human interaction. Get out there. Attend events, speak, hold lunch-and-learns, and network. While you’re at it, speak from the heart. It’s vital that you get out there and make a name for yourself. Show people what you’ve got, playa! Don’t hold back!
10. Think small
    It’s easy to think when you’re starting out that everyone else is bigger than you. The truth is, you’re a lot smarter than you think. After learning about the back-end for websites for major companies like Johnson & Johnson, we realized that we were the ones ahead of the curve, and these big companies were way behind. It was also an obvious example of how we could provide value and win big!

We get some customers who say, “Hey, I (or sometimes, their cheap Team B web developers) would like to make some changes to the website. Can you give me the login information?”

Previously, I’d say, “Sure, it’s yours after all!” (When in fact it isn’t: I’ll explain issues of ownership later.) I’d think, “Freedom to the people!” and hand it over.

For your own sanity, don’t ever do this. Inevitably, the following day, pages of content we had strategically placed would be gone, to be replaced with, “blah, blah, blah.” I’d guess they were “just testing things out.” Thank God we keep a disgusting amount of backups. This causes more problems than you might imagine:

Problem 1: The site looks like crap.
This stuff is in our portfolio, so stop making us look bad. We give you art – you poo on it. Rlly.

Problem 2: Your search engine ranking will suffer.
We don’t just place stuff here and there: we’re strategic about it. If you start toying with your content, just watch your search engine rankings and impressions go down. Trust me. If you don’t, go try it yourself. (I’ll just revert to an older copy anyway.)

Problem 3: Only n00bs edit on live environments.
This is a tough one for some people to grasp, as they have no clue how software development works in the real world. Let me tell you how it works: we have two servers: a live server (the website) and a staging server (where we make changes before putting them on the live site). You never edit on the live site because if it goes down, you can be shit out of luck. Nobody cares if it’s the staging server, in fact, you rejoice. That’s how things are done. No ifs, ands, or buts.

Problem 4: We can’t manage your code.
We have a system for managing code: it’s called Git. If you edit the live site, our Git repository doesn’t sync properly (and it’s a pain in the ass to fix). When code is edited… ok, I’m gonna stop here as this explanation is overly technical. However, in summary: any developer worth their salt knows this, and it’s how everyone builds.

Back to the issue of ownership. Imagine you’re a contractor building a house, and you need to add a fridge and a stove. You’re not going to make those from scratch. You buy them from Samsung or whomever. The reason being, it’s easier and more cost effective. So, when I’m building you a website, I reuse elements from other sites. It’s quicker and it saves you money. (If you don’t like this concept, you’ll have to pay for it.) To accomplish this, we issue an ongoing, royalty-free license of our work for you to use. You can do as you wish with it, but you do not own it. Kk.

Solution
So what happens if you don’t own anything? If you want to edit things, we approve the changes. Cool? As easy as that sounds, I still have to give Team B staging access and Git access. Most of them only get as far as staging – but hey, that’s still a win. 😉