Designers Beware: 10 Warning Signs of a Bad Client

No other force has more power to make or break the spirit of the web designer than the all important client. The good ones make us love our work and the bad ones can make us wish we were dead. Sometimes when it gets really bad, we have to fire a client. But wouldn't it be great if we could tell the good ones from the bad ones right away and avoid them like we would bad fruit at the market? I don't think it will ever be quite that simple. There will always be a few bad apples that sneak in under the radar. But over the years I've learned a few warning signs that are dead giveaways for hard-to-please, controlling, whiny and/or needy clients. If you come across a potential client with one of these, think twice about the project. If they have two or three, run the other way.



1. Client who claims their last designer just couldn't quite give them what they wanted

Admittedly, there are some situations where this is a valid claim. Most of the time, though, this client is controlling and hard-to-please. It may seem a little awkward but it's important to probe them for some details about their relationship with the previous designer. Ask if you can see some of the rejected work. Find out how many iterations they went through before the client gave up on them. If the client is willing to give you this information, you should know pretty quickly whether or not you should pass on the project. If they won't, proceed with extreme caution.



2. Client with computer skills that are grossly lacking

Clients who are extremely computer/web illiterate suck a lot more time than ones who know their way around. Keep that in mind when you're quoting a job for this client. Sometimes I've even found that a client's frustration with technology can be transferred to the designer—a kind of guilt by association. The last thing you want is to coddle a client through a project only to have them bad mouth you to all their friends because they're frustrated with the technology.



3. Client with "a little web design experience"

You've probably run into this client before. He's the guy who built his last website in Front Page and can't understand why the project is going to take so long and cost so much. He knows just enough to question every decision you make. If this client starts out on a controlling note, you're probably doing good to pass on the project. If you decide to chance it, it's important to establish yourself as the expert early on in the process. Don't leave any room for doubt. Do your research and be prepared.



4. Client who offers a percentage of their business as payment

I went for this one a lot when I was first starting out. Don't do it! People with million-dollar ideas and no money are a dime a dozen. You should get paid for what you do. Also, keep in mind that if the website ends up being a huge success, you're going to be first in line for the upgrade and support work anyway. That's true whether you get paid for the initial project or not.



5. Client who insists on three or four different design mockups

Clients who love options are usually clients who love control. Clients who love control can quickly become time-sucking, make-you-wish-you-were-dead, demons from Hades. Be wary of this client. He's the sneakiest and hardest to read of them all. Sometimes everything ends up just fine. The client quickly chooses an option and you're on your way. Other times you end up with a nine month project that should have been finished in two.



6. Client with the flowchart

Sometimes clients who bring flowcharts to the first meeting are just highly organized and efficient individuals who want to make your job as easy as possible. If this is the case you'll know right away. When the client is saying things like, "You're the expert, but we put these together to give you a better understanding of how our business works", etc. You have nothing to fear. But when you get a stack of paper with every detail of the website pre-planned, you are dealing with a control freak, and potentially your worst nightmare. It's not worth. Let the project go to some other poor shmuck.



7. Client with a big IT department and no marketing department

The company that has a lot of IT workers and no marketing department will almost certainly clash with your ideas about design. In my experience, the IT department in a company likes to have control of the website because they view it as part of their territory. Right away you're dealing with an issue of clashing egos. And with no marketing department there to balance the situation out, you end up with an overdose of type A personality that's no good for anyone. Be careful with these types of clients.



8. Client who thinks Network Solutions or their ISP is your competitor

A client who thinks you are in direct competition with cookie-cutter website solutions and local ISPs is probably not going to value your work very much. Dealing with clients like this always makes for a strained relationship. They may be willing to pay your fee because they "don't have time to mess with the other solutions", but they will always view you as a necessary evil. That's not exactly the type of business relationship you should be looking for.



9. Client with no previously created promotional content

Clients who blatantly disregard the value of marketing and advertising are many times frustrating to deal with. To start, they have no previous experience working with creative agencies, so everything is a learning process. Also, the lack of raw materials makes it difficult to get started. And once you do get started every piece of content you need will take extra long to get because it has to be created from scratch. If you're going to jump into a project with a client like this, make sure you're ready to spend some extra time or hire a copywriter to produce the content for you.



10. Client with a current website that was designed by a family member

This is never a good situation. There are always a lot of feelings involved and hoops to jump though. It's especially bad with the previous designer/family member is part of the decision-making group for the new design. I've been in meetings like this where pride and ego end up splattered all over the conference room. It's not a pretty sight and I don't recommend it for the weak stomached. Don't go for this project unless the family member is completely out of the picture. And I don't mean dead, because then you're looking a whole new set of issues.



by: Matthew Griffin

Click-Jacking

Feds charge seven men in 'click-jacking' scheme

 By David Sarno, Los Angeles Times

In a reminder to consumers to be careful what they click on, federal authorities have charged seven men with infecting millions of computers with a virus-like program that tricked users' Web browsers into navigating to phony pages stocked with ads, earning the defendants as much as $14 million. In a type of online fraud known as click-jacking, the malicious software waited for users to click on links to popular sites like Apple's iTunes or Netflix.com, and then quietly redirected their browsers to similar-looking sites larded with online ads — ads that allegedly earned the defendants cash each time they were displayed.

HTML 5 Standardization

HTML5 is all the talk. While many features are going to be great there is still so much work needed to provide standardization. I'm excited but with all of Google's algorithm updates, the constant flux in the quality of search engine results I am apprehensive that the www is going to be further splintered. Apple's Mobile operating system (iOS) and now Google's involvement in the creation of HTML5, not supporting many of the XHTML standard code the cost of quality website design with consistent website browser rendering is going to double if the Giants do not start working together.

ALERT OSCOMMERCE WEB SITE OPERATORS!

ALERT! osCommerce web site owners, in light of the recent spike in web site hacking, specifically osCommerce web site's, it is extremely important to protect your business and your customers by upgrading your web site software and installing all security patches provided by the distributor. osCommerce is an online shop e-commerce solution available for free as an open source based software released under the GNU General Public License. While reports of hacked osCommerce web site's are on the rise all e-commerce platforms are attractive targets for hackers.

The problem with osCommerce, as well as most open source software, is a lack of support and difficulty finding information when problems occur.  Most often you are referred to forums to sift through years of posts to figure out if others have experience correcting an issue and attempting to implement their solution or "work around".  Reputable hosting companies notify their clients when their online store is at risk but most do not offer software support. There are things you can do to protect your site.  You can help prevent hacking by monitoring your server logs for unusual activity, attempts to hack a web site will appear first in server logs as errors, usually someone searching for a database. Look for unauthorized access attempts or uploads to the site without your knowledge. The problem then becomes web site owners that are not comfortable installing updates or cannot find the time to perform maintenance. If you are among the previously mentioned group of web site owners we are here to help http://www.InternetMarketConsulting.com.

Protect your customers:

• Do Not Store Credit Card Numbers
• Monitor Server Logs
• Promptly Install Security Patches
• Back up Regularly

Alternative e-commerce solutions are available, that are not open source and often automatically install security updates for a specific period of time. These alternatives range in price from $1,000-$50,000 depending on their features, support and connectivity. Just because you purchase licensed software does not guarantee protection from hackers.  You must remain diligent in monitoring logs, creating backups and installing updates when prompted. 

Another option is to hire a website maintenance company to perform regular maintenance operations, security checks and updates.  Conducting business on the Internet comes with responsibility to your customers to create a safe, enjoyable shopping experience.  The idea is to create balance between security and convenience.  If given the option most customers do not mind having to re-enter payment information if it means added security.  In fact, I recommend that people never allow a web site to store payment information, while it may be faster and more convenient no site is impervious to a determined and well-financed hacker.

Tip 1: Columns Dropping off page.

Problem: Columns of information are dropping off the page or rendering at the bottom of the page. Website Repair

Hosting $3.95, useless backups $19.95, a functional well-managed website priceless!

What is the REAL cost of website hosting? Wow, you cannot believe your luck when you find this great deal for website hosting only $3.95 per month, you add on daily backups for only $19.95 because we all know how important it is to have everything backed up. Upon switching to your "too good to be true" hosting company you have a simple question, after thirty minutes on hold you finally reach a customer service agent. You spend an additional thirty minutes explaining how your website was fine last week but now the website is returning 404 codes, page not found error. Page not found, where could your pages have gone? You have not made any changes. Perhaps the agent does not understand you because of your thick American accent, which is understandable right, so you speak very slowly. The customer service agent tells you to email EVERYTHING you just said to their support team. Now, you spend twenty-five minutes describing everything AGAIN in detail with dates, account numbers, domain names and error codes in an email to the hosting companies technical support team. You get a receipt from the hosting company acknowledging your support request and informing that for you can pay for expedited support, which turns out to be $150.00 an hour. An email arrives from Phil at technical support at 3:30 the following morning asking you to please recreate the issue and send them a screen shot in jpg format. Your website has been down now for at least three days when you receive an email responding to your screen shot asking you to describe your problem; apparently, it is not standard practice to document all telephone and email interactions. This time you are to describe each step you took to recreate the problem in detail. Oh, and do not forget to include dates, account numbers domain names and error codes with your response. Each email signed “Kindest Regards,” but at this point, you are not feeling any kindness. A prompt response arrives, only fifteen hours later, telling you to reinstall your content management system. You reinstall your open source content management system and after several hours of trial and error the website is finally up and running but the content is missing. One more time you start the process of contacting your hosting company and their response, sorry they do not offer technical support for the content management system that you installed through their control panel. For those of you that are not familiar with “open source,” it is a program designed and distributed free of charge but once you install the application you are on your own. Some open source applications have been extensively tested and have excellent knowledge databases to help troubleshoot technical issues others provide forums that you can submit questions to other users, not such a good resource when you are way over your head. Now one may ask why you did not simply have the hosting company restore the site from those wonderful daily backups. Turns out when they say daily backup, they mean that they will backup your website every working day, not exactly every day but what they consider daily, and each time overwrite the previous backup. Geniuses, you would not want those redundant backups lingering around taking up space on your unlimited hosting account. Remember, your website has been down for three days and just so happens that they have a backup from the day after you first contacted technical support. Finally, in order to get your website repaired you call a professional website repair company. Come to find out, the website repair company offers monthly packages that include free hosting, redundant backups, monthly audits and updates. Hosting $3.95, useless backups $19.95, a functional well-managed website priceless!

The Cost of Some Internet Marketing Techniques

One common website repair request we receive at Internet Market Consulting involves repairing website design errors and penalties caused by "Black Hat" Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing companies. 

 

 Outsourcing SEO Can Cost You Your Website   by Ward Tipton
If you are new to the world of SEO and SEM you may not know all of the actual subtleties involved but in all reality, if you are just going to hire someone to do your SEO work for you, you better know a whole lot more or you could suffer far worse than you ever would trying to do your own SEO work ... even without any real experience. Even if you hire an SEO Professional to promote your site, if they do anything that the search engines decide is unethical, your site will be banned and you will have no recourse, legal or otherwise to get it back in!
If you have already looked around the freelance sites, you may see all sorts of jobs people want done regarding SEO work. Somebody here needs ten PR5 or better one-way links to their site. Somebody over here wants 100 comments on DO Follow blogs. If none of that makes sense to you, you really do need to learn what it means whether you are going to promote your own websites or have someone else do it for you. Why?
If you do not learn about SEO your work could very easily get you banned from the Search Engines or decrease your rankings whether you do the work or not!
What? How? Huh?
The top search engines are constantly evolving their algorithms or the methods that they use to decide both your pages rank and its placement on the SERP or Search Engine Results Page. A while back, three-way linking or Pyramid linking was all the rage but they quickly became more costly than effective. The basic idea was to provide mutually beneficial, one-way links by linking three sites rather than just two. Thus, instead of reciprocal links (which are still valued less) between Site A and Site B, there would be a link from Site A to Site B, a link from Site B to Site C and a final link from Site C to Site A.
This effectively provided all three websites with one-way links and increased the value of those links. It may have taken the search engine a while to figure out this tactic but figure it out they did and many of those sites were penalized in rank and placement while some were banned altogether. Many of the people doing this were Professional SEO Experts who were hired by people just like you. While some of the people simply lost page rank, some of them really did lose any ability to get their site indexed on the search engines at all.
Over 80% of all organic (free) traffic comes from the search engines!
Once your website has been banned, sandboxed or otherwise removed from the search engine indexes you may just as well shut that site down and build it from scratch. Google does not care what SEO Service you paid to promote your site. Bing does not care what SEO Company you paid to promote your site. Yahoo does not even care what SEO expert you hired; once your site is off the search engines, it is off until the search engines decide to let you back in. This can take years to accomplish and most likely will require more money invested than you will ever be able to get back from your investment.
These days, as in the example given above, many people are searching for SEO Experts that will give them all these one-way links. They will only want DO Follow links back to their site and even many of the SEO "Experts" think that this is a good thing! But guess what! Google is neither stupid nor idle and when it updates the algorithms, unnatural website growth patterns are going to be red-flagged first and then the search engines will begin the banning process again. With over ten billion websites indexed each of the major search engines, they really do not need your website to provide their users with viable alternatives.
So what is the answer?
The answer is actually very simple. If you are serious about your online business and want to succeed and stay in business for the long run, do not try to jump to the head of the pack right away. Organic growth is, as the name implies, natural growth. When you are advertising and promoting your site, do not seek to aim for only the high value targets but take on all of the possible targets.
When someone sees your link tagged on one of your comments on a No Follow site are they any less likely to click it than they would be on a Do Follow site? You can still get traffic, and while you may get more value on the search engines from a Do Follow site, you can still get traffic from a No Follow site and your growth will appear more natural to the Search Engines insuring that you do not have to worry about being banned or sandboxed.
If you only have one or two websites that you will never be making a lot of money from, learn about the SEO and do it yourself. Would you let someone you do not know come into a brick and mortar business you have built and let them market it and promote it however they see fit simply because you do not know how ... even though your lack of knowledge regarding the subject means that you cannot even be sure that they do either? You cannot run a business like that in the brick and mortar world and expect to be successful. Running a business on the Internet is no different.
If you own numerous websites or have valuable and profitable products that will allow for the costs, pay someone to do your SEO for you but be selective. If someone is promising you that they are only going to get you One-Way links on Do Follow Sites do you really think that this "unnatural" growth will go unobserved to the Search Engines? Do you really think that something so Unnatural is going to outrank a site with the same number of links but showing all organic growth or natural growth? Guess what! If you do not know anything about SEO, you need to learn ... especially if you are going to hire someone to do it for you! The cost of unnatural growth can literally kill your website.
Proper SEO goes far beyond just getting all the "good stuff" and throwing it together and thinking you will come out ahead of the game. Proper SEO efforts involve many different aspects, some of them more beneficial than the others but only beneficial if you have all of them together, the better with the not so good. Anything less is putting your online business venture on a path to failure. If you are business for the long run, take the good with the better and sooner than you think, your site will be one of the best ... and that means you own the Search Engines, they no longer own you all because you took some time to learn proper SEO techniques!

About the Author

Ward Tipton is a Professional Writer who provides highly specialized and quality informational product creation and online content for his clients. Ward recently opened Professional Writing Services for content creation and content distribution services.