Web Design Guarantee and Dependability
Copyright © 2010 by Larry Gowdy - updated July 10, 2010
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Yea, but does the
website actually work?
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When I first started my business in 1982 the country was in a bit of a recession not too dissimilar to today's economy. In the past I had watched the Amarillo region go through several cycles of boom and bust, and so I was confident that the Amarillo economy would soon pick back up like it had always done in the past. I am also confident today that the local economy will once again increase and be as strong or stronger than it was two years ago.
As my business grew, in 1983 I became the regional service center for a major manufacturer of housing electronics (intercoms, built-in vacuum systems, vent fans, etc.). I quickly learned that almost no building contractor in the panhandle would consider using the manufacturer's brand due to how previous electricians and service centers had failed to properly install and service the equipment. The installations had been sloppy and/or installed incorrectly, many of the products had defects, and more often than not a contractor had paid for the installation of equipment that simply did not work.
Faced with the challenge of overcoming the contractors' strong prejudice against the brand, I cut prices, gave free extended warranties, repaired product defects before installation, and guaranteed my work unlike what anyone else in the region would possibly consider. Within a year I had promoted the manufacturer's products well enough that it became the number one best selling brand in the region. I was selling and installing hundreds of the products annually, and with the recession over, we were all doing well.
Several things happened when I promoted the housing electronics manufacturer. One, the local electrical supply companies tried to convince me to buy all of my products only from them, which was a good thing because the competition for wholesale prices helped keep the customers' retail costs down. Two, my own competitors in the electrical field saw how well I was doing and they tried to cash in on my success by their selling the same products. The final result was that the suppliers began calling my competitors with the hope of selling additional products, and since the competitors were no more caring than those before me, the quality of installations plummeted as did the manufacturer's reputation - again. Faced with the problem of my receiving fewer referrals from the wholesalers, I dropped the brand and became the regional service center for other brands. The last I checked, two of the local wholesalers have gone out of business, and the remaining two wholesalers were only selling one or two of the manufacturer's products a year - again.
Today we are being faced with a similar problem, that some web designers have charged customers for websites that simply do not work. Some other web designers are milking business owners for thousands of dollars to update low quality websites that are not even found on search engines. The result is that many business owners have been soured against the idea of having a website. Today I had another potential customer tell me about their less than pleasing experience with a web design company; it feels like 1983 all over again.
Business owners already know how difficult it can be to get an accurate yellow page ad (mine this year has the wrong URL listed), and there is a daily struggle for many business owners to get even the most simple of services done like business cards, telephone repair, Internet, etc.. On top of the annoyance of poor quality service, business owners are bombarded with numerous daily phone calls from salesmen trying to sell more low quality products that are of no value except to profit the salesperson. At one time I was receiving between seventy to one-hundred and forty phone calls a day in my business, more than I could possibly return, and so I fully sympathize with business owners not wanting to be telephoned by salesmen. In the 90s, I received so much junk mail that the mailman had to make a special stop at my door to hand me arm-loads of mail. It took me about half an hour each day just to sift through the mail to find the wanted bills and payments.
Business owners do not need nor want more telephone calls from salesmen, and though mail is the most polite method of approaching a business, more often than not the letters may never be opened. Rebuilding the local reputation for web design is not going to be an easy task, but in time it will be done. Once the website designing reputation is rebuilt, it is expected that new and old web designing companies who build non-working websites will once again begin making sales and driving the web design trade's reputation back down. In past years my business survived on our name alone, and the worse that our competitors' service became, the stronger our business grew. Our optimism is that our web design business will become increasingly popular in spite of the faltering reputation of some other web designers'.
When shopping for a web designer, I strongly suggest that the buyer insists on getting a guarantee in writing that the designer will correct any and all errors in the website at no charge, and if for any reason the website does not work as intended within a short period of time (ten to thirty days maximum), then the customer will receive a full refund of all money paid. If the web designer cannot make the website work within a few days, then the web designer was likely not qualified to build websites. Many, a lot, a whole lot of web design companies are using free blog software and pretending that the 'websites' were actually made by the seller. Many other web design firms are using similarly automated software, and if an error exists in the automated software then the error cannot be corrected until the software manufacturer releases an updated version with the errors corrected. Insist on that guarantee, and accept nothing less than 100% accuracy.
My guarantee is that the websites I build will be free of errors, that the websites will work as intended, that the websites will be found on search engines, and if at any future date an error is discovered I will correct the problem at no charge. I can offer such a guarantee because my web designs are usually always error-free, and what errors might be found will only be of some little something that just takes a couple of minutes to correct (misspellings, minor coding, etc.). Most service companies only give a thirty day warranty on labor, and a few high-end companies will give a year warranty on labor, but I believe that when a business owner pays for a service then the business owner should get what s/he pays for regardless if an error is discovered a month later or a decade later. My guarantee of error-free accuracy is spoken with a smile but with the seriousness of it being true: "forever, or until I can no longer physically or mentally type code on a computer, whichever comes first."
Today is a good time in the recession cycle to purchase a website. Prices are down, you can get an excellent website for a fraction of what it will likely cost in another couple of years, and by the time that the economy is back at full-swing your website will have had time to earn high rankings on search engines. If you wait until the recession is over, your competitors' websites will be getting the most business while you sit and wish you had made the decision earlier.
If you already have a website, what is the website's dependability? Does it work? Are all the graphics and text where they should be? Do the graphics and text remain aligned when the viewer zooms in for larger text? Is the website ranked high on search engines? Is it performing for you, or is it just a money pit? Things are changing in Amarillo, and your website will soon be more important than you might imagine.
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