As you sow so shall you reap…
As you may or may not know, the New Zealand backbone is made of small business; small companies like mine going about their business and being competitive in their marketplace.
Every day, a new web developer takes on their first client and begins a web site build. It’s an exciting time for any new startup - to be able to take your IP and start charging people for it.
I remember my first site, I think I charged around $150 for a 5 page build and I was so proud of the result. I remember calling my folks back in the UK to show them it, spelling out the url and waiting for their applaud. There was no applauding.
The home page was pretty much one big image, weighing in at 400kb, and my dad was on dialup. It took minutes for my dad to see the page “design”, and it was 1000px wide, he was on an 800x600 monitor. He had to scroll sideways to see the ‘effects’ I had put there…
I don’t think I’ve met a web person that hasn’t done something like this in their infancy of web development. It happens mainly because:
- I was a new inexperienced startup and desperate for a first client
- My client had no budget and wanted a quick fix to get online
These two things are ingredients that account for the large amount of crap on the internet. Thankfully, most of the time we as developers grow, the client learns the ‘get what you pay for’ analogy, and we both learn from our ‘mistakes’ and improve/progress/move forward.
On the other side of this, either through ignorance, or greed, or for some other reason I cannot comprehend, established developers/agencies continue to pollute the internet with badly crafted rubbish that does nobody any favors. They continue to charge people for building websites with poor markup, bad design and no common sense - essentially inaccessible.
We as developers of ‘public facilities’ should use best practice in everything we do – and charge appropriately. Demand for cheap sites are never going away, leave it behind. That’s for new players entering the marketplace. Let them learn and let the client learn. Rise above the rubbish, and the demand for cheap sites.
You’ll notice job satisfaction is on a different scale when dealing with quality, not quantity.
