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You’ve met with your client and defined your project’s goals. You understand the scope and have worked with the client to define a clear goal. You breathe a sigh of relief, knowing everything is in place for you to get started. But then things start to change …
Suddenly, the client has a better idea of what you can do to make the project a success, which, yes, will involve some additional work you didn’t talk about earlier. You’ve worked hard, but the client now wants to change direction, making everything you’ve done a waste. What you thought was a straight shot to launch has turned into a meandering journey through the backroads of indecision.
Welcome to the wonderful world of scope creep.
You’ve probably heard the term somewhere. But what is it? Is it some sort of curse? If you say “scope creep” three times in front of your laptop, will the simple website design you’re working on turn into an an email campaign, social media contest, anda logo redesign?
We all love free products to help us personally and professionally. But when it comes to free website builders, they’re not necessarily the best things to consider. While free web builders have their advantages in terms of a free website and the many free templates that come with them, there are many more disadvantages stacked up against them.
It’s great for small businesses to be able to get their website online quickly and in the cheapest possible manner. However, free web builders often need to be linked back to the builder so your website will look unprofessional. Usually, at the bottom of your site, you will have a “powered by” link, and that generally consists of “Powered By Free Website Builder”. It doesn’t look professional at all and it will make customers think you’re not serious.
While the setup of a website using the builder’s features is often free, there are many other features that you could benefit from that aren’t free. For example, builders will give you disk space and bandwidth to keep your website online. However, you will usually miss out on other features such as email accounts, MySQL database, and sometimes even a parked/addon domain name – which means you’ll have to use their subdomain as well.
We stated above that features are very limited and the storage and bandwidth often given to you aren’t beneficial. It will often run out quickly and that means your website is either going to go down or you’re going to be unable to upload additional content until you pay for extra features.
Free Web Builders often make out they are easily customizable, and while that may be true, customization is limited. This means that you can only be as creative as the tool allows, which is something that puts many webmasters off. You will never get the chance to create that dream website you have set out to achieve, and in reality, the only way of achieving such a website is to get it custom made or take advantage of the many other resources out there.
You will get the “powered by” link at the bottom of your site as basic, but some builders also require you to place advertisements. This isn’t at all professional, and often, you will have to advertise one of your competitors.
Free website builders, of course, provide many other benefits, but from looking at the disadvantages above, it would be much wiser to consider a free WordPress theme on a WordPress CMS installation. You’ll get more freedom and when your business grows you’ll also have access to premium themes.
If you have an online masters in business administration (online MBA), you will already know how important presentation is to a business. If you don’t have a degree, presentation of a website is the key to the success of any business.
Free web builders don’t give off the professional presentation that is often desired by customers, but they do provide many other benefits for smaller businesses on a tight budget, so they can be considered in that respect. You can also use web builders to create blogs but you should consider using WordPress; learn how to start a blog.
A decade ago I started a web design company. We grew and grew, and after ten years of hard work, I’ve finally been able to get rid of it.
Don’t get me wrong – we were successful, had fun and did good work. At our peak we had over 200 clients and 15 fulltime staff, making us the largest such company in our city. We’ve worked on great projects for some big name clients and we even made some money too.
Little by little however, the years ate away at my soul. This year we finally left it all behind and moved onto our own products, and I’ve never been happier.
So this is why.
Web design is not without its benefits. Client work is endlessly varied, and you’re always learning new things.
It’s a ludicrously easy industry to enter too – all you need is a computer, Internet access and time. There’s plenty of demand for cheap work to get you started, and fair rates for good work if you can do it.
I started Silktide fresh out of University with no computer and £14,000 (about $22,000) of debt. And though it was hard from the start, we were able to double in size every year, and all our work led to better work. Our efforts were continually rewarded as we grew.
Unfortunately, not forever.
When you’re selling digital products, you benefit from the absence of inventory and shipping, but you get piracy as a constant threat instead. It is remarkably easy for someone to steal your intellectual property — music, designs, eBooks, software — and distribute it under their own name.
The numbers associated with piracy are staggering. Microsoft estimates that piracy costs the software industry $491B each year. Another estimate pegs the loss between $200 to $250B within the US alone.
Regardless of the numbers, one thing is clear: theft can be a serious problem when you’re selling digital products.
As a web designer you need to constantly stock up on fonts, logos, stock photography, graphics etc., and you need to rely on tools to get your work done efficiently and successfully. Here is a list of the top 100 web design resources to help you as a web designer stay on top of your game. This list of 100 web design tools range from the best color palettes, logos and finding the right visual assets, to choosing the perfect typography.
