by EasyEditor Newswire 16/12/2010
Web designers across the UK are routinely over servicing and under charging clients in a bid to keep the e-commerce revolution on track, claim experts.
While 72% of website designers have seen a rise in expectations from their SME clients the majority are struggling to maintain increasingly sophisticated sites on lower budgets and against cut-price competitors.
According to web hosting provider Fasthosts at least a third of web professionals have provided clients with out-of-hours overtime and half have performed work free of charge in a bid to demonstrate the benefits of a properly designed and maintained website.
In the last two years at least 60% of web design firms have been forced to slash their hourly rates while 56% admit to losing clients to cut-price competitors. Many have also had to deal with projects being changed half-way through or work added because client’s under-estimate the maintenance required for a good website.
“For many small firms, using external web professionals is a very sensible and rewarding option,” said Steve Holford, marketing director of Fasthosts Internet Ltd which conducted the research and found low technical understanding from clients was hindering the success of many web projects.
“It’s clear that in recent years, web designers have worked hard to adapt to the needs of clients and demonstrate the value they can deliver. With the right approach from both small businesses and the web design community, online revenues can be successfully built and so help the UK economy in its return to growth.”
However, with many web design firms feeling the pinch as a result of over servicing and under payment leading business experts have urged a review of how client expectations are managed at the outset.
“Having a bespoke set of Terms and Conditions can help manage customer expectations and encourage smooth client cooperation to ensure projects stay on track and web companies to manage cashflow,” said David Reilly, Managing Director of Create Ts &Cs. “A lack of relevant terms and conditions often leads to longer projects, lack of payment and scope creep resulting in the client taking advantage and in some cases retrospective price discounting.
“A set of properly written terms and conditions places the supplier in a position of strength allowing negotiations to start from a sensible position and reach a conclusion both parties can be happy with.
“E-commerce is now big business, worth billions of pounds a year to the UK economy. If British businesses are to compete on the world wide web they have to be prepared to invest in the technology to attract consumers. For their part, web designers have to set out the value and benefits of what they can do in unambiguous terms.”
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