What does the customer want?
Posted on May 24, 2005
Customer behavior: never miss to watch the customer attitude and actions.
Few weeks ago I was presenting an offer to a customer for a very small site. Nothing too fancy, it was for a small Public Relation company.
My first step in approaching this customer was to propose him a need oriented offer: simple front end with a very basic administration interface that would allow him to edit his 2 levels deep site.
After presenting a few design ideas, my next strong point was (or at least this is what I thought at that moment) presenting the very user friendly administration interface. Big mistake…2 weeks have passed and we are still working on the designs and not a word about the administration side. Simply the man doesn’t care about the administration, he only wants his site to look in a certain way, and have the necessary content.
So where did I fail? I tried to get back in time and find out why I have considered the administration side a very important benefit. Here is what I found out:
- while I’m using administration interfaces each and every day to edit the content of my sites, most people will never want (or rarely) to change the site content
- also, I do find HTML easy, but the average Joe knows only Word
sometime the creative is far more important than the site engine (especially for people that are not planning to change the site content too often) - I’ve missed several other hidden signs that now are very clear for the given situation: the client had all his documents saved on the desktop and further more he was typing the site’s URL’s in the Google search box. At least these 2 signs should have been an important factor in the decision to present the application benefits. Now I see a red light when talking to a customer who types the sites URL’s in the Google search box: he will probably never want to administrate his site.
So here is my advice. Newer walk on the known paths just because they are known. Try to adapt your strategy on the customer behavior. Good luck!
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Wow, what a flashback; Been there, done that. I had a “new client” who didn’t own a computer, had just sent his first email 2-weeks prior to contacting me and wanted to sell his product online. Two red flags I completely ignored and endeded up recommeding the client to pay for computer classes before paying for a website. I saw him a few days ago at a mutual place. I didn’t recognise him but I know he remembered me and I overheard him asking someone else I know if they “got that web thing down yet”… Web thing? Yet? Did he mean building his site? What happened to his courses that would show him how to setup a website? Honestly, I didn’t care, but that was easily over 7 months ago and I would have figured someone in his class would have built him something eventually. I guess nobody wants a uber-noobie client, even if they are paying cash.
Ah, so sorry to get off-topic. I totally understand what you mean, they see the “Design” and not consider the “technical design”. Only client who do data-entry all day, in my opinion, would consider the administration portion more critical.
Macromedia Contribute was a $99 solution for updating static pages from a Microsoft Word users’ view. I couldn’t find many clients who liked to spend an extra $99 to change a sentence or two. So, we try CMS’s for small clients, and only if they totally need updates weekly, then it’s almost overkill for them. But, it may be overkill for me to spend time updating pictures and text on static sites - if I’m busy coding. Yes, I charge them; Yes, I wish they could do it themeselves, but I’ve seen good designs go bad when the client scans ugly pictures. You can almost “see” the break in change from what I posted up and what the clients have done.
So, do I undersell the client? I don’t always get called back when I upsell the new client, and I know it’s due to “too much information/features” resulting in “too much money” from them. But then again I haven’t called them back to ask “what didn’t you like about the presentation/quote”… hmm, I should try that one day.
Sound familiar to anyone else?