There are many web developers who are either a little shady, or genuine but don’t know what they’re doing. That’s a fact of life across many industries, but this is something we see and hear about almost every day. If you’re receiving poor service from a web developer, marketing agency, IT company — any provider, really — at what point is it time to pull the pin and move on?
Recently a new client contacted us for assistance with their online marketing. As we do with every project, we took a look at the client’s website right away and uncovered a whole range of issues. Some were fairly minor, such as inconsistent fonts or colours, many related to a low-quality and outdated design style, and the vast majority were important features which help with search engine ranking and website usability — these were critical mistakes.
We provided the client with a list of issues, and recommended that they delay any online marketing services until the website issues are resolved. After all, there’s no point in spending time and money to bring more traffic to your website, only for the site itself to fail at converting those visitors into sales.
The client then took the list of issues back to the original developer to have fixed. This begs the question:
If the developer failed in so many major areas the first time around, why would you go back to them?
Answer: Price.
We get it. Every business is on a budget of some kind. Every dollar counts, and this is no more true than when you’re trying to establish a new business. But what many business owners fail to understand is that you have to spend money to make money. We say this to people every single day:
Investing funds in high quality providers will always result in a better return on investment.
In practical terms, if a business owner opts for a cheap, low-quality website and never makes a sale, their return on investment is a big fat zero. But if they spent a little more for premium quality, they would recoup their outlay quickly, and then it’s all profit thereon.
On top of this, you have to ask whether the original developer is genuinely concerned about a quality product, or if they’re just fixing their mistakes because they have to. Sometimes correcting these issues later can be more costly than doing it right the first time around, and will also cause you lots of headaches along the way. We don’t believe in band-aid solutions when it comes to investing in your business.
If you’re using a web developer primarily because they’re cheap, and you’re not getting the results you’re after, it doesn’t make sense to stick with them. Make the decision, be professional, and politely let them know why you’re moving on.
Why go back to the shoddy developer? The answer is clear: Don’t.
