web design Kent, Web Design Maidstone

 

Web Design. Would you pay as much as Victoria Beckham?

 

Of the thousands of web developers and designers in the world there are few that would argue that being paid £670,000 for creating and maintaining a website would not be highly desirable. We would all like clients like Victoria Beckham, wouldn’t we? Pots of money to spend on your services; an easy target for those with great sales speak. As IT professionals we have more abbreviations in our arsenal than there are hits on the latest Adele Video, and we can wheel them out in any contract negotiation, scratch our chin, shake our heads and trot out an unreasonable figure. But £670,000? That’s just slightly less than builders are getting for a one bedroom flat in Maidstone these days.

How much is a Web Designer worth?

 

But are we worth it? Is any website worth that kind of investment? In a world where footballers are grossly overpaid and health professionals are not, where should web developers and designers stand? After all, we train harder than any of the aforementioned athletes, are bothered with all kinds of unrealistic demands from over expecting customers, and generally work long hours. Should we not be renumerated with similar riches to England’s own ‘Golden Balls’?

I would say not. Yes, we are overworked and underpaid (big aah required at this point) but no more than any other professional. There are sometimes very complex problems that we have to deal with, but we are not talking about saving someone’s life here unless the website has key information on it – different subject. An e-commerce site that has gone badly wrong will have an impact on business. Imagine Amazon having issues taking payment or the .Gov website being down stopping people from paying for the joy of scaling the Dartford River Crossing that must have been paid for so many times now we could build another 30 of them? These organisations cannot function without the IT. We are important and would like to be treated as such, but compared to a service Police Officer we are just a support function. In the days where servants made the breakfast, cooked the dinner and polished master’s shoes, we would have slept in the same quarters and eaten in the same kitchen. We would have been a blacksmith creating robust shapes from wrought iron and steel sweating away in the search for perfection. We were always behind the scenes while the real work took place on the platforms we provided.

In the 21st century we are the descendents of those trades having turned into hunched versions of Gollum: no-one can see ‘the precious’ until it is finished. We are artists ‘darling’ using Photoshop, Illustrator and Inkscape; we are WordPress Web builders, crafters of beautiful page design using PHP, CSS3 and HTML5.

And that is where we fit in. There will always be an expectation of a quick fix or the website in a day, but the reality is that the real work to complete a comprehensive set of lightning fast, secure pages that are mobile responsive and beautifully rendered that the great God, ‘Google’ would approve of is not as easy as it looks. Nevertheless, we will continue to obfuscate the true cost of any project with our lexicon of IT descriptions that even Scotty from Star Trek would be proud of.

How much would Web Design Pro charge me?

 

Thankfully at Web Design Pro.co there isn’t that kind of approach (Cue video of delighted customers marvelling at their new site). I will always attempt to use as little jargon as possible whilst trying to outline what services that I provide during the free consultation. But you should be prepared for a lengthy discussion about your new website! I want to make sure that what I create is what you have envisaged. And then once the work is complete present you with a invoice that we agreed on after our first meeting and not one that has spiralled out of control.

If, of course, you’d like to present me with a £669,400 bonus becuase you think the work is outstanding then I might just be able to find something to spend it on.

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