August 19th, 2010
Don’t Vote For Pedro
by Jeff Rummel
Vote For Pedro
In Napoleon Dynamite, While running for class president, Pedro’s big talking point was “vote for me, and all your wildest dreams will come true.” This is a popular stance with politicians, it’s simple, romantic and reassuring. No really believes that Pedro can make their wildest dreams come true, but it’s reassuring to hear.
Unfortunately there are a lot of web agencies taking the Pedro approach. They make a similar veiled promise, to keep you in the consultation. This approach keeps you in the consultation, you feel reassured. Everyone can talk about pie in the sky dreams, and avoid talking about the real-world details of how much work it takes to make dreams come true.
Don't Vote For Pedro
Making your wildest dreams come true takes real work. With any real work, there are real-world costs involved, and with any sustainable business, someone will have to pay for these costs. Most often the cost is deferred to the client in any number of ways. Sometimes short-cuts are taken by the developer, the code isn’t quite as clean as it should be, leaving a site that is not as findable by search engines as it could be or not as secure.
Some companies create arbitrary fees that help there balance sheet, but have very little relevance to the direct labor they are providing to you. Perhaps the worst way your “wildest dreams” are ultimately paid for is through poor project management, and somehow when you think the project is complete or almost complete you get hit with a bill that includes their fixed cost and a laundry list of other costs and features that were never explained at the appropriate time during the project.
The biggest advantage of working with a design agency over electing class president is that it’s not a democracy. You do not have to elect an agency if you don’t want to, and more importantly, you can have that agency put “your wildest dreams” in writing. Of course any decent agency will ask you to go into detail about your wildest dreams, but that’s a good thing. The more you and any potential web agency can talk about your specific needs, goals, and budget, the better they will be at addressing your wildest dreams.
When Pedro ran for Class President, the stakes for the voters were low. Class Presidents have very little real power, but when it comes to your web presence, the stakes are very high. The agencies taking the Pedro Approach only see your website as a product, and they’ll tell you anything to get your vote, knowing that they’ll have you at least until their term is up. They don’t consider your long-term needs until they are up for re-election.
Good web agencies understand that your website is a service masked as a product and will commit to you a long-term solution. The product begins with a findable website with quality content that reflects your brand. The best agencies know that the findable website is the beginning. They aren’t looking for re-election when the initial project is complete, they’re two steps ahead of you and when the initial site is successful, they are right there with you helping that site grow. And when it comes time for you to spend your hard-earned money on their hard work, they can tell you exactly where all that money went.
The Take away knowledge: Expect more from your agency then making your wildest dreams come true, get them to put it in writing, and after they have, make sure you understand what they wrote down.
Alfredo Pete
great site.