These economic times are hard, and business owners have to make tough decisions on daily basis. When business cash flow is low; work is not coming in or the budget is being cut, one of the first things that gets neglected is marketing. It is very sad to see a business in the position of not being able to promote their product or service. Marketing, advertising and promotion are vehicles that bring in more business, and when they get neglected or cut due to lack of finances…well, we all know the outcome.
I wanted to share this story with you, to hope to inspire and encourage the business owner through these difficult economic times.
A few weeks ago, a loyal customer of ours emailed me to inquire about her website that we had designed 3-4 years ago. She wanted me to review and analyze her website and it’s relevancy. I emailed her back after taking a close look with the following remarks:
- The framework of the website was outdated due to changes in the Internet and search engine industries. Some of the features should be updated to current criteria.
- The design and overall look of the website can be refreshed to keep up with expected visual trends.
- Social media networking needs to be integrated and implemented on the website and in her marketing strategy.
- Large portions of the website needed to be re-tested for browser compatibility, considering that Google Chrome did not even exist when her website was originally designed and developed. In addition, new browser versions have come out in last 3 years, so the website had to get tested to ensure compatibility with the latest browser versions.
Her reply to me was, “That seems ok, can you take care of it for me, and how much will this cost?” It was difficult to say, but the amount of work that it would take to address those issues would be equal (if not more) to designing a brand new website.
The client expressed to me, that she’s been going through some tough times in her business and that she did not have the money in her budget to redesign her website.
As much as I always want to help our customers succeed, there was not way around these issues without a lengthy effort.
Nevertheless, a few days later, we were able to find a solution. One of her clients is a graphic designer of 25 years, and he offered our client to barter his design services for hers, to help her with a large portion of her website design. We worked together with her designer to ensure that the design of the website was compliant with features and functionality of what she was looking for. After the design stage was complete, we would take the new look and develop the rest of the website for her.
This was a great compromise, which allowed us to still offer our services to this loyal customer, even on her limited budget.
This is not the only time that we were able to find an alternative solution to reach the goal at hand. I am happy to look back at this and realize that everyone’s situation is different and here at DIF Design we were able to meet the customer’s needs and not compromise on quality.