Despite what you think – your friend’s cousin’s nephew can not design your website. It is becoming very frustrating to see companies taking their first (or second) step into the online realm, and entrusting their brand to a developer/designer with limited experience – just to shave a few dollars off the budget.
Fortunately this is one thing professional developers and designers are running into less and less these days as companies are starting to realize the difference in quality that a fully established studio can offer when compared to that of a college student who took a web-design course in highschool and is now trying to pay for his 6-pack of Budweiser for the dorm party tonight by convincing you “frames” is the next cool thing.*
This applies to all aspects of professional services. I would not go to a doctor that was, in-fact, not a doctor. Nor would I go to a mechanic that was offering his services based on the fact that back in high school, he learned how to change the oil in his dad’s Trans-Am. </end rant>
Do you think the web industry as a whole is becoming more standardized in what a client can expect from quality, or do you feel it is still all over the map?
*no hard feelings though, we all need to get beer somehow
I think, similar to and/or because of the economic situation, the web industry has diminished it’s “middle class” to the point where the majority of designers/developers either fall into the “lower class” (people working from home in their spare time for pennies) or “upper class” (reputable design firms with quality work). Unfortunately, you will always find people that want to save a buck by going with the friend of a friend, but I agree that more companies are seeing the benefit of using a professional to manage their brand.
Congrats on the new site. Looking forward to reading more.
You bring up an interesting point. Is there a “middle class” in the design and development world? Perhaps it just isn’t profitable being in the middle. I remember a diagram from back in the University days (wish I could remember the name of it), which argued that the most profitable points in an industry were located at the exact opposite ends of price/quality. If you can picture a valley, with a low-cost/lower-quality provider at the top of one end, and the high-cost/higher-quality at the other end, and then everything that falls between the two at various (but lower) heights in the valley. Now attach the idea height with the idea of profitability. Now, I can see where this could be very true when applied to the idea of selling widgets, but is it applicable in a creative industry as well?
Regardless, thanks for your feedback Beth!