--- title: Red Flags date: 2021-01-19T05:00:00-05:00 author: Sean Smith canonical_url: "https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-3/red-flags/" section: Podcast --- <!\[CDATA\[YII-BLOCK-BODY-BEGIN\]\]>[Skip to main content](#main-content)Season 04 Episode 3 – Jan 19, 2021 56:28 [Show Notes](#show-notes) ## Red Flags  0:00 0:00 1.0x 0.75x1.0x1.25x1.5x2x [](//dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/website101podcast.com/uploads/mp3/season-04/03-red-flags.mp3) In this episode Sean and Mike discuss red flags to be aware of when looking for a web developer. Conversely we also talk about things that clients do that are red flags for web developers. ### Show Notes A lot of what we talk about is common sense things like not interrupting people and appropriate response time, but common sense is not always as common as we would like. ### Show Links - [Web Jargon part 1](/episodes/season-02/episode-5/web-jargon-part-one/) - [Web Jargon part 2](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-6/web-jargon-part-two/) Powered Transcript Accuracy of transcript is dependant on AI technology. **\[00:00\]** **Mike:** Hello and welcome back to the website 101 podcast. I am one of your hosts, Mike Mella and with me, as always, is Sean Smith. Sean, how's it going? **\[00:11\]** **Sean:** It is going well. We're recording on a Friday in early November, so I got the weekend ahead of me looking forward to it. **\[00:19\]** **Mike:** And yet it's like 15 degrees right now for some reason. That's pretty awesome. **\[00:23\]** **Sean:** Yeah, I'm going golfing on Sunday. Are you really? Yeah, my wife booked us nine holes on Sunday afternoon, so lots of fun. **\[00:32\]** **Mike:** So the golf courses are still open in November. They plan for this weather. She had trouble getting a spot. Maybe they just open up when it gets nice or something. Anyway, I'm looking forward to that. Okay, so today we are... I always say it's an awesome episode, I guess, but this is really going to be an awesome episode. We're talking about red flags, you know, things that, if you spot them in a web developer, you better watch out because they should be, they might be a sign of problematic **\[01:04\]** **Sean:** things to come, right? Right. And conversely, we're also going to talk about things that you may do that are red flags to developers and agencies, so that you can be aware of them and maybe change it or think about why it's a bad idea. **\[01:20\]** **Mike:** Yeah. **\[01:21\]** **Sean:** We're going to start off talking about problems that we feel developers do that would be an issue that you should be aware of. And one of the first one is, you're having your initial conversation. You've gone from email, you're on the phone, and you're talking about your project, and your developer keeps interrupting you. Yeah. So, you know, you're talking about what you want, what you need, and instead of like, yes, that sounds good. They're interrupting and like saying, yes, I can do that or that's a bad idea rather than listening through and trying to get an understanding of what your business **\[02:02\]** **Mike:** requirements are. Yeah. And before we move on any further, I will say that a lot of this, the whole idea, I think for this episode came from my lovely wife. Oh, that's right. We were going to do some renovations in our house and we went through some quotes from different, whatever, Renault people. And this one guy that we were working with, well, considered working with, did a lot of these things. He wasn't a developer, of course, but he just, the interruption was one of them. He was, when she was speaking with him, he kept interrupting and it was not a good scene and we're not going to work with that guy. So anyway, thanks to her for giving us the idea and we're going to put it in a developer context. So interruption is definitely a good one. **\[02:45\]** **Sean:** Interrupting is just common social grace. I mean, you don't interrupt people. It's just rude. Another one that I am sometimes guilty of is addressing people incorrectly. I have a terrible memory for names, so especially when I first meet somebody. So when I'm doing business, I do my best. I have an email open with their name in front of me so I know how to reference it and make sure that I'm going to talk to them. **\[03:15\]** **Mike:** I often work with, so a lot of my nonprofit clients are worldwide. They have offices in different countries and they have Vietnamese staff and they have Indian staff and all this. And I often, in my notes, when I'm about to have a call with the group, I write the phonetic Pronunciation of their name as I understand it so that I can remember. Oh, that's how you pronounce that name **\[03:41\]** **Sean:** Right, and another good thing would be if you can't figure out the phonetic pronunciation when you first talk to them Ask them. How do you pronounce it? Make a note of it in your file So that you have it there in the future until you've actually truly memorized how to say it. I **\[03:55\]** **Mike:** Remember I worked on a project a web project years ago with another developer who's me and him as you know both working on the project, sort of independently. And he kept calling the client by a different pronunciation of her name. I think her name was Dena, and he kept calling her Diana. And I spotted it once or twice, and I was like, I don't wanna call him out on it on the call. And I would always forget to remind him when we were off the call. And eventually one day she was just like, it's Dena, not Diana. And he was like, oh, I've been calling you Diana this whole time. And it was just like this awkward silence. **\[04:31\]** **Sean:** It's probably uncomfortable. Another thing that I see in our notes here is calls you miss. Is this something your wife said? Yep, this is another one that same guy. I can't imagine talking down to a woman and calling her miss. I mean, she has a name. It's like Jane Doe, Miss Doe, Mrs. Doe, director Doe. **\[04:59\]** **Mike:** Even man would probably be better than then miss most of the time because miss can be if you're speaking to a grown woman It's diminishing. This can be a little condescending. Yeah, right. It's just wrong So okay, so moving on here The developer talks over you and diminishes your needs. This is a great one. So if you're You know, you're especially with our audience who may not be terribly familiar with all that's possible on a website all that's not possible, that kind of thing. They're still getting their feet wet in the web world. They might request something. And if the person kind of says, no, no, wait a minute, we're not, we can't do that. That's not possible. What are you talking about? You know what I mean? That would be pretty rude. **\[05:40\]** **Sean:** Yeah, maybe over use of jargon. Yep. And to help you out with jargon, be sure to check out our season three episode on jargon. We have, it's a two-parter. I'm pretty sure it was in season three. **\[05:53\]** **Mike:** will link to it in the show notes. That is something that I find a lot of developers do almost intentionally. I get the feeling like they use jargon almost to confuse the client to make them think, you don't know what I'm talking about. You must trust me because you can't handle this yourself. I'm giving you all these terms. You don't recognize you better leave it in my hands. You know what I mean? **\[06:14\]** **Sean:** And I think that if you're using jargon rather than making it something that the layperson can understand, it's about your insecurity as a developer, your insecure in your authority as an expert. Yeah. I personally feel it's my job to make what I do understandable by the layperson who doesn't understand. **\[06:38\]** **Mike:** Yeah, I like to think that that's one of my strong points is that I can sort of translate some of our stuff into our language into something that the client can understand. **\[06:48\]** **Sean:** Well, I think that's true because that's part of why we're both successful. We're able to relate to our client and translate what they want into what we do and return that back to them in a way and say, hey, unfortunately, you can't do it this way. Or perhaps if we did it this way, it would be better because it would make your site faster or it'd be easier for you. What do you think is that a good, are you happy with my idea? So, you know, we can translate these things and make it easy to work with. **\[07:21\]** **Mike:** Yeah, so instead of diminishing your needs, the developer should offer alternatives to the, to the, you know, if it's not possible, they should offer an alternative, **\[07:30\]** **Sean:** something they can do. Right, you need to be able to listen to your client, not just hear what they say. **\[07:37\]** **Mike:** Right, right. So let's talk about quotes, sending a price quote. So let's say you ask a developer for, or, you know, okay, we've outlined the scope of this project. Can you send me a quote or an estimate? They send it to you. And then within a few hours, even within a day, they get back to you and they say, hey, have you read my quote? What do you think of the quote? What's your answer? Yes or no? **\[08:02\]** **Sean:** Are we gonna do this? Yeah, I think that, you know, you need to give people time to evaluate the quote. Take that quote to other stakeholders. they might be, they might not be the decision maker. They may need to take it to their boss or a small committee for to evaluate. And honestly, the developer is probably not the only developer who's quoting on a draw. **\[08:31\]** **Mike:** Yeah, it's probably not just you. **\[08:33\]** **Sean:** Most times there'll be two, three or 10 more developers. And if you're getting pestered by somebody, that's not so good. So when I send in a quote, what I usually do is I set a calendar reminder for one week later and I have it to repeat once a week until I give up, which is however many weeks or depending on the response that I get from them or whatever, but I wait a week before I inquire about it. Most times, I get an answer back faster than that, but I think a week is sufficient to wait. **\[09:08\]** **Mike:** Yeah, and the converse of this, so we'll get more into the, you know, red flag things for client behaviors later on, but just while we're on this topic, if you're a client and you get a quote, one way for you to sort of be, you know, courteous is to actually respond to it. It doesn't have to be immediately, like we said, but, you know, don't just receive the quote and then say, oh, it's too expensive for me and then never get back to that developer. **\[09:37\]** **Sean:** pretty bad form. Yeah, ideally, you'd reply back and say, Hey, we're going to make a decision by Friday or next week on Tuesday. If you don't hear from us by then, I'm sorry. Or if you don't **\[09:53\]** **Mike:** hear from us by then, please email me back. Or even just if and when you decide you're not going to go with that developer or that quote, just let them know. Say, Hey, thanks for your quote. We've decided to go a different direction. **\[10:04\]** **Sean:** Yeah. That almost never happens. I think I've only had two or three people do that in my 12-year career. **\[10:12\]** **Mike:** I know. I find it happens. It's a frequent thing as well. **\[10:16\]** **Sean:** I'm not sure why. Another sign of a bad developer is somebody who sends you a quote and then they respond with a lower quote. Maybe you said no or you said, oh, we've chosen somebody else and they respond with a lower quote. They're desperate. They need the work. was probably a reason they're desperate. **\[10:36\]** **Mike:** Yeah, this was another thing that happened with that renovations guy that I spoke of earlier. He sent us a quote and then we didn't get back right away because we were still interviewing other people and then he said, hey, just in case that first quote was too high, I could probably make it cheaper by doing this and this and cutting off these things and we were just like, you know, this guy seemed a little too needy. **\[10:59\]** **Sean:** How I generally work if I'm concerned that maybe the budgets higher than I feel that the client is ready for. And I'm not always positive about that. What I'll do is I'll send in two or three tiers, two or three different packages. So there'll be like package one, which is say X dollars, and then package two is X times 1.5 X, and then package three, which is two X. **\[11:25\]** **Mike:** Yeah, that's good. Something like that. And you can build in multiple phase things, do something as part of a phase two. **\[11:32\]** **Sean:** The quotes would include different amounts of work. So, hey, I don't sure what your budget is. I can do this for $10,000. I can do this for $15,000. And I can do this for $25,000. Right, right. What's your choice? Instead of, hey, $25,000, I haven't heard from them in a few days. You know, maybe I can do it for like $4,000. **\[11:57\]** **Mike:** Yeah, yeah. I do the same thing. I put, yeah, multi-tiered options, just in case you don't, in case, you don't want to scare them off. There's always something you can do for whatever budget they have. That's something that I'm always telling my clients is, that's why I would like to know a budget up front is that what you get done depends on how much money you're willing to invest, right? **\[12:20\]** **Sean:** Exactly, and another common courtesy, your developer should not be late for meeting. Well, as well as you as the client, like for me personally, I would rather be an hour early than five minutes late for anything. **\[12:35\]** **Mike:** And I know I've been waiting for this one because I know this is your, you know, totally in your wheelhouse because you've said that to me many times and you and I have met up in coffee shops and pubs and whatever over the years. You have never, have you ever been late? I don't think so. Not once. I've probably been late several times but I can guarantee you have. One of us has to be there first. So if you're there first, then I'm the one that's late. **\[12:59\]** **Sean:** I know some people who don't necessarily agree with me. Generally, I just find it very off-putting and rude in general. And if you're going to be late, send a text message. This is not the 1980s or 1990s where you couldn't find a phone. I can't communicate with somebody. Send a text message. Send an email. I'm sorry. I'm stuck in traffic or whatever. Yep, don't just show up 20 minutes late without an explanation. I just don't understand people who do that. I think it's very unprofessional. **\[13:33\]** **Mike:** Totally, totally. **\[13:34\]** **Sean:** Yeah, personal life, different story, but in work, unacceptable. **\[13:39\]** **Mike:** So this next one is something that really bothers me and it happens too often, which is that your developer answers the phone while they're on a call with you. So maybe you're doing like a zoom chat or something like that. And they're phone rings and they can, oh, could you hold on a second? I got to take this and they go away and they're talking for, even if they just say, oh yeah, I'm on a call. I got to go, you know, I'll call you later and they hang up. That's not good enough for me. I feel like, unless it's like an emergency, like from your spouse maybe, I might answer a call from my spouse, I suppose. But personally, like even right now when we do these podcast episodes, I mute my phone. No one, my phone will not ring right now because it's muted. Like why wouldn't you do that when you're having a meeting with a client or a web developer, right? **\[14:27\]** **Sean:** Yeah, I'm with you on that, especially if it's a new relationship, you shouldn't be doing that. With a longer-term relationship, I do answer calls that come in, especially if I'm on a video call and they can hear my phone ringing. The length of that call is high. I'm in a video conference, I'll call you back. Yeah, and that's it. Yeah, and the only other time I've ever done that is I got a phone call from my daughter and I knew that it was coming and she needed to get picked up or something and I told my client ahead of time, I'm expecting a call, I may need to cut this short. **\[15:09\]** **Mike:** That's great, yeah, that's fine. I mean, if it's pertinent to the timing of the call then of the call that you're in with the client or a developer, that makes perfect sense. **\[15:20\]** **Sean:** But yeah, or, hey, my wife's close to going in labor. She calls me, I'm answering the phone. **\[15:26\]** **Mike:** Yeah, but generally when the bottom line is, if you answer a call that's not urgent, what you're saying, what the developer is saying to you if they answer a call like that, is you're not as important as the person on the other end of this call. And that's a red flag. **\[15:42\]** **Sean:** Yeah. Another red flag developer can take on your job immediately. Yeah. Hi, I've got a, hi developer A, I've got this new site, we just incorporated that I'd love to build out. Yes, yes, I can start tomorrow. **\[15:59\]** **Mike:** Yeah, right away. **\[16:01\]** **Sean:** If you can start tomorrow, why? Unless you know that this guy is new into business, you should not be able to start immediately. **\[16:10\]** **Mike:** Like, it could be that, you know, If you're doing a pro bono thing, very often, especially with my non-profit clients, sometimes they get work done pro bono from some student, maybe who just graduated from a web course or something. And they may not have other client work going on, so they maybe they really are available right away. And that's fine. And that goes in with what I said about being like a new to business. Right, right. But if you're speaking with a professional developer and they can start like tomorrow, then you you probably should ask yourself, why didn't they already have any work booked? You know, how is their business going, you know what I mean? **\[16:46\]** **Sean:** Yeah, honestly, if you call me, and it's a slow period, probably the quickest I could start on a project is two weeks. Yeah. And that's on a slow period. Right, and if you called me today, I won't be able to start until March. I just turned one down. That's not normal. Right, normally I could start a little bit sooner, but right now I can't start until March. And that includes new projects for existing clients. **\[17:12\]** **Mike:** Right, right. I just had a client reach out and they have, and this is another one just before I get to that. This is another red flag that has the converse version for the client. So if you're a client looking for work to get done on a website, don't expect someone to start right away. You know, expect them to have some work that they have to finish first, book things in advance. I had a client speak to me the other day, that they had a report due mid-November. Again, it's right now, it's November 6th as we're recording this. And it was a very big project and they asked me to, you know, if I could do it and I had to say, no, I'm sorry, I don't have time. I'm totally booked with three other projects right now. **\[17:52\]** **Sean:** Last year in October, so October 2019, I was approached by an existing client and they said, hey, we want to rebuild our site, which I had been maintaining for a long time. I took it over from a previous developer and they said we'd like to launch by January. And I said, I cannot start until January. And even if I could start immediately for them, it was not the size of the site was not possible to launch in January. So I mean, I talked to them and we ended up starting mid January and Mike helped me out on this because I was I was over booked at the time. I talked to Mike and he did a bunch of work for me on that site and we ended up launching it in June. **\[18:38\]** **Mike:** Right. **\[18:39\]** **Sean:** Yeah, so it was, and it was supposed to launch in May, but we ended up launching in June. So it got through some delays. Big site, clients were really happy with it, but, you know, if this was an existing client and I had to push back and say, I can't start right away. **\[18:52\]** **Mike:** Yeah, so there's a, there's a tip for, for all you would be clients out there is plan things in advance. It'll make it easier for everybody. So on the price tip, another one here, extremely low price. If you speak to a developer, oh yeah, I can do that for, I don't even want to say what a low price is, because it depends on the work I suppose. But if it feels really low, if it's the lowest of several quotes that you got, might want to look into that, right? **\[19:24\]** **Sean:** Yeah, I mean, I think that goes for any sort of industry like I Had my backyard renovated this summer. Sorry you doing different renovations than me But I had my backyard renovated. I tore down my deck and replaced it with a patio and did a little bit of landscaping and stuff and We talked to three guys There was the cheap guy the expensive guy and the middle guy the guy you hired. We went with the middle guy And I had the expensive guy had done other work for me previously, but he was much too expensive for this quote, for us. It was out of our budget. The middle guy was not at the top of our budget. And he did an excellent job. We're really happy with it. So, you know, you don't want to be the cheap guy. And the cheap guy was about 40% cheaper than the middle guy. Right. And I was like, that's good. I just got this queasy feeling, talked to my wife, and I said, you know, I don't want, I'd love to save money, but I don't, you get what you pay for. **\[20:30\]** **Mike:** Yeah, exactly. And I wanted to get into that because I had a client a few years ago who came to me. There were an ongoing client, and they wanted a microsite done for a campaign. And they said, hey, can you do this for us? And I said, oh, yeah, what's your budget? And the budget was, I won't say what it was. It was very low for an e-commerce site effectively. You could sponsor, it was one of those ones where you can create a team and join a team and sponsor a team and donate and that kind of stuff where it's like a competition type thing. And I said, that's your budget for that. I'm sorry, I'd love to do it, I can't do it, I can't do it for that price. So they went with someone else, that other developer built the site on WordPress and it was There's a nightmare for them, apparently, the developer basically built it and disappeared and they would try to reach out and say, hey, what's going on with this? This is not right. And we add some features and they were like, no, the site's built. It's done. I have other work going on now. And I mentioned to them later, well, this is kind of a, you get what you pay for, I kind of knew you wouldn't be able to get that e-commerce functionality done for that budget. **\[21:41\]** **Sean:** And something that I really, really try to be careful about is I get an inquiry from a client with an existing site. And their previous developer has done things that I think are bad, or their approach was wrong or how they interacted with the client, based on what the client is saying, I'm really care for about this. I was like, hmm, I wouldn't do that. That's as far as I'll go. I'm not going to say, oh, your, your previous developer is an unprofessional guy who doesn't know anything. Like you can't, if your developer is trashing your previous developer or other developers or other software or whatever. Somebody is trash talking something. You don't want to work with them because they're going to end up, trash talking you when you move away. Exactly. That's right. Yeah. I mean, we're giving **\[22:42\]** **Mike:** red flags in general, but I wouldn't say, oh, your previous guy was this guy and he did it this way. That's unacceptable. Why would he do it like that? You didn't even know the situation of who their previous developer is. Maybe it was someone who used to work for the organization. And they're on good terms with that person. They just didn't quite know, you there's all kinds of reasons why something might not be the way you do it. Just keep quiet about it and just do it better. Exactly. Moving on here, let's see here, developer doesn't ask follow-up questions or clarifying details about your requests. Yeah, that's a good one. That was a suggestion for my wife when I talked to her about this episode. Is that right? It's a good one. That would be a a scary thing to, you know, if you kind of go, oh, we want this website with this functionality. We want to have this component that's over here and then they kind of go, I can do it **\[23:38\]** **Sean:** and start next week for X dollars. **\[23:40\]** **Mike:** Right. **\[23:41\]** **Sean:** Exactly. **\[23:42\]** **Mike:** Yeah. It's just like, yep. Can do. It is like, okay. Really? Did you fully understand what I just said? **\[23:48\]** **Sean:** Yeah. I would always follow up with additional questions to clarify that I understand what they want. And make suggestions about things that as a professional, I have experienced about that might enhance or improve their website. Right, because my goal is not to just get money from you as my client, my goal is to make your business better, to make it easier for you to run your website. **\[24:14\]** **Mike:** If the developer has, truly has expertise in the development field, they should be able to enhance your requests by saying, you know, we could probably do that a little better this way, or at least echo it back to you and say, okay, so you want this and this and this, like this other website, is that correct? And then just confirm things **\[24:34\]** **Sean:** like that. Exactly. So, coming up next, we're going to talk about red flags from clients. **\[24:41\]** **Mike:** Hi, hope you're enjoying this episode. We're always looking for topic suggestions, so if there's anything you'd like us to discuss on the show, please let us know. We're also looking for guests **\[24:52\]** **Sean:** If you have a guest that you think would be great for a podcast, please let us know. If there's a guest that you would love to come back, let us know. You can do that by visiting website 101podcast.com slash contact. And we're back. Welcome to the second half of the episode where we're going to talk about red flags that you do that alarm us as developers. And I don't mean that you're going to do all of these. I mean, you in the general sense, clients in general may do something like this that is a red flag and would make me reconsider or if enough of the red flags are there, I'm going to turn you down or stock working with you if I have an existing relationship already. Absolutely. And the first one is self-explanatory, micro-managing. Yeah, nothing like getting 100 emails a day, phone calls all the time, questioning every decision, maybe telling me what code to use. If you're going to micromanage me, why don't you just build it yourself? And yeah, that's exactly right. **\[26:03\]** **Mike:** I have nothing further to add for that. **\[26:07\]** **Sean:** Another one is kind of like a two-pointer inconsistent messaging. So this could be where you're giving conflicting instructions or conflicting messages about priorities. And additionally, it would be inconsistent communication. And by that, I mean, you're sending me an email, you're posting in our message board. Maybe your developer has shared their cell phone and you're sending them text messages at inappropriate times of the day. **\[26:42\]** **Mike:** Yeah. Yeah, so going back to conflicting instructions one, one of the situations I encounter occasionally is that there's a team working on the project, maybe communications, a few communications people, whatever, and they're all sending me emails and where sometimes I get it from this person and then I get a different one from this person and maybe they don't jive with each other. They're conflicting instructions and I'm like, well, which one of these do you want me to do? So a good tip is to have one person in your organization be the communications point for your web developer. Everything should go through that person. **\[27:20\]** **Sean:** One point of contact. I haven't had this issue. I do have one client that I get emails from different departments, but they're all about different specific things. Although I suppose there could be a clash which hasn't happened yet in the three years, but yeah, I think that ideally there would be one point of contact. **\[27:40\]** **Mike:** Yeah, and getting to the inconsistent communications, I, I don't know about you, Sean, but I prefer email or some form of typed communication all the time over something like a telephone call or a call like a Zoom call or something, and that's because there is a documented trail of what was said. So I can always go back and say, look, on this date, you sent me an email that asked for this, and I can always go back rather than say, Remember the phone call you I thought didn't you say you were gonna? No, no, I never said that I've been I am 95% of the way with you **\[28:14\]** **Sean:** I do prefer email or Trello. I use Trello with my clients a couple of clients don't like project management so they use email and I'll work with that. But sometimes it's easier to Talk it out on a phone call or a screen share. Yep. In which case you do that and then you write it up in a follow-up email or a trouble board post where you said, hey, our phone call, we talked about A, B, C, I'm going to do A and B, C, we need to reevaluate later. And you have this written record **\[28:50\]** **Mike:** of everything that has been agreed upon. Yep. Every time I have a call with a client, I follow it up with an email called Notes from our call, where I write, usually I break it down into Mike's tasks and client's tasks and this is what we agreed to do and let's you know exactly and **\[29:08\]** **Sean:** I have a relationship with a couple of different agencies where I I build out sites for those agencies on top of my client sites and I get most of my phone calls come from the the project directors of those agencies and at in the college keep saying hey please post this in base camp please He's posed this in Basecamp because to the one agency, they like Basecamp, right? **\[29:29\]** **Mike:** That's a project management tool. **\[29:31\]** **Sean:** Yeah. And it's like posted in Basecamp. This way there's a record and I can come back to it. And it's so much easier to use project management than email. I personally like to have inbox or and I can't do that if I'm getting emails from clients. **\[29:46\]** **Mike:** They can get a little overwhelming for sure. of email, what about if your developer sends an email, and then they call you to ask if you've received the email? **\[30:03\]** **Sean:** Yeah, we talked about this in last episode with Amanda. Yeah. Mike, you said this happens to you somewhat regularly, or I think Amanda said that? **\[30:15\]** **Mike:** Well, so just now I positioned it as though it was the developer sending the email. It could be either. It could be the client or the developer. Don't send an email and then follow up asking if they got. I remember, here's my running joke that from years ago, I used to work at this nonprofit, and I remember one time, one of the guys in our office, the cubicles type thing, came over to the lady that sat next to me, and he said, hey, I just sent you an email and then that lady said to him, yeah, I'm kind of actually in the middle of something right now. And then his response was, oh, okay, I'll just send you another email. **\[30:50\]** **Sean:** I just literally Facebook. **\[30:56\]** **Mike:** Yeah, he Facebook. So I love that story because it was like, what? Anyway, it's like something you'd see on the office or some one of those shows. **\[31:05\]** **Sean:** More often than I would like to admit, I get a phone call from somebody. Have you seen my base camp post or my trello post or my email. And I was like, I haven't checked email yet, or I haven't looked at it yet. I'm in the middle of something. And it's generally because I check email in the morning and at the end of the day. **\[31:25\]** **Mike:** Right. Not everyone checks email at the same time. **\[31:28\]** **Sean:** And it's because I need to get into the zone. Oh, and if that beep beep beep, that's because Amazon just ship delivered something to me. **\[31:37\]** **Mike:** You don't have to take another call. **\[31:39\]** **Sean:** No, I got people upstairs I'll go and get it. I should have turned that off. All right. And moving on, the next thing we'd like to talk about is everything is urgent. If every time you're emailing or calling your developer, every task needs to be done immediately, it's tough to prioritize. You know, sometimes something truly is urgent other times it's like, hey, I need this. Can you do it as quickly as you can? You have to understand that your developer, unless they work directly for your organization, is not your employee. It's a client relationship and they have other clients as well. **\[32:28\]** **Mike:** If you haven't entered into a relationship with your developer where they're on call, kind of literally where you can just call them or reach out to them and they'll immediately do something. I can't imagine you would have such a relationship, but I suppose it's possible. But if you haven't illustrated that between the two of you, then don't expect them to be able to do it right away. And again, this goes back to the planning we talked about earlier. If you have something you want done, plan in advance and expect it to be done after that. **\[32:58\]** **Sean:** Yeah, exactly. Oh, I need this new feature. Or hey, we want to have a new site because we We have a conference coming up two months from now. Great. Hey, we have a conference coming on Monday. Can we have this three page microsite done? **\[33:15\]** **Mike:** No. **\[33:16\]** **Sean:** Sorry, I'm booked out for two or three weeks as we mentioned earlier about scheduling work. I'm not sitting by my phone waiting for you to call for work. I'm actively scheduling it. And I want to do your work, but I can't do it immediately. So it's up to you to plan far enough ahead of time. **\[33:43\]** **Mike:** If you, so let's say our listeners work at an office somewhere, presumably most of you are working a job somewhere, if you knew you'd be out of a job in a month or two months for some reason, you've got about to be laid off, you'd probably look for work, right? You'd probably look for other work after that. That's how we work as self-employed developers. We're always looking at the future to make sure there's something coming toward us, some payment coming toward us. So we're not waiting for everyone's call at any given moment. **\[34:17\]** **Sean:** Right, I mean, we could be in a slow period where we might be able to take on a job quickly. **\[34:22\]** **Mike:** Yeah, we could fit something in sometimes. **\[34:24\]** **Sean:** Yeah, and if it's a small thing that's urgent, we can do that. And if it is something that truly is urgent and not something that you should have planned for, like maybe something broke on the site, or an unforeseen event came up and you need to do something with the website. Great, we can do that. And great example of this, COVID, everybody's living through COVID. Back in March and April, all businesses were shut down or there's all, every website had to put up an announcement about their COVID policy, you know like we're there for you or whatever. So that week I had about seven or eight clients all on this same day saying this and I need to add this little bar to my website with a it's like oh yeah sure okay I was like working double overtime on this stuff and it was like and I had to tell clients look I have four other clients in front of you who are asked for the same thing. I'm going to do it as soon as I can. It is a priority, but everybody's asking for the same thing, and everybody understood that as well. So the first people in, we're the **\[35:34\]** **Mike:** first people out. Right. And we spoken before about maintenance plans where you might get priority seeding with your web developer if you have a recurring arrangement, right? Payment **\[35:47\]** **Sean:** arrangement. Yeah. And I do have maintenance plans with clients. And if they are on the maintenance plan, they do get bumped to the front of the cure. **\[35:56\]** **Mike:** Yeah, so it's not something to consider if you think you might have things pop up here in there that are very important, but time sensitive. **\[36:03\]** **Sean:** This COVID situation, for example, I had seven clients. Four of them were on maintenance plans, and I think three of the people at the front were on the maintenance plan. Somebody else further back asked up. They got bumped in front of number four because they were on the maintenance plan. **\[36:20\]** **Mike:** Right, right. **\[36:21\]** **Sean:** Yeah. number four that they got bumped number five but I mean I did move it. Yeah and you got it done **\[36:29\]** **Mike:** anyways. So on the note of you know getting requesting tasks another red flag from the perspective of a developer is if the client seems to think that every little request they they have is really easy and can be done very quickly. There's different levels of effort required to do different things on websites. If you just want to change the title of an entry somewhere, sure, that can be done quick, but if you want a photo gallery built or something like that, it's going to take some more time. **\[37:02\]** **Sean:** Yeah, and even a task that seems simple, sometimes it could be more difficult than it appears, and that's part of, you know, you don't, may not truly understand what's involved in it, or it might be due to a legacy code that makes it difficult on your particular site. Yeah, unfortunately it happens. It's the same thing like you might think you take your car in and you're asking them to do something. You might think oh this should be easy but it ends up **\[37:34\]** **Mike:** taking like eight hours and costing you $1,500. Yeah, it's the same kind of thing. We don't know as **\[37:42\]** **Sean:** lay people what is involved in everything and your developers should also be able to communicate **\[37:49\]** **Mike:** roughly why it's if it's going to take longer or require a bigger budget, they should be able **\[37:55\]** **Sean:** to explain somewhat what's behind that. Right. So just before we recorded this episode, I posted in a discord community that we're in and I said hey we're going to be recording about red flags, Does anybody have anything to say and I got one response which I feel lucky to have gotten because I did post it with very little notice and so Sebastian to Hasden and Sebastian I hope I pronounced your last name correctly has said Some examples of client issues are it better be perfect his client actually said that yeah **\[38:33\]** **Mike:** I just noticed he says I had that once I that's scary **\[38:37\]** **Sean:** I mean, yeah, it better be perfect. It just makes me feel like, you know, I'm a kindergarten kid and I've been called into the principles office or something, you know. He also said things like not replying to all questions in an email. So if I send you some questions to clarify what you want to do, it's important for you to answer all questions. And it could be as simple as, hey, I don't know right now, I'll get back to you. Like, if you don't have the answer, **\[39:13\]** **Mike:** let me know. Don't just skip it. Yeah, that's a good one. I get that one frequently where I ask questions and I get some replies and not others. And related to something we talked about where the **\[39:25\]** **Sean:** web developer is trashing other developers, he says, you know, mentions bad experience with previous developers. Yeah. While sometimes you might have a bad experience with a web developer, is it you that's the problem or is it the web developer? Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, it's fully, **\[39:49\]** **Mike:** you know, it's totally possible that you might have worked with a bad developer, problematic developer, whatever, but yeah, if that happens a lot, maybe you're the problem. I don't know. Well, what I would **\[40:00\]** **Sean:** it says, like, hey, it didn't work out with our developer, or our developer moved on, or outgrew us, or we outgrew our developer. You know, I've lost the client, or two, because I outgrew them. My fee structure got higher than they could afford, or I moved in a different direction. And I also lost one client because they moved on to something that was way bigger than I could handle on my own. Yeah. All right. You moved on. Great. It happens. Relationships change. Don't badmouth your past relationship. Yep. And the last thing he says, if your client says we can't get back our domain name from our previous agency. **\[40:45\]** **Mike:** I feel like Sebastian had some very specific experiences for a lot of debate about. **\[40:51\]** **Sean:** But either they were bad as the client was bad or the client has inability to properly vet the people they work with and control their own assets. **\[41:05\]** **Mike:** Yeah. Although I can see this happening, though, because I've had clients where they're so unfamiliar with how the web works that I say, okay, you need to buy a domain name, you need to set up the name servers, you need to get hosting, and they're kind of like, oh, and I say at the end of the email, or I could do it myself and send you the details or transfer ownership to you. And sometimes the client's like, yeah, yeah, you just do it yourself because we don't want **\[41:31\]** **Sean:** to do it. Actually, what I do slightly different to that is, hey, if you don't want to do it yourself, give me login credentials. **\[41:40\]** **Mike:** Yeah. But they still have. Yeah. **\[41:43\]** **Sean:** But how hard is it to create an account? Yeah. create the account. You send me the login credentials. I go and do what I need to. So I go into a go daddy or name cheap or wherever you've registered your domain. I do what I need to do. And then I tell you it's done. I copy the information that I need to keep. And I say, hey, when you're done working with me, I recommend that you change the password so I no longer have access. And I specifically tell you a good idea and as an ethical person, if I stock working with them, I go and delete all of this information. I don't keep a record of it. But you can't trust that everybody's going to do it. They could be forgetful. They could just be a bad person. You don't know. Yeah. So if you don't have control of your own assets, I don't know. It just feels to me like it's it's unprofessional. For my own clients, I'm willing to manage the licenses for the software and everything, but I want them to purchase it. I tell them what to do. I say, go here, do this, do this. After you've done that, please do this and this. But if you can't, send me the log in credentials and I'll take care of the rest. But I don't want you need to go in and buy it. You need your credit card. You need to buy it. I don't want your credit card. I'm not buying it. I'm not owning it. If I die tomorrow, get hit by a bus, or you decide that you don't want to work with me for whatever reason, I want you to own all of the important stuff. **\[43:20\]** **Mike:** And everything you just said is a sign of a good developer that they care that the ownership lies with the client. If your developer is unwilling to let you set up hosting yourself or buy a domain name yourself for some reason, that should be a red flag for you. **\[43:38\]** **Sean:** I mean, I offer hosting as a value ad to my clients, but if my client decides they don't want to host with me anymore, I'm happy to let them go. I will give them the keys to the site, help them move, and be done with it. That's great. I'm not going to try and own them or beg them to stay on or do some really dodgy stuff to keep them so they owe me money. You don't want to work with me. want to work with you. That's how it comes to it. Like, I don't have the time or the energy to **\[44:09\]** **Mike:** deal with the stress of that. Right. Right. So, okay. The next point here is something we've mentioned probably in several different episodes for different reasons. No budget or unwilling to share a budget. So if I'm a developer and you're the client and I say, hey, yeah, I can I'd love to work on this project. What's your budget? And you say to me, um, what's it going to cost? And there's a standoff between us. And this happens very often. And I can totally understand that some people just don't know what a website should cost and what have you. But as I said before, the money you're able to invest dictates how much you can get. So there's always, well, almost always something, something I can give you for whatever your budget is. Um, so you should come up with, have a discussion and say, how much money are we willing to invest in this website? What is the point at which after that, we will think, oh, that's too much to spend on this. But below that, you'd be happy to invest that in a good website. That figure is your budget. **\[45:14\]** **Sean:** Well, it will also save you time as well. Because if you tell me that, hey, these are the features I want on my website. And my budget is $3,000 or it's $8,000 or whatever your budget is. I can come to you and say, yeah, I can work with that. Or unfortunately, I can't do it for this much. But what I can do is I can do Feature A, B, and D. And I can fit that in. Feature C and E. maybe let's look at another phase two or unfortunately your budget is not within what I normally work with. Some developers will be newer in their career and they might be able to do what you need for less money. Yeah absolutely **\[46:06\]** **Mike:** you can get you might be able to find someone who is within your budget and from a So client's perspective, a big reason to share a budget is, so imagine this scenario. You speak to a developer, here's what we need. You go back and forth. Can you do this? You all, you mean this? No, I meant this and all this stuff. You finally figure out what it is. Okay, I'll send you an estimate and you get an estimate and it's five times higher than what you were prepared to spend. So then you've wasted all that time for both of you. Like why bother getting into that conversation? If there was absolutely no chance of that person having a fee that's within your budget. So figure out how much you want to invest, say it upfront, it's really the better way **\[46:47\]** **Sean:** to go. I have a story about that, but I did not bother to ask for a budget. So I got an inquiry through my website, hey, I'm looking for a website, I forget all the features that they wanted, but it was pretty big. were some e-commerce stuff involved and they had an existing site, which was e-commerce. I said, all right, these guys are making money. They've already got a website and they want to make some improvements and modernize it. So I spent hours going through their email, asking some follow-up questions and writing out this beautiful quote. And it's like, this is what I can do for you, it's going to cost this. Oh, we only have $200. I was like, I spent more money or more of my time than the $200. Just putting the other to quote. Yeah, $200 for an e-commerce site? $200 for any site. Yeah, well sure, yeah. Like, okay, so agency rate for website work ranges from a hundred and forty to like two hundred and fifty dollars agency rate in our freelancer for you a good freelancer rate will probably be in the 80 to a hundred and twenty dollar range two hundred dollars. That's it. That's man. How long ago was that about four years ago? Wow. And it would have to be like 25 years ago for it to be like something that would be almost free stuff. I can't even imagine. Anyways, have a budget. This way you're not wasting your time or the web developers time. You know, like some web developers will have a minimum. I don't do work below X. Right. Like for me personally, I have trouble fitting into a website into a budget of less less than $3,500. **\[48:48\]** **Mike:** Yeah, that's about my price point too. **\[48:50\]** **Sean:** Yeah, and that would be a pretty basic site. But there will be other developers who can do a website for a thousand or $1200. Maybe they're using some WordPress and a theme and it doesn't take them a lot of time. Great, but I tend to do bespoke work. And bespoke work requires more effort. **\[49:07\]** **Mike:** And having a budget explicitly stated helps you locate the developer that's right for you, right? **\[49:15\]** **Sean:** Exactly. Okay, so let's move on. Scope creep. What is Scope creep? Scope creep. So the scope **\[49:26\]** **Mike:** of the project is the list of details, the list of features that you require. So we want a blog, we want a news section, we want the staff, board members, we want it to whatever, whatever the list of things you're asking for, that's the scope of the project. Scope creep is when you're In the middle, we're all in the middle of building this site out, and then the client usually is the one who says, you know what, we sort of change our mind. We want to do this instead with the board members thing, or they say, oh, you know, we like what happens over here on this website, and we want to add that. Anyway, the scope changes. It creeps higher and higher, and the client expects this work to be done within the original scope, but it can't be because it's more work. **\[50:16\]** **Sean:** Yeah, and that's why a good web developer and you should come up with a scope document that dictates what's included in the quote for the entire build, or even if it's like work on an existing site, hey, I'm adding in this new section or I'm adding in this new feature, what is included in that? **\[50:36\]** **Mike:** Yeah, absolutely. **\[50:37\]** **Sean:** way everybody knows what's expected. And hey, it's going to cost X dollars. If I, if it takes me longer than X dollars is worth to me, that's on me. Yeah. Because I didn't quote properly. But if it takes longer than X dollars is worth to me because you started adding in extra features or work that was outside of the original agreement, that's not, that's not good. And again, this, **\[51:04\]** **Mike:** You know, the simple solution to scope creep is plan multiple phases of work. You know, if you have a new feature you want added, talk to your web developer and say, can we add this in in the next quarter or in the next month or whatever or something like that? **\[51:18\]** **Sean:** So, you know, I just recently launched a big website and one of the things that was waiting during development is there's another phase. And it wasn't about the money, it was like, We need to launch the site, and now we want to add something else, but we don't want to wait. So they launched the site, and now we're in the process of negotiating this new section to the **\[51:42\]** **Mike:** website. Right. Right. Another aspect of sort of budgeting that we spoke of earlier is sort of nickel and diming the developer about everything. So if a developer works with a client and the client's It's always like, can we make that a little, can you knock some of the dollars off that feature request or like, you know what, I can't really pay that much. And if they're constantly asking you to lower your price for various stages of work that you're doing, that's a red flag for developers. **\[52:15\]** **Sean:** Yeah, it shows that you don't value the work. Another thing that shows you don't value the work is, hey, why don't you do this for exposure? So, and for the, for somebody who doesn't know what exposure, working for exposure means it's like, hey, why don't you do this work for me and then I will tell everybody that you did the work so that you get exposed as somebody who can do this quality work. Unfortunately exposure doesn't pay my mortgage. **\[52:49\]** **Mike:** Right, that's always what I tell people. I don't get, I haven't gotten this in many years, but back when I did, exposure doesn't **\[52:54\]** **Sean:** put food on the table. I haven't got that since my first year as a freelancer. Yeah, same with me. Generally, it's asked of young in their career early in their career inexperienced developers and they're kind of like, oh, I need to add something into my portfolio. Don't, don't do that. No, it's just, it's just bad. Like, you wouldn't work for exposure **\[53:19\]** **Mike:** in whatever your job is, so don't expect them to. **\[53:23\]** **Sean:** And so lastly, we have, you're not gonna, you don't want to sign a contract, pay the deposit, or you're laid on payments, all comes down to payments. If you've already signed your contract, works ongoing, don't be late with the payments. Could you imagine you're working at your nine to five job, and your employer is, your two weekly salary is due on Friday. It's like, oh, sorry, I forgot to write the check today. And then like, on Monday, it's like, oh, yeah, yeah, I'll get to it later in the week. And then you know, Friday rolls around is like, I haven't done it yet. Are you going to continue working at that job? Yeah, how are you going to feel about that job? Yeah, you know, you're agreed to something to pay it on time. **\[54:10\]** **Mike:** Yeah, web development is a job for us web developers. And we need to get paid **\[54:15\]** **Sean:** regularly just like anyone else. And, you know, it's like pay the deposit, sign a contract. The contract is there to protect both you and the developer. That's right. The contract often references the scope of work or a statement of work, which may be a separate document that tells what needs to be included. You know, you just sign everything, pay everything, be on time. Take it seriously. I've occasionally get late payments from clients. I've never had to stop working with a client because they were consistently late or didn't want to pay. But I've heard about it. **\[54:52\]** **Mike:** I've had a client once that wouldn't pay and it got nasty for a while, but then it got resolved and I'm happy about that. **\[55:01\]** **Sean:** I'm glad it worked out for you. So this episode has gone on a lot longer than I thought it would. **\[55:08\]** **Mike:** This is easily our longest episode for this season so far. a long time. Maybe for all, yeah, all of them, I don't know, maybe. **\[55:15\]** **Sean:** No, we've got a few that are over an hour, and we're just at an hour now. Okay. I don't remember the last one that was over an hour. **\[55:21\]** **Mike:** Well, it was good stuff, really valuable information from both sides, and I'm glad we tackled both developer red flags and client red flags, all important. **\[55:33\]** **Sean:** The website 101 Podcast is hosted by me, Sean Smith. You can find me on LinkedIn. My username is caffeine creations, or on Twitter, where my username is caffeine creation, C-A-F-E-I-M-E-C-R-E- 8-I-O-M, or at my website caffeine creations.ca **\[55:56\]** **Mike:** And by me, Mike Mella, you can reach me online at B-Likewater.ca and also on Twitter and LinkedIn, where my username is Mike Mella, that's M-I-K-E-M-E-L-L-A. Hold on a second, I gotta clear my throat, we're gonna cut this out. Geez, I need more whiskey I think. **\[56:18\]** **Sean:** We should do that quote at it, I need more whiskey, we'll put that in the outtakes one time. You should totally have outtakes. Close Transcript Have a question for Sean, Mike, and Amanda? [Send us an email](/contact). [![Listen on Google Play Music](/assets/images/google_podcasts_badge@2x.png)](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly93ZWJzaXRlMTAxcG9kY2FzdC5jb20vZmVlZC5yc3M%3D)[![itunes badge](/assets/images/itunes-badge.png)](https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/website-101-podcast/id1449510012)[![itunes badge](/assets/images/spotify-logo.png)](https://open.spotify.com/show/3rmSM1R9t6q1U8DmYWJRSO?si=NrYPMgDaRV6Dd56PjEaPow)### Season 04 - 1 [ 'Click Here' Hurts Your SEO and UX: Why It's Time to Change](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-1/click-here/) - 2 [ How to Talk to Your Web Developer: Communication Tips for Clients](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-2/how-to-talk-to-your-web-developer/) - 3 [ Red Flags](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-3/red-flags/) - 4 [ Content Strategy](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-4/content-strategy/) - 5 [ Accessibility](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-5/accessibility/) - 6 [ Improving Your Website Without a Redesign: Content Audit, Usability Testing & More](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-6/how-to-improve-your-website-without-doing-a-full-redesign/) - 7 [ Content Marketing](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-7/content-marketing/) - 8 [ Alternatives to Google Analytics](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-8/alternatives-to-google-analytics/) - Bonus[ Listener Survey - What Topics do you Want to Hear More of?](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-/listener-survey-what-topics-do-you-want-to-hear-more-of/) - 9 [ Website Optimization and Speed](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-9/website-optimization-and-speed/) - 10 [ Exploring WordPress Website Development with Laura Bailey](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-10/wordpress/) - 11 [ From Novice to Bootcamp Instructor](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-11/from-novice-to-bootcamp-instructor/) - 12 [ Pimp Your Typography](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-12/pimp-your-typography/) ### All Seasons - [Season 01](https://website101podcast.com/season/01/) - [Season 02](https://website101podcast.com/season/02/) - [Season 03](https://website101podcast.com/season/03/) - [Season 04](https://website101podcast.com/season/04/) - [Season 05](https://website101podcast.com/season/05/) - [Season 06](https://website101podcast.com/season/06/) - [Season 07](https://website101podcast.com/season/07/) - [Season 08](https://website101podcast.com/season/08/) - [Season 09](https://website101podcast.com/season/09/) <!\[CDATA\[YII-BLOCK-BODY-END\]\]>