Let’s take a look at the proposal I got today. Upon reading, several red flags immediately popped up, and I hadn’t even talked to the “potential” client as of yet.

Already we have our first issue. The client doesn’t want any major changes to the IA or content. Basically they want a skin, not something that’s best for their users.

Here’s our second red flag, a list of plugins they’re telling me, the developer, what to use, instead of trusting that they’re paying me to know what should/shouldn’t be used. Also, it looks like they included everything under the sun, I bet dollars to doughnuts they don’t even need half of these.

Also, special prize goes to those who can spot the “special plugin”. After seeing this plugin list, I already decided not to work with this client – but wait! – there’s more.

Deadlines are inevitable and very understandable. But what isn’t is an entire laid out schedule of what the web designer or developer needs to do or abide by. Is two weeks really enough for a full design? Is another two weeks really enough for development of what they’re wanting? Tough cookies if it isn’t, they say.

Here we find an even worse red flag. So they’re not coming to you because they like what you do and want to work with you. No, instead they’re throwing their RFP to anyone and everyone who wants to agree to the ridiculous timeline. You should never, ever go into “competition” for any sort of work. Clients should come to you because they know you can deliver the best.

Moving on:

It’s always best to be open to your clients about those you may be partnering with to finish the project. However, it’s not up to the client about who you work with. It’s your choice. (Of course if they somehow had a terrible experience with that other person, that’s another story).

Ah last, but certainly not least. They acknowledge that RFPs take a lot of time, yet they don’t care that they’re throwing theirs out willy-nilly to everyone. Also, they’re now mandating how YOU will get paid, instead of allowing you to list out payment terms.

Designer & Developer Professionalism

Sometimes it’s tough to remember that you own a business. You’re not anyone’s employee, nor do you have to work with every client who comes your way. The clients you choose to work with reflect on you, and you’ll only end up attracting more of the same.

A person doesn’t walk into a doctor’s or lawyer’s office and demand that they work on their schedule and when(if) they’ll get paid. No – they work on that professional’s schedule and they agree to that professional’s terms of work, or they don’t work with them at all.

There’s no problem with clients checking out a few different companies to see who knows their stuff and is affordable, however, it’s completely wrong to open a “competition” like feel to the process, hoping that we’re so desperate for work, we’ll scramble over each other in order to do it.

You, The Client

I don’t even know who this client really is or what they’re wanting, but they’ve already given me plenty of reasons to turn down work with them. In order for us to give you the best work possible, we need to have conversations with you, learn what and who your company is, as well as invest time into the relationship. No professional designer or developer will compete to get your money.

I’ve begun to notice that there are three different types of people who run businesses (and by business, I’m including us solo freelancers): the complainers, the doers, and the ones that succeed. These three types of people approach their work in completely different ways, and almost always have completely different results.

If you find yourself identifying with one or the other, that’s ok, you can always change. Before I went into business, I was a complainer. Then I became a doer. Now, I’m hoping to become one of the ones that succeed.

The Complainers

The complainers are easy to spot – probably because they’re constantly complaining about something. In business, they’re always making some kind of excuse why they aren’t succeeding, why their projects are late, or why the “man” is constantly holding them back. Complainers are almost never successful – because they don’t want to be. Yep, you heard that right.

If complainers were successful, they’d never have something to complain about, so they subconsciously hold themselves back by not even trying. Why try when you know you’re going to fail, right? Here are some of the excuses and complaints I’ve heard from this group:

• I can’t succeed because of the economy.
• I can’t start a business because I have bills to pay.
• I can’t make it because the clients don’t want to pay my rates.

If you notice, most of the complainer’s status stems from one simple phrase: “I can’t do X because of X”. These people are happy to dump the responsibility of their lives on to someone else, because then they feel they can’t be blamed for it. How can you blame someone who worked 30 years in a job they hated so they could pay their mortgage – right?

Experience has taught me that if you don’t task risks, then you’ll never get ahead. Taking risks are always scary and there are always consequences, but the cool thing about life is that you can always start over. Did you quit your job to start a business, only to find it wasn’t working for you? Guess what – there are always more jobs.

You’ll never go hungry as long as you have the drive to succeed. Of course, there may be lean times or slow periods in business, but the successful ones can always make it by thinking of other ways to make some money. And yes, that can include taking menial jobs to make it through.

The Doers

The doers are not a bad group to be in. They get things done, and they do them well. They have to the drive to push forward and continue working where others would have given up. It’s this drive though, that can also be their downfall. Getting things done and making can be an illusion of success and it’s often where we stop.

I found myself in this category about a year after I started my freelance business. Things were going well, I was working hard and making great money. I kept doing. But then I realized that I hit a plateau and simply doing wasn’t, well, doing it for me anymore.

Being a doer at the beginning of a business’s life is exactly where you want to be – but if you don’t move from this category after the ball gets rolling, you’ll wake up 5 years down the road to find you’re still exactly where you were when you first starting succeeding – and no one wants to be static.

You may wonder when you’ll know it’s time to stop being a doer and start being one of the ones that really succeed. There isn’t a time period or a number of clients or even a set amount of profit you’ve made that tells you it’s time. All I can say is to stay alert and there’ll come a time where you’ll feel that plateau. Sometimes it comes when the projects you’ve been working on bore you. When you no longer have to market your services and you’re booked up for months. When you notice nothing is changing. You and your business should always be changing.

And The Ones That Succeed

Ask anyone and they’ll tell you that they want to belong in this category – but not everyone has the drive or willpower to actually do anything about it. You can’t just wake up and be one of the ones that succeed, which is where the complainers often fall short. No, you have to be a doer for a while before you can be a success story.

So how do you become one of the ones that success, and just what is success? While it can certainly mean different things to different people, I like to think of it as sort of a confidence and a drive to becoming a household name. It certainly isn’t making lots of money – you can hit that in the doer stage. It’s a confidence that allows you to make what you want to make, do what you want to do, and have those in your industry know who you are.

The ones that succeed are always coming up with new ways to “get out there”. They don’t like the status quo, nor do they sit at home and work all day. I’m struggling with trying to enter into this category myself – it’s not an easy stage and takes a while to evolve the kind of mindset it requires.

The ones that succeed get out there – they do work, but they do other things as well. They speak at events, they write books, they contribute to the community and offer up high quality freebies. The often teach as well, in the form of workshops, guest professors, or after-school events for children. Notice a trend here?

It’s interesting to watch one of the ones that succeed do their thing. When they’re at conferences, they don’t just hang in the corner like I do – they’re in the middle mingling. They know everyone and everyone knows them. This isn’t a popularity contest or anything – they don’t buy their Twitter followers – they’re just that good. Everyone wants to know them, and they do their best to know everyone.

Getting into this category takes a lot of hard work and time. I personally am aiming for 2012 to be my year to be one of the ones that succeed. I’d like to finally get out in multiple conferences and even do some speaking and book writing. Who knows, perhaps I’ll succeed?

This also gives me the opportunity to see behind the scenes – I don’t deal directly with normal clients, but instead I interact with the designer who then interacts with the client. Sometimes I even interactive with the project manager, who deals with the designer, who deals with the client. Needless to say sometimes things can get quite messy. We developers love you designers, but things aren’t always rosy.

While we devs aren’t perfect when it comes to dealing with the “other side”, there are several things I’d like to point out that would really help us help you better – and ways you can avoid being that stereotypical annoying nerd type.

Be Upfront About The Project

One of the most annoying things that a designer can do is to not be upfront about a particular project. It’s really annoying – and almost a deal breaker – to deal with you as a designer at the beginning of the project, and then all of a sudden you disappear and some project manager from some company you’ve never heard of and never agreed to work with suddenly steps in to be your liaison. If you’re working with other agencies, that’s cool, just let us know up front that’s who we’ll be dealing with.

Your Mockups Look Like A Massacre

Your designs are your babies and we developers want to make sure we take care of them well – but it’s impossible to correctly code a site if we can’t get the resources we need. Handing us over a mockup that takes up half our HD, with hundreds of layers that aren’t named, grouped or in any logical order isn’t going to cut it. And please, don’t get angry if we end up missing all of your rollover states because of this.

Temper Tantrums

Nobody likes it when they can’t get their way – but sometimes the web is going to do what the web is going to do. Yes we’d like get everything pixel perfect, the unicorn animations smooth, parallax working behind jQuery flying wizards…but sometimes it’s just not possible. We’re not here to sabotage your design. We’re here to help you and sometimes you need to trust our judgement when something can’t, or shouldn’t, work.

You Stood Me Up!

Web projects are never precise in any category, and much less so in schedule. What you think is a quick and dirty project really ends up taking months, and something that looks long and daunting is finished in days. So we understand that you can’t always get the project start dates correct. But please, please, if you ask us to schedule you in for a date and realize you’re not going to be ready – please let us know so we can fit someone else in in that time slot. I often have 4-5 projects scheduled in for one week and normally only 2 come through. I end up turning down projects when I could’ve ending up doing them! I’ve contemplating require deposits before I put clients on the schedule, although this isn’t very convenient to you, the designer.

Developers Are Annoying Too

We developers are not without our own shortcomings and I know that it can be difficult dealing with us sometimes. A list of things I think we developers could work on as a whole:

• Communication – we tend to drift off into our own world!
• Pay Attention – especially the backend programmers who tend to skirt the details
• Respect – just because you don’t touch the backend, doesn’t make you any less important or smart in the web world
• Learn – I believe the web would be a prettier place if developers took some time to learn basic design principles and kept up with the trends and new techniques.

Your Thoughts

What are some of your pet peeves when working with designers? How can both sides better communicate?

Then came along tables, and with it we started getting designs that slightly resemble the sites of today. Then came CSS and best practices – and here we are today.

In the past year or so the web has undergo a quick change. It seems that everything is changing so quickly, that it’s tough for one lone developer to keep up with what’s going on and what is and what isn’t acceptable to do anymore.

While following best practices and keeping up with the trends and changes is important, sometimes it’s just as important to learn what to filter out – and more importantly to listen to what your own experience tells you what is or isn’t right.

Mobile Fights

The biggest issue going on on the web today seems to be the issue of mobile development. Should we go native or web? Should each device get a separate experience or should they all look similar? Is it ok to use a completely separate site for mobile or just use media queries?

This issue irks me most of all because it reminds me of the days of the browser wars. We’ve fought so long and hard to get rid of terrible browsers, including IE6, so that we no longer need to hack code or use separate styling for each browser. Yet now the experts are fighting amongst ourselves about whether this same issue needs to happen in the mobile world.

I’ve give you a hint: unless you have a really large site that also incorporates a shopping experience, you don’t need a separate version of your site for mobile. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say you don’t need to do anything in mobile, except make sure you don’t have any layout issues.

I spent a while pondering whether my own site needed a mobile version or not – but after using and reading my own site on both my iPhone and iPad, I can happily tell you that my site is easy enough to use on it’s own. The buttons are large and easy to push and the text is easy to read. Why would I need to moblify it after all?

It’s good that  the industry is fostering debates about what’s best for the web, because debates are what push the web forward. Just remember that not everything they talk about pertain to you or your clients’ sites.

HTML5, CSS3, Kill Me Now

As a front-end developer, I’ve been looking forward to the prevalence of HTML5 and CSS3 as much as anyone. But I’ve been seriously irked by the way it’s been used to create what should be left to Photoshop, to allow excuses for browser hacks and just the general way it’s used as a buzz term and an end-all-be-all of the internet.

In truth, neither HTML5 nor CSS3 truly change much of anything. Yes, we can now do rounded corners and shadows and we have some new tags that can be used, but the old standards of design and development still apply – there needs to be a purpose for everything. We don’t need to make icons in CSS3 or include videos (akin to the animated gifs of the 90′s) otherwise we’re digressing instead of progressing in terms of the quality of our code and design.

I have to be honest, the buzzwords of HTML5 and CSS3, the arguments of whether they can be used or should be used and the general abuses of it have worn me out. This is when it’s best to turn to your own experience to figure out how HTML5 and CSS3 really need to be used. Is it okay to use HTML5 tags and hack IE, and/or use JS (which weren’t we just told not to rely on JS for functionality a few months back?). I don’t think so. My idea is that we need to implement something that again goes across browsers and across devices.

What Now?

What do we do when the experts are fighting amongst themselves and disagreeing with everything each other says? Do we listen when they tell us to do a bunch of extra work that really doesn’t help the client or ourselves out?

It’s up to you to decide if you want to go in their direction, or in the opposite. I choose the opposite way.

It is worth it to pay as much for development as for the actual design itself. Here are eight web development mistakes that could be costing you business.

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