I am amazed by how many people in the web design industry are out selling new clothes. Too often I see web designers building web sites that look good, but have no strategic value. Let me see if I can put this bluntly - If you are designing web sites that merely look good, you are selling your clients a wardrobe full of invisible clothes. A great looking site without any research or strategy behind it is a waste of resources.

The fact is that 99% of web designers in the world are more concerned with how their web sites look than how they actually work. This presents you with a great opportunity! If you become an expert at helping your clients use the web strategically, you will find yourself with more clients than you can handle.

Design Strategy First
Some time ago, UPS decided that it needed a web site. It contracted the services of a small web design firm by the name of US Interactive. Rather than just building a good-looking site for UPS, US Interactive focused on strategy first. They started out by asking questions - will a web site increase our client's profits? Could they use the web to somehow minimize their expenses? Could the web provide their customers with added value or convenience? Only after answering these questions did they start in on the design work. It was US Interactive that suggested that UPS could allow their customers to track their deliveries online. The strategy turned out to be brilliant. Through the use of their new online tracking system, UPS has increased market share and profitability immensely. The strategy has been so successful that other shipping companies and even the United States Postal Service were forced to follow suit or lose most of their business.

US Interactive realized what you, as a reseller, must realize - if you can't help your clients increase their profits or decrease their expenses you have no business building them a web site. On the flip side, if you can help your clients use the web strategically, you will become a highly sought after professional. US Interactive is now a nationally recognized company, with clients like American Express, IBM and Sun Microsystems.

You too, can build a solid reputation (and a pretty healthy income) by putting strategy first, and letting design follow.

1. Understand Your Client's Purpose

Always start out by asking your clients what they want to accomplish with a web site. Are they a small business, a large business, or something else (government, non-profit, etc.)? Is the business looking for publicity, or are they an established business looking purely for online sales (e-commerce) to enhance current sales? Is the site an information tool or a sales tool? And the list of questions goes on. It is critical that you understand your client's purpose and expectations. If you design a site to inform and he wanted a site to sell, you're not going to accomplish the important goals (those of your client).

If you ask your client about the purpose of their web site, and you get a response like "well, everyone else is on the web, so I figured that I should be too" - you need to do a little bit more work. Take the time to formulate a strategy with your client. Get to know their business, and see if you can come up with new ways (like US Interactive did for UPS) to increase profits or decrease expenses using the web. Present your ideas and suggestions to your client - and hammer out both the goals and the expectations before you begin your work.

Don't ever move forward until you and your client understand both the purpose and the expectations for the web site! Designing without a purpose is like hitchhiking without a destination - you are guaranteed to spend a lot of time getting nowhere. Additionally, if you don't understand your client's expectations (remember that many people still think of the web as some sort of automatic magical money machine - and it's not) you will never meet them. And if you don't meet your client's expectations, you fail to get two critical things: repeat business, and good Word of Mouth advertising.

2. Become a consultant

What really separates the success stories from the failures in any industry is knowledge and understanding. Bill Gates is a master programmer, and he understands software better than most. Michael Dell understands PC hardware and server technology as well as anyone in the world. The best way for you to help your clients succeed on the web is for you to understand the web better than the next guy. It's that understanding that allows you to become a web consultant, instead of just another web designer - remember this: Web Designers are a dime a dozen, but good Web Consultants are in high demand.

If you can't tell your clients how the web can help them accomplish their goals, and answer the questions they have (or quickly find the answers if you don't know them), you've already lost. Businesses will turn to you because you understand the web and how to make it work for them. It makes sense, then, that if you don't understand the web and how to make it work for them businesses won't turn to you. If you become a true web consultant, you will find that there is more demand for your services than you know what to do with.

Becoming a web consultant is like any other business, you will need to invest time and effort to get good at it. Review last months article on "Surfing for Information" and start putting some of the tips into practice. Spend some time researching which strategies have worked for others and which ones haven't. If you haven't already done so, it would also be well worth the investment to attend a reseller training seminar. The more you know about how to succeed on the web, the better (and more valuable) your services will be.

3. Test, Test, Test!!!

Here's a great rule of thumb for web designers: Test Everything. When it comes to web design, part of good strategy is testing results after the work is done. This means that you will have to think beforehand about how you are going to test. For example, if you build a site for a client who wants to increase sales by 10% over the next year by using the web, how will you know if you have reached the goal?

Setting goals, designing specifically with those goals in mind, and testing to see if you attained those goals is a great way to build your client's trust. You may not attain all of your client's goals every time, but if he/she can see that you are just as committed to reaching their goals as they are, you are building a long term relationship. Most of the time, web designers build a web site, take the fee and walk away - when the clients get discouraged because their web site isn't working as hoped, the web designer is held to blame (and for good reason). If you really want to build a working relationship with every client, include testing and refining as part of your services.

To go back to where we started, consider that most of your clients will usually be happy with your work just after you have finished it...that's the easy part. Just like the Emperor, however, if what you have designed isn't backed by good strategy, they will eventually realize it and become displeased. In the words of the Graphics Guru...

...Those who build impressive web sites impress, but those who build sites that work - have success.