Why not promote the benefits of designing to standards as a way to increase the accessibility and usability of a site? The more usable and accessible a site is, the greater the chance that potential customers aren't going to look elsewhere for that all important product or service because the site didn't work properly for them or they weren't able to access the information they were after.
Even if only a small number of customers become repeat customers because the site was usable and accessible for them, your clients would probably be interested in increasing their profit margins by even a small amount - ask any business manager: it's far easier and more profitable to have repeat customers than to attract new ones with advertising and marketing, assuming of course that these clients will actually market their site rather than just making it live and waiting (for a long time) for customers to just start arriving...
At 03:39 PM 12/04/2005, tee wrote:
Hi, I'd been doing web design on the side since last year. I believe in web
standards, but I am not sure about potential clients who want to pay me do
the job will believe it. For us who believed in web standards, it all sounds
very beautiful and convincing, but for companies who provides services, they
want web sites, they want their web sites looks nice and professional and
they want it to be affordable. They simply want to know how much it will
cost right, nothing behind the scene will interest them.
What is the incentive for us to tell potential clients that web standards is
important and how many people in this group successfully using web standards
as selling point for their web design service. Do you increase your ballpark
as a result?
In my web design site, I do brag about web standards and that I care, but
when I talk to potential clients (so far only two), I didn't even mention
it; they didn't ask either even though they have visited my site. To me, web
standards is something I believe in, but I do not see any benefit when
approaching potential clients.
tee
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