The process of creating a website that is customized to a client’s specific needs is complex and engaged. It’s a combination of design, marketing, usability, and engineering. Yet, it seems that very few individuals recognize the intracacies of this process and expect people to be able to just pop out a website without much thought or effort. I think this digg user found a pretty good way to describe the issue here:
Just like the old engineer joke:
‘There was an engineer who had an exceptional gift for fixing all things mechanical. After serving his company loyally for over 30 years, he happily retired. Several years later the company contacted him regarding a seemingly impossible problem they were having with one of their multi-million dollar machines.
They had tried everything and everyone else to get the machine to work but to no avail. In desperation, they called on the retired engineer who has solved so many of their problems in the past.
The engineer reluctantly took the challenge. He spent a day studying the huge machine. At the end of the day, he marked a small “x” in chalk on a particular component of the machine and stated, “This is where your problem is”. The part was replaced and the machine worked perfectly again. The company received a bill for $50,000 from the engineer for this service. They demanded an itemized accounting of his charges.
The engineer responded briefly:
* One chalk mark $1
* Knowing where to put it $49,999′Web designers, like engineers, are paid for their intangible expertise on the subject, something hard for non-experts to gauge or comprehend.
