A month or so ago I received a regular email newsletter from Business Link for London. This site is big on advice to small business in London, paid for by you and me.
It had a link to a white paper ‘choosing a web designer’ so I put it to one side to read later. Here we are ‘later’ so I resurrected the mail and clicked the link to go to the white paper. Here is what happened:
- I was asked for email and password
- I hadn’t been back for some time so the site asked me to confirm my details and add a few items of information
- The screen then said. And I quote:
Thank you, your Contact and company details have now been updated.
Please select which details you wish to review and update.
Contact and company details
Additional contact details
etc etc
Er Um… the white paper – remember???
Form someone dishing out advice, you would think they could do better than this.
And the white paper…
Long on platitudes short on practical advice. They refer to a couple of developer directories but no web links to make the easy to find – you have to Google them yourself.
If you couldn’t work out things like the following for yourself you have no business in charge of a we site:
“Look for developers with a track record and capabilities that are appropriate to the type of project you wish to undertake. “
on costs …
“In instances where work is billed on the basis of time and materials, the key factor is usually staff day rates … ” give me a break! How about telling people to insist on a fixed price.
Bob Browning's blog 
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