The Auction and website design
Brenda Novak’s Auction for Diabetes has begun! Day one…and there have been no bids yet on my website offering. Probably too early to start feeling self-conscious. I am a new name in the business, after all, and people don’t know what to expect from me. Just today I ran into a common problem — a client feeling worried about telling me what she wanted, as if for some reason I was going to say, "no." I’m picky about the jobs I take on. Once I take on a customer, it’s got to be pretty bad before I’ll say no. After all, I have the best customers in the world. What are other web designers telling these folks that they feel so limited? I had a professional designer explain to me recently that soon, all of my sites would start to look alike. I looked at my portfolio. Really? How’s that? Will all of my customers start liking the same things?
Website design is an art form to me. Layers of design and programming come together. New layers interact with older layers in unpredictable ways. We tweak. We try things. Some are new and exciting. Sometimes we laugh with the "well THAT didn’t work" diagnosis. We create a design we think is fabulous and then we send it out into the world. Hundreds and thousands of people, each with different screens, different browsers, different operating systems, even different languages all check it out. What happens when your sister’s cousin’s husband looks at the site and sees something that didn’t show up in any of our testing? We fix it.
My favorite feedback has been the frustration felt by some folks when things go right. "But, I’m out of books!" I laugh. Order more. "But, I don’t have time to teach all these classes!" Say no. Enjoy it. It isn’t always that way. Each website I release is an adventure. Will it fly or will it fall flat?
Will anyone bid on my auction? I have had some response from my more recent marketing efforts. A couple of web-designers have contacted me offering their services. I’m really hoping they didn’t actually take the time to figure out who I am. One of these days I really should take some time and finish my website.
Anyway, wander over to the auction and check out the offerings. This is for a good cause, folks. As a border-line diabetic, I support this cause whole heartedly. I’ve lost friends to diabetes and seen other folks’ lives damaged by this disease. In particular, Brenda Novak is working for her son. Children with diabetes…a very worthy cause.
