Don't Be Held Hostage! Kill Your Web Designer by Tom AntionNo, I'm not suggesting that you yank out an AK-47 and blow your Web designer's life away. I'm using "kill" here in
same sense as you might say "kill lights" or "use kill switch." Turn off your Web designer's money-wasting flood of hostage-taking tactics.
If you read this article and can honestly say that your Web designer doesn't engage in these practices, by all means keep them around! There are, Heaven knows, precious few such designers around. But if you're like most of us, at least a few of these behaviors are likely to sound all too familiar. In that case, it's your duty to turn off your Web designer's money spigot and find someone else (or learn to do this stuff yourself; it's not that hard).
Any semi-literate eight-year-old can design a Web site. Just look around Web and you'll conclude that it is being designed largely, if not entirely, by semi-literate eight-year-olds. That does not mean that these people can design a useful and successful small-business Web site, though.
Ask yourself this simple question. Can you or someone on your staff easily add navigation buttons and pages to your site and update contents of existing pages? If your answer is "No," then your Web designer is holding you hostage and you should kill him or her. Period.
Why shouldn't you let Web design "expert" handle such things? Simple. You can't afford to find your business stymied while you wait for someone else, whose agenda isn't same as yours, to find time and inclination to fix a problem. Whether it's a typo or a product price change or a color switch or a new product you want to add to your catalog, you need to be able to control when and how these changes happen.
