{"id":215,"date":"2009-12-24T12:22:31","date_gmt":"2009-12-24T17:22:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deliawilsondesign.com\/blog\/?p=215"},"modified":"2012-09-30T07:47:33","modified_gmt":"2012-09-30T12:47:33","slug":"oh-no-my-client-wants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wiztech4zc.com\/blog\/oh-no-my-client-wants\/","title":{"rendered":"Oh, no, my client wants a big flash banner -what do I do? part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Any decent web designer\/developer knows and understands the idea of best web practices, but what to do when your client won’t cooperate?<\/h3>\n

This got to be the biggest bane of web pros:\u00a0 clients who pay to have it done their way rather than pay a web pro to manage the project.<\/p>\n

I’ve developed quite a bag of tricks to deliver the look of what they want — and learned to accept the inevitable: they pay money for a site and then they may well pay (with money or lack of income) for it over and over because they didn’t listen to a web expert in the first place.<\/p>\n

So what do you do?<\/p>\n

The issues:<\/strong> search engine optimization, load time, visual distraction, function and, once more, search engine optimization.
\nThe action keywords: <\/strong>educate, negotiate and fronting (appear to give up the fight while working in the background).
\nThe tools:<\/strong> CSS, image optimization, and a lot of creativity in flash and javascript.<\/p>\n

The best example we’ve all heard more than once in our careers: “But I want a massive, fancy, moving flash at the head of my page!”<\/h3>\n

So…
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Educate:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  • explain how this hurts search engine optimization and therefore the website bottom line, i.e., importance of text, load time and positioning<\/li>\n
  • gently mention how some visitors are distracted by moving elements, using the key phrase, “it distracts from your message or purpose”<\/li>\n
  • explain the cost of the flash will not have a reasonable return on the money (I quote large prices for these kinds of flash objects)<\/li>\n
  • give up when you get a blank stare or “but I want…” in return<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Negotiate:<\/strong><\/p>\n

      \n
    • agree to a flash but require more text above it<\/li>\n
    • insist on driving the flash creation (charge him\/her less, bribe, do whatever it takes to have some control over the flash itself)<\/li>\n
    • reduce the flash visual size<\/li>\n
    • move it to one side instead of all the way across<\/li>\n
    • agree to it only on the home page and use an image on subsequent pages.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      Appearance:<\/strong><\/p>\n

        \n
      • work to create the visual look he\/she wants but creatively work in the html and CSS code to mitigate the effects such as using a div with a background to blend into the flash images and that contains keyword-driven text<\/li>\n
      • moving the flash div lower in the code with CSS positioning tricks<\/li>\n
      • don’t forget flash can have a transparent background – move large visuals out of the flash and into backgrounds where possible<\/li>\n
      • work to create a non-streaming flash that appears to stream by pre-loading images and watching the frame by frame load time<\/li>\n
      • switch to a javascript solution such a jquery that will enable the use of keywords and lessen load time but still have a fancy appearance (oh and it’s more “Web 2.0” – I do hate that phrase!)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
        \n

        I know a director of a state public health division who insisted on using certain fonts on the area website.\u00a0 He wanted it to look a certain way on his computer and did not care about what anyone else saw. The employees did as they were told and the result is incredibly amateurish. Just ow!<\/p>\n

        \n

        When those in power are so shortsighted, well, eventually they will lose their job, retire or die.\u00a0 We can only be patient.<\/strong><\/p>\n

        In my next blog post, I’ll give an example of some of these techniques. so stay tuned.<\/p>\n

        Author: Delia Wilson Lunsford, Founder & CEO, WizTech, Inc. <\/em><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        Any decent web designer\/developer knows and understands the idea of best web practices, but what to do when your client won’t cooperate? This got to be the biggest bane of web pros:\u00a0 clients who pay to have it done their way rather than pay a web pro to manage the project. I’ve developed quite a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-web-design"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wiztech4zc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wiztech4zc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wiztech4zc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wiztech4zc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wiztech4zc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":43,"href":"https:\/\/wiztech4zc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":306,"href":"https:\/\/wiztech4zc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions\/306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wiztech4zc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wiztech4zc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wiztech4zc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}