I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of clients treating web developers like brainless code monkeys. After so many years as a part of a legitimate and growing industry, why are web developers not yet treated like experts? Why do clients demand the final say on the presentation and mechanics of a website? Web developers are the experts. We know what works best in user interfaces. We know what attracts the eye. We know how to word page copy and navigation items. We can distinguish between a good colour scheme and a horrible one. So why do most clients insist on getting their own way, all the time?

In my few years as a web professional I’ve been the primary developer of dozens of sites, and I’ve had my hands in over a hundred. I’ve written two complete content management systems which power most of those aforementioned sites. I’ve also extensively studied the best design, usability, and accessibility practices and take pride in being able to tell a client what “works” with the utmost confidence. Yet all too often, the response is “well we want it this way”, or “we think this text should be bigger”, or “we think this should go over here”, or, even better, “my friends think this doesn’t work, so change it to something else”. Yet these same clients usually have little to no knowledge of how to make a website or what design elements work best on the web. If they do have design knowledge, it’s usually very, very rudimentary, almost always outdated, and most likely relating to print, which is (of course) a vastly different medium and should be treated as such. In other words, most clients don’t know what works.

Let’s say that you need to get your car repaired and you know absolutely nothing about cars. Would you squabble with the mechanic over the inner workings of the engine? I don’t think so. Would you ask your friend for his opinion, even though he’s equally clueless? Probably not. So why are web professionals not treated with the same respect? It astounds me to no end that many people still view a website as something that is easy to make and maintain. Websites are easy to make and relatively simple to maintain, but it is very difficult to make an effective website and requires expertise not unlike that of a trained mechanic.

Just as anyone can pop the hood of their car and start playing around with the parts, anyone can throw a website on the Internet. But it takes special skill to craft a website that will attract visitors, generate business, and generally serve as a respectable online presence for an individual or company. So please, clients, keep that in mind before you start assuming that you are the expert, simply because the website is for you. No. We are the experts.