Marcia - 6:17 am on Jun 11, 2003 (gmt 0)

>>For "Non-techno savvy group" I will delete "Web site analysis and recommendations" section if I am so sure.

That site analysis is always included in the initial evaluation - which comes *after,* it's part of the service - and I'm just now fully reaping the benefit of that and appreciating having done it. It takes precious little time to check out things as simple as file sizes and download time, check for sideways scrolling at different resolutions, etc. Not for free, they still take time.

But if a year later a client is whining about wanting better conversion in spite of rankings that couldn't be better, you can point back to those emails with the reports about the 175K to 275K pages that take two minutes to load, run the same current reports, and there you have it. No explanations needed - your bases were covered going in the gate.

The point being, that we have to be careful to make it clear that we "make recommendations" and that terminology clearly implies that implementing the recommendations is on their end. We might not always be too popular or loved by web designers who thrive on bloat in the name of art, but business is business and it's all about conversion in the long run, and that extra measure taken of evaluating design elements in the initial analysis (and follow-ups) is no more than ensuring that we're being responsible in looking out for the welfare of the client, whether their web designers like it or not. It's called CYA.

Specifics on keywords take research and are foundational - that's part of the job. And there absolutely are some who try to get, to be blunt about it, free consulting under the guise of getting a proposal. It takes time and practice to develop the ability to inform about what you intend to do without actually giving away the store and letting them get out of you what they should be paying for.

Sure, some get lost quickly by not telling but I chalk it up to them wanting a DIY deal in the first place. Some are window shopping and trying to get freebies along the way. Some find the bargain basement and come back with a new attitude. They would have been a problem client the first time around, they aren't the second.

It's not a new phenomenon; we all go through it and always will. The last thing we want to do is deal with people who don't recognize our value, and if we have value we need and deserve to be compensated and respected for it.

It's something we all need wisdom about, and that's not always easy to come by. It was through the counsel imparted in this discussion that I caught the vision of what WebmasterWorld was all about, and what we would come to mean for the webmaster community, which is awesome if you envison it from a global perspective:

Need wise counsel not found anyplace else [webmasterworld.com]

From October, 2000 and that's priceless, timeless wisdom that holds as true today as it did then.