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Do you ever have this experience with a client?

by mraffiliate
10 replies
I mainly work with local photographers and they tend to be a little difficult to deal with because they want to put gobs and gobs of photos an videos all over their site and use nothing but flash.

I have a client that I picked up last month that wasn't happy with another SEO company. The 1st thing I told them to do is switch hosting companies. They are using one of those companies that offer free web templates and hosting so you essentially don't own the template and so if you leave the company you have to start over from scratch. Also this company's platform doesn't allow you to change the permalinks so you end up with "www.site.com/pageID?=5389" Well they like their site and will not move to a regular host.

They asked me why they aren't getting hardly any conversions from their site and I told them why in an email last night. Last month their site received 433 visitors and more than 61% of those visitors stayed less than 10 seconds before bouncing. Overall over 72% of visitors are staying less than 30 seconds on the site. I told them that their site isn't easy to navigate and that they need a simple, clean HomePage with a strong call to action along with some photos of their work and a couple of paragraphs of text explaining their business and how it will benefit the visitor. I stressed to them that it isn't about how fancy your site is but getting the visitor to call or email you.

Well their response was that I'm pushy. They believe that they have to dazzle visitors to their site and have all this flash and fancy smancy photos all over the place. It amazes me how hard headed people can be when what they have isn't working but they refuse to make changes that will bring the desired results. And of course they bring up that other sites that are ranked on the 1st page of Google have the type of site they have.

This is one of the reasons I'm navigating over to lead generations sites that I control and if a potential client doesn't rent it off me I'll go to their competitors. People mistakingly think that a 1st page ranking on Google will flood them with clients.
#client #experience
  • Profile picture of the author Kunle Olomofe
    I will usually fire a client who thinks he can do a better job than me and is stubborn about taking advice from me whom he hired to give advice based on MY experience--then he really doesn't need me and I don't need his money so bad I have to cow-tail to his misled views just to get paid.

    Having said that, I can't judge if this is the kind of client you have since yours is the only side of the story here. But my advice is if you insist you want to stay with this client do what I do...

    1. Get paid per hour you spend consulting with them---whether they take your advice or not you get paid. I do this very successfully. I find few people are afraid to do this in our niche, well it works and brings in good pay per hour of my time spent--never wasted

    2. I let them know THEY are the boss and have final say on certain things but also make it clear they take ALL the responsibility for those decisions. If I have to I write everything out clearly in an email or a PDF doc before offering consulting and I also have them acknowledge who is responsible for what. So I don't lose sleep if they cork up their own business based on NOT taking my advice.

    3. I let them make a few mistakes and track what they are doing then find a good time to show them why they should try my way.

    4. Like I said, if they are just so pigheaded, I move on. It has happened before. It's NEVER the end of the world--so don't spend energy trying to keep someone just because you think you must. You'll be happier and so for that matter will your former client, it just means your styles don't match. No harm, no foul and hopefully no love lost.

    Cheers
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    • Profile picture of the author mraffiliate
      Originally Posted by Kunle Olomofe View Post

      I will usually fire a client who thinks he can do a better job than me and is stubborn about taking advice from me whom he hired to give advice based on MY experience--then he really doesn't need me and I don't need his money so bad I have to cow-tail to his misled views just to get paid.

      Having said that, I can't judge if this is the kind of client you have since yours is the only side of the story here. But my advice is if you insist you want to stay with this client do what I do...

      1. Get paid per hour you spend consulting with them---whether they take your advice or not you get paid. I do this very successfully. I find few people are afraid to do this in our niche, well it works and brings in good pay per hour of my time spent--never wasted

      2. I let them know THEY are the boss and have final say on certain things but also make it clear they take ALL the responsibility for those decisions. If I have to I write everything out clearly in an email or a PDF doc before offering consulting and I also have them acknowledge who is responsible for what. So I don't lose sleep if they cork up their own business based on NOT taking my advice.

      3. I let them make a few mistakes and track what they are doing then find a good time to show them why they should try my way.

      4. Like I said, if they are just so pigheaded, I move on. It has happened before. It's NEVER the end of the world--so don't spend energy trying to keep someone just because you think you must. You'll be happier and so for that matter will your former client, it just means your styles don't match. No harm, no foul and hopefully no love lost.

      Cheers
      Yea I will be letting them flownder on their own. The sites that get me to input my name and email are the one's that are super simple and have the call to action in front of my face and don't get me distracted with too much information
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  • Profile picture of the author TheCG
    Originally Posted by mraffiliate View Post

    I mainly work with local photographers and they tend to be a little difficult to deal with because they want to put gobs and gobs of photos an videos all over their site and use nothing but flash.

    I have a client that I picked up last month that wasn't happy with another SEO company. The 1st thing I told them to do is switch hosting companies. They are using one of those companies that offer free web templates and hosting so you essentially don't own the template and so if you leave the company you have to start over from scratch. Also this company's platform doesn't allow you to change the permalinks so you end up with "www.site.com/pageID?=5389" Well they like their site and will not move to a regular host.

    They asked me why they aren't getting hardly any conversions from their site and I told them why in an email last night. Last month their site received 433 visitors and more than 61% of those visitors stayed less than 10 seconds before bouncing. Overall over 72% of visitors are staying less than 30 seconds on the site. I told them that their site isn't easy to navigate and that they need a simple, clean HomePage with a strong call to action along with some photos of their work and a couple of paragraphs of text explaining their business and how it will benefit the visitor. I stressed to them that it isn't about how fancy your site is but getting the visitor to call or email you.

    Well their response was that I'm pushy. They believe that they have to dazzle visitors to their site and have all this flash and fancy smancy photos all over the place. It amazes me how hard headed people can be when what they have isn't working but they refuse to make changes that will bring the desired results. And of course they bring up that other sites that are ranked on the 1st page of Google have the type of site they have.

    This is one of the reasons I'm navigating over to lead generations sites that I control and if a potential client doesn't rent it off me I'll go to their competitors. People mistakingly think that a 1st page ranking on Google will flood them with clients.
    Life is too short to have to deal with people like this.

    Obviously they know what will work for them so let them take care of it.

    There is a reason I work for myself. Several reasons, actually. Dealing with aholes like this isn't one of them.

    Next!
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    • Profile picture of the author mraffiliate
      Originally Posted by TheCG View Post

      Life is too short to have to deal with people like this.

      Obviously they know what will work for them so let them take care of it.

      There is a reason I work for myself. Several reasons, actually. Dealing with aholes like this isn't one of them.

      Next!
      Yea I would have to agree.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jason Kanigan
    Recommend the flash site AND a separate mobile site.

    Show them that flash sites don't always appear on mobile devices...and the screen sizes typically do not show off their work in the best way.

    And best of all...people searching for "photographer" or "wedding videographer" on mobile devices are my kind of people: wanting to talk to someone just like this right now.
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    • Profile picture of the author mraffiliate
      Originally Posted by kaniganj View Post

      Recommend the flash site AND a separate mobile site.

      Show them that flash sites don't always appear on mobile devices...and the screen sizes typically do not show off their work in the best way.

      And best of all...people searching for "photographer" or "wedding videographer" on mobile devices are my kind of people: wanting to talk to someone just like this right now.
      They have the mobile version from the company they are hosting from. They are getting plenty of targeted traffic. Since Jan of this year they have had 1,089 unique visitors to their site, 252 of those were from mobile devices.

      Out of those 1,089 visitors, 55% stayed less than 10 seconds and overall 74% stayed less than a minute. For a photography site these are very poor visitor engagement figures.
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  • Profile picture of the author beeswarn
    Buck up and get back to prospecting. You did you job very well. These people qualified out for pure stupidity, as most photographers will.

    Otherwise, follow Jason Kanigan's advice in the reply #6 above this.
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  • Profile picture of the author cvcena
    A client who wouldn't listen to you is not a client yet... Perhaps all you need is a different approach...
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  • Profile picture of the author Imobiliare
    Yes I sometime get this kind of customers and they usually don't wanna pay
    i mean they go for those kind of template because of the price
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    • Profile picture of the author mraffiliate
      Originally Posted by Imobiliare View Post

      Yes I sometime get this kind of customers and they usually don't wanna pay
      i mean they go for those kind of template because of the price
      They are paying $399.00 a month to this company for hosting / website template.
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