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Behind The Firm List Blog
Where to Draw the Line
One of the original decisions I had made, when starting The Firm List, was to include any firm that offered web design or development services, regardless of whether they were any good at it. There are nice sites out there, like DigitalThread which showcase only the best web design firms, but I didn't feel I could build a site like that.
The reasoning behind it initially, was that 1) I didn't feel that taste is altogether universal, but rather personal and arbitrary, so I felt that the quality of my site as a resource may be diminished if I put my tastes upon it, and 2) in a sense, I figured that there are some companies looking for really cheap, low-end stuff, and these firms may be just the right level/price for them.
Over the years, I have seen a lot of really horrible web design firm's websites. I can't say for sure whether the people work there can do better or not, but for their own sites, it's been pretty scary. But the same can be said for firms who have really good creative, yet try to be overly technical and have all sorts of java that crashes my browser every time. Then there's all the firms who's site doesn't even come up on my primary browser (IE5 Mac) and even sometimes not on my secondary browser (NN4.08 Mac), and it's usually not high-end DHTML that's the problem, more often it's sloppy tables, etc.
Recently I hit a few horribly done sites, and I found myself asking whether I need to start reconsider my full-acceptance policy. Is there a point where it just doesn't pay to let anyone who can use FrontPage claim to be a web design firm?
One of my greatest hopes all along, is that given an exhaustive list of web design firms in a given area, that people looking for a firm would see all of these sub-par firms in direct contrast with the quality firms in the same town or region. My hope would be that 1) they would choose the firm with more talent and 2) that the firms with the sub-par sites would realize they need to either get more experience or get out of the game.
So that's been my hope. I have tried to give the firms the benefit of the doubt, allowing the chance that they are just starting out, have little experience, but the desire to learn and get better. And in most cases, I know that coming to my site is the first time they have seen such an array of other firms, and perhaps that humbling experience will help drive them to get better.
But on the other hand, they just may continue to make sub-par sites and continuing to instill in the minds of some clients the thought that "Hey, how come you charge more that Firm X does?" completely missing the point of the old adage "You get what you pay for."
