One Night Stand

In a recent interview, I was discussing the merits of various approaches to web development.

Its a well worn argument – technical excellence versus commercial reality.
The fastest way to build any site is to hack together a few components, adding a bit of polish to the front end to make it look good. Cost effective, fast, and any competent developer can do it. The developer might feel a little dirty while they’re doing it, but hey, that’s what they get paid for.

Its a strategy best described as find em, f*** em, forget em.
From a marketing point of view, its commercial suicide.

Its a one night stand.

If you’re lucky, the client won’t notice, and won’t feel used after you’re done. Any marketeer will tell you that good marketing relies on converting your clients into fans. That’s not likely to happen after a one night stand.

What if it does though?
Say the client is really happy and wants to establish a ongoing relationship?

This is the point when your quick and easy hacking bites you, big time. Even an experienced developer won’t have an easy time of understanding code they wrote at light speed, a month or two later, especially if they never expected to ever revisit the code. Invariably you will have throw away the existing code, and start again from scratch. That’s no problem though, because you’ll do it the same way as you did before.
You’ll charge them the same way as you did before (or lose money), even if the functional changes aren’t particularly great.

Effectively another one night stand.
And another opportunity to not only lose the client, but convert them into an anti-fan.