Building Online Community Sites for Clients

While the social media and Web 2.0 buzz has created a number of new job opportunities for web designers and developers I can’t help but wonder at what cost? I have written before about how some client’s just aren’t ready for a sophisticated website, and how we should consult them to reach their goals. What if the client isn’t ready for the commitment of building a community? There are a number of reasons that client’s may not be ready to support a community based site that they do not realize.

The build it and they will come mentality
Unfortunately some clients have picked up the idea that if they build a great website people will find their site and automatically want to participate. This may be from a lack experience or over optimistic ideas of what SEO can really do for them. The truth is without some solid marketing, that most likely no one is going to find their site or care.

A lack of web savvy knowledge
The reason that these clients have approached you to begin with is that they lack the skills or talents necessary to create a community on their own. Once you are out of the picture, how likely is it that they are going to be able to keep momentum on the project. In reality this is a problem that is much larger than community sites, but that is another article in itself.

The lack of integration with their current business practices
A lot of times clients have not thought about how maintaining a community will fit into their business culture. Chances are that if the community requires the business to substantially change its business practices that it will be abandoned. In some cases employees may become vocally opposed for fear of change and how it may affect them.

An underestimated level of commitment
Some clients may also underestimate the time commitment that creating communities takes. Things like writing articles, moderating comments, participating in the community, and marketing the site can add up to a full time job.

Additional costs outside the creation of the site
A community cannot exist without users, and as explained earlier, users don’t just appear. Clients tend to see a quoted price for the site and forget about the additional expenses they will incur through marketing and advertising costs. Additionally, if the site does continue to grow they may have to invest in more expensive hosting solutions and software licenses. These are all things that can be very expensive.

So what should we do?
While we as designers need to take on these types of projects to keep our own companies in business, we do not look very professional allowing our clients to invest in projects we know most likely won’t be successful. It may not be our place to warn clients, however it is our responsibility to ask the right questions so that they can reach an informed decision on their own. Here are some examples of questions you can ask to make sure a client knows the commitment and costs involved:

• Are there any marketing initiatives you have planned for the launch of the site that we should be aware of?
• Which one of your employees will be responsible for creating new articles? We would like to walk them through the steps of creating a new article.
• What advertising initiatives are you going to be using to promote the site? We would like to create some landing pages to help improve sign-up rates.

Questions like these will inform the client of the responsibility involved, keeping you out of the blame. This is a tough situation to be in however if handled correctly, you can save a client from making any huge mistakes and also keep yourself in business.