Crab Cakes and Bonehead Freelance Mistakes: A Marketing Fable from the Baltimore ‘Burbs

You wouldn’t believe this restaurant’s website. “Old School” doesn’t even begin to describe it.

Smack in the center of the screen, a black-bordered, low-res image of crab cakes topped with Old Bay and a lemon wedge. (This is Bawlmer, hon. Or Baldamore, depending on your zip code.)

Times New Roman font. Honest-to-God HTML tables. No responsive design, of course, which made it practically unreadable on a smartphone.

It was 2013, but the “Skipper Dan’s” website was still partyin’ like it was 1995.

It was perfect.

For my budding tech skills, that is. After raising a couple of kids and homeschooling one of them, I was searching for a path back into the world of paid work. Freelancing sounded just about right.

But wait. What could I do — or learn to do — that people would actually pay for?

Writing? Well, I’d always been a writer, but come on. Who’s gonna pay for that?

(Bonehead mistake #1: The internet is made out of words, and someone has to write them. I figured this out eventually, but that’s another story.)

Building websites? Now that could work. I’d played around with WordPress and built a site for my church. It was actually kind of fun. People pay for tech skills, and doesn’t every business need a website?

And so my big idea was born, the plan too simple to fail:

1. Download a WordPress template. (Built on the Genesis framework, naturally. I didn’t know much yet, but I was already a Genesis snob.)
2. Customize the thing with CSS, plugins, and the odd PHP snippet where needed.
3. Start with “Skipper Dan’s.” On spec, which means if they like it, they pay. If not, they don’t. Then on to other local businesses. I had my eye on a plumber’s site next.

Payment? I wasn’t worried about that.

They’d love it. I mean, how could they not? It was an investment in their future, after all.

(You already know where this is going, don’t you?)

I went all in. Highlighted the hell out of CSS3: The Missing Manual. Bought the ideal Studiopress theme, hung out in WordPress forums, soaking in all the geek. Ignored my family, gulped down so much coffee I gave myself heartburn, stopped going to the gym or even bothering to look in the mirror.

Two weeks later, the thing was ̶d̶u̶c̶t̶-̶t̶a̶p̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶o̶g̶e̶t̶h̶e̶r ̶finished. And I’m sorry for the immodesty, but my baby was beautiful.

A cross-browser-compatible, mobile-responsive WordPress site, all set up on a Hostgator dev domain. Somehow I’d even managed to create a custom form that made updating their menu a breeze.

All they had to do was log in, enter the new item and its category — appetizer, entree, whatever. And voila! Watch it magically drop into a leather-bound, fancy-fonted graphic version of their actual menu. (Getting the columns to line up took forever.)

No matter how I tried, I couldn’t quite imagine their reaction — the magnitude of wow! — when they viewed it for the first time. Astonished. Yep, that’s what I was picturing. Also dazzled.

I shot off the email with a link to the site, careful to explain how the custom form would make menu changes so much easier.

Then I sat back and waited for their reply. A week went by. Another.

I called and left a message, which they never returned. Finally, I sent another email, sure they must have missed the first one somehow.

When their reply finally showed up in my inbox, I took a few shaky breaths. Walked down to the park and back to steady my nerves. Finally worked up the courage to open it.

Dear Amelia,

We saw your email and the web site you made. Thank you, we are very busy and we do not need a new web site. We will not be doing business.

Dave

Marketing Lesson Numero Uno: Just because you think they need it doesn’t mean they think they need it.

Want to know whether someone needs/wants your thing enough to buy it? Just ask them. BEFORE you start making it.

And then listen. Write down what they say and learn from it. Then go make something they actually WILL pay for, or something someone else needs. Whatever you create will be so much better with their input.

There’s more than one marketing lesson to be learned from my story. But talking to real, live people before you try to sell them something is a pretty good place to start.

Okay, sure. Most entrepreneurial ideas are more sophisticated than my pathetic-ass foray into WordPress development. I’ll be the first to admit I had no idea what I was doing.

But here’s the thing. Unless you’re validating your idea with adequate research before, during, and after you make it, you won’t get any more traction than I did. And you’ll be just as disappointed with the result.

One last embarrassing admission:

My “research” involved strolling over to “Skipper Dan’s” for lunch. And you’d think the floral-print wallpaper, beige carpet, mauve-cushioned seating and walkers in abundance would have given me a clue about their clientele’s burning need for an “up-to-date” website.

Perhaps the fact that I was the youngest person there — and I’m middle-aged — should have made me reconsider.

But nope, it didn’t. I plowed right ahead with the project, never processing (or maybe admitting to myself) that their customers were just fine with their 1990s website.

And you know what? It’s 2019. Their stuffed flounder and jumbo lump crab cakes are probably still amazing. Their parking lot is still packed with Buicks and Chevy Impalas at lunchtime. And I just browsed their website for the first time in six years.

I swear, they haven’t changed a thing.

Note: The restaurant is real. The story is (regrettably) real. The name — “Skipper Dan’s”— is completely fictitious.