People don't have any clue about what's involved. They maybe have had some printwork done on the cheap before, and see this as similar.
And when I say they don't have a clue about what's involved you need to remember that many people can't plug in a printer. They have no idea about 300 dpi or 75 dpi or low quality jpegs or cross browser ("I click 'the internet' and there it is") or HTML or CSS or anything else.
But this is perhaps an opportunity! (A painful opportunity that's possibly full of woe, but still).
You create 5 mini sites of varying levels of complexity. You start with totally passive, html & css only, no updates, few images. You then build up, including tiny bits of dynamic content (roll-overs, javascript) all the way up to full content management. You describe how many hours of work are needed to create each of these, you show examples of wireframes. You also describe the design decisions the client would need to make ("Will your content change once a year? Your best choice is X But if you will add content once a week your best choice is Y").
You then give tentative costings. You make sure they're labeled as tentative and subject to change because of work involved.
You invite potential customers to talk to you about what they need.
Hopefully this will filter out people who have wildly wrong ideas about the costs or times, and will encourage people who want a website but who were too baffled to ask.
Of course, there are many risks of dealing with totally naive clients and it could be hellish.
And when I say they don't have a clue about what's involved you need to remember that many people can't plug in a printer. They have no idea about 300 dpi or 75 dpi or low quality jpegs or cross browser ("I click 'the internet' and there it is") or HTML or CSS or anything else.
But this is perhaps an opportunity! (A painful opportunity that's possibly full of woe, but still).
You create 5 mini sites of varying levels of complexity. You start with totally passive, html & css only, no updates, few images. You then build up, including tiny bits of dynamic content (roll-overs, javascript) all the way up to full content management. You describe how many hours of work are needed to create each of these, you show examples of wireframes. You also describe the design decisions the client would need to make ("Will your content change once a year? Your best choice is X But if you will add content once a week your best choice is Y").
You then give tentative costings. You make sure they're labeled as tentative and subject to change because of work involved.
You invite potential customers to talk to you about what they need.
Hopefully this will filter out people who have wildly wrong ideas about the costs or times, and will encourage people who want a website but who were too baffled to ask.
Of course, there are many risks of dealing with totally naive clients and it could be hellish.