I might be many things but I am not a mind reader. But for the last week I have been attempting to do just that for one person who contacted me through my website about help with their online shop. At first I thought it was going to be a matter of offering a little advice via email. When their next email suggested the prospect of a redesign, a mock up was requested which I designed and installed on my demo site and sent a link. The demo was actually a test drive of a fully functioning website wearing the mocked up theme. It makes sense to me that a person will better be able to tell me what’s right or what’s wrong with it this way. Unfortunately in this case it did not happen. The email I got in reply mentioned nothing specific about my design and said nothing about what they preferred instead. Further exchanges were consistently unenlightening. Beyond 3 links to other cookie cutter fashion blogs and a color scheme limited to 4 colors they never let me in on the secret. Eventually I got the message that what they wanted was exactly what they already had. And the project went fizzle.
Although unpaid this week long endeavor was not unproductive for me. Not only did it get me started on a WordPress theme specifically for use in conjunction with the WordPress Shopping Cart plugin and a new banner for my own site it also got me thinking on how I might best avoid getting into another situation like this one. I’ve also got to post a price list that might encourage the people who like getting things for free to resist contacting me better weed out the time wasters.