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Originally Posted by Nox
.. to decide, at least for me. I am faced with doing business in a small town with low economic growth and clients that don't care about anything but getting a great website at the lowest cost possible.
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I can sympathize with the problems this comes with. It's tough getting the right ideas through to some clients. You really have to sell the idea that having a site that meets standards means that it will require less maintenance in the future when new browser versions are released, that having an accessible site will mean he won't be closing his virtual door to clients that can't see well or can't use a mouse and keyboard well, and that being "up to code" is legally necessary for his brick-and-mortar business and at least a good premise for his online business.
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Originally Posted by Nox
I cannot afford to design an xhtml/css site, hack it for IE, create all the graphics from scratch and make sure it looks as slick as his competition for so little.
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"Hacking" a site to look right in IE isn't necessary in most cases, unless your target is IE 5 rather than IE 6 (or 7 one of these days). IE6 still has a lot of issues with regard to accepting standard HTML/XHTML and CSS, but it is much better than previous versions. Personally, I browse with Opera most of the time.
As far as making his site "look" like an existing competitor, I've always found that it helps to steal only the best code. *grin*
Start with a copy of a page from the site he likes, then edit the heck out of the code so that it meets standards. If it's like most sites, it probably isn't up to current specs.
http://www.alistapart.com/ has some really good articles on designing with CSS, accessibility issues, etc.
Best of luck,
Narasinha