Take a moment to reflect on the very real possibility that the new web site you’re working on – the one you have declared a masterpiece in your mind – is in fact the bane of your client. They hate it, and you don’t even know it.
Why don’t you know? Perhaps they aren’t vocal and prefer to seethe in silence, or maybe they’re too busy to guide you in a more suitable direction. The fact is, they have chosen not to communicate this dislike of your work, which is a very big problem.
Some clients may never voice any concern, and instead just go along with the show. In the end, they’re left unhappy and with a site that they don’t think achieves their goals. Other clients may just go behind your back and hire another designer. Whatever the case, the client isn’t happy, and you’re left to pick up the pieces, wondering what went wrong.
How can we avoid this mess in the first place?
There are five simple, though effective, methods below that can help you to discover, address, and alleviate client concerns before they turn into a whirlwind of trouble.
Practice being proactive
Being proactive takes a lot of work. Most of us are reactive, meaning we respond to issues as they’re brought to our attention. On the other hand, proactive behavior requires a certain amount of foresight and planning, which can be tough when you’re juggling multiple projects. Proactive communication can help get your clients to express themselves more openly, because you never leave the ball in their court. For example, if you’re requesting feedback on a design, you need to be proactive in following up when the client fails to respond. Otherwise, the ball will be stuck in their court far too long, and your proposed design will grow stale, and the inaction – regardless of who’s at fault – will be viewed negatively.
Work in small steps
Working in baby steps and continually communicating is a great way to keep your client in the loop. By involving the client early on, and in more steps of the process, they can help you make minor course corrections before the direction of the project heads down a dark, ugly spiral. Once the direction turns sour, you’ll have a hard time buying back the trust of the client in your abilities.
Ask questions
When interacting with the client on feedback, ask more forceful questions. I don’t mean questioning their feedback, but rather digging further into what they mean. Oftentimes, by probing a client on a specific piece of feedback, I can learn much more about their desires than I could by producing another design iteration. Getting to the root of the feedback can eliminate bad design direction early on.
Have confidence in your work
Sending mock-ups and designs to a client, especially if conceptual in nature, is nerve-racking business. You will be rejected at some point in your career, and that rejection can be painful. Nevertheless, the potential for rejection should never cause you to shelter your work. Instead, you should strive to be more open with it. Get it out there, and fast. By being transparent with your work, the client becomes a participant in, rather than an audience of, the design.
Know when to be defensive
The client is not always right. A shocker, I know, but as a design professional, you need to understand when it’s appropriate to defend your work. If the client questions aspects of the design that you think are spot on, be willing to explain why you chose that direction. Of course, this type of communication needs to be extremely professional as to avoid condescending or rude tones, which can alienate clients.
There you have it. Five extremely easy ways to discover and repair client issues with your work before they destroy the project. If you have a method of your own, please share!
I think I’m proactive when working with clients throughout creating their website.
However, I just experienced (after the website has been done for a few months) the client hire another designer and change the color scheme of the website. I’m talking from cold to hot. (blue to pink)
What would you suggest keep it in the portfolio or should I have to throw it out? (I did the design / development for it)
Corey,
That’s awesome. I find being proactive can be very hard some days, especially considering it’s so easy to slip into a reactive mindset, so keep it up.
I’ve experienced exactly what you’ve gone through as well. For the portfolio, it can be a tough call. If you have other sites that represent your skills well enough, I’d say exclude it. However, if your portfolio is sparse, and you really want to show others what you’ve created, then perhaps a screenshot of the site (before modification) without a link to the live one will suffice. The thing you want to get away from is passing off the modified site as your creation, especially if it’s a bad design change.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! It’s really useful.
I must admit that you’re fully right: we should cooperate more closely with our clients during working process to avoid misunderstandings and disappointment by the results. And we should connect our clients as personally fast as possible and as often as possible. However few clients want to get in touch with you every day. They prefer to get the results rather than work with you from the very beginning till the end. Relying on my experience customers hate to fill out different questionnaires, describe their preferences in design and especially describe the functionality they have no idea about. So sometimes it’s very difficult to involve a client into work process. And there are some reasons for that. First, your client may be very busy. In this case you need to extract all the information from the client and discuss all the details on the project and even possible difficulties that you may face during the work. What is more you should get the information in written form to avoid such a response like “I didn’t ask you to do this!” or “It’s not exactly what we wanted”. Secondly, your client may not understand all the features and definitions you use and as a result he is getting tired and trying to avoid cooperation. In that case you need to explain everything as clear as possible. Do not expect from you client to know design or developing features as well as you do! It is stupid! Sometimes you have to be very patient to your clients while they are learning to understand all these features with your help.
This is a great article. It is important to maintain a close relationship with your client so they are comfortable in telling you what they do and do not like. It is also good to give them many updates on the design progress to ensure their satisfaction.