Let’s face it… some clients are a pleasure to work with, while other’s can be down right difficult. Some will trust your decisions and feedback as a professional, while other’s will shoot down every idea you have and only want it their way — but is their way the best way? What happens when you know their is a better solution to fit their needs?
In most instances, I try my hardest to educate them into finding a better solution that will fit their audience’s needs and communicate their products/services AND keep them happy. If you’ve had experience with this, then you know its not easy. It takes work, patience and a bit of strategy.
I’m interested in hearing your techniques and the various ways you educate clients when they have you designing for “themselves” instead of their audience. Update: Check out Paul Boag’s presentation discussing how to make clients better understand and approve our work.
At my company, we recently printed up a brochure to educate our clients on the basics of building a website. We give them the roadmap of the entire process, and show them what happens if, for example, they want to change the layout deep into the construction. Also, we give them a glossary of web “lingo” that might come up in conversation.
So far, it has helped to illustrate that building a website is vastly different to layout out an ad. And to prospective clients, it shows that a lot of thought goes into the creation of our projects.
On the technical side of things, I’ve found talking in terms of budget and turnaround makes more sense to clients than explaining that changing from a 1 column layout to a 3 column layout requires writing a new style sheet.
For clients with their own ideas, if you want them to regard you as a professional and take your word as (design)god, you have to first believe it yourself.
Clients are just people like everyone else, just like you and me. When you show them something and they challenge your decisions because they don’t understand them and you say “Sure, we’ll make the background yellow – no problem! …Yea, I can use Comic Sans for all the text, OK!†You’re just showing them that they don’t need you, your essentially working as a computer operator for them and no longer as a designer.
Now there is a balance, you have to listen to what they’re asking for and figure out what the goal is that they’re in search of by asking these things. “You know, I see that yellow is used on many of your other marketing materials, this is an important part of your brand – but using it as the background color is going to make it difficult for your customer to read the content. Let’s use the yellow for the headers!â€
I could go on and on with this subject, I think it’s partly about educating the client, partially about listening to their feedback in an objective way, and also a bit about being a sales person – knowing how to talk about your ideas in a way that presents you as someone who knows their shit.
Jim,
Great feedback and I love your idea of an “educational” brochure! Would you mind sharing with us?… if not, no biggie :)
Liz,
Your statement about believing in yourself is huge. If you don’t have the confidence in your work, it will show through to your clients… which in turn causes them to not trust you and your ideas. Also, making them happy and listening is a must. I agree with you 100%… designing for “designs sake” is only prevalent in the design world, so interacting with your clients and coming to a happy medium is essential to good business and learning. Thanks for the amazing feedback as always Liz!
I like to tell clients the likely consequences of an inclusion or an omission. “Your audience will likely interpret that _____ as ______.” I find the word “likely” has an informed ring to it, and it protects you from committing to a hard prediction. You’d think “probably” is the same, but it’s too casual, too common.
All that said, the more you force a client to educate you about his/her business, the more informed your opinions will naturally be. You can fight “fire with fire.” Clients get away with the most when they steamroll you into starting a design before you’re fully comfortable with the underlying issues.
I could go into techniques or educational pieces that could be utilized, instead I’ll make it very easy (well, Liz makes it pretty easy with the way she approaches challenges).
When you tell a client to do something, it can be met with opposition. If you try and educate your client, it’s quite possible they may be insulted. If you make the changes or direction of the project their idea and not yours, guaranteed they are getting what they want and so are you.
Make it their idea and you’re golden. It’s made my life easier and I never have had to use Comic Sans on a yellow background since ;)
Great question Brian. Can’t wait to see some other approaches..
“What happens when you know their is a better solution to fit their needs?”
there is a better solution…
Our company has encountered innumerable stubborn clients. So what we do is we give them options. If they ask us to write a content or create a new design for their website, we come up with two to three copies which they can choose from. We never assume that our initial work would pass their assessment right away. We always leave room for revisions.
Great idea Jim, can you share with us?
Great blogsite filled with information. I am always educating myself to improve to attract different areas of readers and business. I have come along way in the last year since launching my wordpress blog but still need to improve. I spend a few hours a day improving on it but since at this time I’m a one person show for my business my time is limited in improving solely on design. I love this site and will be following the advice of your articles and readers to hope gain attraction for clients. Found you on Twitter, another great tool for information and entertainment
Amanda,
Really glad you like the site and find it resourceful. My aim is to make it resourceful for designers AND clients like you said, so glad it’s coming off that way. What’s your blog? Would love to check it out. Feel free to chat with me on Twitter
It is much better if you will also let the client know the basic dos and don’ts in building a website. After all, that client will still be the boss on how the website will look like because for sure, the client will not be paying you for something that he don’t like. Let me client also speak for himself, and once done, never forget to educate him about the things that he needs to know so that he would feel that you really care about it, and will not think that its just the payment that matters.