Article: 5 Things Your Clients Should Know

I read an interesting article on teaching your clients about web design. It brings up some great points on helping your client understanding their role in their website’s development. While its not in inclusive list, it brings up some good points. I’ll share a few quotes:

This is not a criticism of clients, however. There is so little information that clearly defines their role. Sure, there is no shortage of material on usability, accessibility, online marketing and copywriting, but who has the time to read all of it?

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One of the biggest problems in most web projects is that the client starts making the decisions that are best left to the web designer. Not only does this lead to bad decisions, but also inevitably leaves the web designer feeling undervalued and frustrated.

This problem can manifest in a variety of ways, however ultimately it comes down to a single issue – the client is trying to find solutions to their problems instead of relying on the web designer.

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The most obvious occurs at the design stage. After seeing your design the client comes back with comments such as ‘make the logo bigger’. This is their solution to a problem that they have with the prominence of the branding. If they had expressed the problem instead of the solution, it would have enabled you to suggest alternate approaches. Instead of making the logo bigger, you could have possibly added more whitespace or changed its position.

I highly recommend the read. It also looks like the blog post author wrote a book called “The Website Owner’s Manual“. Maybe I’ll have to get a copy and see if it is any good.