Web Design Ireland

We’ve all had them. The old school client, who think that as a customer they are entitled to use you as a glorified computer operative. Unfortunately - whilst it is easy to just “do as they say” for an easy life, adhering to every client whim is often not in both parties best interests, and can often lead to problems further down the line.

Sometimes, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing - the client who “knows it all” because they have done a course on Photoshop, can end up being a nightmare to deal with, and they refuse to listen to good solid advice.

Web Design and Development is a skill, both from a technical perspective, and from the experience gained of what will work and what won’t online. The following are a few of the client requests to watch out for, and nip in the bud when they happen.

1) Can you organise that into a separate section?

Problem
I’ve dealt with this before when a client comes from a business background that has organised their business into separate sections - particularly corporates. Sometimes it *does* make sense to mirror the website navigation with the organisational structure - but rarely.

Solution
If you see them moving a section from one place to another that makes no sense logically, ask them to think like a visitor. Remember the three click rule, and that ultimately a user wants to see everything relative to them in one place. Ask them about the types of customer that the website will serve - then if necessary, use business units to further split up sub sections after that. I tend to create a sitemap to showcase how the information architecture should world prior to work starting on the site, which gets rid of ridiculous requests right from the get go. Writemaps is a friendly solution for showing a client a navigational proposal which can be ammended, shared and referenced throughout the project.

Pitfalls
If you fail to do some you may end up with a home page that is extremely cluttered, and difficult to navigate easily.

2) Can you make the logo bigger?

Problem
They believe that making the logo bigger will increase the exposure of their brand. You believe it will ruin the design from a proportion point of view.

Solution
Talk to them about it, and explain that in today’s marketplace, logo’s are important, but aren’t everything. Their brand will be their homepage, and that will be the memorable thing imprinted in the visitors mind. They will associate a brand online - not with a logo, but with the information on their site, and with the trust that you create from great content.

Pitfalls
You could of course just give in, and make it bigger, and send your clients onto this link

3) Can we paste it from a competitors site?

Problem
They believe that they can create a brand around copied and pasted information from Wikipedia, or worse still from a competitors website. Your client was likely the kid at school asking for a copy of everyone’s homework.

Solution 
Unfortunately for them search engines are particularly good at finding duplicate content, not to mention websites such as copyscape If you can educate your client that this is bad practice and will affect both their reputation online and their search engine placement, you stand a chance at changing their mind about content. Bloggers and SEO persons will continue to harp on about how content is king - and this should be emphasized in your client meetings. Get the content collated before any work starts, and dont be scared to put this in your contract.

4) Can we not animate the text / logo? Make it spin maybe?

Problem
1995 called - and they want their spinning logo back. Unfortunately your client insists on making things move, or making a sound when they are clicked. Or other grossly off putting design flaw.

Solution
Ask them to send a few leading companies in their industry that have such crimes against web development on their web site. Or better still ask them to find a site in the Alexa Top 500. Explain that movement on a website needs to be minimal in order to help the visitor navigate easily through the site, and that motion often detracts from content, and results in higher bounce rates. Plus its tacky.

5) I don’t like the font on the page. Can we not use our corporate font?

Problem
You are dealing with a marketing department that insist that every piece of literature that they use - uses the same corporate font that the use on their logo. And the website - that should be the same shouldn’t it?

Solution
Frankly - this is an easy one to deal with, as we are limited to a few fonts for a webpage. Just explain that the web is not the same as printed material, and you have to take into account alternative machines - Mac / Pc / Linux. You could also use something like SIFR to give them headlines in the proposed font.

So what awkward questions do you guys get from clients?