Web Designers – Keep Your Clients In The Loop

I know a lot of designers who become personally attached to their work and don’t like anybody to see it until it’s finished. However, I have discovered recently that this mind-set just doesn’t make sense when dealing with clients. I want to take this opportunity to recommend that you show your clients/peers your work-in-progress as early and as regularly as possible. Here’s why…

During my last two design projects I decided that I would try to show the client as much of my progress as possible. I took this decision after hearing the wonderful talk Paul Boag gave at FOWD New York entitled “Educating clients to say yes.” Paul offers many pointers that create a much stronger working relationship with your clients.

Both of these design projects where I kept the clients involved in the design process received the clients sign-off with minimal need for amends.

How this worked was that I would plan for a certain period of design time every day. Then as I completed that day’s work (making sure that no elements looked unfinished) I would package it up and send it to the client. I would also send a rationale with these drafts, informing my client why I had made the decisions I had. I would refer back to the brief for every point so the client knew every decision being made was towards the brief they had supplied.

So here’s why I think both of these designs were signed off with very little amends needed:

Fully finished concepts can be a lot to take in


When I’m asked to critique design work, I’m often overwhelmed at first. A fully designed web concept can be a lot to take in and knowing what to focus on or where to start can be daunting.

There’s a psychology theory called chunking that describes the process of supplying bite sized pieces of information, instead of supplying all of the information in one go. The theory is linked to long term memory and says that humans are far more likely to remember the bite sized chunks over receiving it all at once. However, I think this theory relates just as well here.

Sending through small sections of a design and asking for specific feedback is much easier for the person being asked to feedback. If you take a look at the fantastic design community that is Forrst, which asks members to critique other people’s work, it tends to be the snaps of smaller detailed areas that receive the most/best feedback. Often, when someone uploads an entire web page for review it takes much longer for feedback to come in and it usually receives less overall.

Clients like to be involved


No matter how attached you get to your design, you have to keep it in your mind that your client has to live with it for the long term. You can argue that user experience is the most important thing until you are blue in the face, but if your client doesn’t like it they aren’t going to sign it off.

Clients want to be “involved” in the design process, so make them feel like they are. Send them regular updates and ask them if they feel the design will appeal to their audience. Remember they are likely to know their target audience far more than you will.

In Paul Boag’s earlier mentioned talk, he describes that continually engaging the client in this process encourages their buy-in and makes them feel valued, which they should be. In my experience this is absolutely correct. By sending through design progress little and often my clients seemed to have far less negatives about the design.

It’s a lot more work to amend a finished concept


If you send a finished concept to a friend, ask them for feedback and if you are lucky enough to receive some good ideas, it can be a lot of work to implement those changes and they may well impact other parts of the design.

For instance, if they suggest you try a different font for titles and you have only designed one title, changing it would take seconds. However, if you get this feedback after your design is complete, you then have far more titles to amend and it could well drastically change the spacing required. Earlier drafts are often less detailed, meaning that any proposed changes should be much easier to make.

Don’t take it personally


It’s important to remember when offering your work out for feedback that any criticism you receive is directed towards the work in question not your design skills. You shouldn’t be afraid to receive criticism; it can only serve to improve your work.

I recently posted a snap of a header (work in progress) design to Forrst and received a few pieces of constructive criticism. I had two options, I could be stubborn and reply negatively not implementing their advice, or I could try implementing their ideas and see if they helped improve the design. I chose the latter option and was very happy with the outcome.

To summarize

The next time you are designing anything, send it to people for feedback as often as possible. If it’s work for a client be sure to include them in the process. Don’t be scared to show them draft work and don’t be scared to receive criticism. Try it once and see if it works for you.

Have you ever used this approach in your design process? I’d love to hear how this has gone for you. Have you ever had a negative outcome of using this method? Your thoughts are always welcome.

4 Comments on "Web Designers – Keep Your Clients In The Loop"

  1. Seth W says:

    I find that client involvement is both the most rewarding and challenging part of web design. I try to always complete sections of the website like structure, color schemes, content placement, etc. and then get them involved after every section is completed. Then when I need to make changes (good communication always leads to some changes) I can fix one section, or page, or concept at a time.

    Good client relationships always revolve around good teaching. You have to teach the clients what and why it is you are doing what you are doing.

  2. Chris Harris says:

    Yeah, that is what I like to do honestly!!
    Chris Harris

  3. Aisha says:

    Thank you Grant for posting these! Hopefully this can be a great help for the community!

  4. sarfraz raza says:

    Great compilation. Thanks for inspiring. Keep it going.

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