Listen to the Client
I can’t tell you how much miscommunication there is between designers and their clients. Make sure the clients understand what you are offering, and try as hard as you can to listen to your client, and understand what their expectations are.
There can be a lot of hand-holding in web design, making sure your clients don’t feel like they are being talked down to is important, but at the same time, a patient explanation of what is possible and what is not possible is also important.
So here is a dilemma: There is a client who has a real nice site, someone else built for them. It looks great. They come to you to ask for changes to the site, adding pictures, changing text. Now you as a designer tend to think about how the site looks and “feels”. The “feel” of a website, something esoteric and not easily quantified, is looked at through your artistic eyes and has everything (you feel) to do with the quality of the site. You might feel these proposed changes to the site break apart the flow, or ruin the “feel”, or draw the user away from important elements on the page. But it is what the client wants.
Listen to the client. You will charge them for the work they want done. They might find later that they do not like the way the site “feels” to them after the changes are made. You make some more changes to get the site to “feel” right again and you’ve just made extra money. If the changes are extrordinary, and will affect the entire look of the site, then ask them to think about what they might end up with, maybe even make some of the changes to show them what will happen. In that case, you’ve made a friend. Either way, listen to the client. Understand that someone with a business did not get there by being stupid or naive (in most cases). They want changes, it’s your job to meet their needs, even if you disagree with them. Even if you lose money. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve ended up helping someone for no pay and getting more business because I wanted to help them with their problems instead of trying to get them to do it my way.
Web Design as building a house
Think of website design like building a house. You have a plan, a floor plan. Maybe you got a graphics comp from your client. Maybe you’ve been tasked with making the layout design yourself. In any case, you start with a plan. It’s going to have this many pages (rooms). It’s going to have this kind of menu system (read plumbing or electrical system). You get the idea. Start with a plan. You or your client (or both) sit down and plan what will exist on the site. Plan the page content, how the menu system will look how the site fits together.
The nice thing about building web-based real estate is that you can re-use materials that are incorporated in your site. Maybe you have found a cool way to get your pages to draw boxes with rounded corners (I did). That code, that snippet of code becomes a material you can use in your other designs, because it is not dependent upon the graphics you use, but on the code that lays out the graphics.
There are a number of tricks, most of which are by now well known, for laying out web pages that either re-size or are static, have columns that flow like newspaper columns or layout as completely fluid, re-sizing as the content demands. With CSS and javascript, we can, as builders make certain layouts part of our materials stash, we can use these over and over again. We don’t have to keep buying these materials either. We always have them to use.
I had a conversation with a friend of mine who is a general contractor. He and realized how closely web design and construction paralleled each other, and the differences there were between them.
For instance, we will both offer quotes to our customers, hoping they like or have heard of your previous work. We can always show off our previous work although it is much easier for the web designer to do this.
One thing I think that intrigues me about this concept is that thinking of web design as building a house is that you can get your plan organized much quicker if you think of it as a floor plan for your site. How many pages, how do they connect to each other, what kind of bells and whistles are you going to have. What are the client’s expectations for the final look.
The best part is, if you make a mistake, it’s easy to fix, unlike house building, where you have to cover it up or tear it down and start over. Sure, you might have to destroy your first few tries at a website, but you only lost time, not material. This is why I still quote a flat price for clients who want a complete design done, graphics and all. I expect to try numerous things before getting something that works well and is appealing to the eye. The only caveat is if the client wants to change graphics after already approving others. that will be extra.
Welcome to Friar’s Blog
Well, hello!
Welcome to Friar’s Web Log. We will feature discussion about web design and technology in general in the coming weeks
In the world of Web Design, it seems there are as many varieties and formats as can be imagined by people. One can choose to use Flash, ColdFusion, Ruby On Rails, any number of blog designs, and so on and so forth.
The question that most needs answering then is what do I want to present in a website? Do I want an entertaining website? You know, the kind with lots of fluff and showy graphics. This type of website, though difficult to create, can be very rewarding in terms of artistic content. The problem with many site of this kind is that they lose clients because users find it difficult to navigate the page and find the information they need.
On the other hand, content driven websites, set-up to be more functional than artistic, can lose clients just as rapidly due to lack of punch. Just like those charismatic celebrities we know so well, a website that is lacking in artistic presentation, can look dull or lifeless or just plain uninteresting.
The key to a good design is to balance look with functionality.
- Be easy to navigate and very bold in it’s presentation of navigation.
- Be easy on the eye. Too busy is tiring, try to make the look subtle rather than full.
- Present content logically. Just like a good newspaper or magazine, a website should have logical breaks and formatting of content, even if that content is not text but something else like video or images.
On the other hand, it may be that the owner of a Domain Name wants the site to be a journey. I have seen sites like this, and for me they are fun to peruse through. You are forced to find the ‘hidden’ links, and the site becomes a puzzle. For a site like this, balance is also required. A design should offer the user immediate rewards and tantalize with the promise of more if the user wishes to go deeper.
The key then, to good web design, is Balance. Balance between look and functionality, balance between empty and full, plain and busy, tricky and obvious. We must strive to create for the user, but also so the owner of the site will see maximized traffic and be happy with the look.
