Saving Clients from Design Costs

Written by Shari Thurow
January 11, 2007

Logo Samples, Design Renditions, and Going over Budget

I have a problem with some design / development clients. All feedback (brutal honesty preferred) will be appreciated. I do not only work on high-end, big-brand client sites. I also work on small to medium size sites as well, mostly medium-range budgets.

I understand that most people are visual. They want to see a specific example of a visual element (a navigation scheme, for example) before they "yay" or "nay" it.

This is my problem. If I (or any of our developers) have to provide a specific visual element every single time someone needs to see an exact rendition? Two things often result:

It takes more time to complete the project because it takes time to design every single rendition of a design element

All that extra time means that the project goes over budget.

I try and try and try and try to communicate this to some of my clients. I want them to stay within the budget, but some of them just insist on unlimited iterations of various design elements.

I'll give you an example...

I wanted to show some primary, secondary, and 3rd-level calls-to-action to a client. A different client site that did this very well was a manufacturing site. However, this manufacturing site? It is specifically designed for lower end browsers because that is exactly what the target audience uses. My other client was viewing the example site on the latest browser. It doesn't matter that the calls-to-action didn't render the way he wanted it. It mattered that my other client's target audience had those CTAs rendered the way they wanted it.

I was trying to point out to my client was that this particular site had excellent placement and organization of primary, secondary, and 3rd-level calls-to-action. All my client would focus on, however, was how much he didn't like how it looked. Even though I told him I could modify this within 60 seconds (it's a style sheet change), he just would not get off that topic. He kept missing the point - his site needed this type of organization and use of screen real estate. I don't know if this example illustrates my point, but I did my best.

What do you do when people insist on too many renditions of design elements, making the project launch date later than expected, and going over budget?

Just so you know, as a designer / developer, this situation happens all of the time. I don't know how other designers give unlimited logo samples. I've experienced too many people taking advantage of it (and not paying).

Again, any feedback will be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

Shari Thurow, Webmaster/Marketing Director
Grantastic Designs, Inc.

this post ran in issue 2323 of LED Digest, "Saving Clients from Design Costs."

see also this special issue with feedback from design firms and clients.

Comments (6) add comment

Brett Work said:

The first thing I try to do is get the decision makers involved immediately by asking them a few questions (related to the design - I ask a ton of other questions unrelated to the actual design to learn more about them, their business, their goals, etc...).

1. What will be the primary color for the site elements?

Once I know this, I provide examples of secondary colors.

If they have an existing logo and are going to keep it, this question becomes "What complimentary colors do you like to go with your logo" and give them examples.

2. What sites have you used that you like from a visual perspective?

3. What sites have you used that you like from a functional perspective?

4. What are your competitors doing on their site(s) that you like and dislike?

5. Do you prefer horinzontal or vertical navigation layouts? If vertical, left column or right column (maybe both)?

Without these answers, how do you even begin? If you wanted an architect to design a house for you, wouldn't you expect him to ask things like how many bedrooms, 1 story or 2, eat-in kitchen, flooring materials, etc... Unless that guy is billing by the hour, he is going to want to know as much as possible up-front so that his first pass can can at least provide what you asked for from a layout point-of-view.

It is their site, they should be the ones making the look and feel decisions. By getting them involved from the beginning, I know what they are after and don't try to push something else on them unless a certain element is important for a particular piece of functionality they want or conflicts with their site goals, target audience, etc.

In the end, the customer paid you do develop a site. If you go over your internal budget, why is that their fault? Part of the relationship is about managing expectations. If you don't ask the questions and it takes 15 steps, that is your fault. If you ask the questions and the client does a 180 somewhere, then you need to have a talk about agreement modification. A reasonable business person will understand that changes in scope or changes in agreed upon design elements necessitate changes in the agreement. If they don't, I would cut your losses and move on. If they nitpick everything from the beginning, imagine what happens when traffic stats don't meet expectations, subscriber rates are lower than desired, abandoned cart rates are higher then average... That's a scary road to be on.

January 11, 2007

James Miller said:

I deal a lot at the low end and tend to emphasise costs from the start.

I always say that content is the most important thing in a web site and this is what gets you the search engine position, so you must start with content. I then say that we need a temporary navigation system, which we'll update and change in a couple of months, when the site is complete.

This approach shifts actually puts design behind content and often as content determines what pages need to be written, I find it a much better approach.

It may be easier for me in that most of the people I deal with are lawyers, journalists and writers, who are generally good at content.

January 11, 2007 | url

Renee Kennedy said:

I dealt with the same problem you illustrated for the 7 years when I had my own web design business. The biggest challenge of the design process is getting the client to agree on the visual elements. The way we learned to handle this problem was to set the expectations right up front and to have it spelled out in the contract.

When I went over this portion of the contract with the client and through the contract negotiation process, I continually reiterated that the client had 2 chances to make changes to the design elements. After those two chances, they would be charged at a rate of $75 per hour to make any other changes.

Also, as the project progressed, when I would show the client different renditions, I would say in emails things like: "Here are three concepts of what your site might look like, you will have two more chances from this point to make changes to these concepts." (Along with a lot of other stuff.) But I think putting it in writing every step of the way drove the point home.

The client you have currently may be a lost cause, and you may have to cater to him, but in the future, you can address this issue by setting expectations up front and detailing it in legalese in the contract. (We had a lawyer design our contract and that was the best thing we ever spent money on.)

January 11, 2007

Michael Linehan said:

In response to Lynne Diamond, LED Digest 2324: Design Elements vs Business Decisions...

As a client, this is a real dilemma to me. I budgeted for the site based on her representations of cost. I can't afford to pay her triple her estimate. But I do want to be fair - so I'm not sure really how to proceed.

Do not continue. (Oh dear, I'm going to sound harsh.....) Fire her, at the very least. And from one who is not, in any sense, a fan of the "sue them if they look at you wrong" US legal system, I'd say take her to court. From your description, I'd say this job is so appallingly, badly done that you shouldn't have to pay anything, never mind triple the estimate.

So a photo that is perfect for the design may give the wrong message to a potential customer. Who knows that better? The business owner or the web designer?

If you have a web team that actually understands MARKETING in addition to the artistic and technological elements, it may be the web team. Many small business owners have done little or no study of even the most basic marketing principles and treat it as an unpleasant task to be relegated to a quick 2 hours on Friday afternoon before leaving for the weekend. That business owner has almost no basis upon which to make such decisions.

On the other hand, many designers and programmers are precisely that, and know little or nothing about marketing. And I say, why should they? Being a good designer or programmer is profession requiring extensive knowledge and skill and ongoing study. Who also has time to also become a marketing specialist? The web has long since passed the level of complexity and specialist knowledge needed where one person can do it all. I'd say that for even a modest business website today, one probably needs a programmer, a designer and a web marketer.

So in the case where only a web designer is being used, and especially if the business owner has studied marketing to any extent, it may very well be that the business owner has a MUCH greater understanding of marketing.

Therefore, the ambiguous, overall answer --- it depends.

January 23, 2007 | url

Rae Deisler said:

I agree with Michael. This person needs a wake-up call. You are being abused by your service provider! Fire her with extreme prejudice.

January 23, 2007

David Strait said:

Before desktop publishing, designers had to use type setters and paste up technology. I remember paying $80 to have a two line piece of type re-set by the output service provider so I could run and paste it in prior to a press run. Then came GUI and everybody got visual.

In that bygone era I learned a great trick to control the flow of client changes. Don't let them see the visual presentation--until they had signed off on the "wording" for the ad. I still make the client review the copy, including calls to action, headings, sub heads etc. first. Instead of showing the photo, I would write "photo of a ...." or "logo goes here". Now days we call that "content" but the point is the same. I tell the client it works best to decide WHAT we're going to say before we decide HOW it will look.

This approach seems to get their heads out of the visual realm and into the analytical realm (left vs. right brain stuff). We can email back and forth to negotiate the wording before they can get their heads into a myopic focus on single simple design element. BTW I'm not a designer. I'm a marketer who learned desktop publishing.

Once the copy is signed off, we can start to look at visual issues which support the marketing purpose which was discovered in the copy writing phase. My contracts set the included number of changes to the visual elements at three, with clear indication that additional renditions above the set number of changes will be charged at an hourly rate.

This does not prevent clients from obsessing on a color or whatever, but it controls the abuse of my time, and get the client thinking.

January 29, 2007 | url

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