When meeting a client, it is good to chit chat on a few small things to break the ice, and move into discussions.
Some people have been “trained” what to ask a client, but are somewhat embarrassing because it is too scripted, not coming from a place of experience or genuineness. The thing to remember is that there is no reason to be afraid of clients, that they respond to your care and interest in their business. You are not there to tell them what to do, or be defensive. As we develop our projects over the course of years, we learn more about client engagement.
Before an initial meeting, it is important to do some research on the industry or market segment involved, and look at what competitors and others are doing. Get a feel for the key items that stick out. You do not have to follow the same website template designs, but should be aware of those designs.
For example, domestic cleaners as a whole have some pretty terrible websites, so why would you take that as your example? A number over-complicate with excessive amounts of details, and in reality overcharge people for what could be very straightforward service packages with one price per package, regardless of whether there is more or less work on the day. My view is that people are being ripped off, so a new website could target how people will not be ripped off – in a way that does not explicitly say others are ripping you off. Then, such sites could develop information about what the business also specialises in, such as solar panel cleaning in addition to domestics.
The cleaning websites constantly use stock library images which bear no reality to who the people are, or the geographical location. Gimmicks are not mature, and we are not stupid enough to think that a website using global variables that plug in all sorts of place names for the region is a successful marketing tool. This ends up becoming insulting if that is the way the website has focused on presenting itself to pull you in.
If a website is different to mass produced templates, it is engaging, giving confidence and higher trust. You do not have to use the same industry colour schemes of rubber glove blues and bucket yellows. This industry is often temporary and not truly competitive. Often this industry is run by people who stalk the person once they send out an enquiry.
You can see that some thought can go into understanding the industry you are looking at and help shape what you do for a client who cares about their business. If the client wants to rip people off and be somewhat stupid in their approach, why engage with them? Our purpose here is to provide quality websites. We will come across clients who have an idea that is not mature or developed, who may think they are going to do something no one else does, but in reality, everyone is heading in the same direction.
I will present some case studies on this website that show aspects of research and business analyses for truly competitive industries, and for others that are not competitive.
So, when you start a discussion, you have researched a bit, and tried to find information about the client’s own business. They will notice this. They like to tell you what they are doing. As they do this more, you discover parts you would not have otherwise known, which turn out to be really important. Without this, you have a significant gap in your view of the business, so the website will lack what it should have. There are aspects of a business the staff and manager take for granted, so they may not talk about it immediately. To them, what is normal can be what you target as really special, and during this time, you look out for catch phrases, like “Our food is delicious”. The client may not think anything of this, but it stands out to you as a shining star, so you capitalise on it. It is not stupid.
As the client develops a sense of safety with you, they will talk about a lot of things. You are not there to solve business problems, or advise how to change the business. You are not there to cover everything about the business in the website. You need to take your analysis and its development to agree with the client what the primary message is, what the secondary message is, and how the website matches that truth. It is no use having ideals the client likes that are not in day-to-day practice. This is a waste of time. Clients may have pet likes that are not the core business.
You then work through how you will arrange the Home Page and a sketch of the sections, their title headings, and some parts of the content. The home page is not detailed, so pull it back as best you can. This can be difficult if the client requires a lot of sections as you scroll down the page. The problem is that this slows the page performance, and can even mean you develop a mobile web page separately due to performance issues. Some clients will develop the outline content with their own wording, replacing your own words or placeholders. Some will be too busy with the business to refine this content. Nowadays designers use AI wording, so I ask, why bother reading at all? I’d suggest to keep wording limited, and use other pages on the websites, or blog posts for more detailed content. People will not read a lot. I still prefer to avoid AI wording.
Let us say the client has two areas for their software sales that help professional technical writers, and students. You need to provide a different message to students, and produce page content dedicated to them. The core message to students may be to basically change their views so that when they become professionals, they will use your product and offer them different trial licensing and pricing. As you can see, this is a deliberate strategy for that audience. If you do not do this design work, the site will have its own inherent confusion and lack purpose. There is no point simply presenting a software sales product, listing brochure-style points about it, and trusting people will buy it because the client says it is the best and they know what they are doing. This is fantasy and ego. You should be composing a thoughtfully produced website with a story, or theme. Without such constructs, websites are at the lowest compositional level possible. Look for the story. This is like the difference between a mass produced modular home and an architected home.
This approach only comes from years of development and practice, and focuses keenly on detail and thought processes that look for the total picture and its components. You have the right to develop your work from better to better over time. What you design today may be somewhat childish compared to down the track. That is how it goes.
If a client is looking for a website to magically solve problems and auto-generate revenue, they have a deeper problem, and sometimes the problem is too systemic to work with. If they want you to start running the business by your efforts with the website ongoing, do not do that. You cannot run their business or parts of it.
A quality website will provide informational content. Some marketing sites will not give information because they know the visitor will keep looking for it, and in frustration call the business. This is a deliberate dishonest tactic and is dangerous to the end user. These kinds of sites have people behind the scenes who well know how to use psychological behaviours to coerce people to purchase and to shame them with false guilt if they do not do what they say. The more seconds a person spends on a website, the more likely they can be pulled in. This is a statistical reality.
People should be far more brutal in their use of websites, let alone people they never met on phone calls or emails. Even when I explain to someone why the person contacting them is scamming them, they still do not believe it and try to talk to them in a manner they have not the slightest care about. Why do people want to be hunted and put down? People just do not learn, and the loss of money and refusal to grasp resolute stance against the hunter is absolute proof of that.
Over time, I and others saw scammer websites producing ridiculous, childish content and structure. Then we saw the same things re-invented, masked with better presentation, but underlying these visuals was the same stuff. As a designer, you have to develop awareness for your area of work. In the IT web hosting space there is little if any adherence to industry best practice. Some providers will uphold such values, but others will not. A service may boast that it has 100% for its particular service provision, but in practice the evidence shows this can be a blatant marketing lie.
In general, it is good practice to host websites on servers in the same country and region. In Australia, we mainly use Sydney. With Amazon, the email is via Oregon in the USA. Even though you are designing a website, you want to convey to the client end-to-end delivery, which includes management of domain names and transfers where required, DNS records, the hosting provider, disaster recovery backup, security, performance, SEO, post-live monitoring for a couple of weeks, and maintenance. A number of “Aussie” hosting providers do not use servers in Australia, which means there are existent potentials for risks based on other countries – typhoons, cables under the ocean, what happens if the website database is on a separate server, and initial handshake time due to geographic distance.
I always say, things do not tell you what to do, but you control what is done, as that is your expertise. When you play a musical instrument, you have limitations for sure, but you are telling it what to do, not the other way around. As an example, when we place photography onto a website, it needs to be a certain pixel and file size to maintain detail, contrast, blacks and clarity. I am not bothered about optimising software that says I have to change the image.
If a client uses social media, this can be linked from the website. But if people are only keen to add content for a few months to the website or social media platform, this is not the best approach for them. You will see situations you are aware of that are not the best, and need care about what you say or do not say. A business should stand on its own, so you look for what are its differentiators.
For instance, there are several food catering companies in each city. One may focus on convention centers and provision of alcohol. If your client does not do this, that is fine, so you say what your client does. You may notice the competitor uses a lot of frozen foods. So, your pitch could be that your foods are never frozen, all are hand made, and are like the good old days with home-style cooking. You can back that up with photographs. Your client’s business delivers food anywhere, as opposed to people having to attend conference centers.
Again, we see how we drill into details. This means you have the intention to develop such skill. This hones your own communications and clarity. There are so many people who resolutely think they communicate what the other person needs to do or hear, but they are not doing it. And in terms of logistics, things just don’t “happen”. There can be many behind-the-scenes details to monitor and intervene on. You will learn to articulate rather than assume. The poorer you communications, the more likely you are to be at risk of making mistakes, even monitory.
As you conduct analysis, see what the goals or aims of the business are, what parts of that you put into a website, and that it matches what the business does so there is no disconnect. A simple example is if the client says how friendly they are to people, you put that into the website, but the office people are rude to callers. You can’t have mismatch at any level.
Each website needs a colour scheme, a logo, a business slogan, and some catch phrases. This is part of your discussion. See where you go with it.
As you define the business qualities, you do not have to prove them or justify them on the website. No one will challenge what things you say with confidence about the business on their website. In fact, you must point out how good they are at specific things without any sense of having to downplay it. Your client will not think something is really amazing when in truth, it is. So find those things and use them.
This whole process will involve key design decisions. You need to summarise in an email a simple but clear outline of what you discussed in terms of these key things. Down the track, the client will have input from family and friends. They may be totally juxtaposed to agreed decisions, so you come back and say what the decisions are and how you arrived at them. Friends were not part of that process. You know why you decide something based on facts, not ideals, and then the web design is constructed on that basis. There will also be “friends” who will never like what you design.
All of this analysis and agreement is essential so that you have content to work with that will not unravel later on. You must not avoid proper extent of pre-planning. As you design a site, or any software application, you make hundreds of decisions in your brain without realising. This builds dependencies for the total picture. You can’t take a slashing knife to that work and think it will be okay.
The more depth that goes into a website, there is a simpler sense about it. Easy navigation, easy to find content, the right amount, all smooth. Yet, even though the visuals may look amazing at first, the mind adjusts to this, and thereafter views the maturity of the site, rather than the wow factor. These types of sites are able to last a long time, assuming the business does not make major changes. Once work is done, it is very hard to go back and do more. Rather, the site may have features added to it.
The examples and approaches above ensure good outcome. The business does its day-today work, generating revenue by is own works, where the website supports that work. It is a myth to think the website will generate the revenue. It will enhance revenue or business contact and confidence. A number of people are upset when they view a website with assumptions that do not work. Correctly designed will place a site way above the majority of sites that are still poorly designed today. This means things like SEO optimisation are just bread and butter things we do, not something special, the result being proven higher rankings. It has to. And we have proven it does.
I would advise great care in being further involved in services that take up huge amounts of revenue and time with insubstantial returns. You need to use your time on other matters and not be chained to bad things. If the client wants advertising, let them employ a specialist service to do that. We may love our clients but we cannot sacrifice ourselves, especially when at the end of the day, they have no issue with using other services and have the money to do so anyway.
We wish to provide quality sites, and the kinds of things we are discussing here will work, as they always have worked. This is why a solutions design approach is recognised by the business community as something that works and saves loss. The principles here help us as a framework with our smaller website projects, or even if we help others with their IT-based projects and our contributions to that. This is where we see personal development and what we call value add. We cannot sell value add with a dollar amount, we cannot tender on it, but people look for it.
