Nowadays, I often quote a main website, a facebook page, a twitter page, and a YouTube Channel. I interest clients in a way that they understand that the content, branding, and design can be optimized for each of the mediums and it gives it the best chance to drive new business. The one caveat is that I have the ‘Are you sure your going to be able to maintain your Social Media platforms as they will need daily attention?’ If they don’t feel confident about it, then I sell them on us doing for them for XXX.xx a month.
As far as the process…
I first explain the stages of the project:
Quoting and costing
The asset/content compilation and refinement
Approvals
The design phase where we discuss branding, product and service positioning, colour schemes, and other media assets how we will use them.
Approvals [stages 1 - 5 may loop until the content is ready and has final approval]
Code > Approve > Code > Approve …
Hosting - figure out the logistics of where it will be hosted and who is best to manage the domain, DNS, and web server.
Approvals
Ongoing Maintenance and Marketing optimization (step 9 may loop many many years)
Then the content/asset compilation and refinement stage is started with interviewing the customer with a list of questions. An example might be
Have you done any research about what today works and things that do not work when marketing yourself on the Web? If so what aspects of what you learned are most important for your site?
Does your company have a mission statement if so where can I find it?
What are the top 5 things you would like the site to effective communicate?
What are currently your best products/services? Are these the services you want to market more, or are there other products/services that need more visibility? - sometimes I can just document a few; however if it is many products I’ll ask them to send it via an email.
Do you have any current digital assets? Photos, written content, design layouts, colour schemes, stylistic guides and ‘proper use’ documentation, music or videos? If so, are these assets full produced or are they in different raw stages? Who can I contact in your organization and will you let them know that I will be calling them for these assets?
Will you allow me to come into your company and ask key stakeholders that you designate to help compile assets and content? If this will not work, then how do you suggest that we can make this best work for you, given that you rather than us will have to drive this process and stay on the timeline so that we can release the site within your desired time range:
I think many customers don’t know what to look for or how to properly analyse the traffic patterns, hit ratios, and other web metrics so I make sure I am there to decipher this for them. This inevitably becomes a new opportunity to help add more value to the site and to provide new business opportunity for you.
I’ve had the same problem with many clients who dont really understand the true value of great content and other factors which would help in their site rankings. In these kind of situations i would recommend the best thing to do before you start with any work is make a wire frame (2 one your version and the other the owners simple version he wants) with mock content then give a presentation with pros and cons. This in itself is good for going ahead with the design work ahead else the customer many times dosent understand the value of your work or what service you have to offer him
cheers!
Your case is not because you’re not a good service, just because you don’t tell him what he need to listen. Try point out some other things may meet his need.
I love your process. Mine is a little different because I mostly work with templates. I tend to sell social media platforms too. I started this new thing, where I set-up their Facebook, Twitter and YouTube Channels and then charge them for training so that they could maintain it themselves. The saving in this is about 1/4 of the price so many opt of this solution. The other option is for me to maintain it for them. There is a grey area now between SEO and SMO as a lot of today’s traffic comes from social media channels.
Client’s occationally ask if people visit them online. Sending a simple report always settles their nerves. At the early stages of my business I use to attach the information on the invoices and receipts, however, now with automated sending I need not worry about this.
I think many customers don’t know what to look for or how to properly analyse the traffic patterns, hit ratios, and other web metrics so I make sure I am there to decipher this for them. This inevitably becomes a new opportunity to help add more value to the site and to provide new business opportunity for you.
You’ve either been doing this for a long time, or you’re very clever, either way I am equally as impressed. How often do you do this. Maybe I could do the same every 3 months or so to help clients understand and decipher their content.
Off Topic:
I was actually thinking of something really big, “guaranteeing a return-on-investment on all ecommerce websites” but such a possiblity can only be made with real hard work and careful market analysis. @ServerStorm do you have any experience with this?
I really try to not give the customer do this for themselves as most fail miserably and then blame it on my design. I let them know this most likely outcome, remind them that gaining new customers generally involves a cost otherwise gaining them is not very effective most times. This is no different it is my expertise and not yours and I can ensure that I get you involved when all good opportunities present themselves while you can concentrate on servicing the business. I generally find that it takes about 3 months to start to see good movement in the Social Media platforms so I offer us to do it for 3 months and see if it is worth continuing if the results say so. This has never failed for me and I do this for 20 or so customers now.
I do this every month so I condition the client to understand the value of responding to the metrics that we collect over-time. They need to understand that sometimes is dynamic change while other times it takes time to see the patterns emerge. i make sure that I am well prepared and highlight only the meaningful metrics for them so an average session take between 1/2 and 1 hour. I don’t charge them for this visit as I cover this cost in the maintenance contract.
I don’t think that you should do this as there are so many factors that can dictate good or bad ROI. Instead I would be willing to guarantee a percentage of lead opportunities that they can convert in their own process.
If the client is not that helpful, he can’t blame you for ineffective results of the job. And I do feel that it isn’t right to use stock images for the website. It’s simply not being honest with the people and their prospect clients. Simply try ur best to use what you have now. Hopefully the client will realize later that he plays a major part in the success of his website.
Or rather than giving the gift of “Hindsight” you can let them know at the beginning that while you can design it, program it, and write content for the web, his involvement in the process is crucial to his website’s success. You know, when websites don’t succeed it’s always the developer who is the “bad guy” in the client’s eyes. When you lay out all the cards on the table before the deal starts, he can’t come back at you later. Let your clients know precisely what you can do to help them succeed and what they need to do to contribute to the success of their website.
I think that too often, clients look at building a website like painting a house. They pick out the colors and expect the painter to do the rest. Some web developers tend to look at the client/developer relationship as adversarial when actually it is a partnership. The better you can communicate that to your clients the easier the project will go and the happier all parties – designer, programmer, writer, and client – will be.
i think some people here overcomplicate it. If client only “picks up the paint” you are free to do what you want and do it right and thats actually not the worst scenario =)
If he doesnt bother with text - add more images. etc Some project can get into first pages on native search with the right development without much investment from the client. Few hours of work for copywriter to create nice headlines and its good to go, lets your seo specialist look into it for an hour and tailor it stuff for long tail seo a little bit, even if the client didnt pay for it.
If its not a 100 usd project i think company should be able to spare 10% of the budget to add some bonuses to the project
Not saying such approach will fit every company but i always try to give more then i am payed for i guess. Anyhow we must work with what we got, sometimes it will take more time to explain client the need of something then it will take to just do it for him yourself, just make budget slightly bigger if you need to. Its common for many studios i know: you put some headers, texts, benefits as an example and client goes like “hey, thats cool, just let them be on launch version we like it”.
ps obviously not speaking about web sites where content is THE THING. like blogs etc. Would be silly if client didnt realize the need to have good content on his blog and just payed for design xD
Pretty silly for a business website to have design and not good content. People don’t visit to look at how pretty the pages are. They visit to find information and that IS content. Sorry if this is offensive, but I believe it is quite arrogant to think that you are “Free to do what you want” with a client’s website. If you are not building it to represent your client’s business goals, then you are doing no good for the client. In order to do that, you need to communicate with your client and help them understand that their input on your work is crucial.
I think u misunderstood =) Why not? if client doesnt know what he needs you are free to do what you want and suggest him options.
Most clients will be happy to use what you suggest. Sure if they have their mission wrote down and you just change it the way you like it - thats arrogant but if they dont have anything and you nicely put something like “our mission is to make every man on the planet happy” - why is that bad? If they wont like it it wont go live.
I am talking about mostly sites with straight marketing goals here, were content is just a “cover” to sell / promote the product or service (thats the majority of the sites we do anyway)
[edit] i ll give you en example. Lets say your client make sausages and he wants to sell it… but he doesnt have any information and doesnt realize where to get it and why does he even need it.
You start with getting their sausages. Taste it. Cook it and make a picture of it. Edit in photoshop.
Big tasty picture thats a good start. Add some vegetables to the picture and make it look tasty.
Now how does it taste? … well tastes like meat. Write it down.
Make more photo collages.
Now we need benefits, why would people buy this exact sausage, photos are not enough. Put an approximate list:
a) company is 10 years on the market (if its not 10, client will fix the number)
b) if you order 10 kilos delivery is free
c) google some standards for sausages in your country. Write it down. Lets say its iso9001 certified
d) put random properties like “Tastes great when grilled”
Company info… well making that up is tricky so pictures is your friend again. Go to their factory and make dozen of pictures, usually you can find some info about the company there. Here you go.
put some happy people eating sausages there.
ask your programmers to taste it and give a testimonial. Write it down.
Here you go, It didnt take you long, you didnt bother client with questions, you dont need to wait till he sends you something, you have no one to blame, show it to client, he will be glad to read what you made up and correct it. Job done.
Its not the fastest way nor its easiest for you but thats how i sometimes do it when client is tricky.
Instead of going through all that, why not start with a questionnaire to find out what the client wants to see on his website, what his marketing goals are, the benefits the business offers to its customers, what his customers most like about the business and who are his customers? What if you work strictly on line where the sausage factory is thousands of miles away?
If you develop a system that puts you in partnership with the client you become his confident and not just an employee. That makes for a successful ongoing relationship, less do-overs, and a smoothly flowing project.
I thought we are discussing cases when systems doesnt work =)
Its not rare that you email your questions to client like should we do this… we suggest doing this, what do you think?.. here are few more options of… waiting for your answer asap.
And he answers few days later something like “yes” or “please do”.
An old doctor joke comes to mind. You go to your doctor and tell him you are sick. He says, “Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.” In other words, ‘if that doesn’t work, I’ll try something else.’
Thankfully, most doctors don’t do business that way today. They are professionals who use their skills by finding out your symptoms first, diagnosing the problem, and treating the condition accordingly. That’s their system. It saves time, stress on the part of their patients, and builds confidence in their skills. As a web-writing professional, it’s my system, too.
If you are diving into a project before you have all the specs. That’s when the trouble starts, not because the ‘system doesn’t work.’ it’s because you are not using it.
What system would you suggest to use towards clients who “doesnt understand the need of good content” and reply to your 5 pages of brief with “not sure what does it mean” or they answer “no” to every question in your brief starting from “do you have a logo? - no”, “do you want us to create one? - no” and ending with “are there sites on the internet you really liked either look and feel or the way they work? - no”.
=)
I am a designer not a psychologist, so i d rather spend half a day to draw a wireframe or some sort of simple mock up and try to get going from there rather then solving mysteries in the head of the client or reason with them. I was scared to dive in the projects like that before but it turned out that most crazy clients will just like your mock ups straight away and it will just work that way. I am not encouraging anyone to do the same btw.
I think the point Linda was making is that you should sit down with the client and discuss their needs with them, and on that basis make suggestions based on your expertise, explaining these suggestions as you go. Then, together, you build up a spec for the project. By the time you draw up a wireframe, the client should be fully in the picture of why everything is where it is.
Boag speaks really well on the need to work collaboratively and constructively with clients. I’ve found some of his videos particularly inspiring.
You are absolutely right =) However it largely depends on what kinds of firm or agency you are, if you are “full service” like we are i guess its fine for a client to be like “i dont know anything, i want to sell my sausages, give me options”.
Ye. we are going in circles but its close =) guess i could TLDR my point with something like “sometimes client doesnt need to understand the need of a good content when he pays you enough to hire a copywriter / marketing manager / photographer”.
That would perhaps be fine if the client had no say in the final product. But the fact that clients will almost always have an opinion on the matter, and are the ones holding the purse strings, it’s important that it be an educated opinion—based on communication with you.
We may seem like were are going in circles, but really we are trying to make sure that this is a balanced thought process. Please keep in mind that many people ‘lurk’ and don’t chime in on such discussions, but still read them. If they are not experienced then our answers may help or hinder them. This is also true of people that find this discussion via search engines.
Experienced clients are easier. This is especially true because they understand the value of what a site can bring to their ROI so they are more actively involved - normally by choice. Not so easy for new customers. Inexperienced customers may not understand the value of what a site can do for them. Clients often will not know what it takes to make a web-site successful.
IMHO, it is our jobs to ensure they get a site that does provide value. We can belly-ache all we want that they don’t give us what we need, but really it is on us to set their expectations, find what value they bring to a site’s design (like actually understanding their products, services, and market, as well as terms/ideas common in a given industry. It is also our job to learn about their business so we can demonstrate that we have invested in them; they are far more likely to invest in us.
If you get a ‘new customer’ you need to put on your Account and Project manager hats and really sell them what they need and explain things like schedule, risks, important milestones that you or they cannot miss without schedule and cost increases (due to more effort).
Many people believe their is a low-barrier to get into Web design. i would argue that this is not true because to be really good at our craft we need to understand marketing, people management, clear and regular communication, content requirements, functionality/UX, code and graphic design. Throw in video and audio and then it does not look like such a low barrier. We need to demonstrate value so the customer realizes we fulfill these values to their business. With this trust comes better communication, more sales and generally happier customers. It also lays a bed for problems that occur don’t get hyped-up by the client as much as their is a level of respect and trust.
