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I am sure you have heard the saying: "The Customer Is Always Right"
I must admit, I'm not sure if I believe in this cliché.
This statement, especially in regards to website projects, is a bit out of date. Occasionally we see businesses promote this term to attract new clients but as they become more and more educated we need to give them a full suite of information or your page will be closed in less than 3 seconds.
Most customers are quite capable of finding any kind of information on the web. They can enforce their opinion on the project which can commonly result in a disaster.
It's not easy... but try to persuade your customer to do what is good for them and show them the benefits so they don't assume they are getting ripped off. By trying to do whatever they ask of you, they think you are just try to sell your service, your not there as a business partner but only to be paid for the job in question. Funny isn’t it?
One of the solutions that has always worked for me is to clarify the project objectives before meeting the clients. It will help your customers understand exactly what they want and more importantly what they need.
Future growth of the website is very important matter to be considered. Most of the time customers just want a 4 to 5 page website with no content management system and no future goals. Then in less than 6 month they come and want to have another page and another page then they want to have video or audio, or they get sick of the look and list goes on and on. This all happens because you did whatever customer asked you, whereas if you have a clear project plan and get the customer to sign off on them then your life will become a whole lot easier.
It is an essential step to making sure that your customer understands that you know what you are doing. I have seen developers and Search Engine Optimisers who couldn’t give their customers enough confidence in what they were doing. Your expertise needs to be able to enforce what is the best for your clients.
Don’t forget to talk to your clients, it sounds silly but believe me, I have seen many companies start their projects with almost no brief in mind and then assume all the way to the end that they can manage the project. They will end up spending way more time and hours on the job than their original estimate.
Try the below steps and let me know if it worked for you:
- Ask your client what is their vision for the website and where they see it in the future.
- Make sure you get the type of your website right! Is it - e-commerce, portal or both. Don't assume your client knows what these are.
- Ask your client about the websites conversion. Is the conversion in her website based on newsletter submissions, articles read or products purchased?
- Ask if the client wants advertising of any kind on their websites? If they do is there any external software required and do they want stats on this programing.
- Ask if they want SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)? Explain the benefits of SEO.
- Talk about there exit strategy, what will they do if the website doesn't meet their expectations? Re-design, content review etc.
- Ask about the Copywritting? So many clients are worse than me in web copywriting, offer them the service.
- Request a rough site-map, so you know what goes where, so you can figure it out the navigation. This also helps the client understand there website better.
- Ask about the content type, video, audio etc.
- Finally the most important one; Don't write a line of a code until you have all of the content.
To wrap up this article, you need to keep this in mind. Customers are very happy for you to take care of their project if you can show that you are expert in your field, and you know exactly what you are talking about. Be confident in the products you are selling and educate your clients.
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Naturally I don't think we should ever say no to a particular idea built to weigh up some more options and get a better result will make clients come back to you time after time.
After all if the website you are building doesn't deliver the intended goals of the client you will loose them over time.
Anyway, great article and I will be sure to checkout some new posts when your website is completed.