As a small business owner, you have your hand in every detail of your business. You run payroll, you manage staff, keep track of inventory, in charge of ordering, chief of sales and direct your marketing. So it’s only natural that you want to be involved in every aspect of your company’s website.
As web designers, we want that - hands-on and involved clients are good website design clients. But sometimes a good client can make bad decisions.
Let’s say your web designer sent you the first mock-up of your website. It’s sharp, but not too flashy. It’s got a lot of information, but not cluttered. It’s color scheme even matches the precise hue of blue you use on the walls of your store.
But there are some things you need changed. You need another menu tab for a new product line you’ve just acquired. You’d like another picture of the inside of your store. And, by golly, you want your LOGO BIGGER. How are people going to remember your logo if it’s an inch-by-inch in the top left corner?
Hold up there, kimosabe. Take a breath, relax. It’s one thing to get more information on your site, to add functionality, but if you’re paying a professional web designer to build an effective website for your business, it’s worth it to heed some of their advice.
We can say with a fair degree of certainty that no web designer will say no to stuff like an extra menu item, additional pictures or more content pages. Information that is necessary to your business or functions you want from your site can always be worked in. What irks any web designer is when a client tries to overstep into design.
Now that doesn’t mean designers want unquestioning clients - matters of taste, such as color scheme, image choice or layout (to an extent) are perfectly legitimate critiques. Even a wholesale “I don’t like it at all - do something different” can be dealt with. Clients who ask questions are smart clients, ones that make it easier to deliver something both can be satisfied with.
But stuff like “Make a bigger logo” or “Make the text as big as possible” or “Can you add some flashing lights? Oh! How about a siren!” not only oversteps the boundary, it will hurt your website and web business too.
Professional web designers draw on both client needs and their own experience of what works in websites. They know (or should know) how people use websites. They know what works - that too much animation makes a site difficult to use, that a certain size of text is easier to read on the average computer screen, that if they make your logo bigger, it’ll blot out the sun.
Remember, your web designer wants your website to be successful too - it’s just as much a reflection on them as it is on you. Trust that they have your best interests in mind. It will make for a better website for the both of you.
