Who is to blame for the fact that the site does not fulfill its functions?

Meet John, the owner of a fairly large site, a marketer, considers himself smart, professional, and also sure that he knows how to clearly express his thoughts. With all this, John doesn’t know much about web design and development, so he needs your help. John appeals to you with a set of clear marketing goals and asks you to name the price of his work.

Always explain to the client why you are asking about the budget.

Before you call the price you ask John about his project. After a couple of minutes of conversation, you ask a question about the budget. In your opinion, this is a fair question. After all, there are so many approaches to solving a problem. Without knowing the budget, it is impossible to determine where to start work. You think that website creation is like building a house - without knowing the budget, you cannot find out how many rooms the client wants and what materials to use.
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John, in turn, is suspicious of your question. Why do you need to know about his budget? The only convincing reason that comes to his mind is that you do not want to accidentally call the price less than the one he is willing to pay. In addition, he himself does not know what his budget. How does he know how much the site costs?


The client should not think that you are luring money from him.

John leaves. He is determined to find an honest web developer who is not going to deceive him. Luckily for you, all the other developers also do not explain why they know about John’s budget, and in the end, you can even get John back.

Express all recommendations in a manner understandable to John.

Once you have received this project, you arrange a meeting to agree on all the details. However, John immediately regrets his decision to contact you, as his fears were confirmed. He thinks you want to squeeze more money out of him, talking all sorts of nonsense about usability or site availability. John does not care about visitors with disabilities, he generally does not believe that such people visit his site.

As for usability, of course, the web developer is obliged to make the site user-friendly. Why do we need expensive usability testing? He thinks that such testing involves the use of expensive equipment, for example, cameras, laboratories and two-way mirrors. You thought you clearly explained all these questions. You talked about WCAG 2 and even remembered Jacob Nielsen. You begin to suspect that John is a little tight.


If you want a customer to understand you, avoid technical details.

Probably, he would listen to you if you were talking about the availability of the site, as a method of increasing positions in search engines or increasing the profits brought by the site. And so, John rests his feet and refuses to pay for all these "unnecessary additions."

Involve John in the workflow

You are leaving the meeting, satisfied that you were able to sign a contract. But some kind of premonition indicates to you that this is another one of those terrible projects that you have had to do. Despite this, you remain optimistic and head immersed in the workflow. Almost immediately you get a call from John. He asks if you are ready to show him something. You explain that it is too early to show something, John is disappointed but leaves you alone for a while.

A little later, you're ready to introduce John to the design. You really like the result, and despite the fact that it took a lot more time than the budget provided, it is worth it. The final design has very high usability and will be the jewel of your portfolio.


Do not hide from customers. Show them the results of work at the earliest stages and involve them in the development process.

John sees the design and is horrified. In his opinion, you did not work at all in that vein. The design contradicts offline marketing materials and does not emphasize the benefits of his company's services. In addition, he is confident that the design will not please its suppliers, and although they are not end users, their opinion is very important.

After a tense conference, your enthusiasm naturally disappeared, but you managed to reach a compromise that might make John happy. You begin to think, and if it was not better to present your initial ideas and sketches to John.

Tell John about the design

After much agony and compromise, you are ready to present John a new layout. John likes the design a lot more, and he thinks you're moving in the right direction, but something doesn't suit him. For a start, he doesn’t like that in order to see all the content you have to scroll the window down, and there are too much white space on all sides of the layout. He tells you to move the content, and fill the empty place. John also thinks about the audience of his site, most of which are young men, and believes that the color scheme of the site is too delicate. He asks to add blue color to it.

While John is almost happy, you feel crushed. It seems to you that he wants to do the work for you. He constantly asks for something to move somewhere or change color, as if your duty is only to move the pixels.


Educate your customers so that they can make the right decisions.

At this point, you are sure that the client is a fool and the only thing you want is to quickly disrupt this design. And you are not going to ask John why he needs these changes. Perhaps, understanding his thinking, you would be able to explain what screen resolution is and offer some kind of alternative to the dull blue color that the Internet is teeming with.

Instead, you wash your hands and just give John what he wants.

Communicate regularly with John

Now that the design is ready, you switch to its layout. John naturally doesn't care about your code. Finally you can do everything right.

This is a difficult job and it takes a lot of time. Despite the fact that you spent too much time on the design, and, in the end, gave up and did everything the way the client wanted, you still have pride. And you are not going to make a mess with the code. Anyway, other designers can see and criticize your design! You work, tirelessly, trying even more than you need. Along the way, John manages to add you a headache by slipping additional functional tasks.

John wondered where you were gone. You have not heard anything from you for several weeks. The site, of course, should be ready for this time.
John writes you an e-mail and asks how the work is going. You briefly answer that work is going slowly but surely. You have never loved project management, and you think that John would like you to spend time on work, rather than writing detailed reports.

John gets your answer and gets very upset. What does “slowly but surely” mean? He writes again and asks about the expected completion date, you give a rough estimate.

The date comes and goes, but nothing is heard from you. This is just an approximate estimate, and some complications have postponed the date for a couple of days! John loses his temper and calls you. He says that he has already organized an advertising campaign, the beginning of which was supposed to coincide with the end of work. Since there was no news from you, he decided that everything was going according to plan.


Communicate regularly with the client.

You defend, telling about unexpected difficulties. But it becomes difficult to answer when John writes: “All I needed was to be aware of what was happening, just one letter a week!”.

Explain to John his role in the further development of the project.

By this time you have finally quarreled with the client. You are done and the site is running. John grumbles and pays the bill after a long delay. You are surprised that John expresses his disappointment and dissatisfaction with the result of your work. How so, you did everything he asked? This guy is not just slow-witted, he's a jerk!

Naturally, John looks at everything differently. He came to you with a list of marketing tasks, and the site that you developed does not fulfill any of them. He hoped to launch the site, achieve its goals and start a new project. But, after an initial jump in interest in the site, the number of visitors and requests fell, and the site itself stopped working.



Make sure the client understands what support his project will need in the future.

John does not understand that the site needs constant care and support. You can not create a site, and then throw it. It needs to be fed with new content that will interest visitors. In addition, it is important to plan the development of the site in the future.

If someone had told him about it ...

Moral of the story

It is incredible how quickly we condemn our customers without really understanding it. We are web developers, and our job is to communicate and empathize. Our task is to send messages from our customers to users of their sites. Creating sites, we put ourselves in the place of their visitors to better understand their needs.

Why are we so often unable to convey information and empathize with our customers? Perhaps it is time for us to apply the skills we have gained by working as web developers in communicating with clients.

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