Listen To Your Web Design Client!

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Listening to your web design client is essential to creating a web site that communicates effectively and genuinely meets your client’s needs. The mere fact that you created a great looking web design does not mean that it will be effective or communicate the right message. Here is an example of how listening can improve the quality of web design. I created this web design draft for a client that works with environmentalists and others who are experts in ecologic preservation. I thought that it would be the perfect look for my client. It has beautiful color and an evocative image.

While my client agreed that it looked great, it failed to meet his needs. Why? The answer lies in the details. Our client knows the views and attitudes of his customers well. For example, as ecologists, his customers generally view development as an intrusion upon protected environments. Therefore, having a graphic of a human, and a wooden platform could be interpreted by customers as wetlands being surveyed by a developer. While the image looks great, it would certainly strike a sour note with potential customers for that reason. Secondly, my client observed that the trees in this web design are not native to the areas of the country that our client serves. While that detail would be inconsequential to most people, it would stand out to his customers who are quite knowledgeable in this field. They would pick out these incongruous details quite readily. That visual mis-communication could result in a lack  of confidence in our client and the potential for lost business.

Small details, yes. However, they are the sort of visual taboos that must be avoided when seeking to reach the highly specific and knowledgeable audience that our client serves. Therefore this web design is shelved. Now a bit wiser, we are creating a new web design that gets the details right. This is a good lesson for all web designers. Listen carefully to your client and consult during the web design process. He knows his customers well. What he knows can often spell the difference between a truly successful web design and one that merely looks good on the surface.