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clientsfromhell.net
I’ve done work for some of the world’s biggest
brands. As you can imagine, it gets very
stressful. To de-stress, I occasionally take small
jobs from local businesses. This may be a bad
plan for relaxation.
A client needed a website for their shop. All I
had to do was take their old site and rebuild it
using their existing product database and all the
designs and information they had already given
me. Simple.
It wasn’t that at all.
I worked for 48 hours straight and presented
a new site. The website had already garnered
two sales (doesn’t sound much but this shop
sold large machinery, so those two sales were
worth over £20k) because in my sleep-deprived
state, I built it on the live web-facing server.
They hated it. To say I was a bit upset would
be an understatement. The difference between
their old site and my new one was like a 1980s
Pinto vs a 2019 Ferrari.
Me: I’d like to understand what you don’t like
about the new design.
Client: Customers won’t buy from us if they see
something different. Could you build a site that
looks exactly like our old one but change the
background to match your new one?
I changed one line of code in their old website
CSS to the new background image, uploaded it
to their server and walked away £2,500 richer
for my troubles. They are still a client of mine.
A few months later I got a call from a
competitor of theirs who wanted a new
ecommerce site. I changed a few colours on my
new version, added their logos and menu text,
dropped in their database, zipped it up and sent
it over. About 20 minutes of work and the
easiest £5k I ever made.SHORT CHANGE
CLIENTS FROM HELLExclusively for net: The latest in a series of
anonymous accounts of nightmare clientsA website redesign is obviously a
huge undertaking that demands a
lot of planning if there is to be any
hope of things going smoothly. So
when it comes to pitching a
redesign to a client or employer,
you need to have a crystal clear
outline of the work involved. To
offer some assistance, we asked
@netmag’s followers to share the
basic factors web designers need
to consider.CONTENT AND PURPOSE
According to @aarmitage,
answering questions related to
content and purpose will make the
pitch more palatable: “Will the
content change? What needs to be
migrated? How will content map
across to the new design
(structurally and visually)? And
why the redesign? What’s letting
the org/biz down so much [that
they] have to throw everything
away and start again?”CUSTOMER NEEDS
Being customer focused, both with
the client and their target users, is
essential to @billyryanwill: “You
need to make sure that you satisfy
the requirements of both to create
an end product.”KEEP WHAT WORKS
A total overhaul isn’t always
necessary. “Don’t throw out the
good stuff,” says
@chopsmcmutton. But on the
other end of the spectrum,
@trulyemma says: “A website is
not your parents’ fridge door. You
don’t get to keep something there
that you made years ago just
because you’re proud of it.”PITCH A
WEBSITE REDESIGN
HOW TO