Interestingly, when I've asked this question before, there has been some argument. No, not on whether the customer is more important (most everyone seems to agree on that), but rather on which customer is more important - the client you're designing for or the customer of the website you're designing for the client. When I say customer-centered design I'm not talking about the client. But I do recognize that clients can have vastly different desires from what their customers do, and if you're a freelance designer, serving your clients first is an easier way to keep them paying you. But as SazBean points out in their article Customer-Centric Design - Your Customers Care, so Should You:
Your goals are probably concerned with increasing sales and leads (if not, they really should be).If you reinterpret this as "Your goals should be concerned with increasing the sales and leads of your clients." Then you'll have a handle on how to work with clients who want pages with black backgrounds with white 8px type for their audience of senior citizens.
I think you glossed over the *most* important. You, the designer is the most important.
Next is the client.
Then comes the client’s customers.
You have to assess the client before taking the job. This gets sometimes tricky, like when money is tight. But if you take on the task, your job is to meet the client’s needs, as the client perceives those needs. Some clients are so opposed to what is important to you, that it damages your ability to do business or your ability to serve others – and you have to politely stay away from that customer. Your ability to serve has to come first.
It turns out a client may or *may not* understand or care what the site’s customers will respond to best. Or perhaps your client has a particular goal, or knowledge of those clients, that you are unfamiliar with. You have to allow for ‘the client is right’. Sometimes you can see the wreck coming, but sometimes the client really did have a better appreciation of that specific task. And this gets back to you, the designer being the most important – if you cannot in good conscience follow the client’s direction, you have to evaluate whether to take on the task.
When your understanding and the client’s intent agree, making the site experience for the client’s customers the most effective for the client is the most important.
What and who is ‘most important’ depends on where in the procurement cycle you ask the question. Sometimes you *shouldn’t* get as far as concern about the client’s customers. Often you can work with a client to resolve concerns, issues, and intent, but agreeing to one thing while you intend to ‘do it right’ is flat wrong – terrible personal ethics.
*sigh* The final product that comes online is the most important thing, combined with the fact that it is designed with the thought that everyone will be able to see and understand it thus enabling the end customer to succeed in their goals and reward properly everyone involved.