Many Web designers that I've spoken with love their customers. They feel that the adage "the customer is always right" is 100% correct, and they live by it daily. In fact, many designers, especially beginners, believe that they should defer to their clients in all situations. The only time they wouldn't is if what the client is asking for is truly impossible ("I'd like my website to make coffee for me every morning"). But is this professional? Or is it just insecure and lazy?
Don't be Lazy or Insecure - They're Hiring You the Professional
When a client hires you as a Web designer they are hiring you to do something they can't do themselves. And unless you're in the very unlikely situation where you're designing a site for another Web design firm, you know more about the business of websites than they do. You should not be afraid to explain to them when something they want might hurt their site or their business. That's what you've been hired to do - more than just writing the HTML and posting the pages.
Clients Don't Ask for Accessibility, or Valid HTML, or a Reasoned Design Aesthetic
Most of the time, clients won't ask you to write accessible Web pages. But that doesn't mean you should throw accessibility out the window. They also don't ask for valid HTML (or XHTML) or a clear design aesthetic, but unless you're not professional, you'll give them HTML that works even if it doesn't validate, and a site that looks good.
Providing services that clients didn't ask for is part of the service. In fact, since you know about SEO, accesibility, parental controls and privacy policies, you should be including them in the sites you design automatically. Arguing that the client didn't ask for those things and so doesn't want them just means you're being lazy and not providing the best service you can for your custoemrs.
It's true that most clients won't ask for a site that is written in valid XHTML Strict. And most won't test your designs in IE 4 or Netscape 6. But if you spend all your time building only what you know how to build and not bothering to learn the new techniques you will be left behind when they start asking for that.
Who is the Expert?
You are the expert at Web design and that's why they hired you. How would you handle the following situations?
- A client wants to create a website for seniors with a black background and dark gray text colors.
- A client demands that you include auto-starting music on every page of their site targeting business professionals.
- A client provides you with their "corporate font" and tells you that all the headlines and text on the site must be in that font for everyone who views the site.
If you answered that you would just do the job because the client asked for it, you should reconsider your decision to be a professional Web designer. Because that is not professional. While there may be specific reasons why the client wants those things, there are very good reasons why they should reconsider each one. And as the professional designer it is your job to tell them the reasons.
A better answer would be to sit down and discuss these needs with the client. Find out what they are trying to achieve with those requests. It might be that gray and black are their logo colors or that music is an integral part of their business or that the corporate font has been mandated for use by their executives. Once you know the reasons behind what they want, you can discuss how to meet their goals without sacrificing their customers or their website.
Be professional. Sit down with your clients and provide them with your expertise. Don't just rest on the adage that the customer is always right and ignore mistakes they might ask you to make. And don't use the fact that they didn't ask for something as an excuse not to give them the best site you can.
Oh, and in case you're wondering, here's what I think is wrong with the three customer requests above:
- Dark gray text on black would be very hard to read, and seniors don't have good eyesight. If the target customer for the site were young, this might not be as big a problem. But contrasting foreground and backround colors are easier for anyone to read, not just seniors.
- Sound is very annoying to most people on most websites. And if a corporate employee has speakers on their computer, they almost never want sound to come out of them advertising that they are surfing the Web.
- The only way to get a corporate font to show up all the time is to use images for the text. But this will make the pages very hard to edit and very slow to download.
