From the article: Is the Customer Really Always Right?
Clients can ask for crazy things, and sometimes it's just tempting to acquiesce rather than try to argue them into someting more sensible. What crazy things have your clients asked you to do on their Web pages and have you gon along with them or tried to talk them out of it? What Did You Do?
Blue, Purple, and Orange...
- I had a client who wanted a new logo for a custom kitchen/cabinet company. He didn't have any concept for what he wanted, but he knew the logo just had to be in blue, purple, and orange because of the meaning of each of those colors. Obviously he could not visualize what a bad idea that was going to be but I knew I wouldn't be able to 'talk' him out of it, so instead I made the most garish logo possible so that he could see it looked like the late 1990's puked all over the paper. After that he listened to my suggestion for a more traditional color scheme...
- —Guest Kimberlanya
Digital Format ??
- I tried to explain to the client that I needed his content in digital format... so he wrote down all the text on a piece of paper, scanned it and e-mailed it to me....
- —Guest me
Rollovers
- My client wanted the menu on the home page to have a rollover image in the middle of the screen. What a lot of work for an effect that has no purpose and can only last less than a second because the user will immediately click on that item. He could not be talked out of it.
- —Guest freelancer
adding music to start page
- well he was an artist and wanted the gallery experience .... need i say more ..... lol
- —eartistp
*Code redesign - interface kept...
- In first sentence I wanted to type "I HAD to redesign code..." but I misspelled "I HATE to redesign code..."... Can you imagine how annoying was that boss? :)) . . . And he wanted and got it... first Flash intro page. yak I tried people, but he wouldn't listen. ;)
- —Guest Triky
Single-image Splash Page
- It's 2007, and my friend insists on a splash page despite my showing her the conventional wisdom on why not. Had to make it a single image with image map because the idea of non-data tables displaying a splash page is even more disgusting. She finally changed it to a usable, textual Home page in 2009 after seeing how well positional CSS redesign and SEO worked for another one of my clients. Her sales went way up, too -- from about $50 per year to $100 per month.
- —Guest CB
Code redesign - interface kept...
- I hate to redesign code... actually to change misspelled words without some specific letters like ć, č, š... and I convinced the boss to change code of the site at least, 'cause he complained that he couldn't find him self on Google (code was '95 made in '08)... but I couldn't made him to redesign quite ugly interface.. :) All that was really annoying, but u need cash sometimes... ;)
- —Guest Triky
The Birds......
- I was asked by a camp site to put loud bird song on the index page. I tried to talk them out of it but they were a family of six and they all wanted it. I designed the site with the bird song and put in a mute button. When the owner saw the button he asked me to take it off. After several months of customers joking about the birds, the mute button was added again.
- —Bewsweb
The Princess the Pea
- Did A site for a small elderly nursing company in beautiful blue and white hues, very graphically smooth and pleasing, only to have the owner insist on placing the picture of the nursing aid and the elderly lady front center in a completely pink hue! Absolutely did NOT FIT. You didnt need to be a princess to know that it was the pea beneath the 20 mattresses! No amount of persuasion or others opinions would sway her. It stayed. I was almost embaressed to put my name on it.
- —OKFossilGuy
Being too trendy :o
- Why why why and where where where it come from? Being too trendy? Did I hear you say being too trendy? I was working the other day on a new concept for this company and they told me that using the newest technologies would be too trendy for them. I mean, are you adapting to it or do you want to stay behind. They were still thinking of webdesign in the late 80's. :-) I showed them some nice stuff and let them give their opinion on it. Afterwards they did agree to be trendy! :-)
- —Guest Skillz
DIY Access = more work for us.
- I had a client who needed a site that included several interactive galleries etc. Unfortunately she was (a) a control freak and (b) wanted to save money by doing the updates herself despite the fact that she could barely turn on a computer let alone fiddle with code. After trying to convince her it was a bad idea I very reluctantly gave in and gave her the access details. After she had broken it something like 8 times and had to pay me to fix it each time she finally worked out that it was actually cheaper for her to leave it alone and let me do the occasional update that was required on it.
- —Guest Don
Correct but not applicable.
- Considering most clients have a fixed budget to their projects, all our professional knowledge may have aditional costs which the client probably wont be able to absorb. It is better to take into account only what the client asks and sugest the best options before the budget is set.
- —Guest Anonymous
The sound of his own voice
- I had a very narcissistic boss who wanted the web site to play the sound of his own very annoying voice chirping "Welcome to company!" when the site loaded. When you are dealing with someone as egotistical as that, the trick is to talk him out of the bad idea in a way that makes him think that he himself changed his mind and made the decision himself. Sure enough, the next week he was lecturing staff on why talking web sites wouldn't work, as if he was the web design authority.
- —idea15
Ugly colors
- Okay, maybe colors are subjective, but I once got talked into creating a site that used hot pink and neon green for the foreground and background respectively. I got a migraine whenever I looked at the page, and I built it! I tried to talk the owner out of that color scheme, but she was convinced that they had to match the exact colors of their logo and branding. They've gone out of business now. Perhaps because they blinded all their customers? :-)
- —Guest Maos
