Yesterday I wrote a post about being aware of the most common warning signs of a difficult client, but today I want to turn the table (or should I say spin it) to see how the client actually see’s the designer and some of the problems which they can sometimes find themselves up against.

I know we like to have a good old moan about our clients, everyone does, not just designers, but can we learn anything by actually listening to a client’s side of the story. If we can understand how the client thinks then we will be able to discover all different kinds of information which will help us within our business.

We can discover the way in which they search for designers, how much they expect to pay, what they look for in terms of portfolio, and how they like to be looked after as your client.

So to gain an insight in to the mind of a typical client I am on a mission to interview and put all of these questions to already established business owners. Here is my first client case study…

Hi Duane, thanks very much for taking the time to answer some questions for the readers of Kaplang. Please start by telling us a little about yourself, does your company employ a designer or do you choose to outsource to a designer?

I run KashFlow, a web-based accounting software business, selling easy to use accounting software to small businesses in the UK and all over the world. The company is full of developers and sales people. We don’t have a single creative bone in our collective bodies. So we rely quite heavily on external design companies for web and graphic design.

So what do you look for in a designer and what has been your biggest dislike when working with a designer?

As a relatively small company ourselves we much prefer to work with small design businesses where you get to work directly with the creative’s and don’t have account managers getting in the way and adding to the cost.

This has its problems as I’ve blogged about in the past, I suspect the type of person who is a great designer isn’t so great at the rest of the skills needed to run a business. It requires a different type of brain. We’ve been let down again recently by a designer going AWOL halfway through a project.

How are you most likely to search for a designer and what is the deciding factor that will make you contact this designer?

We find the designers we work with from online communities like UK Business Forums and from referrals from people we know. It’s very rare that we’d use Google to find a designer. But that doesn’t mean that your website isn’t important. If someone is recommended to me or catches my eye on a forum then the first thing I do is look for their website.

Once on the website the first thing I look at is the portfolio of previous work. As well as good quality work that’s in the style I’m looking for, I’m also looking for variety. There are quite a few portfolios out there that have a collection of very similar designs or styles. I find this really off-putting as to me it suggests they’re a bit of a “one trick pony”. Also, if you have links to sites you designed which have now updated/replaced your design with something else then I get worried that you couldn’t follow the client brief and they weren’t happy with your work. So do check your portfolio regularly.

Most sites have portfolios, but most don’t have the next thing I look for – pricing information. I can look at a designers work, decide I want to use them but I have no idea whether it’ll cost me £1,000 or £10,000 to use their services. I understand why designers don’t want to give any sort of price guideline: they don’t want to appear to cheap or put people off by pricing too high. There’s probably also an element of “it depends how much I can get away with” where you’d quote a big company more than a start up. But this wastes everyone’s time, including yours. Please give me some idea of what you charge! Finding this information without making calls and sending emails is the biggest problem I have when trying to find a designer.

How important is the amount of contact you receive from a designer once you have started working together?

Once the work is under way and the designer knows what we want, I don’t want to be ignored but nor do I want to be inundated with questions. Recently we commissioned someone to copy an existing image we had on to canvas. A straight forward job we assumed. Imagine our surprise when we were presented with a 4 page questionnaire asking about our brand values, where the canvas would be hung, what the lighting was like, etc. Just paint the damn thing!

Questions at the outset are fine and expected, but keep them relevant to the job in hand and try to tailor them to each client if you can. It makes us feel special.

I think the right amount of contact is periodic updates with mock-ups to check you’re on the right track. Perhaps these can be agreed in advance so you can show you’re hitting each milestone in the project.

There are often questions once the project starts, and that’s expected too. You’re unlikely to cover all bases at the outset. One thing I’ve found really irritating in the past is feeding back to a designer that a, b and c needs changing. And then in the next update you can see they’ve done a and b but totally ignored c. Or worse still they do a, b and c – but in a later update they’ve undone the changes. Arrrgh!

Personally, my preferred method of contact is email as opposed to on the phone or face to face. It takes less time for us both than a face to face meeting. An email can be dealt with at 10pm if need be and it also provides a record for both of us of what was asked for or agreed.

What do you look for in terms of payment when working with a designer?

When it comes to payment I have no problem with a part payment before work starts and the remainder either on completion or in stage payments dependent on the size of the job. Although I would always want some part of the payment held back until the job is finished, just to make sure it does actually get finished.

Designers, in my experience anyway, often take a lot longer to deliver the goods than you’re first led to expect. So if you want to show you’re not like this then how about some sort of financial penalty if you miss the deadline due to problems that are no fault of the client? That would impress me.

No doubt I now sound like your typical nightmare client and you can see exactly why all the designers we’ve ever worked with in the past have changed their names and left the country. But I feel a lot better now I’ve got all that off my chest.

So I am sure you must be wondering to yourself why I chose to bring this up and allow a client to put their point of view across. I chose to do this because I believe we can really learn by listening to our clients. At the end of the day yes we are designers but we are also business owners and it is this that really matters to us all at the end of the day. During my days of studying Accountancy & Graphic Design at university (great combo I know) I was taught to always research my customer, you must know them inside out so that you are able to give them exactly what they want…giving you a greater chance in achieving business success.

So what have we learnt from Duane…

He likes to work with small design firms as he likes a more personal service, so if you are a one man band who is trying to look like a massive corporate company it probably isn’t doing you any favours or gaining you any extra work.

He doesn’t like being let down, so do not promise to deliver the impossible just to win his business. He would probably much prefer that you were honest and up front about the whole procedure that will be put in place to complete his job. I say this because it is quite common for designers and developers to need each other’s services to complete a job, and when communication breaks down between you this is when deadlines are missed or jobs are only ever half finished.

He searches for designers via forums and word of mouth. This could very well mean that all of your SEO efforts are not what you should be focusing 100% of your attention on. You should be networking offline as well as online via forums.

Duane likes a well displayed portfolio and pricing structure is also very important to Duane, so if you do not have these in place on your own website it could be an idea to invest some of your time in to this area of your business.

As a busy businessman Duane likes to be kept updated through email rather than phone calls or face to face meetings. I know every client will be different in this area but my point is…Ask the client from the start how they would like to receive your updates.

I would just like to thank Duane for taking part in this interview and if you are a business owner who would like to take part in my next client case study, please contact us.

Do you believe this insight in to the clients mind will help you to better your business as a designer?

Please tell us your views.

About The Author:

Michelle Kirkbride

Michelle Kirkbride has many years of experience as a web developer & consultant, she currently lives in Yorkshire, UK with her two beautiful children and loving partner. She spends far too much time at her computer and is currently addicted to her work. Michelle Kirkbride the founder of Kaplang is also a business Mentor with D100, a Success Doncaster mentoring programme run by Deloitte and funded by the Doncaster Council.