Designing a complicated website that has stunning looks is not a difficult task. The difficult task is the definition of “complicated” and “stunning” that would satisfy someone the website is designed for. One of the common problems that web programmers face while working at a project from clients is their fickle mindedness that is not easy to satisfy. It is generally observed that most of the clients are contended with the design of a website only when he realize that his denial to the previous designs delayed the final outcome and now he has no other way but to accept this final one. In here, designers and programmers are treated in the same way contrary to their specific differences of contribution in developing a website.
Here we discuss some of the practices that web designers and programmers may follow, which will be beneficial for them to design a website to the contentment to their clients.
Showing Samples and Templates
Most of the clients who approach a web designer do not know about the technology or the programming that are used. They might have a gist of what html, javascript and php are, but not what they are capable of doing in a website. Therefore, when a client approaches a designed most of the time he says that he need a good website and most of the time he has no good idea of what his “good” means. Therefore, the best a web programmer can do is to show him some samples of website that uses slightly different techniques. For example, showing him a website that uses plain html and CSS, showing him another website that is quite responsive and dynamic in behaviour with J query or PHP and so on. It is most likely that he will take a wise decision in the first step itself. If this fails, if he is not able to make up his mind, make him give some names of websites that he wants his own to be like the ones. That will solves most of the problem that arises afterward.
Digging Out the Mind
The next is to find out what exactly the client wants to do with the website. There is a common misunderstanding from most of the clients end that they assume some of the functionalists like forms, comments, login, blogs comes with a website by default. They do not mention about these specifically expecting that they includes in the website by default. Most of the time it happens that, after showing a design after weeks of toil, the programmer realizes that there should be a fundamental change of the coding pattern because the client forgot to mention that he also need a “login” button for the users!
Find the Favorites
Another advisable method to speed up the task is to find the favorites. I remember one of my friend who had a trouble about the background color of a website he designed. The client was an old man, a senior fellow who had the website designed for his university. Every time my friend presented a design, the old man kept asking if the background color could be made better. It was repeated for about four times until it was known that the favorite color of the old man was pink! This happens not only with colors but also with certain shapes in the websites and also its navigation pattern.
Stay a Step Ahead of the Client
Another good practice is to plan out the probable changes and a to have a sheer farsighted strategy. The client should be informed that he will be shown the preliminary designs on some specified dates before the final dateline of the project completion. It should be specified that he will be shown the updated designs for some specific number of times. Suppose, the design will be shown to him for a maximum of five consecutive times and he must finalize the design on the fifth time. This will eventually force the client to be satisfied with what he have, without following the normal pattern our minds works, which cannot be satisfied.
Money
The last but not the least, is certainly not an advisable one. However, it is also, not a very uncommon practice. Designers should charge extra for each of the changes that they think is an unnecessary waste of time. This is method is much effective with clients who has less knowledge about coding and website development because, they cannot or they will not need much justification for the demands. By the way, it is certainly not an ethical way to sort out things even thought it is justified most of the time. The best way one can justify this is to use this method only once in a blue moon or to use it with someone who deserves.
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