You’re sitting in the cafe sipping your latte when opposite you, your potential client says, “Hey, I was thinking why not we put a fast paced animated introduction on my website with an upbeat techno type music?” By the time you had heard the part of the techno type music, you would have either burnt your tongue or choked on steaming latte in your throat.
Probably choking on coffee is a little extreme but if you’re a web designer, marketing manager or web developer who practices web standards then the above is just one of the impractical requests clients today are still requesting.
Things become even worse when clients persist to have it their way. And little do they know, the customer is not always right in this age because there are outside influences like egos and personal preferences. Therefore, besides the impractical Flash tunnel request I’ve come across these other requests:
- Could you only make the content area scroll?
- I think the green text is alright with a blue background. So let’s change it.
- Could you add an interactive map beside the list of branch offices?
- I heard AJAX can load content fast. I want to use it in my website.
- I want my website to be #1 on Google tomorrow when I search; ‘Coffee’.
- I want this header to be red, the other header to be blue and the next one to be purple.
- I want this panel to be transparent.
- I want an animated navigation like (website) because I like it and it is really cool.
- I want my visitors to fill up ALL the fields before they are able to send this form.
- I want my website to do this, this, this, this, this and that..but I only have $$$ budget.
Have you had any impractical website requests lately? Share them in the comments below.
[tags]Impractical website,Malaysia website, Website requests[/tags]
“I want my website to be #1 on Google tomorrow when I search; ‘Coffee’.” ?? LOL…
What’s hard abt request #1?
Maybe I should define the content area. Imagine a large header with menu, search and advertisement. Sidebar with Profile, Newsletter signup, 10-30 Submenu Links, Promotions and etc.
If you can visualize this, the original website is already made to be scrolled. So why add the confusion of a secondary scrollbar inside?
Furthermore, how many international corporate websites today practice this?
I’ve no real qualms for personal websites but for business websites, this impractical method does question your professionalism.
Danny, I have a solution for you. I got this few days after i did my business analysis.
Give your clients your clients requirement survey. With that, we are able to identify what exactly the requirements, the objective and their preference in terms of creative.
Don’t let them do the talk, we as a consultant should decide and give solution. We can always go against what they feel because we have equipped with more experience handling this nature. And of course, we can justify, as long as we ourselves treat them professionally ;)
Hope that helps.
Cheers,
Muid
Thanks Muid.
I’ll keep the survey in mind and try my best to act as the consultant I should be in all my client meetings. :)
ah so…
how do you convince & deal with clients who insist on doing it their way cos they’re paying you?
have you ever turned down a job because they won’t let you do “your job”?
(hi Muid!)
In the end, after a long grueling discussion of professionalism and personal preference we will let clients have their way and allow them to be the website designer.
We believe we try very hard to explain our view and the customers perspective of the request made therefore if the client still insists on seeing it from their point of view, we’ll just let them have their way.
Reason is simple. Yes, it’s because we want to complete the project and collect the money. But it is more like, if they’d like to learn it the hard way it is up to them.
We have never walked out of the door in the middle of a project because it is unprofessional. But we’ll be satisfied because we did our best and we did not fail the client. They failed us. :)