Clients

Friday Focus 07/18/08: Elegant, Exquisite, Extreme Details

July 18, 2008 By Sophia Lucero

Elegant, exquisite, and extreme details on these sites that are sure to please. Welcome to this week’s Friday Focus!

Designs of the Week

This creation is just a delight to look at. Everywhere you look there are design elements that carry the underwater theme brilliantly. More importantly, those elements break the mold of straight borders and rectangular image frames and buttons.

This business website is simply well-done. I love that the company logo is inlaid into the rotating photos below the header, when typically it’s found at the top of the site. It adds interest to how the photos are framed and presented.

Music. Color. Type. Those are the three elements that make up this recently redesigned website. Every page gives a completely different visual and musical experience.

Social Media Weekly

Design – How to (and not to) work with a designer
Will Harris shares his experience on working with a designer. A good read for both designers and clients.

Design – 50 Absolutely Killer Flash Templates
FlashDen shares the top 50 Flash templates that are ready for you to use, perhaps even modify. If you don’t want to buy these products, then at least take a look at them for inspiration!

Programming – Cheat Sheets for Front-end Web Developers
Twenty-three cheat sheets for HTML, CSS, JavaScript (mooTools and jQuery), all printer ready.

Here it is: The Redesign Contest

March 21, 2007 By Devlounge

Calling all designers! My time trying to figure out what the best contest for April would be has finally come to an end. I think this contest will be functional for everyone involved. You, the designer, get to have fun and show us your own vision of the next look for Devlounge. You also get the chance to win some sick prizes, most notably a Microsoft Zune, and fame forever here at Devlounge.

The Situation

Originally, I had planned to temporarily redesign Devlounge for the month of April as part of our month long celebration of turning “one” (years old that is). Than I started playing around with things and thought about doing another refresh / realignment for release in late May. But now, a lot of people are pointing out that they’d really like to see an entirely new, fresh look for Devlounge, and for us to break away from the main look that has made DL what it is so far.

Knowing well that I needed an idea for a contest for April, it dawned on me. Why not let the community that turns to Devlounge put together their own mockups of what they envision the next version of Devlounge to look like? This would kill two birds with one stone, giving me fresh ideas and something to work off of, and creating a much more exciting contest for participants.

So, here’s your early warning. The contest will officially kick off on April 1st (with an official post regarding the contest, rules, judging, and application form) and run through April 15th, so start getting together your mockups now!

Ten Tips for Coordinating Clients in a Corporate Environment

March 21, 2007 By Ronald Huereca

Whether you’ve been put in charge of your corporate website, or you’re a freelancer who’s been hired on, designing a website for a corporation is never routine. There are turf wars, inner-departmental battles, upper management issues, and precedent that you must deal with.

Typically with freelancer jobs, there is only one client. However, in a corporation, there are many clients that you will have to deal with. These clients could be head of certain departments, divisions, or offices.

Listed below are ten short tips for coordinating clients in a corporate environment. These tips are listed in no particular order.

Establish Authority

Sometimes you will have to remind the clients that there is a reason that you are the web developer and they are not. There are times you will have to deal with a client that might actually know something about web development and questions you on a particular design decision. During these intense moments, it is crucial to listen and state your logical reasoning behind making a design decision.

The problem with dealing with multiple clients is that each one has a different idea of how a website should behave. You need to be empowered to make the final decision, however. Design by committee is never a good thing. Establish your authority to make the design decisions and make sure the upper management will back you when your client screams that web sites should never scroll.

Get Upper Management Cover

When you inevitably step on someone’s toes, it is important that the upper management has your back if a client strongly disagrees. One of your first jobs is to assure the upper management that you are the expert in web development. If a client then starts a fire, the upper management will be able to quickly put it out.

Get to Know Your Clients

In any working environment, it’s extremely helpful and beneficial to get to know people outside of work. Go out to lunch with your clients. Get to know them. If you start to get to know them on a personal level, the clients will be more willing to help you do your job.

Establish a Style Guide

Establishing a style guide is crucial. Style guides not only define the look and feel of the site, but also the behavior. A style guide will also force you as a designer to think through your decisions from beginning to end. The corporation may already have some kind of style guide. If that is the case, use that guide as a foundation for yours. The web style guide should be different, but do not venture too far away from the corporate style guide if there is one.

An example of a good style guide is A List Apart’s style guide.

How you do your style guide is up to you. If the style guide has upper management approval, you’ll have a standard to fall back on when someone disagrees with a certain part of the design.

Establish Single Points of Contact

When dealing with departments or divisions, it is absolutely critical that there is a single point of contact for each one. If you don’t have a single point of contact, then there will be nothing to stop dozens of different people from contacting you and flooding you with content changes, design “suggestions”, and the like.

Get the Clients Involved

Allow the clients to see your progress. It’s one thing to constantly ask the client for information and the client has no idea why he/she is doing the extra work. It’s another to show the client the work you are doing so that the client knows what the end result will be. It’s an extra way to show that the client’s feedback and contributions matter.

Get the Right Tools

Make sure you communicate to your upper management the tools you need. If the corporation does their own hosting, make sure you have the privileges to build the website. If the corporation needs to make a hardware/software purchase, make it very clear that without these tools, you will not be able to do your job. The point here is to get what you need up front.

Know the Key Players

Get to know the names and locations of all of the key players in the corporation. These key players will be upper management, the database administrators, the IT people, and the department heads. These key players can either make your job easier, or make it a living hell. Make sure each of these key players knows why you are there and what job you are trying to accomplish.

Educate Your Clients/Upper Management

While it is important to not overwhelm your clients with techno-speak, it is also important to educate them as to the benefit of the latest design techniques such as web standards. Since most of the clients won’t know the difference between MS Outlook and Web 2.0, educating your clients is more of a “show and tell” type thing. Show your clients why you are doing things rather than telling them about it.

Educate Yourself

The last tip doesn’t necessarily have to deal with coordinating clients, but it is important to stay on top of your industry. If you are a freelancer, make sure you take the time to learn new skills. If you are a corporate employee doing webmaster duties, try to convince the upper management of the importance of giving you time to learn new skills (such as training and seminars).

Conclusion

I hope you found these tips helpful. If you have your own tips for working within corporate environments, please share them in the comments.

Thank you for reading.

Crossing the Language Barrier

February 20, 2007 By Devlounge

When dealing with clients we constantly find our heads spinning with a barrage of different things – from “I hope they don’t say one of these” to identifying and dealing with task at hand, whether it be design, code, or both. We’ve always said that communication is essential for a good client-designer relationship, but what are you supposed to do when that essential line of communication is so hard to maintain due to language restrictions?

The Importance of Client Communication

Ever since I joined the freelance world, I always made sure the client communication lines were always open, especially since, hell, it would be their money I’d be taking a few weeks later. I generally try to update my clients as much as possible. And most importantly, I always try to be honest. Whether that means telling a client I’m too busy to take on their project at the moment or letting them know when uncontrollable situations arise that cause me to have to pull out of a project early. In most cases, this would probably piss clients off immensely, but if the line of communication had been there the whole time, they’ll appreciate honesty and truthfulness.

That line of communication can sometimes be very “hard to maintain”. Hard to maintain can come into play on multiple occasions. Sometimes you end up with a client who just isn’t willing to play nice, and has more of a “Take the Project and Run” type strategy and will attempt to do anything but pay you. Other times, we’re put into situations where a client really wants us to work on their project – only there’s one major problem – You don’t speak the same language.

Where’s my Translator at?

This becomes a time when the line of communication requires you to pull out your favorite edition of the world’s Multilingual dictionary. We’ve all been faced with it before. A client asks you do to something, but it takes you as long as it would to get their project done just to decipher what the hell they’re asking in their message.

You can’t fault everyone. Some people try extremely hard to get their message across in your own language, but not everyone is perfect at it. For example, here’s a recent excerpt from one of my emails from a client who wanted me to take on the duties of redesigning their online magazine.

“Uh, it sounds too good for me, especially the price, i mean, for us in Latvia it is big summ, thats why i want to use WP or Pligg or something instead of codding. But maybe it is cuz needs ir for internet magazine, more in newspaper or magazine style, not like regular style, right?”

Laying out the options

If it’s your first time attempting to deal with an international client, chances are you’ll be under a lot of pressure. You want to take the project, but you’re unsure if you can handle it. You end up having a short list of options for working through or around the international request.

If the client does speak my language well [enough] that we can easily get on the same page, I can move along with the project and nail out specifics.
The client has somewhat of a grasp on my language, but leaves out essential details that they can’t describe well enough for me take the project. Should I be in or out?
It’s extremely hard for me to understand the clients request(s), but I do need the money…

Is it Possible to take International Clients who don’t speak your language? (And Should You?)

For most of us – no way. Unless you have a lot of experience in multiple languages, it’s never a good idea to try and connect with clients that you can’t understand. While money talks, so do clients. And there’s no way you’re going to find yourself with a payday if you can’t understand what the persons asking for to begin with. That’s not to say you have to say no to every international request you’re ever going to get.

Some International Clients could have a better hold on your native language than you do. In that case, brush up on some of your own vocabulary and jump right into the project without any concerns. Just make sure you and your client are on the same page before you begin and get too deep into the project.

And the message to clients before hiring non-native speakers

As designers, developers, freelancers, and industry leaders – we all want to be able to do our job for you without the extra hassle of trying to nail down what you mean. If you really want someone to design for you but you don’t speak the language at all or well enough that they could understand what you’re trying to get across, than don’t bother! Or, find someone who could translate your native language to the potential designer / developers’ language so they can have a better grasp as to what you’re looking for. In the end it will speed up the entire process, and safe both parties countless headaches and visits to Babelfish.

Ten things you hope the client never says

February 12, 2007 By Devlounge

Working from home as a full-time freelance web developer I’ve encountered some absolutely stunning lines from clients and so have friends of mine. This is a small collection of those lines to watch out for if you choose to go into the field yourself.

1. If you do this one for free…

This has to be one of the most popular. People always want something for as little as possible, the notion of ‘you get what you pay for’ normally doesn’t register until at least eighteen years old, but the notion can be ignored at ages high above this.

2. This will be great exposure…

This usually comes before number 1, ‘If you do this one for free you’ll get great exposure’. The problem is great exposure isn’t a link in the footer and it isn’t a mention in the launch post. Great exposure is guaranteed jobs afterwards, and lots of traffic for your own personal site – that and possibly free advertising in a prominent placement.

3. Deposit?

Some clients want you to effectively work for free. No deposit and lots of free work = one starving freelancer. To be free to accept work that doesn’t involve deposits be sure to have some money stored away to eat away at until the client pays in the end. Make sure they are trustable and will pay in the end. Be sure to do your research.

4. Can I put this on my GeoCities?

It takes the breath out of you, working on something for a long time and then a client asking you if they can put it on an incompatible hosting platform that won’t support it. It makes for some difficult explaining but makes one great entry on a ‘ten things you hope the client never says’ article.

5. I’ve changed my mind, I don’t want it anymore

This is always an annoyance, and is sometimes a requirement in order to progress onto other projects. But it’s always something that will affect you on a personal level.

6. Ok can you just add this, and this

“You want money for the additions? You said you’d do everything for a set price!’. This one starts a lot of arguments and can affect your relationship with the client dramatically depending on how you react. To prevent this one blowing up on you always outline a clear feature set before starting work and outline exactly what you’ll deliver. Also outline what additional costs will be monetarily to the client. Will they be by the hour? Or a fixed fee? Discussed on arrangement? Whatever it is – it’s always best to plan these things out beforehand.

7. I just need you to look the other way whilst we break this law..

Whether it be tax law (it usually is) or some kind of pass the parcel – breaking the law is bad, um kay? Be sure to brush up on your tax laws that apply to you – make sure that if your hired to do a job for a company as an employee that they are handling your taxes, and if you are a contractor that you sort out your own. It always helps to know a small amount of law, and to consult an accountant when you aren’t sure of something.

8. My mum says that she won’t let me use her credit card so I can’t pay you

Funny, but a huge cringe worthy moment. It happens to all of us once in a blue moon, and it makes a fun entry.

9. Yahoo! will buy us

This is normally followed by number 1 and/or 2. People get bought all the time – but it’s simply not the case that millions are involved with every purchase of another site. Yahoo! may buy anywhere between one and tens of sites a year, but that’s between one and tens of several million websites out there.

10. Nothing at all

The client disappears, drops off the face of the earth. It’s your worst nightmare, they get you started on a project and leave, they give you a brief about a project tell you the deposit is coming and then you never hear from them. To avoid this make sure you always have a backup plan and if you can get a secondary contact for your client – that’s even better.

I’d like to thank Ronalfy for giving me the idea for this article. If you have any other things you’d like to see me write feel free to leave a comment or use my contact form to send it directly.

I would also like to mention that this article is also available on my blog JHuskisson.com where my articles will always appear first. To keep up to date with my blog be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed.