Clients hire professional web designers and developers to help them build a 1st-class website. Afterall, when you hire a professional, you are trusting them to provide the best work possible that accurately portrays your marketing message for your business. Design & Development go hand in hand when planning out a new web project, it’s objectives, and how you will roll those out.

But as equally important as being the expert that your client is needing throughout the process, is making sure that they know that their involvement is  very important in the way we design, develop and plan the best route for deploying an effective website.

Below are a few useful tips on how to include your client within your workflow so that both parties feel that their involvement is beneficial:


  1. Ask your client for design examples

    This is a really important step in the process. We tell our clients all the time that since 2 different people looking at the color blue may associate its meaning in design very differently.

    It is for this reason that we are huge advocates of having our clients go out online and look for website design examples that we can use as design inspiration when we start the process. This gives us a great sense of certain elements and/or features that they like so that we can be sure to incorporate some of them within the design draft.

    Although we prefer our clients to provide us with examples, it’s only encourage and not required.


  2. Allow them to critique the design and provide their input for revisions, whether a fixed amount or unlimited.

    This should be an obvious one, but some designers won’t allow any revisions. To effectively include your clients in the process, their opinion matters, so having them voice their feedback for changes is very important. Whether you allow 5 revisions or unlimited changes, that’s entirely up to you. Just remember that the client needs to feel like they have a say in the final product.


  3. Discuss overall goals and objectives of their website, define roles of all parties involved.

    Probably one of the most challenging parts of deploying a successful website is defining the overall goals and objectives for the project. Along with this, it is important to review with your client everyone’s role within the project and set deadlines so that both parties stick to their tasks.

    This will not only ensure that the project moves quicker for everyone, but keep a sense of structure.

Overall, including your clients in the process is almost always essential. They are paying for a professional product and will most likely want to be very involved. Your job is to successfully pave the path to a great site while working closely with your client and hearing his/her needs throughout the process.

Until Next Time,
Josh Olswanger
Thrive Web Designs – Your Boise Web Design Team


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