I had a similar problem, except that when we got back to square one, I said in my reply that it was the very same design as I first envisioned, so the client was unable to accept it (no “added value”). So changes continued and continued and continued. I was paid by the hour :D

@ Brian Scates: Oh no! I keep telling people not to take my “advice” seriously. I mean this was supposed to be yet another, semi-humorous rant about annoying luser type behavior – not a serious look at design process, client support or negotiation. I’d hate hate to see other designers read this and think this is how things should be handled either.

Again, this is just me making a “lusers say the darnest things” post, and exaggerating to make it seem funnier than it was.

It was a very informal thing really. Like: “Luke, can you put this photo on this page” – and me going, “sure, no problem”. There was no contract, no money exchanged hands or anything like that. So yeah, don’t look too much into it.

@ emp: LOL! Awesome! I usually see the opposite to be true – the clients will agree to a set price and then try to masquerade feature requests as bugs and demand them fixed for free.

Being the web development company working for another, bigger company we had a client like that.

He would pull this stunt with every, every, every change we made.

At the end, we talked to his boss who authorized charging for the extra work.

He turned out to be our most loved customer after that.

The client may be ‘right’ – but I assume the reason they hired me is because they needed an expert who knows design better than them. It’s a disservice to your client to immediately give in to ideas that don’t work, and it results in busy work for the design team and reduced margins.

I’ll give you a pass if this isn’t your normal job, but I would hate for any other designers reading this to think this is how things should be handled.

Another suggestion – get GoToMeeting or something so you can talk through things like this live and both be looking at the same thing. That could go a long way to improving communication, especially when the client is struggling to describe what they are looking for.

@ Brian Scates, @ John S and @ Sean: Oh, wow… What happened to “client is always right” attitude?

This was a failure in communication – plain and simple. The client didn’t seem to understand terms like header, footer, side bar or navigation links. Instead, she insisted on using vague descriptions like “above the large letters on the right”, “next to the text”, “where the black letters are” and etc. She kept calling links as “headings” and could not find a term to describe actual headings on the page.

I mean, I could talk about composition or aesthetics but I really didn’t know what she wanted. I assumed that perhaps she had a certain look in mind and tried to accommodate her.

I’m not really a front end designer – I feel much more at home at the back end. This was merely a quick hack they wanted me to do so that they wouldn’t have to call their expensive real web design people.

Brian has it right. Whether you’re a designer or a developer you need to be confident enough in your work to offer a rebuttal to clients who ask for changes that don’t make sense. In the end the client should respect you for it.

Brian Scates is 100% right. Being able to get your design through the client review is part of being a good designer. You probably have an incompetent project manager, or none at all. Sorry :(

This is also the case with colour palettes, navigation links, choice of image etc. More often than not the suggested is not as the customer would like right up until you show them “their” version and they ask for it to be changed, ending up back at square 1.

My first thought in design is ROI. How much time will it take me to do the site and what does that equate to in terms of how much I’ll be paid?

I tend to draft up 4 mocks as shown above and allow the customer to choose one of them as part of their ‘purchase price’ rather than design one themselves. If they don’t like the designs I charge an hourly rate for changes outside the scope of the contracted 4.

That’s normally enough for a customer to stop trying to be a web designer and let me work in peace.

It seems to me this is an issue of you failing to sell your design. I know with some clients they like to think of themselves as designers by proxy, but often times these situations can be avoided by explaining WHY you put things where you did. My recommendation would not be to add simple mistakes for them to fix, but to do it right and know how to sell it. Don’t just accept whatever feedback you get and do it – you’re the expert, you should know what works best, and you should be able to convince the client why.

This is worthy of thedailywtf! Submit it! Awesome story!