Helping clients by thinking ahead and being flexible
18. Feb, 2010 
2 Comments
As freelancers, it’s our job to improve our clients condition.
One thing I’ve realized a lot lately as I’ve been outsourcing more and more, is that good planning saves lots of time.
Yesterday I was working on upgrading a site for a client that I made when I first started freelancing in 2007. The css was coded terribly, and as a result, doing the work to the site was an absolute pain. The type of pain where paragraphs weren’t lining up, and font sizes were everywhere! How I coded it so badly is beyond me and to be honest it’s also a bit embarrassing. I was a bit like the polar bear in the photo here – I wasn’t thinking ahead.
Anyways, the point is this: every designer knows how important it is to have clean css. It’s important to have good css so that the website has consistent styling and is flexible.
Similar situations popup for coders all the time. Should they do something the quick way, or do it in a modular and extensible way. The concept of doing things fast or doing it right I’ve seen referred to as “technical debt“.
My assertion here is that our solutions to clients have the same trade-offs attached. Rather than build something that works for the specific instance it’s in, we should build solid solutions that can change and grow as the client changes and grows.
Here are some examples.
Taking future goals into consideration. One of my clients wants an ecommerce store in the future, but only wants a brochure website now. To save work in the future, the product line information pages on the initial site are actually going to be categories in an ecommerce system. A little more work now, but saves redoing work in the future.
Taking growth into consideration. Ever had a situation where you used a top based navigation, and everything was fine. Then, six months later, the client comes back and says “we need a new page”, and suddenly you realize there’s no room for new pages. Gah.
If the site is likely to grow, keep some “outs”. Using a left nav generally gives plenty of outs. Styling in a drop-down gives some outs if you’re using a top nav. And having outs isn’t just restricted to new pages. It could be new features or forms or whatever.
Lorem Ipsum designs. You see these on deviant art all the time. Designs that look absolutely stunning, and then you realise, they’re stunning because no real website could ever work like that. They have the exact right amount of words in every part, and the reason they can do that is because it’s all Lorem Ipsum. Put those designs around real websites and watch them fall apart.
Time for some solutions.
Get all information up front. Take extra time to talk about what the client wants before starting work. I remember once I had a client where I had just pitched a proposal and got a cheque, and then as soon as I received the cheque, the client started talking about new pages that I had heard nothing about that would come off the site but be part of an entirely different domain!
Probably just hearing that is making your blood boil, but situations like this are often our own fault for being too hasty to start the project and not letting the client flesh out ideas earlier.
Involve yourself in planning for the long term. Why not jump in on the ground floor and have a say in what changes the site is going to go through? Before you’ve finished a project, come up with a 12 month plan for the site with the client. That way you have more control over what might be needed of the site in the future.
There are future proofing issues in everything we do. Thinking ahead helps us tackle them before they happen, and have outs for when we are unprepared.
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The horizontal navigation bar issue has bitten me far too many times in the past. Now I only use horizontal navs for when there is enough room to easily add a couple more items, or if the nav items are broad enough categories so that any new pages can sit below them in the site map. Being able to design for a 960px width makes things easier nowadays too.
But you’re right; it’s always a good idea to find out what future plans the client has for their website.
Good point about wider designs. Another thing I’ve seen is the use of Javascript to resize the width of nav items, so they still stretch across the entire page, but they are sized dynamically so you can add pages later.