1. The client is quote shopping. Government departments are great at this. They send you an email with a 20 page brief they’ve prepared, and want you to send back a quote to go along with the 20 other quotes they’re collecting.

Have you ever gone to a government website and seen how crap it was? Well it’s because they go with a cheap company that invariably don’t care about anything but fulfilling the conditions of the contract.

My advice: Save the effort and don’t even bother reading their brief. As soon as it’s clear that they’re collecting quotes, turn it down. My one exception is if you’re in a state of growth and you’re happy to take a pain in the arse job for the sake of building credibility.

2. The client wants too much. A small startup contacts you and wants you to do a site for them. They have a huge feature list which you know to do properly will cost $50k and they want to “just start small and build from profits”.

These jobs should come with a scope creep warning attached to them. You’ll do the job and a list of revisions come back that look a lot like features. You say it’s not part of the scope and suddenly they realise the brevity of the job they’ve asked for.

These jobs aren’t worth it. The exception is if the buyer is experienced in dealing with developers and understand things like scope.

3. The client wants it cheap. Cheap like this non profit business. The problem with doing work cheap is that if you always do it, eventually you’ll figure out that you’re not making enough money and you’ll end up in a cubicle working 9-5 because that actually pays the bills.

Buyers that want cheap work can pull their hair out trying to speak Indian.

4. The client will be a pain in the arse. If the client has been through 5 designers already. If the client is controlling the quoting process. If you missed one of the earlier signs but have a gut feeling that it’s going to be bad. If you have no clear contact who is in charge of the project. If your contact has no authority within the client organisation. If you’ve heard bad things from the grape vine.

All signs that you’re better off sending an email saying

Thanks for contacting me for a quote on your website. After looking through the design brief I’ve decided that our services aren’t a good match for your particular needs, and that you’ll get a better solution from a different provider.

Best of luck with it all.

5. The project is going to fail. Sometimes I’ll get someone looking for a quote for a website, and I talk to them a bit about their idea, and it’s just a terrible idea. Maybe they need a shitload of money that they don’t have. Or something else that just sounds ridiculous.

My advice: Stay away from shitty ideas. It’s no fun being around someone who’s going to blow some cash, and it’s even less fun when they blow it on you.

Summary

Our job is to educate clients, but sometimes, it’s impossible. And when it’s impossible, you’re saving yourself time and money when you politely decline before the situation turns bad.

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1. 5 reasons why job boards suck
2. Top 8 reasons you should have an effective website
3. Helping clients by thinking ahead and being flexible

What we need to do, is educate our clients from the beginning. Feedback has to be objective and customer focused. If you’re dealing with a committee, get one person who can sign off on the design, and explain that personal preferences creates an environment where “too many cooks spoil the broth”. I try and do this early in the process, in the kickoff meeting or even in the sales process. Give examples of ideal feedback.

Have reasonings behind decisions. And not reasoning like “if it can’t be that color, I want to stab myself in the eye” or “reducing the padding makes me think it looks cramped”, but reasoning like “if we put that there, the page is going to get cluttered and the desired action we talked about for this page is less obvious”.

Take the time to go through design decisions with the client. Explain to them the design decisions in terms of objectives.

Despite that, there are still going to be clients that make you want to stab yourself in the eye. In these cases where I’ve educated the client, explained my reasoning and I’m still not getting anywhere, I happily turn my brain off, get the client to break down broad feedback into specific feedback, document all requests (because they contradict all the time) and just do what I’ve been asked to do. After all, it’s the clients design, not mine. Once clients get to this stage, they’re not concerned with having the best work, they’re concerned with having it look exactly how they want it.

Your turn

What was your last experience with a micromanaging client? How did you get through it?

Related posts:

1. How clients can hate an awesome design
2. Helping clients by thinking ahead and being flexible
3. You aren’t designing for yourself