Comments on: Nightmare web design clients

By: Control B

Control B — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 19:50:56 +0000

All hugely familiar! Have link, will tweet.

By: Tony P

Tony P — Thu, 21 May 2009 02:04:01 +0000

Back when I was at the Secretary of State’s office in RI the joke used to be that those who didn’t have any experience in design (I kind of include myself in that as I hate the minutia of CSS and the like) tend to use purple fonts and blink tags.

By: UnderPaid&UnderAppreciated

UnderPaid&UnderAppreciated — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 03:51:22 +0000

lol! - I’ve encountered a vast majority of the nightmares mentioned throughout this thread. There’s been so many times when I’ve wanted to tell a client to p!ss off and do it themselves.

Most clients have absolutely no idea of the amount of time, knowledge and skill that is required to design a good website - and because of this they always think they’re being overcharged no matter how good the end result is.

Unless we design an entire site from scratch, dream up all the graphics, layout AND a vast majority of content for them, ensure it works perfectly accross all browsers, and SEO it to the top of google all for UNDER £500 theres very little thanks to be had… oh, and then of course they expect ongoing updates free for life… lol!

- I honestly think most of them believe all we’re doing is sitting in front of photoshop and a word processer for a few hours, thus we must all be grossly overpaid anyway. lol!

If only they knew…

By: Timere

Timere — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 03:10:37 +0000

This list makes me wanna change professions…..
I’ve got to add a couple of recents ones of my own…

1. Client: ”No one’s visitng my site”. Me: ”Well if you don’t give anyone your address they won’t know where to find you , will they?”. It’s unbelievable that these clients don’t have their website address on their letterheads or business cards or anywhere else and yet expect to have ebay’s traffic!

2. I had this one recently and had to give the Client a good telling off… He wanted some overly complex, 5 minute running flash intro with everything but the Kitchen sink in it … I explained the pros and cons, but he insisted. So I did it with preloader and all and he goes ”I don’t want that loading thing… I want the flash to play immediately the page loads”. All attempts to explain the role of the preloader and why the flash can not be loaded immediately failed. His reply ”How much does it cost to get the flash to play immediately?”. He finally agreed to the preloader after a couple of his friends and clients complained about his site not working…..

3. Another annoying one….Client: ”After you’ve built the site you’ll have to show me how I can maintain it…you know change background color, font, image positions etc”. Me: ”You’re asking me to teach you webdesigning? …uhhh… no problem…first of all though go buy your flash, photoshop, dreamweaver etc for like £2000 then we can start…….

By: Josh (vancouver computers)

Josh (vancouver computers) — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 05:32:05 +0000

I just spent 2 hours with a client. It is supposed to be a small website for the sale of a single product. I was charging her just 150$. After creating a template page I was working with her to create the text of each page together. I made the huge error of letting her use my personal laptop, and she took this opportunity not only to create promotional materials unrelated to the website but she also felt the need to explore my laptop’s contents, and start to comment on the ads I was running, accuse me of using her pdf files because the logo of the pdf file is the same (she thought that somehow the logo was specific to her pdf files, so ALL pdf files on my computer apparently were copies of her pdf file). I explained to her that pdf files all have the same icon and that does not mean that they have the same content.

However, she was too much for just that miserly 150$.

Moral of the story: keep clear boundaries, keep clear expectations, keep a good professional distance, don’t take on cheap clients.

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 09:28:57 +0000

Haha this is so completely true and it got funnier and funnier as the list progressed!

Nice one

By: webfish design - leon caddick

webfish design - leon caddick — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 09:10:20 +0000

This is a great article, made my day!

By: trCreative

trCreative — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 15:50:36 +0000

I think you’ve summed up the joys of being a web designer beautifully!

By: Web Designer - Evan Skuthorpe

Web Designer - Evan Skuthorpe — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 13:09:54 +0000

Good luck with clients like that.

By: xHTML Coding

xHTML Coding — Mon, 12 May 2008 01:28:41 +0000

Well, the worst case was when a client delivered a PSD (if it can be called like that, because actually it was a puzzle of cutted images in one single photoshop document) and requested that I use the same fonts as in the PSD (emm…which fonts? on which PSD?).

Anyway some times they make my day, but other times they make my nervs..