Educating Your Clients

Lesson #1: You Are a Creative Professional, Not a Laborer

You are not a laborer. Or whatever this guy is..
(Image from Photodune)

The first lesson, which forms the basis of all other lessons in this post, is to make your client understand that you are a creative professional with the same talent, skills and experience that any other professional might have.

Most people don’t tell their doctors or electricians how to do their jobs… why? Because most people recognize that doctors and electricians know more about their respective trades than they do. This seems to change with web designers though – lots of clients think that simply surfing the web qualifies them to make design decisions… meaning that they usually treat web designers as extensions of their own minds.

Because of this false-perception, clients often take us creative professionals are laborers who were born to do their work, not experienced professionals that are an equal part of the design process.

This can especially be the case with freelance web designers, where most clients are of the mindset that – if you don’t have an office, it means that you don’t have any work hours. For these kinds of clients, educating them that you have set times of the day that you work is the first step in establishing a respectful work relationship. Make it a point to tell your new and existing clients that you are a professional, the same as they are, and that you need time for yourself, your family and all other things in the world.

Reprinted from:

http://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/workflow/educating-your-clients-8-lessons-for-web-designers-to-teach-clients/

This article is from www.rollwiththetank.com.
The direct link to the article is below and the content is reproduced below.

This says it all...

Many times when I am asked what are the first steps for getting a new website I always recommend to get all of the content of the website in an outline format. More times than not when I am approached about a client getting a website for the first time the client does not know specifically what they want on the website.

So attention all clients! You have homework – make an outline of all content for your new website.
This helps in (2) ways: First, it will allow a web designer to quote for your project. If you can get a website designer to give you a quote for a project where they have not seen at the very least an outline of the websites content then either the designer or client is probably not going to end up very happy with the amount of work going into the website. The designer runs a risk of under-estimating the amount of time and work it will take to complete a website or also it could to lead to project drift or creep.

Second and more importantly, knowing all of the content will allow for the optimal design for the website. Knowing all aspects of what is to be included on the website will absolutely affect it’s actual design.
The outline form can easily take the traditional outline format. Did you ever have to create an outline for a paper that you wrote in school? Ever had to give a presentation and wanted to make sure you covered specific points? You have probably created a content outline in one form or another.

A basic format is to make it look like this….
I.
    A.
    B.
        1.
        2.
            a.
            b.
II.
    A.
    B.

Remember the saying….”Content is King.”In most cases it is always the responsibility of the client to provide the content for the website. Again, in most cases that is optimal as no one knows the clients product or service better than the client does and what the best approach is to present it in a sales or information pitch via website. Remember the saying….”Content is King.” Be sure to treat it that way!