As the years have gone by, we’ve learned there are certain issues that often come up with clients. To avoid later problems, we ask specific questions to uncover these problems right at the beginning of the job. Some examples include:
- Do you need your pages to be printer-friendly?
- Do you want your site to be fixed or fluid?
- How important are search engines to your marketing?
However, I’ve also realized that you can’t anticipate every concern a client will have, especially if this is their first Web site.
Recently, after launching a new Web site, the client called me up, very upset, that his site wasn’t secure. By that he meant that anyone could grab the copy or images off of his Web site without much trouble.
Now, some of you might snicker at that, as this is true with just about every Web site, from a personal home page to CNN or Google. However, this is a completely legitimate concern. He put a lot of time into his copy and photography, and he certainly doesn’t want people swiping it without his permission. As the victim of plagiarism in the past, I know where he’s coming from.
There are some tricks to make a site more difficult to steal from the average user, but I recommended that he not have us spend the time to do that. (Some people may have some suggestions on keeping images safe, but the bottom line is that if you can take a screen shot, you can swipe an image.)
Now, would I ask that question at the beginning of every job? No. For most clients, photographers and artists are a notable exception, this just isn’t a common-enough issue. Plus, there’s not a good enough workaround, like with the printer-friendly pages or fixed vs. fluid design.
What questions do other Web designers out there ask at the beginning of jobs to head off potential problems down the road? What have been some of the most surprising problems that a client has come back to you with near the end of a job?
