In this episode, I'm talking about dealing with difficult and tricky clients, from those who ghost you to those who just never end up signing off the website project. Hi, and welcome back to another episode of Websites Made Simple. I'm Holly Christie, your host. I'm a website designer who's been in the game for a very long time. I have two website design companies, this demanding life and simply sites. And most importantly, I am here to support you.
If you are a web designer or a website developer, if you're a copywriter or a branding specialist, you may also find this episode very useful. We have all had a lot of difficult clients. It's part of the web design process and I have a lot of theories as to why the clients can become very difficult. One of those theories is that I think that people don't realize what a intricate job website design is.
And I think it's because it's being completely trashed by all those adverts of Wix and Squarespace and WordPress and stuff saying, oh, you can build your website yourself, do it for free. We've got the tools, which, yeah, it's great. And, you know, for lots of website designers, that's where they began the business. So that's fantastic. But it also gives people a false impression of what a proper website build for a proper business actually takes.
And that's, you know, great branding, great copywriting, really good design skills, and the SEO and background knowledge that puts all of that together. And clients often don't realize that. And so when they contract a website designer, they don't really think of it as, I'm going to need to put a lot into this investment, not just with money. I'm going to have to put time in there as well. And I've got to show up to the game equally as I would to any other contractor I'm working with.
Instead, they can kind of just leave the web designer to it, or they don't get on with their part of it, which is providing content or whatever else. And then when you come back with what you've been able to do with what they give you, they then come back and give you hell for it not being how they want. So we are going to cover quite a lot in this episode. I'm going to try and keep it not too long because I don't want us to glaze over.
And also, if I told you every nightmare client I've had, or the client stories where I've had to fire the clients, or when I've been up all night or when I've woken up early in the morning kind of eyes pinging open, heart racing, thinking the mobile responsive wasn't right on this website, the client's, you know, thrown an email up or whatever else. Yeah, I am really here to support you in not having these experiences because trust me, you don't want them, you don't need them.
Yes, we all learn from them, but I will give you my learnings from them so that you don't have it there. So yesterday I put a post up on LinkedIn and I said, web designers really want to hear from you. What do you find the trickiest when you're dealing with clients? And the first one that came up, and it came up over and again, is that the client just won't sign off the project without having a lot of changes.
And every time you work through that list of changes and say to the client, great, you know, those changes are done, could you just sign the project off now they come back with more changes. And it can be really pernickety stuff like, you know, center this text or change that button or I don't want the hover action on this. And it's just one thing after another after another after another.
So there are a couple of ways of dealing with this and a lot of them all come down to having really, really watertight terms of service with your clients. And if you're concerned that your terms of service aren't strong enough or you don't have any, which lots of web designers don't, then I have the website Designers contract pack on my courses.thisdemandinglife.com website and it's an editable document. It is based on my own terms of service as well.
And it really, really tells people what the expectation, what you need to be able to do your job really well and what they need to be able to provide you with as well. And the beginning of these terms of service say, you know, I want to have a very good working relationship with you and this is how we're going to achieve that. So if you don't have terms of service, go onto the website, you can buy that there and it will make you a lot more confident with dealing with these clients.
And from the other side of it, if clients really do kick up, then the contract pack also helps you to nail them to the wall. And I had one client last year who was repeatedly Ghosting me a 9 week project, went over 18 months, she just wouldn't sign it off. That I actually ended up taking it to Smart Small claims Court and winning because my terms of service was strong enough that I was able to do that. I've also been able to fire clients and trust me, it is not my favorite thing to do.
I would much rather have a really good working relationship with them. But sometimes you have to. And I've managed to fire clients and still been paid for the work that I've done. All of that because of these terms of service.
So if you feel that yours aren't working well for you, as I say, the web designer's contract pack, and that's@courses.thisdemandinglife.com let's say that you do have terms of service or the project's already started, whether you have one or not, and you're just getting to the point where it is just getting to more and more and more and more changes that they're asking for and some somewhere a line has to be drawn and I often find trying to get a client on a call will really help with this.
So saying, can we have a zoom call? You can word it as nicely as you like and then you go onto the zoom call and then I like to be the first one to talk. I do the flattery, you know. Thank you so much for coming on the call today. I want you to really love the website that we've got.
I've noticed that there's been a lot of changes and every time that I produce the next version of the website there are more changes and I was wondering if we could look at it together now whilst screen sharing so that we can have a final list of amendments before the work is finished. And this really gets the client's attention because they are not going away and getting the opinion of everybody else.
They are working one to one with you and it will make them more aware of the changes that they're asking for. Plus it also gives you the opportunity to push back if you don't think that the change that's being asked for is the right one for the website. It could be that they want something animated, but actually the animation is going to make someone feel, you know, viewer feel a little bit seasick.
Or it could be that it's overloading or there are too many calls to action or something like that. It really gives them the opportunity to benefit from your expertise, but it also helps you to contain those number of changes before sign off.
Because once you're on the call you can make a note of them and you can say, right, I'm going to get on these, I'll have them to you in these next days and then you can have a final run through before we sign off the website or ready to sign off the website and then back that up with an email. You know, thank you so much for your time on the phone today on Zoom.
I just wanted to confirm these are the final changes we'll be making to the website and I anticipate they'll be with you in this time on this basis. I anticipate a publication date of the website of this and it really helps contain the people there. You might also like to put in as these are the final changes. I've sent the invoice for completion for the website and this needs paying before going live again.
I have these in the terms of service in the web designers contractor package, but it really helps you take charge of the situation. And it also means that anything after that, once they've paid the invoices, you've done your bit. Anything after that also becomes chargeable. And again it will tell you in the contract pack, I promise this isn't just an episode selling the contract pack, it's just that the contract pack's been born out of a decade of experience.
And it also says once that final payment has been made, any other changes to the website then become a new project. They get booked in separately and they will be quoted for separately and need paying for as well. So it really helps hold the client to account there as well. Because clients also don't want the web design process going on forever.
And the ones I know who feel that they have had the worst experience with developers or their website build are the ones who have not had very clear boundaries. So it's really important that you hold those boundaries there. So the next one that people talked about is pretty similar and that is scope creep. It's when the client just continually asks, not necessarily for more changes, they ask for more to come out of the website. And we call it scope creep.
And it could be they're asking for extra pages or they're asking for extra functions, anything like that. They want a completely different design or something like that. This one I often find quite easy to go through with clients because when they come through and say oh can I have additional pages or blah blah, blah, I have a set price, I charge for additional pages. For my custom build websites it's £450 per page. My simply sites pre built websites, it's £150 per page.
So if someone comes back and says oh, I'd like all of these extra pages, I can say to them, absolutely. That's £450 per page. Would you like me to prepare an invoice for you? And usually when people realize they're not going to get it within the build, they reconsider whether they actually really do want them, what's really important here, whether as say it's additional pages or whether it's additional functionality of the website. And again, it's about holding boundaries.
You come back to them and you say that's absolutely fine, yes, of course we can add, you know, a calculator or this or a form or that as it's not in the original scope of the project. I will have to quote separately for this in this instance, I anticipate or I'm happy to quote this amount. Would you like to proceed on this basis?
And then depending on what that actual amount is, you can either add it to the final invoice or if it's going to be a hulking great amount because they want to suddenly put a membership option on the website or something like that. Then you could raise an invoice for, you know, according to your terms for that as well.
But usually what I find is that if you hold the boundaries around money, clients are actually quite good about it and it makes them consider what they do want and what they don't want, what they are happy to pay for and what they're. So something that's harder to deal with is when they start to ignore your time scales. Now again, my website designer's contract pack, I'm so sorry, but that does cover all of the timescales as well.
It also has a couple of graphs on there or charts, flowcharts, that's what they are, that have what the website design process should be from when the deposit is paid, when the content gets collected, all the way through to the first draft and then the completion as well. It can be really useful first of all to have a terms of service that details to clients when they can expect to hear from you and then stick to it as well. Unless you have very good reason not to stick to it, do stick to it.
And if you're not going to be able to make a meeting time with the client that's laid out in your terms of service or your process chart, you might like to use the flowchart on your website or draw up your own version for a client, then it's important that you message them and let them know that they won't be hearing from you that day for whatever reason. And I usually send the website walkthrough videos.
So my website process is very collaborative and every Friday I will send my clients the website board walk through videos of the progress that we've made in the week, where I've taken their feedback on board and I invite feedback from them prior to getting started the following week as well. And I might not be around on a Friday, so I might send the video on a Thursday if not a lot of progress has been made or not enough for me to be able to show it to the client.
And this could be because I'm waiting for some content from them or I've had an emergency happen that week or something like that. I will email them and let them know and I'll say, just let you know I won't be sending this this week. This is the reason. But you can expect to hear from me or you can expect to have the update next week on this day. And I've always found that people have responded really well to things like that.
As long as they know it's when people are kind of sitting and hanging around and stuff, that it starts to build that bad feeling. And one of the things that you need to be as a website designer and developer, branding specialist or copywriter, is you need to be a really good communicator. Because so many people complain about the experience of their website build and they say it's because they didn't hear from their website developer.
As a website developer or a designer, you could do much better business as well, because we're all in this game to make money. But if we don't have good reviews, if we don't have a reputation for communicating well with clients, our clients often will go and find people who do communicate well with them. So it's really important that if you struggle a little bit with communication or you don't feel that it's the most important part of the process, trust me, it really, really is.
Because good communication builds good feelings. And then every now and then we do have something that screws up in the web design process or something like that, and we can use that good feeling to say, I'm really sorry it's not worked out like this, or I'm sorry I haven't got the update for you today, but this is the fix, this is how it works. People get a lot of trust in there. And you really can turn around website projects with a bit of good feeling there as well.
When someone is rushing you through a project, even though you agreed the timescales, the first thing to do is bring them back to that initial conversation when they booked it with you. And I like to do this on email as well so that I have a written record of it.
Say, you know, I've noticed that you're eager for the website to be completed and just let you know we're still absolutely on track for, you know, publication or first draft to get to your whatever on this date as agreed at the start of the project. And usually I find that's enough. Between, like, the weekly updates and any other communication, I usually find that that's enough to keep them there.
If a client seems particularly anxious about it again, I might get them on a Zoom call and say, you know, I just wanted to have a chat. I've noticed that you're really eager to go with these timescales, and I'm wondering if something has changed because this is my process. We've agreed on these timescale because I know this is how I can deliver the project to you in the absolute best way. And sometimes just talking it through with the client can really help.
I had a client last year who got a little bit tricky. It wasn't so much about the timescales, but he had repeatedly been, like, trying to phone me. I don't use my phone for work. I know that sounds crazy, but I find it hard not having visual feedback. And often I'm just not available on the phone. As a designer, you will know that you don't necessarily want your concentration broken by people phoning, which is why I have scheduled zoom calls.
And he sent me a bit of a shirty message one evening and he said, well, I tried to do this, but you didn't answer your phone. And I tried to do that, but I couldn't call you, or something like that. And I went on and did the website update as I usually would. And then at the end of it, and this was when I was screen sharing on my update, I pulled up the email and I said, I wanted to talk to you about this email.
I want to have a really good relationship with you, and I can't do that when you send me messages like this. And it's actually in my terms of service saying, please don't contact me by phone. So I was able to bring that back as well and say, and the reason that I don't use the phone for work is because it breaks my concentration. I don't have the visual feedback, so I don't always know what it is that someone's talking about. And, yeah, I'm just not always available.
So I said, let's have a zoom call and let's finish off the website together. We did that. The client was really apologetic. He said, I hadn't realized any of that. I'm really sorry. Let's work together. We've carried on working together. I still host and maintain the website. Everything is good. Sometimes it's just about not being afraid of the clients and it's just about not feeling like, oh, gosh, they're the one who's paying for the project. I mustn't do anything to upset them.
And it's not about upsetting them, it's about having really clear boundaries. Because, like, my client with the phone, because not everyone's going to read your terms of service other than you, that is, if they don't know they can't do what it is you want them to do. And I love that Brene Brown has a saying which is, when I know better, I will do better. And ultimately, no one wants to fire their web designer and no one wants to be fired by their web designer.
Ultimately, everyone just wants to have a really good experience. So it's holding those boundaries, being firm, but being fair as well, and always having that really good communication which will help in this situation. So the final one is that they're ghosting you, and no amount of good communication in the world will kind of get that client back from that position of ghosting you. It is really frustrating.
I also find it really rude because I also think it's people thinking what I'm doing is more important than what you're doing and it's just never, ever a good look. So you're going to love this. In my terms of service, there's a sunset clause which basically says if I don't hear from you for a certain number of days, I will consider the project to be abandoned and I will archive it and there will be a fee to bring it back out of archive.
And so usually I would send a client like a website like Walkthrough, and I obviously invite their feedback. If I haven't heard from them within a few days of that, I will email them and say, just want to check that everything's okay, that you've got the feedback. I'm conscious that I want to be able to deliver the project on time and I can only do that if I get your feedback by the end of today or whenever it is.
And if you've tried contacting, try contacting and you haven't got anywhere with them, then my next step is to wait until we hit that deadline for the sunset clause to kick in and then email them and say, just let you know, as I haven't heard from you and as per the terms of service. And you have to make sure they have a copy of the terms of service both at the time you quote and when you raise the invoice so that they can have it there in front of them.
But I say to them, as per my terms of service, if I don't hear from you, I will archive the website. If you then choose to reactivate the website, it will incur a charge of this to get it out of archive. It will also essentially go to the back of the queue of what I'm working on. So just checking that you are happy with me to take these steps before I do.
So in almost every case bar one, which is a client that went to court, they come back and they say, oh my goodness, I'm really sorry, no, please don't archive it. And it usually gets the project back on track. And if it doesn't, there are two things that you can do in this case. One of it is archive the project, leave it as an abandoned project sort of thing, and, you know, appreciate you're not going to win them all and you're not always going to get paid on every single venture.
But the other one as well is to make sure that your terms of service is robust enough that even if you have to archive the project, you've still been paid for the majority of the project. And this will come into how you individually price your services.
And it's important to say the best way of being able to do this is not have rock bottom pricing, because if you've had your 50% deposit paid up front, or maybe even more of a deposit paid up front, and then you get to the point of abandoning or archiving the project. The most important thing is that you don't feel that you're out of pocket for your design things as well. And structuring money in your website design business is the topic of a whole other podcast.
So my final takeaway, do not take on a project without having a client pay a proper deposit for it. None of this 10%, none of anything like that. Make sure that you have a good upfront front payment before you start. So there you have it, just over 20 minutes of dealing with difficult and tricky clients. I hope it's really helpful for you. It's been very helpful for me.
I would love to know, if you're dealing with a tricky client right now, which one of those methods you would use for them and hope you get a really lot of success with this as well. So until next time, bye.