Website Design: Balancing the Needs of Client and User
As a website designer, it is your job to walk the tightrope between what a client wants and what a user needs. Your client list is going to provide you with a diverse and often challenging list of demands to fulfill. Every client will want something different for the website that serves as an online extension of their business; sometimes they will have specific ideas ready for you, but mostly they will only have a vague notion of what they want. It is your job to create a design that will represent their brand effectively (in keeping with their mission, attitude, aesthetic, and products or services) and speak to their demographic, but you also need the ability to steer them in the right direction (without getting fired for disagreeing with their “vision”). But there is an even more important aspect to web design that has little to do with the client. You must be able to consistently create sites that users can, well, USE. So no matter how the client wants to tart up their web-space, you must first and foremost make it user-friendly.
If you’re lucky, you’ll end up with clients that are willing to defer to your expertise and let you do your job as you see fit (on their behalf). Ha! Fat chance! These people are expending a portion of their advertising or development budget on your services, and they want their money’s worth! This means they will approach you with all kinds of crazy ideas about how the design should progress. Most of what you are handed will be junk and it will be your laborious task to sift and narrow until you discover the core of what makes their company unique. This you can use. But first, you need to focus on the framework.
Some clients will want a store, others will want a blog, and many will require information-gathering software. All of this falls under the category of particulars. You need to start with the basic layout and navigation of the site, and this will be targeted at the user, not the client for whom you are creating the site. This is probably the most important aspect of your work because it will be largely responsible for the user experience. How many times have you gone to a website and been unable to locate the navigation tabs, forcing you to search the page from top to bottom? Have you ever clicked a link only to find it broken? And how many times do you return to these ill-conceived sites? Well, there you go. Getting the basic framework for the site in place is the most essential step in designing a site that will suit the needs of your client; if guests can’t find their way around, they won’t return.
Once you have created this user-friendly framework, you can start the arduous chore of pandering to your client. Just remember that you are being paid to create a website that represents your client’s brand and helps to expand their business. So regardless of what they ask for, you need to strive to deliver what they actually need (and convince them along the way).
Sarah Danielson writes for Grid Design Firm, one of the top design firms in Chicago specializing in web, online marketing, branding, and print.
