3 Ways To Lose A Design Client
Like a member of the bomb squad or a pilot, designers are capable of stupid things that cost them their job. For freelancers, the following three disasters are a good way to make sure you get your papers stamped ‘DO NOT HIRE’ ever, ever again.
3 Deliver broken or misprinted work
For web designers, this means a broken page. For print designers, this means print work that is crooked, smudged, on the wrong media or printed with the wrong colours. For both web designers and print designers, it means pain.
The fix
For the web designer, this isn’t as easy as it seems. The main culprit will be Internet Explorer 6 and 7. The best trick is to check cross browser compatibility on all the browsers you can. That means installing Firefox, Opera, Safari, Internet Explorer 8 (with Compatability View). For IE 6, keep an old PC running it, use Multiple IE or install Virtual Windows XP. All this installing is time consuming, but it’s worth it. As often as you save, check your pages across each browser to nail problems early. The best cure is prevention.
For the print designer, the only thing you can do it flip through all the copies. Yep, all six thousand letterheads, if that’s what it takes. You can avoid this issue altogether if you convince your client to shoulder the burden of the printing. Obviously, printing is a service designers can charge for so you’d be mad to seriously consider this. Take charge. You can do it. Just be careful. If you stuff it up, pay for a reprint if you can’t negotiate a free one, and don’t tell the client what happened.
2 The Typo
Print designers need only stuff one word up and it’s lights out, simple as that. It gets worse if your client doesn’t notice until its been seen by a bazillion eyeballs before someone catches on. It makes the client look like a troupe of half-wits. Like a crusted-on barnacle, no perfect storm of proofreading and rechecking will wash a typo away.
It'll be you'res.
The fix
If you’re by yourself, you’re really up the creek here. To nail the typos, you need as many pairs of eyeballs as you can get. Ask anyone who’s a slow reader. I personally ask mum or my grandmother, because they’re not usually in a huge rush. For big projects or big accounts, employ a professional proofreader and past the cost onto the invoice. You and your client will thank you for it.
1 Forget the job or pass the work on
Your client is paying you as a designer because they want your designs. The best way to get one angry is to never deliver it or give it to someone else so they don’t get what you promised.
As a designer, you have to talk a walk in the client’s shoes once in a while. See that any contact they have with you is the only info they’re getting.
You have to understand that once they have made contact with you and agreed on a rate, they are by-and-large locked in. Furthermore, if they’ve already paid a deposit, they have a financial stake in the work. If a client doesn’t like the rate at which the work’s being done or suspects you are working on other projects and pushing them to the wayside, its not a good look. If the client doesn’t cut the rope early, they get dragged along for the ride. You can be certain you won’t work with them again.
Look familiar? Apart from the manilla folders which no one uses.
The fix
The best way to maintain a good rate of work while juggling projects is to keep open a conversation with the client and the project itself.
Email them once a week with your thoughts and how you’re progressing and even if you’ve only managed a small thing, make it appear big with a bright idea or a reflection on the process. To maintain momentum, write a short list of things you’re yet to finish for the client and try to attack them one-by-one. You’ll often find that once you finish one thing, the design juices keep flowing and its a pleasure to finish the job.
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