I love having conversations with a good friend of mine, Michael Lacey. He and I always have such poignant discussions about topics regarding web development, website redesign and even life lessons. The topic more recently was vendor to client communication during a web development process. Being a web developer most of my professional career I would tend to side with the website vendor, but I believe there are steps that can be taken by both parties to the make the process smooth. Today I will focus on how a client can avoid pitfalls to make the vendor “switch off” when working on the project or with you.
1. Ask about web “best practices” and standards
Did you know the internet and world wide web is built off standards? There’s coding standards, doctype standards, accessibility standards, design standards, usability standards and even SEO standards. Let the vendor tell you about these. The more informative they are to you, the better the vendor and the better off you are at understanding them and the world they work in.
2. Ask for their opinion
This is one of the hardest things to do for any client or anyone for that matter. It’s not the hardest. You have a design idea or functionality idea. Ask if it serves the business purpose of your website, or if you know the answer to that – ask how it can be implemented to work. The vendor may have done or researched something like it before and may be able to take it to a level beyond what you know.
3. Trust the vendor
Your website vendor should form a partnership with you. They are making business critical decisions that will effect how you do business. If you are not happy in the end or do not make more money as a result of their work – they’ve failed. So the vendor has a lot at stake in the project much like you. If the vendor offers an alternative to a design issue that guarantees higher usability over design you may want to consider it. Your website is not their first project (most likely). They’ve likely seen something that can be a trap.
My example would be is I may ask a contractor a bunch of questions for his opinion or how something could be done, but I wouldn’t go to him and tell him exactly how to do something because I’m not a contractor. He gets paid to make those tough decisions so I can live in my house safely. Your vendor is getting paid to make tough decisions to turn your business needs into a functioning tool on the website. Michael pointed out, “I would ask about certain building practices but yield to the expert when making the decision.”
4. Be the expert for your business
Once you entrust the vendor to do what they do best, you can be the expert to them about your business. The only way the website will be successful is if you disclose to them your best practices and industry to turn that website into the true business tool it can be. If you can carry your end of the bargain to its fullest, the end result may take your business to a new level.
