Amanda went to Design for Drupal 2014 in Boston last weekend. She brought back a ton of useful information, and now she’s passing it on to you.
The organizers of D4D made a conscious effort to gear the first day more toward business, and I relished the opportunity to think more about client communication. I’ve had a few interactions with clients over the past year that have left me feeling like they weren’t interested in giving feedback or that we were just completely not getting each other. One point that stood out:
If a client isn’t giving good feedback, they are
A) probably just really busy or
B) need some guidance from an expert (you!)
It’s an opportunity to really take leadership in the direction of their web strategy. You can be the hero!
Here are some very concrete tips on communicating with clients:
- If you need to make a case for responsive web design, and the client thinks it’s a non-crucial expense, make a video so you can fully illustrate what it means for users. You can even consider mocking up their site to show them roughly what it might look like. Here’s how to make a screencast with Quicktime.
- If you’re having trouble explaining an idea, take a screenshot and draw on it (Skitch — part of the excellent Evernote suite — is great for this) or find an example in the wild (another website.)
- If you find yourself explaining the same thing to more than one client, consider writing a blog post about the topic, and you can just share that with them. It saves time, and the client will appreciate the directed content.
For on my D4D experience, check out the rest of my recap here.