Why your clients don’t care about their users, and how you can make them
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Why don’t your clients care about users?
Let’s be clear, its not that your clients are uncaring. It is just that they are not thinking about the users when making decisions. Even when they do, they often conclude that the inconvenience for the user is worth the potential return for the business. This means if you wish to convince a client to prioritise the users’ needs you must achieve two things:- Get the client thinking about the user.
- Get them to realise the damage ignoring the user can cause.
Getting your client to think about the user
There are no shortage of ways to get the client focusing on user needs, if we are willing to put in a bit of work and plan in advance. A good place to start is by telling the client up front to focus on user needs. I know it sounds obvious, but it rarely happens. Most clients are not familiar with running web projects. They don’t understand their role in the process and so it falls to us to explain it to them. As we explain their role we should always make a point of stressing that they are the advocate for the user. Tell them that they have more contact with their users than we do and so it falls to them to champion the user through the design process. In reality we are championing the users’ needs too. But giving the client this role will help them to think about the user more often.![002](https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/cdn-origin/uploads/2014/10/0021.jpg)
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Understanding the damage caused by ignoring users
To us the damage of ignoring user needs is obvious. But, then it is not our business or job at stake. Clients are often under huge pressure to deliver more leads, make more sales or drive more traffic. When under that kind of pressure you need solid arguments to justify putting users’ needs above short term gain. It falls to us to convince clients and give them the ammunition they need to justify their decisions to their boss. I always start by laying the groundwork early. In kick-off meetings it is not unusual to ask a client about sites they like. Designers often use this as reference for producing a design. But have you ever asked a user about sites they hate? If you get them talking about their own bad experiences, they realise just how frustrating a bad experience can be. It is not unusual for a client to moan about a dark pattern on another site and then propose an almost identical thing on their own. By talking about their bad experiences you help them make the connection. That in turn helps them realise the bad blood they are creating. But that is not enough to argue their corner when challenged over their decisions. In such situations I tend to focus on how consumer behaviour has changed. Consumers have two things today that they never used to have. They have the competition a click away and an audience to express their dissatisfaction to. These two things put the power with the consumer and means that customer service has to be at the heart of what our clients do. Few clients have a problem grasping the impact that easy access to their competition brings. But they do tend to struggle more with the power of an audience. In fact the customers’ ability to publish their opinion on a company is far more dangerous than the competition being a click away. When every customer can reach millions of people, it makes keeping them happy pretty important! One of the best ways to communicate this fact is through stories. I tell the story of Dell Hell and how one man’s complaints about Dell online turned into a firestorm of negative publicity. Or how one customer dissatisfied with British Airways went on to take out an advert on Twitter condemning the company. These stories help to drive home the amount of power today’s customers have. It also demonstrates how ignoring their needs can cause significant damage to a business. By helping clients understand the power of users and focus on their needs, it is possible to turn clients into user advocates. But be careful what you wish for; before you know it they will be complaining about your beautiful design because it is not intuitive enough!Read Next
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