Every now and again I am reminded that it’s easy to get swept up in the details rather than focusing on the bigger picture when designing a website.  As website designers, we’re really serving two needs:

1. Design (and possibly implement) an engaging, usable, website design to sell a product or service, or to act as a resource.
2. Help the owner of the website understand their goals, so that their website helps them achieve said goals.

It’s often easy to assume that someone looking to have a website fully understands and acknowledges their overall goals.  To create a successful website design, not only does the client need to fully understand their goals, but the designer needs to as well to create something that helps meet them.

The aesthetic of a website is a big part of it – it sets the overall tone, maybe it needs to coordinate/match existing branding, it sends a powerful message about intention and personality, and it helps the site visitor know if they’re in the right place.

Frequently, however, people quickly and insufficiently address what they want site visitors to take away from their experience with the site (eg: a purchase, a signup to a service, a brand clarity, an overall warm & fuzzy feeling, etc…), and then spend lots of time worried about whether some specific text should be slightly less blue (for example).  In some cases, it’s important to be concerned with an exact blue.  Maybe you’ve already got a Pantone blue you use for branding throughout.  Or maybe it’s an issue of prominence, priority of information or clarity.  But many times people get wrapped up in details like this that are mostly about their personal preference… because at the end of the day, it won’t matter to the user, it’ll only matter to the person/people who owns the site and is making the decisions.

And it’s a tricky line to navigate as a designer.   While on the one hand you want to say, “it doesn’t really matter” — that’s not entirely true because it matters *to them*, and they’re your client.   Do you have a duty as a designer to tell them when they’re focusing on the wrong thing?  How much time are you willing to invest in helping someone achieve their specific vision for something before you are no longer a designer and are just pushing a pencil (so to speak)?

In my experience, the answer is to gather lots of information up front & to ask the right questions.  This gives the client has a chance to really think through their goals, and then during the design process you can weigh decisions against whether they’ll help meet them.  But that doesn’t always work out the way that you hope.  When all is said and done, sometimes making the client happy turns out to be the goal.

Related posts:

1. Client Spotlight: Diane Pinkard, author of Just Treat Me Like I Matter: The Heart of Sales
2. Client Spotlight: Diana Raab, author of Regina’s Closet