First and foremost, my favorite clients are friendly, inquisitive people. If nothing else, those two qualities will override all others. It’s not worth any amount of money to spend non-work hours stressed out about your project instead of relaxing and recharging.

Beyond that, there are a few simple things that certain clients do that make me happy. In no particular order:

  1. Present requests in clear, succinct writing. Phone calls are great for establishing broader goals and arguing points of contention, but details get lost in conversation, and there’s no to searchable archive. So email first, then phone. And only phone if necessary.
  2. Pay closer attention to your content. It sounds obvious, but good content makes everything easier. Design & technology contribute to your success for sure, but more than anything, it’s the words. Ruthlessly edit them down to the bare essentials. Late stage drafts should be finished before design begins, approximating the tone and length of final text. Resist the urge to use lorem ipsum and “swap it in later”. Read about content strategy, hire great writers, and practice your own writing everyday. I will if you will.
  3. Avoid obsessing about the typography, color palette, layout, or what content management system to use, that’s why you hired a professional. Tell me what you like/dislike at the beginning and then just let it go. If you enjoy being neurotic sometimes, as we all do, there are plenty of other super important things to worry about: audience, analytics, tone, lunch.
  4. Do not assume anything about how long something should take. Some things that seem easy can take forever and vice versa. Good research is crucial and labor intensive. Even small bug fixes can take all night sometimes. I’m sorry that I don’t always know beforehand. Unfortunately, this seems to be an axiom of nearly all software development of any kind.
  5. Please just tell me your budget and target launch date from the beginning. Then I’ll tell you what can be done with that. Let’s not be coy or play games here. There are two numbers to start with: how much to spend on building the project and how much to maintain it post-launch. Ask your web vendor to help determine a reasonable range to work within.
  6. Launching is just the beginning. Great web projects must be iterated on over time.
  7. When sending requests for troubleshooting, include links, screen shots, and make sure I know your browsing environment. Deducing these things from a cryptic “such and such isn’t working” can take a surprising and unnecessary amount of time.
  8. Use a password manager and properly archive your email. I have billed an ungodly number of hours just in looking up passwords for people and resending old emails. Hours I would much rather put towards optimizations, design improvements, adding features, etc.
  9. Avoid panic. Websites go down sometimes. Things don’t work like they should. Data gets corrupted. Hackers penetrate. Bugs will be found. Probably some typos too. Poor decisions to renege. When this happens, you have to make a choice. You can stress out, have a wack attack and we’ll all slog through a crappy day. Or you can put your ego aside, explain the problem calmly, ask for help, and we’ll go out for ice cream after.