How to Say "Your Site Sucks" Nicely
No matter what your area of expertise, there comes a time in every web developers life when you have to tell a client that their site, to put it plainly, sucks. I'm all for honesty, but in 11 years of working with clients on internet projects, I've found out the hard way that the direct approach isn't always the best.Even if, deep down, the client knows their site is a mess, they often have a lot of time and money invested in it, and are bound to be defensive in the face of criticism. The problem is, sometimes clients need to know the truth, no matter how ugly. So how do you break the news gently?
Accentuate the Positives
Like any bad news, sometimes it helps to ease into it with a little good news first. I've never seen a website that was a complete loss, and there's always something that can be salvaged. Try to step back from your initial reaction and take a good look at what your client is doing right. Even an awful website might have a decent navigation scheme, good copy, or a solid architecture.Of course, be sincere. If the best you can come up with is "Those dancing hamsters really capture the essence of rodent frivolity" or "The screen looks like the 70s threw up on it, but at least it matches your sweater", then you should probably keep your mouth shut.
Stick to Business
Ultimately, your job as an internet consultant, whether you're a designer, usability specialist, or SEO, is to help your client's business succeed. When you're breaking the bad news, stick to the business case: gently explain, point by point, why the site is hurting your client's bottom line.Focus on Facts
Especially when you're talking about design, it's easy to confuse opinion with fact. Keep your criticisms specific, whenever possible, and impersonal. Be especially careful around issues that involve personal taste, such as color schemes. Even if you know you're right, your client may take your criticism as a personal attack.Call for Backup
One of the best ways to keep things from getting personal is to bring in a 3rd party buffer. For a large project, this might mean an in-person resource, but often it just means citing online articles, market facts, or other industry experts.Provide Solutions
Especially when you're a paid consultant, everything has to come back to solutions. The best way to soften bad news is to be prepared to tell your client how to turn their situation around. Ultimately, bad news only matters if it's permanent, and providing answers isn't just a good communications strategy, it's what you're getting paid for.Question: So, how do you break bad news to your clients?
Leather Watch site
· Thursday, February 21Pete, it's awesome how you apply tact to usability. I'm often tempted to bring grammar lessons to SEO (Andy Beard, Slightly Shady SEO, Tim Nash, I hope you're listening!) and it's nice to see others doing similar stuff.
ANyways, you're bang on about prefacing with good news - they'll focus on that and digest the criticism easier - and the indie experts - then it's not you vs me but what the pros are saying about it...
Linda Bustos
· Friday, February 22Your approach is a lot more diplomatic than these:
www.duhcorp.com
www.huhcorp.com
Good for a laugh for all us Web/Tech service professionals ;-)
Steven Bradley
· Friday, February 22Good advice Pete. Telling a client their site sucks isn't easy. A little tact helps, but even then it's not the easiest thing to do.
Unfortunately I have tried the direct approach once or twice and let's just say it didn't go well.
andymurd
· Tuesday, February 26A good way of saying "your site sucks" is to compile uncontestable statistics, for example:
* Your site has an average of 2.3 H1 tags per page
* 30% of your pages have no meta description
* You post to your blog once per day but it's RSS feed is a week old
* Your landing page takes 8 seconds to load
When you've got a few statistics like that, it's easy to offer solutions.
Dr. Pete
· Tuesday, February 26Great examples, Andy. Sticking to facts definitely depersonalizes the whole thing, and pushes the client to start asking follow up questions. If you say "30% of your pages have no meta description", the worst they can say is "I heard meta descriptions don't matter", prompting a discussion.
William Rock
· Tuesday, February 26Andy Great point, sticking to business and key topics such as research findings on their website is a great example.
I like to be very prepared before I approach a meeting with a client about their website.
Starting Point:
1. Establish Relationship with Client (Find Goals)
** What is the purpose of their website: is it to be only used as a portfolio or do they sell a product or service that they are trying to increase lead generation or product sales?
2. How long have they had the site, normally I have this data by looking at the WHOIS data, but it breaks the ice.
3. What have they currently done to their website?
Examples being:
- Do they have in-house designers?
- Have they worked with a Search Engine Marketer in the past?
- Do they know their current daily & monthly traffic trends?
- Do they use Google Adwords or any other PPC CAMPAIGN?
4. I normally also run a few reports to get prepared for the meeting such as walking through their site at a top level.
- I look for many things such as title tags, content, flash, redirects, server speed, spelling errors, back links, outbound links, top level rankings, and run spider simulators through the website to see how a normal search engine robot would view the site.
- I normally spend about 1hr on the review before I can really give an accurate answer about a website.
The worst think I think you can do is to go into a meeting and guess, about a company’s website vs. just spending a small amount of time to see if there is anything that needs to be done or that can be done to improve the company’s bottom line.
One thing to be think about is when you have all of this data and start pushing numbers at the executive of a corporation be prepared to backup your reports.
Normally starting out with a high level executive summary is what I like to prepare for the top of the document. Also I like to have the company website on the projector so they can see what we are discussing step by step of the report.
Dr. Pete
· Tuesday, February 26@William: Wow, that's like a post within a post :) I completely agree: the worst thing you can do is go in with no information but act like a know-it-all, second-guessing everything the client has done based on shallow first impressions. Showing a client that you're prepared and have thought your criticisms through can really go a long way.
Adam Maywald
· Tuesday, February 26I do try and accent the positives - but I always stress that I'm the expert and having done extensive studies, reading various usability reports and doing A/B split testing on multiple sites, what I say is only going to help there site. There site is being built, in a majority of cases, to perform an action by the visitor. My expertise is making sure the visitor takes action by the design, ease of use and structure - so what I say goes :) ...but in a nice way. ;)
Mike Tekula
· Tuesday, February 26Very important topic. It's always a problem in my experience. Clients ask me, "why wasn't our site build SEO-friendly from the beginning?" Many small business owners are disenchanted with web development as a whole because they spend a few thousands dollars for something that is, let's face it, totally intangible in the traditional sense...only to find out it was built the wrong way and they can't go after search positioning until they overhaul the entire thing. There are quite a few web developers floating around out there who I'd like to slap some sense into.
I just have to add - this part made me laugh out loud: "The screen looks like the 70s threw up on it, but at least it matches your sweater." That is funny stuff.
Dr. Pete
· Tuesday, February 26@Adam: You're right: there's definitely a big difference between being diplomatic and telling a client what they want to hear. We don't do any favors for people by avoiding the truth just because it's unpleasant.
@Mike: Glad you liked my what-not-to-do examples. One of the blessings and curses of being a web developer of just about any type is that there are so many people who do it badly.
Isabella - 760 Media
· Tuesday, February 26Great Post Pete! Unfortunately, it is true that most people cannot take constructive criticism bluntly; sugar-coating seems to work just as well for adults as for children. So you feel there is particular order these suggestions should follow in, or perhaps it is subject to each individual client?
Paul Burani, Clicksharp Marketing
· Thursday, February 28It wouldn't hurt, of course, to also have a few designers' names handy at any given moment. All part of the solution orientation: "Your site sucks, but I'm here to help you make it better."
Ron Patiro
· Friday, April 11I've learned that if you can raise these three aspects, you can get a client to move: Raise their current dissatisfaction with the current site, raise their vision for a better future, and make the first steps toward implementing a plan appear easy.
I was taught this by a brilliant man named Mal Watlington from citysquare consulting. I've tremendously benefited from this insight.
Lori
· Thursday, November 6I love the phrase "rodent frivolity" - that would be a great name for a band, don't you think?
That aside, this is a lot like what we face in real life relationships: how to tell your mom she's smothering you; how to tell your spouse that some habit drives you crazy; how to tell a friend that their boyfriend is a jerk.
The truth is, I have disovered that no matter HOW much tact you use, no matter HOW much you accentuate the positive (for instance, beginning and ending your talk with compliments) some people will always be hurt by the truth.
That's not always a bad thing - sometimes people need to get that "punched in the stomach" feeling before they're ready to take a big leap forward.
So, if you do go to great lengths to tell the truth tactfully and gently, and someone is still hurt, you sort of have to move on and not take it too personally. Either they a) weren't quite ready to hear it, or b) react that way to everyone and anyone who tells them something they didn't want to hear.
Shopping Cart Software
· Thursday, September 17Had to break the news one too many times but as SEO and usability are becoming a big part of actual design, it seems more and people people are starting off better and actually understanding things better as well.