26 November 2004

Getting clients to choose a concept

After reading that Stuff and Nonsense do their initial concept mock ups in code rather than just graphic, I started asking myself "What is the best way to get clients to settle down with a concept? ". Coding mock ups could become extremely annoying if the client wont settle down to one concept, so Andy must have something in place to make sure that their time isn't going to waist.

Following on from my old posts (Mock Designing, and Mock Designing 2), I would now like to find out not how people mock design, but what rules they set with their client regarding this stage in the process.

Here is a list of the options as I see them:

  • Keep doing mock ups until the client is happy with the result as part of the main cost.
  • Limit the client to a maximum number of concept mock ups as part of the main cost.
  • Charge per concept mock up, so that the client is encouraged to settle down with a concept as early as possible.

Which method do you use? And which method do you think would work best?

Happy Wubbing!

Comments ( 5 )

  1. Phil Sherry

    Where I work, my boss changes his mind an average of 826641 times before he settles on a look he likes. I used to code pages up to show him, but now I just mock'em up in Fireworks and show him those. When he sees something he likes, I code it up. Otherwise, I'm just wasting my time.
    26 November 2004 at 15:43

  2. John Oxton

    We used to offer 3 or 4 concepts but sometimes too much choice makes it more difficult.

    These days we are tending to offer one initial concept, usually as jpegs with 'options' for a second if the first is way off target. If after that we are still not on track we figure the project is in need of review anyway.

    Seems to work well for us.
    26 November 2004 at 16:26

  3. Rob Mientjes

    I'm not into the client business yet, but if anything renewing and/or revolutional rolls out of this, I'm pretty interested :)

    If I had to choose, I'd say make a limited number of concepts, so clients know that they have to choose, but it should be possible to refine, of course.
    26 November 2004 at 17:20

  4. Damien Buckley

    Mock-Ups

    We tend to use Fireworks to do working mock-ups as it does most of the work for you - then we re-build the site properly once we've got the client set on a concept. We generally give them 3 totally different concepts, then narrow it down from there - and make it crystal clear that once we move onto actually building the site - there's no more (free) changes.

    You've probably had the experience though that most clients have no idea what they want until you do the concepts - then they're immediate designers and want to put their stamp on everything!!!!
    03 February 2005 at 12:04

  5. Phil Baines

    That's very true. In fact, with one client we had last year, they told us that they were happy for us to do the 'creative' stuff, but when we gave them concepts they kepts asking for more and more since it wasn't 'what they wanted'. However, when asked what they did actually want, they were of know help.

    Clients like these are a waste of time and money. We let them go. ;)
    03 February 2005 at 12:19

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