Top 5 Most Annoying Bits of Feedback You Can Give to Your Website Designer
Time to Read: 3m 4s
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"I'm so annoyed."[/caption]
Try to think about what "pop" means to you, and offer a more specific piece of feedback. 5. "Add more pizzazz." Same as above, but even more vexing. What does "pizzazz" mean to you? As far as we know it could mean "make it red" or "fill it with animations of exploding clowns." Whenever you give feedback, be as specific as you possibly can.
"I'm so annoyed."[/caption]
What's the secret to getting the website of your dreams? Lean in close and I'll tell you: it's the ability to give solid, constructive feedback to the people who design and build your website. A lot of people don't realize that giving feedback is a skill. Anyone can offer an opinion, but offering feedback that another person can use -- that takes practice. Graphic designers and web developers get annoyed from time to time by unhelpful feedback from clients. Here are the five things people say that annoy designers and developers the most:
1. "Shift it over a couple of pixels." This usually comes up when customers don't realize that websites look slightly different in each browser. Trust us, shifting that image or logo over "a couple of pixels" really won't make that much of a difference. 2. "Make it compatible with Internet Explorer." Internet Explorer is dead. Kaput. Finito. It sleeps with the fishes. Sure, it's still out there and yeah, you can use it for things like reading articles on MSN, but if you're still using it for business purposes, you should stop doing that immediately. IE is not being updated any more, it's not secure and it will make your website look weird when your developer sends it to you. Don't look at your site in IE, and definitely don't worry about it being compatible with IE. Instead, make sure it looks awesome in Chrome and Firefox -- browsers people actually use. 3. "It doesn't work." It does too. Let us walk you through it. We'll show you how it works. 4. "Make it pop more." Pop? You mean make it bigger? Darker? Hypnotic? Try to think about what "pop" means to you, and offer a more specific piece of feedback. 5. "Add more pizzazz." Same as above, but even more vexing. What does "pizzazz" mean to you? As far as we know it could mean "make it red" or "fill it with animations of exploding clowns." Whenever you give feedback, be as specific as you possibly can.
How to Give Good Feedback
- Be specific.
- Go online and look at other websites. Find ones that you like and send them to your designers to give them a reference point.
- Think about what will actually help the other person. I'm a writer, and I sent a manuscript of a novel to a friend. She sent back every thought she had while reading it. Not all of them were helpful. I had to spend a lot of time sorting through her ideas to find ones that actually helped me. If she had focused on a) things that didn't make sense and b) things that were inconsistent, instead of writing down every single thought she had, she would have saved me a lot of time and confusion. Putting yourself in the other person's shoes before sending feedback can make a big difference.
- Give examples. See something you like? Show it to us!
- Admit when you don't know what you want. Sometimes, you might dislike something, but you might not know why. If that's the case, say so. If we hear "I don't like it but I don't know why," then we'll know that we have to have a conversation with you to explore what we have to do to make it work for you.