Show your client their new website

This is the moment you’ve all been waiting for: unveil the new website you designed for your client.

This is an exciting opportunity, but it can also be nerve-wracking for the entire team involved in the construction. Website development takes weeks (if not months) of hard work to complete, so what happens if your customer hates the final product?

How do you fix the problem? Is there anything your team could have done in the first place to prevent the negative feedback?

The answer to all these questions is simple – clear communication is the key to unlocking a successful web design. Exactly what must be communicated and when This can be difficult for account teams and web designers to determine.

Fortunately, our team has years of experience navigating this process so we can help you prepare the right way for the unveiling of your website.

Before revealing your client’s website …

Before the big day arrives, it is imperative that you facilitate multiple meetings with your client through all stages of the web design process. By maintaining communication with the customer through the build, all approvals are facilitated.

While doing this, keep the following tips in mind to ensure that the unveiling is as successful as possible:

• Always plan a meeting or screen sharing. Never just send a link to your customer and allow them to rule for free on a website that is in the earliest stages of development. By scheduling a personal meeting or screen sharing, you have control over what the client needs to focus on and in what phase. This will prevent you from being overwhelmed by irrelevant feedback on aspects of the site that are not yet fully developed.
• Explain the reasoning behind your design. Make sure your client understands why you chose certain aspects of the design and how they relate to their original design requirements. This will illustrate to your client that you are listening attentively to their needs and finding appropriate solutions. It also gives you the opportunity to set up key elements that should be focal points for construction.
• Set expectations for customer feedback. Many times clients want to give you feedback in one meeting at a time. Make sure they understand that this is not the meeting. Rather, it is time to focus early on on specific elements to prevent unwanted features from being transferred to the final product. Communicate to your client that they will receive all links to the meeting so that they can provide a more detailed list of feedback.
• Set goals for the meeting in advance. It goes back to our previous point about setting expectations around feedback. It is critical that your client understands what your goals are for this particular meeting and that this meeting primarily confirms the alignment of the initial design direction. The time for a full unveiling of the site will come later.
• Make sure your client understands the following steps. You may need to schedule follow-up meetings similar to these to ensure that building the site meets expectations. Give your client a clear time frame for which elements will be reviewed at what intervals, as well as when the final unveiling will take place.

It may seem tedious to go through this review process for each element, but it is the best way to ensure that all aspects of the web design meet the requirements of the client. Repeat the process as many times as necessary to make the project run smoothly.

During the unveiling of web design …

Once you feel that the site is in good condition to showcase the final product, it’s time to plan the big unveiling. When preparing for the unveiling of the website, you must first review the current website.

It will provide an excellent visual comparison if you include this side-by-side or before-and-after overview of what the site looked like in the past. This review provides the opportunity to show what is not working in the previous version, so they are more excited to see what you have done to improve it.

Customers lead through their website

During the unveiling meeting, pay attention to the most important elements specified in your client’s initial project requirements. Make sure they know exactly where these key features are so that they are confident that their needs have been met.

As you go through the website, you will show other elements that you have brought into the final design, further in line with the objectives of the project. It shows your client that you not only listened to what their needs were initially, but that you also found ways to exceed them.

Control the conversation

While the purpose of this meeting is to determine your customer’s satisfaction with the final result, this is not the time to get too much into the weeds over all the details. If your conversation starts to get bogged down, then rule it out by letting them know that you can discuss the finer details and the necessary improvements later.

After showing your client their website …

Now that the revelation is over and you have led your client through their new website, the difficult process begins: the interpretation of feedback.

After your disclosure, measure your customer’s initial response and identify concerns that you can improve. Try again to keep the feedback high during the unveiling meeting, and outline the following steps on how you plan to receive notes or changes and resolve issues.

Communicate with your client how you would like them to provide detailed feedback on specific design / functionality elements, and plan follow-up meetings to review improvements together.

Treat these follow-up meetings in a similar way to those you held during the early design phase, and consider specific elements rather than incorporating holistic feedback.

Do not be surprised if you have to go back to the drawing board to change items that have been overlooked or requests for the last design change. Sometimes it ends up what a customer initially thought they wanted, without their own fault. Stay calm, do not take it personally, and find ways to communicate more effectively and work together to stifle their unique vision.