What do you guys do when this happens? Just start building a second one?
You might spend several hours creating a mock up, for them to say no I don’t like that.
OR, do you not allow it to happen by building the site piece by piece and getting customer’s approval every step of the way?
I usually have a few alternative ideas, on some basic theme, so I just test each idea by having two or three pages which show them, and say choose the bits you wish to use from these. Luckily almost all like the same final idea as I did, so they are just seeing my ideas evolve.
It depends if you’re working for Andy from Little Britain!
Ideally, you should have enough communication back and forth throughout the process that nothing will come as a big shock to either of you. Hopefully the customer has made his requirements and wishes clear, and you have made your design intentions clear.
If all he can say is “I don’t like it”, I’d be tempted just to walk away. If he can’t offer anything more constructive than that, the chances are that he won’t like the next design you do either. Or if there’s nothing in your concept that he likes and he wants you to do something completely different, you might want to forget it. Starting from scratch again is not a good use of your time.
On the other hand, if he can elucidate what it is he doesn’t like - eg, the colours are too striking, the pictures are uneven, there’s not enough text, etc - but he is happy with the overall concept, then you have a much better chance of being able to iterate the current design, tweak it, adjust it, and come up with something that the customer likes - it might be substantially different from your original design, but he’s given you pointers in the direction he wants you to take it, and that’s what makes the difference.
before design, i think we had better do more communication with the customers, get to know what the customer really wants, meanwhile, we need to let the customer know what we want to do, anyway, communication is the keypoint!
First off, we work for a set price. We have it stated in the contract that we will create 2 mockups and that they get 1 major revision to the design after they pick one they like more. After that, there’s an hourly rate attached to the contract for any work done beyond what the original quote states.
This way the client knows ahead of time that they get a limited number of revisions, we’re not working for free and we’re not working on and on and on for. ev. er.
This article & podcast focuses specifically on “Design by Committee” but I think you’ll find it useful reading and/or listening: