jogger

Hi all,

Indulge me if you will - any advice is always greatly appreciated. I know somebody out there, if not all of you have delt with 'this guy' before

I'm a small time web designer, with a handful of clients who are happy with my work. They are happy, I am happy - we're all happy.
Until one day, a very non-committal client comes along proclaiming to know 'nothing about this sort of thing', and requesting that I 'hold his hand' and 'babystep' him through the whole process.
Since then it has been a nightmare. We had our initial meeting in which I rattled off my 13 page questionnaire that covers everything. I fired off a quote that I couldn't get to him fast enough, only to wait for 6 weeks for him to want to move on it.
Fine, I say - I had room in my schedule, we met again, sketched a little site outline, discussed content/ideas, and off I went to design.
He loved the mockup 'I'm impressed' he says - so on we went to html.
Now he has a beautiful frame, but has no idea what to put in it, which is entirely contrary to everything we had discussed in our first 2 meetings. In person, he seemed to know exactly what he wanted - I could see the bubble over his head with his idea in it. Now, he's not sure how it's all going to 'tie together', and he needs to see it 'in action' before he can decide whether or not he likes it.
Here's an example - I actually did acquire a collection of photos to be displayed. He asked me to start placing them on the website leaving room for him to write a text description underneath. I asked him for a little more direction (how many pictures of each category would you like to display?) He says that until he sees it active he cannot decide if he wants 3 or 6 or 12 on a page. So I respond that I will be placing three pictures, because, as the designer - I provide the suggestion that I think will work the best. In some cases, I did not even have 3 pictures for that category, so I used repeated pictures. I'm sure you can guess that after he saw the layout he asked how he was going to display more than 3 pictures. It turns out that after he saw it with 3 pictures, he realized he would need to display many many more. I, of course, responded in a way that required him to pay more money for adding more pages to display more pictures (as our agreement does indicate a page limit), unless he wants his users to scroll on forever. I do not even have the 'many more' pictures yet.
And finally, after increasingly large intervals of silence between our communication, and his assurance that he will not 'rush' me, he suddenly needs to have it complete in one month, and I still don't have all of the content yet.
When I ask for it, he suggests another 'meeting' - I can't continue to have meetings to brainstorm - I can do that over the phone (It is over an hour for me to drive to his location and back, and I absolutely refuse to have clients to my private residence - which is where I work).
I have never worked with a client who can't figure out what they want on their web pages. I repeatedly suggest times that I am available for a call, but he makes no attempt to contact me during those times. (I did let him know up front that I had a limited availability).
Anyway - whether its deliberate or not - it's very difficult. I've found a way to respond to change requests, but how can I get him to figure out what he wants, when he won't communicate with me over the phone, and it is very inconvenient for me to travel to his location every time he has trouble visualizing.
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Clair Cameron

I suggest you to don't waste your time with him, will damage your business and spoil the time to spending with other projects.

Atleast you can assign a tech person (if you don't want to leave the client), they both can discuss only through chat or phone, sometimes it will work fine.

We had such experience with one client, he came with only the core of the business, not know how to implement, content to the websites (5 portals), even design, logo, color etc.

We assigned one writer to prepare the text content for all of the pages, then he asked us, all of his websites should come in top 10 position in google and other search engines, we did some of the keywords in top 10 since those are newbie domains.

Finally he escaped, without paying us. This is our first and last very experience.

So that be aware of these kind of clients.

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