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We’ve all had those clients who seem endlessly slow to provide the content we need. It can drag out a project for an eternity!
How common is this issue? What are your best strategies for getting the materials you need without the headaches? Also, are there ways to spot these clients early on so you can avoid the problem?
I know hourly rates are one solution, but the market is so competitive. I worry about losing clients if I switch.
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I put a dead project clause in all of my contracts. If they don’t communicate with me for a set amount of time, there are financial penalties. It’s not foolproof but can help to set expectations.
Pretty simple: After x days, your project is archived and it will cost $X to resume work.
I mean, things happen. As long as the client isn’t stringing me along with BS, I usually let it slide as I have other projects I can work on. I usually tell them when they miss the deadline that I will be working on other projects and I’ll return to theirs as soon as I can after their submission, but I can’t sit around waiting forever. If I feel that I’m being strung along, or more than a couple of weeks go by, I gently remind them that they have just a few days left to get me that content else I have no choice but to archive the project. When you (they) are ready to continue, it will cost you (them) $X to restore the archive.
>What are your best strategies for getting the materials you need without the headaches?
You can do this with several approaches, and 2 of the main ones would be:
– legal approach: to protect yourself via contracts with penalties, BUT our clients (in Croatia) don’t like this approach at all, and we would lose them for sure if we would insist on this approach
– “friendly” or supportive approach: it works for the majority of our clients, but not for all – we “push” clients for sending materials by helping them prepare them via some premium AI tools we bought. Namely, either we prepare draft materials for them, or they send us some bullets inputs which we use for preparing draft materials via AI tools, and when we send them those draft materials for revisions – they have tons of comments/revisions/corrections, BUT by that time we already managed to push them to start working on those materials, and usually we finish it (with our help). :-)PS In our project’s proposal I calculate the general time planned for that additional work.
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>Also, are there ways to spot these clients early on so you can avoid the problem?
In general, we have noticed that potential clients who are tardy in responding to our Web Design Questionnaire are also slow in providing the necessary materials for their website.
We changed our contract – it used to be that the final payment was due when we put the site live. It’s now when the coding is finished.
I’ve got a meeting in a couple of weeks about launching a site that I started coding in August. The launch date was pushed back to December 2023. It’s currently scheduled to launch on 1st May 2024.
I just want it to go away.
Super common problem. Clients need to understand that they need to participate or pay for actual content creation.
My project policy, resulting from painful lessons learned when I started, is half down to start, another payment at a set time period (depending on size of project), and then the rest due at another set time. The exception is political campaigns for which we charge 100% upfront. I can usually get the completion up to about 95%+, so if they are dragging their feet, I collect 95%, hand over files, and best of luck.
Just set a projected due date for the project in the contract that indicates when 100% of the fee is due. If they drag their feet, you collect that fee on the due date no matter what. If they want to come back a year later, then they need to fit into your schedule and open a new scope of work to continue working on the site. In those cases I would reserve the time to launch from the original scope, but everything else becomes hourly.
I had one client that no matter how I explained it, they simply could not provide product images in one standard resolution or aspect ratio.
Some would be in portrait, while others would be in landscape, others would be cropped…
In the end I just hard coded the site to reject images that were below a certain resolution and with the ones that did get uploaded, it found the centre of each image and cropped it to the format needed.
Needless to say, I’m glad that one is over with.
Best way I’ve seen it done is cut the cost of the project into two payments. One to start and one a month later. This works especially well if you’re also selling them an ongoing plan where the monthly price will go down to $699 or whatever a month after that second payment. This incentivizes the client to move quicker and you still get paid if they drag their feet.
I’m writing from Turkey.
Unfortunately, it is very common with us. The customer starts by saying that we have to finish this job within 30 days.
Then it takes 10 days to reply to an e-mail you sent. It takes 3 months between the start and the end of the project.
And it is the big companies that do this. Those who have an advertising and marketing department within themselves. So there are special staff in charge of sending me content 🙂
I wonder what the solution is.
The lack of organisation of the incoming documents is another problem. The technical part of the website is not difficult. Understanding the content sent by the customer tires me more.
They wants something at the beginning of the work. After 10 days, don’t have that section, move this content here. It’s like doing the same website twice.
Life is all about incentives: if you bill weekly or monthly for your time they’ll get it done quite fast.
Form follows content, not the other way around. I’ve lost the count of clients who wanted us to come up with an empty website design without any content. They are clueless.
I hire people to get the content. Never wait for the client. Charge more
I do mostly Woocommerce store development and one thing I never did and never will is add the products *for* the client. A few clients have asked about it, saying that “I don’t have the time do to this” or “I don’t have employees” (I work mostly with small businesses and solo enterpreneurs) but then if the client can’t find the time to propel his own business into the online world then it’s not the right client for me to begin with.
At most I will help with bulk importing via spreadsheet, but that is reserved for larger stores with thousands of products.
As for my business, I try to filter my clients beforehand so I rarely have a problem with projects dragging on forever or problematic clients, even because it is the client’s interest that his online store is operational as soon as possible.
I am quick at making websites for small businesses that don’t have a lot. I say after rough draft they have to be the one to connect with me with changes or use Markup.io to convey changes.
Once they go live I accept payment. If they drag their feet, I follow up, and or repurpose the template for another client.
This accepting payment afterwards to go live keeps me from having an issue of making it an awkward departing if need be, but I DONT recommend it for everyone, only for folks heavily confident in their website building skills
At what stage do you ask for content? The best one imo is when you have a wireframe they approved. Because they will see visually how the structure looks like (even if still in b&w) and it will be way easier for them to provide content tailored for those sections, compared to answering a questionnaire or just having to start from scratch with an empty doc file.
Tends to be easier if the discovery phase was done properly, because at that point you already know what key sections the most important pages will have, plus a bunch of other details
Not a solution to avoid all sorts of delays that don’t depend on you, but it helps with the content part. I’ve learned that from a (good) web agency and it helped me a lot