10 Reasons why clients who want brochure sites suck

Yes, that's right. I have compiled a list of why working with the standard mom and pop clients absolutely sucks and why everyone should turn and walk away. This list is only 60% serious, however I know every designer will know what I'm talking about.

10. They always want "easy" changes

What always seems like just a quick little text change never turns out to be that after you have to go through, open Photoshop, tweak the file, realize the text is too big to fit in the alloted space, re-design the whole box area, tweak a few other nearby features to make sure those now compensate for the new design that had to be formed, and on and on. Oh yeah, can you change that one more time?

9. They mess up your design

Once the site is finally on their server and out of your life, they have to go through and start hacking it up immediately. Just a quick change here, another table here and viola, your site is now once again crap.

8. They love the worst sites

They always favor happy and funny over usable and easy. This isn't necessarily a bad thing totally, but when you have pictures of your dog, stupid glittery borders and animated GIFs everywhere the site starts to get confusing.

7. They NEVER have their logo in vector format

I know you know what I'm talking about here.

6. They value their opinion more than yours (the expert)

Ever been in a meeting and asked the client why would we want to have the navigation at the bottom of the site and not the top only to hear the famous, "I like it more that way." Apparently they are now an expert on web usability (however they contradict reason #4).

5. They expect everything done immediately

You know how it goes, you wait and wait and wait week after week before finally receiving any type of input as to what needs to be tackled next and then they want to see an update the following day.

4. They run IE5 in their office

You finally finish building the site and it works great on 99% of browsers, that is, except the 1% located in the office of yours truly. And it HAS to work before being...

3. They never pay what you're worth

You know the feeling, you're in a meeting and you finally quote an offer that is very reasonable only to be trampled with the, "WOW, ISN'T THAT A LITTLE STEEP?" Yes, very steep considering reason #1.

2. They NEVER give you any content

Getting content from a client is harder than not walking away from the start. The site has to rely on pure filler and extraneous design elements because there is never any actual substance provided for the site, which oh by the way...

1. They don't need a site to begin with

Do they really even need a site? I mean isn't the purpose of the site to bring in new business anyway? What good is a site if the only way people find it is from your business card AFTER you meet them. And once they finally arrive there what are they going to learn from the lack of content? That it's time to call up Mr. PISSED-OFF-AT-LAST-CLIENT for a brand new waste of bandwidth. And so the cycle begins once again.

Conclusion

Avoid the mom and pop need a site for sites sake brochure sites at all costs.