A big part of marketing is about the image you project from inside your company as well as out. As someone who wants to come across as very helpful with a supportive and can-do attitude, I got into the habit of asking clients after my final invoice ‘How do you feel it went so far? All feedback is appreciated’

It’s a simple question but one which has proven invaluable. The latter part invited negative criticism as well. I would like to say this never happens but it does which is a good thing.

We all make mistakes… but without generalising, I make mistakes. Most mistakes I know about and fix them before the client (and in my line of work, their clients) ever notice, if it’s a big mistake I will inform the client and tell them what I’m doing up at 3am, what I’m doing to fix it and when they can expect it to be rectified. Some ‘mistakes’ go unnoticed however. Asking this question ensures that I know what they feel I did wrong, and this gives me the opportunity to put it right. When that customer is deciding whether or not to renew, that could be a make or break decision. I have so far lost only one client in 2 years.

When things are going perfectly, it instead gives me the opportunity to proudly add their comments as a testimonial or I can ask that it is submitted via Ecademy or LinkedIn.

Customer feedback is essential as there are three types of complainers:

1) Something went wrong and they tell you
2) Something went wrong and they don’t tell you
3) Nothing went wrong and they complain anyway

Number 3 is the most annoying but number 2 is dangerous for your business because they are telling someone.

This is the easy way to move number 2′s into the top slot.

Any design and development project can lead to a lot of assumptions. I had a debriefing yesterday with a client who wasn’t entirely happy with the way the overall project went though they were happy with the end product. After discussing with them at length where they felt it went wrong and how we could avoid making this same mistake in future we deduced that the main cause was based on initial assumptions. I assumed they would be happy organising their own photographs to go onto the site and offering a lot of input to keep control, they assumed my web design quote included a complete re-brand of their company logo and that their feedback wouldn’t be required and so on. The odd assumption I’m happy to fulfill, it’s my fault it wasn’t clarified in most cases, but there were enough to drastically increase the timescale and lead the client to feel I’m less organised than I am, even though I went beyond what was initially required to reach a final product.

Moving forward, we’ve taken their feedback on board and introduced a three-tiered pricing structure. Unless one tier is specifically asked for in terms of function and marketing, any quote we now issue will have three prices, one for each tier and potential clients can work within their budget and expectations to choose the right one before continuing:

Tier 1: Website Design

We provide the website design based on current branding to reflect you and your business, we provide the website editing platform to run the site and make any discussed functionality work. We can offer tips for successful content and search engines and it will be the responsibility of the website owner to copy their text and products into the pages. This is suitable for most businesses who want to retain control.

Tier 2: Website Complete

As with Tier 1 but we work with one of a number of copywriters to get content and sales copy which again reflects your business and build the website completely. You will then have the ability to make any changes to the copy directly through the editor.

Tier 3: Website Marketing

As with Tier 1 and 2 but we also provide search engine optimisation to help push your site up through Google and can optionally manage adword campaigns to really boost traffic to your site. This is definitely the most complete solution so comes at a cost, it does however mean you can step back from the website altogether and concentrate on your own business while we manage the site.

With this in place, potential clients will have more choice to balance requirements and budget and we can avoid making the same mistake in future.