What if I don't like the design?

Then we change it. That is a normal part of the work rather than a problem, and the order things happen in is designed to make it cheap.

Why disagreement usually happens earlier

Research first, then copy, then design, then build. The words are agreed before anything is drawn.

That order matters here more than anywhere else. By the time you are looking at a design, what the page says is already settled, so what is left to react to is genuinely how it looks. That is a much smaller argument than the one most projects have, where “I don’t like it” turns out to mean the page is saying the wrong thing and nobody noticed until it was in a layout.

If something is going to be wrong, you want it wrong at the words stage. A paragraph is quick to change. A paragraph that six pages have been built around is not.

What “I don’t like it” usually means

It is worth pulling apart, because the fix is different each time.

It does not feel like us. Usually tone rather than layout. Often fixable in the writing rather than the design.

My clients are older than this looks. A real observation about audience, and a useful one. Type size, contrast and how much is asked of a first-time visitor all follow from it.

I expected something more impressive. Worth talking about properly. Sites that impress other designers and sites that produce enquiries are not always the same thing, and we would rather have that conversation out loud than build something neither of us believes in.

I just prefer the other one. Also a valid answer. It is your business.

How to give design feedback that gets you what you want

Say what is wrong, not what to do about it. “This feels cold” is more useful than “make the heading blue”, because the second one fixes a symptom and usually creates a new problem.

Look at it on your phone before you decide. Most of your visitors will.

And send it in one go rather than in fragments across a fortnight. Six separate notes take longer to resolve than one list, and the timeline is mostly made of waiting.

If we genuinely cannot agree

It happens rarely, and it is better faced than managed.

You own what has been produced and paid for, and the work is on open standards rather than a proprietary platform, so it can be finished by somebody else without starting again. Nothing is held hostage. That is true at every stage, not only at the end.