What do you do to get the feedback you want?

If you have done consulting work in web development, I think you've all experienced what I often experience: the clients who don't know what they want, and hate everything you whip up in preliminary designs. This type of client usually gives very vague feedback ("Could you make it look better?") even if you ask very specific questions about the design, don't understand the concept of "placeholder," and in the worst case, don't understand why a web site development is going over the timeline after it takes them weeks to make a deliverable to us, such as feedback, graphics, content, or even payment. Deep down, though, I know they have an image of what they'd like their website to look like; they just can't put it into words.

I'd like to know, as consultants, what have you done to mitigate this rampant problem, besides simply refusing service or cancelling the contract?

Quite simply we start charging them more. We had one client who chopped and changed his mind a heap of times. We agreed a design spec with him and he signed it to say he agreed and from then on when he requested any major changes to the design we said we'd have to charge for our time, as our Ts &Cs stated any change to the design spec would be charged to the customer. He still changed his mind but not so often when he realised it was costing him more.

The customer asked us to design a new logo for the company and that process was hell on earth, in the end we ended up coming up with about 20 different logos because he just didn't know what he wanted. Still he got quite a cool one in the end, and we got a fair bit of money.

So in short, get the customer to sign a design spec and contract which clearly states you will charge them more if the spec changes.

That's already part of my policy, however, that only happens after I actually get the spec... and it's hard to get any spec when the most descriptive way the client can put it is, "Be creative." Basically, I give the client three "chances," by showing three preliminary designs, varying in a number of ways, and after the third chance, I do charge... but the client often avoids the charge by basically cancelling the account after the third one. It has rarely happened that way, but it's happened enough that I'm wondering if there's a better strategy.

I've never seen one but I've heard that some companies give potential customers a questionnaire to fill in which is meant to help them pinpoint exactly what it is they want from the site and want it to look like. You could also ask if there any existing sites they like and find out what areas of that site they like and why.

Haha, yes, I've even done that, and they either avoid the questionnaire, or even tell me they can't think of any sites. I'm starting to get the feeling that this type of client is impossible.

Ah right, sounds like they're a right pain in the arse! What about taking a few screenshots from template sites and seeing if they like anything from them. That way they can see a lot of sites and it is minimal work for you.