7 Tips to Get Your Designs Approved by Clients

When you’re in the design business, you know you’re rarely going to get it right on the first try when it comes to giving clients what they want. However, your goal should be to provide your clients with impressive results as soon as possible. The sooner you get approval over your design, the faster your clients are satisfied, and then you can proceed with your next project. Here’s how to make that happen using one high-tech tool and a few simple techniques.

You want to give your clients exactly what they’re asking for, but you only have so much time to work on each project. You’ll find that when clients assume there’s no limit on revision requests, they seem more likely to ask for small adjustments here and there, until you realize you’ve spent countless hours tweaking the design. This is why you should let clients know upfront how many revisions they get without any extra charges, and once the numbers of revisions reach that limit, you’ll have to charge more.

Your clients might ask to see different colors on the design you have created, or variations that are only slightly different from the design you’re working on. You might as well do it, even if you don’t think they’ll like the result. Not only will this show that you’re willing to go the extra mile to satisfy your clients, but you might also be surprised to find your clients actually like a design you didn’t think they would. When you use Google Jamboard to show your designs, making variations is easy. Whether you use the stylus to hand draw designs on the digital whiteboard or mix and match photos from Google Image, you can rest assured every session will be automatically saved to Google Drive so you can easily access each creation whenever you want to.

Ensure you can back up every decision you make for your designs, especially if those decisions are not in line with the client’s requests. For example, maybe your client said he wanted a light color for the design, but you’ve found that darker color looks the best. If you’re ready to present that design choice, be prepared to show research that supports your decision, since your client might not easily trust designer’s intuition. You can show off your design choices via Google Jamboard by adding a Google Hangouts meeting if your client can’t be there in person. And of course, be prepared to change the design if your client still prefers his or her original request.

You might let your client walk you through the revisions as you make them. This way, the results will be more accurate than if you simply read requested changes that your client would like from an email. Your client doesn’t even have to come to your office and watch you make the changes. He or she can hop on a Google Hangouts meeting from anywhere and from practically any device to show you what changes they would like you to make. He or she will love the simplicity of this process, since there’s no need to coordinate schedules for an in-person meeting, or even learn to use a new app--since your client has likely used Google Hangouts before.

Unless your client is a small business owner, he or she is probably not the only person who has to like the design in order to get it approved. So you might be working hard to impress your client, and then you find out he or she loves it--but the CEO doesn’t. This is why you should ask your clients who makes the final decisions on your design. Then try to loop that person into the process early on, and set up conference calls that involve Google Jamboard whenever you want to share your progress.