The 5 scariest words in web design

“We hired a marketing director”

If your long-time client ever uttered this sentence to you before, then I’m sure this sent shivers down your spine (sorry about that).

It’s fresh on my mind, as I got that exact email from a client this week.

The beautiful site I built less than a year ago… Yeah, the new marketing director has a few ideas.

What could have been a disaster ended up being saved by paid discovery.

I’ve talked about some of the benefits of paid discovery before, but this is another feather in the cap.

After my shock wore off on the Zoom call where I got see the new “design” the marketer whipped up (in Canva, of course!) — I reminded myself to not be defensive and just ask questions.

So I pulled up our discovery paperwork and started scrolling through…

“How does this new design help you better connect with your audience, which we defined as retirement age, upper-middle class? Or has that changed?”

“Is there a reason you’ve decided to abandon your commitment to accessibility?”

“How do you think removing the blog will affect your SEO you’ve been working on?”

Crickets.

Of course they hadn’t thought of any of those things… They were using all the cliches — pop, sleek — and the big one — “wow-factor”. None of which would do much to help them achieve any of their goals.

We went through the discovery document, got everyone re-aligned on the actual goals of the website and decided that maybe a sans serif body font and more saturated colors might be enough to modernize the website (and make the marketing director feel like they are pulling their weight).

Had all the decisions we made at the beginning of the project been based on taste (or “wow-factor”), I wouldn’t have had a leg to stand on.

But we did the work.

Not only have they decided not to destroy all my hard work — I think it saved them from shooting themselves in the foot with their pizzaz pistol.