Although it does not happen very often to web designers, there can be occasions when a client, for whatever reason, claims that the website a web designer has delivered was not what was agreed upon. The claims can range from the website not having the appearance they asked for, fewer pages than agreed, or lacking functionality that they thought it would have.
Now, we should not be so naive to think that there are not a few rogues who sadly give the vast majority of professional web designates a bad name by selling clients short and quite rightly those clients have every right to be aggrieved. However, if we focus on web designers who genuinely strive to deliver great service and great websites, we have to consider the scenarios where clients dispute what was agreed upon.
One of the key problems that cause such situations is that the agreement to design and create a website was done verbally, or if it were done in writing, it has the scantest of details as to what should be included. This serves neither the web designer nor the client and is why, when a dispute does happen, neither has anything to back up their side of the argument.
This can escalate and the dangers for the web designer are that they are not likely to receive final or full payment from the client, and worse, the client could set about rubbishing that web designer’s reputation by going on a crusade of posting negative reviews about them on the internet.
So, if any web designers are reading that and hoping there are ways to avoid such a situation, the good news is there are. Prime amongst them is using service delivery agreements, which are ideal for businesses that provide services such as web designers.