It’s happened to us all at one point. You toil over the design of your newest website project, cross all your t’s and dot all your i’s and finally complete that mockup for submission to the client. The client is overjoyed! You hit it right on! Oh but wait, he’d like a small change. He has this cute little animated gif of a butterfly that he thinks would look perfect right next to his horizontal menu. Oh and that nice neutral color you chose, he wants it bright yellow.

I read an awesome article this morning that really made me happy to be a freelancer:

A guide on how freelancers can compete against large design studios

Customer service is so absolutely important in the freelancing business. I’d rather lose time and money than have a single unhappy customer any day.

A few years ago I started offering web design services to those in need of a web site. Ever since, It’s been a constant learning experience. When I advanced from website coding to directly interacting with clients, I was taking a pretty big step. It was hard enough trying to understand this crazy markup language, and now I had to learn how to interact with clients? Sheesh. Thanks to trial and error, I’ve come to understand a few things about establishing and maintaining the best possible relationship with my clients.

The other day I was going back and forth with a potential client about re-designing his web site. It’s a small site, and I worked with this person before – so it didn’t take us very long to hammer out the details. The next step was writing out the contract and getting him to sign off on it. I had heard about a service where you could electronically aquire a signature, so I figured what the hell, I’ll give this a try.