5 Tips For Giving Your Web Designer Feedback That’s Actually Useful

As you move through the design process, your designer will check in periodically and ask you for feedback about the work they’ve done so far. While you might feel uncomfortable being brutally honest, this clear, concise, and truthful feedback is an essential part of the design process. Otherwise, you’ll end up with a site you don’t love, and no one wants that! Here are some ways that you can offer your designer effective feedback.

1 - Analyze the big picture first

Before you start offering suggestions about font and color changes, take a step back and analyze the site as a whole. Is the layout what you’d imagined? Do you like the overall look and feel of the site? If the answer to these questions is yes, then you can move on and start combing through the details of the site, but step one is to assess whether the big picture stuff is working.

2 - Be specific

If something isn’t working, telling your designer “I don’t like it” won’t do much to improve the situation. Instead, try to be as specific as possible. For example, you might say, “The color scheme makes the text hard to read” or “I’d like our contact info more visible on our homepage.” A general thumbs down isn’t an effective way to provide feedback.

3 - Offer your thoughts in the preferred way

Check with your designer and learn how they prefer to receive feedback. If you’re texting them with notes or calling them while you’re in the car, these thoughts may end up lost in translation. There may be a specific portal for offering feedback, or they may ask you to put it all into an email so nothing gets overlooked.

4 - Don’t be afraid to ask questions

If there’s a component of the site that you don’t love, feel free to ask your designer about the thought behind the creation of that element. They might tell you about a specific design principle that makes this element necessary, or it may be a creative choice that they made that can easily be altered.

5 - Be honest

No matter how much you like your designer, honesty is crucial. Don’t end up with a site you hate just because you felt too guilty to be transparent with your designer. You can word your feedback gently (you can tell your designer that you’d like to see more color without telling them that their designer style is bland and lifeless) but it’s important to speak openly about the changes you’d like to see.