What your boss really wants from the website

Every designer has lived this meeting: the boss asks for something bigger, bluer and more above the fold, and you feel the craft draining out of the room. But behind almost every clumsy request sits a legitimate business fear.

Learn to hear the fear inside the feedback and you stop losing arguments. You start winning them — with pages that satisfy the boardroom and the visitor at once.

Decode the request

‘Make the logo bigger’ usually means ‘I am afraid nobody will remember us.’ ‘Add more to the homepage’ usually means ‘I am afraid we will miss someone.’ Answer the fear and the surface request dissolves.

Repeat their goal back in your own words before showing a single pixel. Clients who feel heard give braver feedback; clients who feel managed give defensive feedback.

Bring numbers to a taste fight

You will never win ‘I don’t like it’ with ‘but it’s good design.’ You can win it with evidence: bounce rates, heatmaps, load times, conversion deltas from the last change you shipped.

Keep a small library of before-and-after stories from your own work. One honest case study beats ten trend articles when a stakeholder is nervous.

Stakeholders do not hate good design. They hate feeling that design is being done to them.— Learned the hard way, in a boardroom, in 2019

Design the presentation, not just the page

Walk in with one recommendation, not twelve options. Options invite opinion; a recommendation invites discussion. Show the goal, the evidence, the design — in that order.

And always bring the mobile view first. Nothing focuses an executive mind like seeing what ninety percent of their customers will actually see.

Your boss wants the website to make the number go up and the phone stop ringing with complaints. Everything else is negotiable.

Design for those two outcomes and you will find the top floor becomes your most enthusiastic design partner.