April 6, 2006

Clients and Copy

How do you manage clients and copy? More specifically, how do you manage clients who fail to produce timely, well-written copy? Even more specifically, how do you keep from shooting yourself when clients are ridiculously late with copy, submit endless copy revisions, or provide copy that's either badly written or badly proofed?

I'm just asking.

Also, I realize I'm lumping together three different problems, so here they are, one at a time.

Late Copy

The worse thing about late copy is that I can usually see the problem coming, sometimes as soon as the initial conversation with the client. When I do, I always voice my concern about it, being careful to present the issue in general terms, as though it's something I mention to all clients. For example, I never say anything like, "It's obvious to me that you're a procrastinator (or overworked, or dysfunctional, or possibly schizophrenic) and that you will likely make my life miserable while I wait for you to produce content for your website."

In the case of one client, fearing for my future sanity, I added a clause to the contract that specified a financial penalty for failure to provide feedback or content within an agreed period. This worked, in the sense that I ended up getting paid for being kept waiting, but profiting from another's failure made me feel like I was running a credit card company. I can't imagine the client appreciated it much either.

Endless Revisions

In fairness to every client I've ever had or ever will have, it isn't until you see your content in context, in an actual website, that you can really tell how it reads. So while I ask clients to provide a finalized set of content before moving on the site-building stage, I rarely complain when they send later revisions. However, there comes a point when it's too much. In one particularly painful case, the process continued for three months, with near-daily revisions.

As with the late copy problem, the only solution I know is to charge more. Beyond a reasonable number of free revisions, I've taken to invoking the "Changes" clause in my standard contract:

Changes necessitated by client revisions or additions following approvals at each project stage will be billed additionally at a rate of $— an hour.

Clients rarely object (they signed the contract, after all), but I still don't like doing this, in part because I can't help empathizing with perfectionists.

Bad Copy

This one never fails to astound me. How can you invest significant time and money on a new website and then fail to write anything but lousy, limp, uninspired copy? Not everyone's a gifted writer, of course, so you'd think the less-than-gifted would recognize this and find a way to compensate (e.g., hire a pro). It rarely happens. And then there's the lack of proofing, which I find inexcusable. I usually end up correcting the most egregious errors, if only because I can't bear it.

The really difficult part, though, comes when I realize that the site is going to launch with bad copy. A website is only as good as its content; everything else—the design, architecture, functionality, code—supports the content. So when the copy sucks, the website sucks, which makes me feel my work is for naught, which in a sense it is.

What's To Be Done

I'd love to conclude with some practical recommendations, but the truth is, I'm flummoxed. The best I've been able to come with is a combination of early communication and a few carefully-worded contract clauses. It's not much.

If anyone has any brilliant ideas, I'd love to hear them. How do you manage clients and copy?

Published in Business, Clients, Content, Process