Today I got an email from a client asking me to make small changes to their websites main navigation. What seemed to be a minor issue to the client turned out to be a rather fundamental change in their site’s structure.

I think very often clients don’t recognise how much effort we have to put into things they consider small. And who can blame them? After all it’s not their field of expertise. I guess it’s our responsibility to educate them and help them gain a better understanding of how things work on the web.

Maybe it’s worth working on site with a client in the same office throughout an entire project. I actually would really love to do that one day. At least that’s what I learnt today.

I met with a client at their offices today where I gave small a presentation on how to structure the content on a web page properly. I prepared some slides but I also explained things using the CMS I set up for them.

The workshop went well. The participants asked some good questions and I got my points across very clearly. I made them aware of the fact that a properly structured HTML document is not only accessible to search engines but also to every single one of their users.

Although today was a very basic workshop, I realised that there were a lot of new things for my client’s team. I think we often forget that there are people outside our web design bubble that don’t know about those basic principles. And that it’s rather our responsibility to educate them than their fault. That’s what I learnt today.