Gathering quality feedback from your design clients may not be your favorite task, and I totally understand that! In the years that I’ve worked with graphic, brand, and web designers, I’ve learned that gathering quality feedback from your design clients in order to understand what revisions, if any, are necessary to moving forward with your project can get a little bit tricky. 

So today, we’re talking about three specific actions you can take to get quality feedback from your design clients. When you follow this process, you are going to be able to get your design work approved often with zero revisions! 

3 Ways to Get Quality Feedback From Your Design Clients

Fun fact for you today! This is actually a training that I share inside my Brand Strategy School program, my signature community for graphic, brand, and web designers on their journey to reach consistent 10K months. I’ve been so thrilled to see how successful this process has been for the incredible students inside the Brand Strategy School.

Today I wanna share a little page out of that training with you so that you’re able to save yourself time, energy, and stress as you deal with your design clients and seek out the quality feedback that you need. 

Set The Stage For Success

Before we start sending out our design work and hearing, “This is approved, no changes needed!”, it’s important that we create an atmosphere with our clients where they understand exactly how to share feedback with us. 

If we’re being honest, for most of our clients they might never have worked with a professional designer for visual branding, brand strategy, or website design. We have a responsibility to educate them about how they can communicate with us best! Plus, as an established designer, there’s probably a method that you enjoy using to gather clear feedback from your clients. Your clients need to know that. So here’s where we begin to educate them about your process. 

Create a clear outline of how you accept feedback. Outline where people are able to share their feedback, what kind of feedback is accepted, and what kind of feedback is not accepted. For example, you might share that when you deliver a visual brand for your client’s review, that they need to fill out a specific form to share their requested revisions. Or, you might ask that they respond to a loom video that you’ve shared commenting on the specific timestamp where they want to see any changes, if any. By making it incredibly clear how to share feedback we are able to eliminate receiving input from your clients that don’t mesh with your process.

There is nothing worse than getting a ton of individual emails from a client asking in each one for an additional change. Communicating to your ideal client, or to your current client, that revisions are welcomed, but they are accepted in these specific ways, sets that expectation and creates a boundary professionally with your client. They understand how they’re able to communicate their changes with you. 

Remember, for a lot of our clients this is an exciting, but it can also be a nerve wracking process! They’re trusting you to create a visual brand and website that reflects who they are, what they stand for, what they do, and who they serve. So it’s important to assure them that this is a collaborative process!

If you’re following a method, similar to what I teach inside the Brand Strategy School, and you’re building your design on brand strategy, then you have a design brief that is very specific and aligns with the direction that your ideal client is wanting to pursue. When you present your work to your client, don’t forget to educate them about how your design aligns with the initial strategy that they signed off on. This is going to make sure that they are really receptive about how this design fits into the big picture. 

Ask Specific Questions

Where I see a lot of designers getting stuck with receiving quality feedback from their clients is giving clients free range to share any, and all thoughts. What we don’t wanna do is ask your client, “what are your thoughts?” Instead, we want to guide them and ask them incredibly specific questions that will give us the quality of feedback that we are looking for. Some examples of this could be,

“What about this design do you find memorable?” 

“What about the design is missing?”

“Where is the design confusing?”

Communicate to your client. This is not just a matter of, I like it, or I don’t like it. This is a matter of what are your thoughts and how does that pertain to the original strategy that we agreed to pursue. With those specific questions in mind, you’re able to gather truly fantastic feedback, even from clients who sharing their feedback or asking for revisions, isn’t a strong suit of theirs.

They’re going to be able to have these prompts to lean on, which then does not require that you are playing detective and also trying to be a mind reader at the same time. 

Feedback needs to be descriptive. In order to get descriptive feedback, it’s important to ask descriptive questions. So feedback is also an opportunity to invite your client into an open discussion. If your client is giving you feedback saying that something is, “just off” that’s an opportunity for the two of you to talk about it. Remind them that with the feedback they share, it is all about the design. It’s not personal and you are here serving in their best interests!

Follow Up To Get Quality Feedback

When you’re asking for this feedback from clients, it’s not just a matter of asking them what questions they have. Follow up again! Even when you’re initially submitting the document or the asset that you want a client to review in that presentation. Follow up by clearly asking and outlining any details that will make this part of the process stay on track.

For example, are you requesting their feedback by a certain date? In your presentation or in your email include that your feedback is requested by this specific date. If they have questions outside of what you’ve been asking, let them know that you are able to support them through this process. If they have other questions or they’re looking for further explanations, let them know that they can reach out to you, that you’re here to support them. Let them know that if everything is looking great and is approved as is, then they need to share that feedback so that you can move on to the next step. 

With that being said, you’re making it clear how they can share feedback, what specific feedback you’re looking for, when they can respond to that feedback, or what the next steps are if the design is approved as is.

Learn How To Get Quality Feedback From Your Ideal Design Clients

Friends, I’m so excited to be able to share this with you, because I know that receiving quality feedback from your design clients can be a process that holds you up, that delays your timelines with clients, or at worst makes it feel like a confusing experience for both you and the client.

By following some of these steps, you’re going to be able to position yourself as a professional. You’re going to be able to gather fantastically clear input from your clients, and you’re going to be able to move your projects along smoothly. 

This is a little peak at one of the lessons that I cover inside my signature program for a graphic, brand, and web designers, the Brand Strategy School. I show my students how to receive zero revision type feedback on their presentations, and the exact questions to use. I am also sharing how to present to their clients in a way where we’re minimizing the necessary edits, and we are maximizing quality input from your client. 

If that’s the kind of community that would serve you well on your journey to reaching consistently profitable months in your design business, by using brand strategy as your superpower, then consider this your invitation to join us inside this incredible community.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE BRAND STRATEGY SCHOOL

If you’re curious about just how powerful the method that I teach inside the BSS has been for me and for some of my students over the years, then be sure to check out my free on demand training, where I cover how to exponentially grow your design business using brand strategy. The beauty of this free training is that it shows you how to grow a design business to 10k months and beyond, without taking on more clients than you can handle, without directionless hustle and without struggling to be seen by your ideal clients online. 

CLICK HERE TO JOIN ME FOR THIS FREE MASTERCLASS