Early on in my career, we worked with a pest control company. Caution green trucks. It was like a hazmat team showed up to every single job — and that green was so obnoxious. Boy, did she want it on the website.
Not accent colors. We’re talking main color, full width. The whole thing.
And I fought with her up, down, left, right.
The Battle Over Caution Green
The first design we came up with was much more reasonable. The green was there — accents, pops of color, balanced against a darker palette. Even against a black it would have been amazing. But she looked at it and said what every web designer eventually hears.
I don’t like it.
So we went back and forth. Back and forth. I told her straight — this is very bright, this is something that might be hard to look at. I know it’s your color, but I think accents would be better. She wasn’t hearing it. She wanted that green everywhere, and she was not shy about saying so.
I put up as much of a battle as I possibly could. Not because I wanted to win. Because I had the experience, and I knew what the screen was going to look like when she got her way. But there’s a line — and it’s not where most web companies think it is. Some companies use a moment like that to push you toward something more expensive. That’s not what this was.
You’re Paying the Money
Here’s where I landed. I told her — look, you’re paying the money. I’ve documented the account of my recommendations and if you love it, that’s what we’ll do.
That’s the whole philosophy. If someone’s paying for something and they have strong opinions about it, they should get what they want. We’re not going to hold the site hostage over a color. We’re going to make our case, document it, and then build what the client asks for.
She relented a little on it. She wanted it all over the place and we were able to tone it down a little. The final product was tolerable. It just wasn’t where I thought it should be.
And that’s fine.
Because that disagreement wasn’t a power struggle. It was just — look, we have the experience and this is the way we recommend. We said our piece. She said hers. We went back and forth until both sides had been heard. And at the end of the day, we yielded to what she wanted.
That’s what a healthy disagreement with your web designer should sound like. Not someone talking down to you for having an opinion. Not a company that disappears your feedback into a ticket system. Just two people who care about the project being honest about what they think — and the person paying getting the final say.
If you’ve dealt with a company that made pushing back feel like something going wrong instead of something going right, that’s not a disagreement problem. That’s a relationship problem. And it doesn’t have to work that way.
In the end, the client won. That’s how it should be.
Yeetish Question
What if I love something my web designer hates?
Then you should get it. We’ll tell you what we think — we’ll be direct about it, because that’s what you’re paying us for. But if you’ve heard the recommendation and you still love it, that’s your call. We document our side, we build what you want, and we move on. No grudge. No passive-aggressive “I told you so” down the road. It’s your business and your website. We’re here to make it as good as it can be — not to pressure you into our version of what that looks like.