It's Monday morning. You brace yourself, open your inbox, and get immediately flooded with a barrage of new requests, questions, and action points from both clients and collaborators.
It’s the same on your team messaging app: countless notifications, out-of-context screenshots with horrible annotations everywhere but in your actual design feedback tool. Then the phone rings, and an important client wants to immediately discuss the website that you just shipped for them.
Before you know it, the day is over. You couldn't answer everyone's questions, you don't know what half of the screenshots were about, and you can't even find the other half because it got buried in the avalanche somewhere along the way.
Welcome to Designer hell.
Is client feedback the worst part of being a designer?
Okay, maybe the description above was a little overdramatic, but it’s not too far off the mark.
For web designers, collecting and managing client feedback is often frustrating, rife with inefficient back-and-forth, delays, and miscommunication.
To build Iteration X and make it the perfect design feedback tool, we talked to a lot of potential users - including designers in web design agencies - to understand why feedback is such a tricky part of the website development process and why it is the source of so much frustration for both the designers and their clients.
Feedback is inevitable in web design, either because clients are not always good at communicating their design needs, or because they actually want to leave part of the brief up to the designer and their creativity.
Which is why there are so many web design best practices that agencies make sure to implement before and during any client project, and also why so many of these agencies use a dedicated design feedback tool to effectively gather and manage clients’ feedback.
How to use design feedback tools and processes
Gathering design feedback is not just about putting a finished product in front of the final client and letting them drown you in feedback and bug reports of every type.
This applies to web design agencies as well as product designers: feedback should start early and be structured throughout the creation and delivery process to keep things moving efficiently.
Start with Prototyping Tools and Wireframes
Wireframes and prototyping tools play a vital role in taking a website or an app from vision to concrete visuals.
Wireframes are like blueprints for a website - they provide a visual representation of the structure and layout without getting into too much detail.This helps clients focus on the overall flow and functionality of the site rather than getting caught up in specific design elements.
For that reason, they give everyone involved a visual representation of the website’s pages or the product’s different frames, allowing clients to visualize the end product before it is fully developed.
This enables them to provide more accurate and constructive feedback during the early stages of design, usually about the overall look and feel of the website, the branding, the theme.
Using wireframes to gather early-stage design feedback offers several benefits.
1- It allows agencies to identify any potential user experience (UX) issues or design flaws early on, saving time and effort in later stages of development.
2- It provides a clear communication channel between designers and clients, ensuring that everyone is on the same page regarding the website's aesthetics and functionality.
There are loads of popular prototyping and wireframing tools that can be used for this, like Mockflow or Gliffy, that agencies can use for effective collaboration with clients and that can act as design feedback tools in a pinch.
In addition to wireframes, agencies can also use high-fidelity prototypes to gather more detailed design feedback from clients. High-fidelity prototypes simulate the actual look and feel of the website, allowing clients to provide feedback on specific design elements, such as color schemes, typography, and imagery.
Tools like InVision, Figma, and Adobe XD can act as design feedback tools, as they offer features such as interactive prototypes, real-time commenting, and version control.
These tools streamline the feedback process by allowing clients to easily annotate specific elements or sections of the design and provide contextual comments.
Using prototyping tools and wireframes is like giving clients a sneak peek of their website before it's fully built. This early look not only gets clients excited, but also lets them share their thoughts when it's easiest to make changes. It’s a win-win: the end result is way better, and the process creates a solid bond between the agency and the client given the in-depth communication anchored in visual context.
Manage expectations around communications
Clients sometimes need to be given certain guidelines around communication and progress so they know what to expect. This can be information of how often they will hear from the agency, about what subjects, and via what channels.
For example some designers find it helpful to show progress page by page, others like to design a brand concept then decline it over different types of assets.
However, this goes both ways. It’s important for web design agencies to also clarify how they expect their clients to communicate with them, and over what timelines. Otherwise, they risk overlooking how many delays they might cause to the process.
Introduce design feedback tools early
To effectively communicate with clients and streamline the feedback process, it is essential to use a dedicated design feedback tool early in the process, not just after the product is already live.
These tools serve as a centralized platform where clients can provide their input and agencies can keep track of all the feedback received. By using such a tool, agencies can ensure that all feedback is organized, accessible, and easily actionable. We’ve done a review of issue tracking and issue capture tools that can be helpful with this selection, and you can also read more about this further down.
Use QA Testing and UAT in Gathering Client Feedback
Quality Assurance (QA) testing and User Acceptance Testing (UAT) play a significant role in gathering client feedback during the website development process.
By conducting thorough QA testing, agencies can identify any issues or bugs that may affect the functionality or user experience of the website. UAT allows clients to test the website themselves and provide valuable insights from their perspective and using a design feedback tool makes the QA testing phase much easier.
Leverage internal team feedback
This might seem counterintuitive when you’re trying to improve your client feedback process, but internal feedback can cut down significantly on the feedback you receive later from clients, and has the advantage of conforming to your own company standards.
Designers, developers, and product managers within the agency can actively participate in providing feedback and suggestions, especially around issues resulting from simple mistakes that can make the client deliverable look sloppy.
This internal feedback loop also helps identify areas for improvement and ensures that the final website meets both client requirements and industry standards.
By encouraging collaboration and open communication within the team, agencies can leverage the diverse expertise and perspectives of their members to enhance the website's functionality and user experience.
Collecting feedback on staging websites and live websites with design feedback tools
Designers can collect feedback at every stage, from prototypes and frameworks to sites in productions, but one step where a lot of the feedback tends to be chaotic and rather concentrated is the staging step.
Staging websites are replicas of the final website used for testing purposes. Clients can navigate through these staging websites and provide feedback on design elements, user interface, even little odd ends in copy or visuals.
Another approach is to collect feedback on live websites once they are deployed. This allows clients to interact with the actual website and provide feedback based on their real-time experience. By collecting feedback on both staging and live websites, agencies can ensure that any issues or concerns raised by clients are addressed promptly.
We built Iteration X specifically so that clients can easily capture issues in one click whether on staging or live websites, ensuring all the feedback is gathered in one central environment without the need to take screenshots with manual annotations anymore.
Using Iteration X as a design feedback tool allows both clients and collaborators in an agency to easily leave comments or suggestions directly on specific elements on live web pages while still on their browsers, which makes it a whole lot easier for the clients.
We also built it with the designers in mind, however, because all of these captured issues are then automatically sent to the Iteration X issue tracker in a format that makes it easier to manage, filter, assign and resolve them.
Both clients and designers can attach more files to each captured issue - on top of the ones captured with the Iteration X Quick Capture tool, comment in the thread, and share with other team members or clients, always in context.
Beyond the issue capture capabilities, Iteration X also offers a whole issue management environment where the product or project manager can assign issues to the developers and designers, set priorities and mark issues as resolved directly within Iteration X.
The issues captured using Iteration X can then be synced to your preferred project management tools, like Jira, Linear or Asana, or exported to any tool that you and your team use thanks to our latest integration with Make.com.
Using issue tracking in the design feedback process
It’s not just about capturing the issues and opening a one-way communication channel from client to designer. Ultimately, to avoid the hellish scenario we were describing earlier, designers need a dedicated design feedback platform anchored in the company's processes to keep things streamlined and organized.
Picking the right tool and building the right process takes time, and thoughtful research. The company needs to take every moment of their interaction with clients into account. This includes key moments such as initial consultations, design presentations, development milestones, and post-launch support. By strategically incorporating feedback opportunities at these touchpoints, you can gather input at critical stages of the project and ensure that client expectations are met.
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The one thing that we keep hearing from users when discussing design feedback tools and solutions is that it’s about all the stakeholders, not just the designers - or their clients. For the tools to be fully adopted, they have to work for everyone: from the clients who capture issues or bugs, or log in requests for changes, to the designers who either implement them or pass them on, to the engineers who build the required changes, to the QA teams who make sure the deliverable is client-ready.
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Like what you saw with Iteration X’s team collaboration features? Get the Iteration X Chrome extension and start using it for free now. Click here to begin with Iteration X today.
