Ask HN: How do you deal with clients who keep second guessing your decisions?
Let's say you have a client who wants a fairly basic "this is my business page", so you throw together a typical 10 page site and show them. They come back with "the page needs more pop", "make this word 4x larger" or "make these images twice as tall". These clients tend to have no idea how the internet works and have no experience with design or user experience decision making.
It gets under my skin because this type of behavior doesn't really exist in other trade industries. If you stood over your mechanic's shoulder and told him to use a different tool or stop everything he's doing to do it your way instead of his way he would probably punch you in the mouth yet this happens all the time with web development.
I understand that everyone thinks they have "the eye" and they want to somehow take credit for the site in some weird way. Usually these types of clients are the ones who will start blaming you if their site doesn't succeed too because they don't understand how the internet works and pretty much ignore all of the advice you give them.
Am I just unlucky to get these clients often or is it the norm? How do you deal with them? They are my biggest complaint with freelance work and honestly it's bad enough to me that it saps my will to work.
I also want to throw in that just giving into them because "the client is always right" isn't always a reasonable choice to make. Sometimes their decisions are really bad, so bad that I would no longer want to be associated with making the site. I would feel ashamed to have it in my portfolio.