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How to Get the Best Work from a Web Designer
-- Save Your Money, Time, and Sanity
By Johanna Mac Leod
You can get the best work from a web designer when you prepare before your meeting. Here are four steps to help you save money and time - and make your web site profitable.
Step 1: Clarify Your Priorities
At the company My Enchanted Light, we use a questionnaire to help our clients pinpoint and clarify their priorities. Here are examples of a Top Priority:
- Top Priority: gain web site visitors' email addresses as the first step in a comprehensive Permission Marketing process.
- Top Priority: create a web design that creates ease of shopping and improved profitability.
- Top Priority: gain web visitors' instant trust and create excellent credibility for a professional consultant. (In this case, the web site is a support element of another marketing plan.)
- Top Priority: create a web site that "pops" with cutting edge visual appeal.
Your top priority guides the whole web design. I have trained in web marketing in addition to web design, and my clients appreciate that I help them clarify the web site's best direction for meeting their company goals.
To support identifying your priorities, you need to make notes on the following vital details:
- what's your target audience and what are their characteristics
- the "style" of the web site
- the color scheme you're interested in using
- how the web site will incorporate the company's existing logo and look of their stationary and existing materials
Step 2: Bring in Sketches or Examples of What You Like in Other Web Sites
Steven Spielberg screens scenes from classic movies to help his cinematographer see what he wants in his own production. Similarly, when you bring in sketches or the addresses of specific web pages (for example "http://www.tommarcoux.com/communicatetowin.html" ) your web designer can easily see what you prefer.
Step 3: Write a Rough Draft of a "Web Site Storyboard"
A web site storyboard can be as simple as a sketch of "balloons" connected by lines. You can begin with a balloon with "home page" written in it. Then, you can have lines extending to balloons designated by the following:
- free articles
- guestbook
- testimonials
- products
The "products.html" web page can have additional lines leading to balloons designated with Product 1, Product 2, and so forth. The web site storyboard helps you think through your web site. You'll find it an excellent tool for brainstorming and coming up with surprising solutions.
Step 4: Make a List of What You Do NOT Like
When asked about what they want, many people reply, "I don't know." Also, people reply "I don't want it to look like X." We have included this fourth step because having a list of what you do not like can save your web designer time in going up 'blind alleys.' Most budget overruns occur when clients require vendors to redo something. When you provide your web designer with a list of what you do not like including colors (like shocking pink!), you save time and money. At My Enchanted Light, we give clients a checklist that helps them easily target elements they want left out of their web site design.
Conclusion
At My Enchanted Light, our goal is for clients to be delighted with their web sites. These four steps of preparation help clients clarify their ideas and meet their goals.
Copyright 2001 Johanna Mac Leod
Johanna Mac Leod is the founder of My Enchanted Light. Her web design work is visible at WinWomenWin.com, eTimePulse.com, and TomSuperCoach.com among others.
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