Three Easy Steps To Ensure Your Web Design Project is a Good One!
If this is your first web experience, you may be feeling overwhelmed. Lots of new terms and strange abbreviations to learn. The best way to make designing a website a happy experience is to be organized, keep timelines and communicate promptly. Do those three little things and you will be halfway home.
Organization is Key
You are going to have to do some work with the development of a new website. Sometimes lots of work. Content, images, forms, attachments all have to be collected, written, and sorted. Where do you begin? Start with your website outline. Just like the outlines you did in elementary school – start at the top and drill down in each section. If you work better with visual information, you can sketch out a branching diagram of your future site. Just draw boxes to represent the pages and start thinking logically about the flow your customer might take as they navigate your site. Click here to see a simple branching diagram. This one was done in a graphics program, but you can do one with a piece of paper and pencil just as easily. Let this skeleton serve as a guide for everything you need to build for your website. Write content to go along with pages and start thinking of any images you may need to include in each page and section for headers or themes. Keep it fluid and be prepared to modify where necessary!
Keep Your Timelines Realistic
We are fast, but don’t expect to be up and running with your brand new 50 page e-commerce site in a week. Each project is very different and we can’t promise the exact day when your site will launch. 98% of the delays we incur result directly from clients not getting information to us in a timely manner. There are many phases to website development, and each project might have different deliverables that might push back the next phase slightly. In a nutshell, you will have a specific time frame for the page mocks design and approval, a time frame for html page build out, and a time frame for content insertion and proofing/testing. You can see how one hiccup in the system can push your project out further. We will work hard to keep everything moving, but it is a very collaborative experience and we need your help!
Communication
Our clients are all over the place. From California to Georgia to Aruba and a bunch of other places scattered in between! Email is the best way to communicate with us so we can keep a record of any and all updates, requests and questions. Of course, there will be times when we will absolutely need to communicate via phone conference and we will be available at any time for your convenience.
Giving us accurate information and following-up on our requests quickly will help us be more efficient in coordinating multiple projects and keeping YOUR project on time. If you have a question, please ask us immediately! We want you to be happy with your end result and we will work to make it right for you.
