Before you contract a web designer to design your small business website there are several things you can do to make the process easier and therefore save you money. If you do some initial planning ahead of time it will help your designer get a better sense of what exactly you want and speed the project up because there will be less back and forth dialogue between you and your web developer.
You will also have a better quote on the job as you will have everything there for your designer to know exactly what you want before the process begins. This will eliminate any surprise expenses you were not budgeting for.
Here is a checklist you can use to be sure you have all your ducks in a row before your first meeting or email to the designer.
- First you need to surf many sites to decide which features or elements in your layout you really like. If you find a website that you really like, copy the URL so you can present a few samples of site layouts and designs that you like to your designer. This will give them a sense of what you find pleasing and what you hope your site will look like. Make notes of which features of each site you liked the most.
- Write a list of features you absolutely must have on your site. Things like contact forms, opt-in lead capture form, links to your Twitter or Facebook accounts, blog, etc.
- Write a wish list of features that you might want to include if your budget and web space allows. These tend to be the “bells and whistles” types of elements that are a little flashy. Sometimes it makes sense and sometimes it doesn’t. Your web designer will be able to advise you on these. There are times when simpler is better but it is good for the designer to know what you find “cool” about certain sites.
- Keyword phrases. This is critical since your web designer is not usually an SEO expert. You must provide them with a list of keywords you wish to use for your website. Otherwise you need to hire an SEO specialist to optimise your site once the design process is done. Don’t leave this one up to the designer because they will tell you it is done but it will be totally ineffective.
- Content. Provide all of the written content for your designer to implement into the site. You know your business better than anyone else. Don’t leave the copywriting of your page up to a designer who, firstly, likely hates writing content about a business they know nothing about and, secondly, will charge you a large sum of money for content creation because they hate doing it. So do make sure you provide the written end of the website as well as any video or audio clips you would like to include on the pages.
- Gather any images, logos, etc. together in one folder to send to the designer. If possible, make the images web-ready ahead of time. By web-ready, I mean shrink the sizes of very large images down to web-friendly sizes. This will save your designer time. Remember that small images cannot be made larger unless they are vector images so if you are supplying really small images, be aware that your designer will not be able to make them bigger to use on the website.
- Decide on your colour scheme. Unless you sincerely do not care what colour your website is, do your designer a favour and select a colour palette. Nothing makes a web designer crazier than a customer who says “choose any colours you like, I am not picky” and then says “I don’t really care for those colours” when the job is done. If you do, be prepared to pay for a redesign as it is really unfair to expect a designer to completely rework a web design because of your lack of input.
- If your website will have a shopping cart, supply all of the info for your payment method as well as all product images, descriptions and attributes such as available colours and sizes.
By following this check list and providing the designer with as much information as possible upfront, you will ensure the project goes off without a hitch and is completed in a quick and painless time period. Do make yourself available to the designer during the web development stage. Making them wait for answers or information will slow down the process.
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