If you are going to have a website built, your relationship with your web designer is crucial! It is important that you educate yourself about what the project involves, what is best for your project, and who you want to work with. Once you decide on a web designer, you will need to work with them. You know your business best, but your designer is an expert at what they do. If you develop a mutual trust and understanding, the result will be a beautiful website that works for you and your business.
1. Consider your options.
There are hundreds of ways to go about building a website. Whether you need a large scale e commerce website with an unlimited budget or a small informational site, there is a solution. There are many decisions to make when having a website built, and one of them is technical – what software or which platforms will you need to build your website. You may not know what WordPress, Magento, Drupal, Joomla, Shopify or HTML/CSS are, but you will need to choose one of these platforms upon which to build your website. You should research your options or consult with a web designer so that you can understand this decision and choose the best one for you. The other decision you need to make is exactly who will be building the website for you. Do you want to work with a freelancer or a large design firm? This decision will be largely dependent on budget, but choosing between similar companies depends on portfolios, testimonials, and personal interaction.
2. Understand what you like and what you don’t like.
When you approach a designer to do work for you, one of the things they will probably ask you to do is to look for some websites that you like, and some that you don’t. Your designer does this to get a good idea of the style you are looking for, what kind of moods and colors you prefer, and to get a general feel for your taste. Your designer will use your tastes to help them design a website that they think you will love. It is very important for you as a website owner to have a basic understanding of web styles and whether or not you like them. Do you like minimalism? Do you prefer a dark or a light color palette? Do you like clean, basic fonts or do you prefer to be more daring? Your designer will be able to help you understand all of these design concepts, so if you are confused, ask! Knowing what you like and don’t like is extremely helpful to your designer.
3. More Importantly, understand WHY you like something and WHY you don’t like something.
Even more important than knowing the difference between what you like and what you don’t like is understanding why. Do you like a certain website because it has an interesting layout? Or are you inspired by it’s bold use of color? Perhaps you like the way a certain business presents content, or how they showcase their photographs. Again, it is imperative that you and your designer come to an understanding about your preferences. If you aren’t sure what you want, that’s ok! Some of the best projects result from the least direction – in fact your designer will probably jump at the chance of presenting you with different ideas or coming up with something new. In this case you need to be extremely open minded to the designer’s ideas. If you are picky or have specific needs, make sure you are honest with your designer, but also try and remain open to their suggestions.
4. Think about user experience.
Your business is extremely important to you. You love your business and you know everything there is to know about it. While the idea of sharing this with new potential customers online is very exciting, it is important to consider user experience to avoid making critical mistakes. You and designer will discuss informational hierarchy and they will know how to present your most important information in the best way. A common mistake that website owners make is not understanding informational hierarchy and insisting on putting too much information in the wrong places. For example, your designer might create a home page based on your design preferences and what you discussed to be the most important information. At this point, because they are so invested in their businesses, some website owners will want to add even more information to the home page. They will request more logos, more lists, more colors, and more of everything. You as a store owner may feel that if the information is not presented immediately, visitors will not see it. In fact the opposite is true. When your site’s visitors are overwhelmed by too much information, the most important information can get lost in the clutter. Be sure to discuss this informational hierarchy with your designer, and instead of putting everything on the home page, consider focusing on making it easily accessible with a well designed website navigation and flow.
5. Trust and consult with your designer.
If you like your designer’s portfolio and style, and you want to work with them, developing a trusting relationship is extremely important. Your designer is a professional who will put all of the time and effort necessary into building you your dream website, and they have a lot of information about how to do so. You, as a business owner, know that you always appreciate knowledgeable customers but you also probably love when customers ask for your insight and opinion. After all, you are the expert! Give your designer the time he or she needs to consider your preferences and create a design. If you are worried about the direction of the product, instead of becoming frustrated with your designer, consider their reasoning and their expertise. Much thought goes into creating your design, so ask them why certain things look the way they do, and the thought behind the design just might change your mind about it. For example, because they might have a better understanding of user experience, they can explain to you why it’s a bad idea to have 30 categories in your main navigation, or why a color palette or 50+ colors just won’t work, or why white text on a black background is really hard to read. Just because you like or think you want something doesn’t mean it’s good for the web or for your website’s visitors.
6. Understand the investment
A website is a great investment for your business! However, a website is not easy to build. It takes a lot of hard work and consideration to make something you will love, so don’t underestimate the level of investment you are making. If you are willing to find the right people and work hard to maintain your site, it can be one of the best decisions you will make for your business. By giving people easy access to information and products, you have the potential to expand your customer base exponentially. You should make sure you are ready to make such an important investment and that maintenance shouldn’t be taken lightly. Either you or someone you hire needs to be consistently maintaining your website in order to make it work for you
7. Be prepared. Ask your designer exactly what they need from you, and give it to them!
Building a website is a collaborative effort. Your designer will ask for a lot of information and content, and the project depends on it. Make sure you stay available to your designer so that they can have any questions answered and have any content added. Before the project begins, make sure you know exactly what they will need to you so that you can start to prepare it. After all, you don’t want the website to be finished and then delay launching because you haven’t finished your end of the work!
8. Be patient.
Like I said before, building a great website takes a lot of time and knowledge. The experts building your website can’t do it in a day, so give them the time that they need to get the job done correctly. Work with your designer to set reasonable deadlines and keep up your end of the bargain by delivering content and payments on time. If you feel like a certain aspect is taking too long, simply ask and your designer will be able to explain to you why something that seems simple might actually take some extra work.
Customer Success Manager
