This is another in our series of posts meant to demystify the process of how we work with a client to design a successful client website. Really, though, a lot of these principles could easily be applied to other creative and marketing projects. In the end, it’s all about listening to the client, learning all we can, and involving the client as much as possible during the process.
The first thing we do after being awarded a web design project is intense research. When we work with a client, I want to know all I can about their business, their competition, and their industry. Every client is different, and by learning all we can about them we really up our chances of designing a successful website for them.
With the competitive research, we make it clear to the client that we’re not learning about the competition in order to copy what they’re doing. If you go that route, you’ll end up with a website that ends up one step behind the competition. We prefer that our clients blow the competition away.
Much of this preproduction phase of working with a new client involves listening and learning. Once we’ve digested things, we start to create mood boards, and we come up with initial information architecture thoughts. It’s important to spend time thinking about the organization of information on the site, how it goes together, and how to appeal to the client’s multiple audiences.
If a major content revision is part of the website redesign, we begin rewriting the content in cooperation with the client right about here.
After signoff on these things, we’re on to wireframes. Wireframes are simple gray box designs that give us a tool to use when meeting with the client to help both of us visualize the organization of information and the functionality of the website.
Finally, after wireframes, we begin to work on the website design as it’ll eventually be seen online. Like every other part of the process, this is a collaboration between us and the client. Often, perhaps due to the intense groundwork we’ve laid, we nail it on the first go around. Sometimes we need a few cycles of design work to get to signoff.
On submitting the design: we don’t blindly email clients the design, we tend towards multimedia presentations that explain the context of the design. This helps our contact at the client company to more easily explain and show off the design to other stakeholders, if needed.
Once the design is finalized, we move on to development. A clean, well-organized backend is as important as a great design. We’re really into clean, web standards code that’ll help a client’s website last a long time. By following web standards, we also get a website that displays on mobile devices and tablets- and a website that’ll do well with SEO.
Almost all websites come with a content management system these days. In the end, it’s important to not only have a great website design, but to have a web platform that makes it easy for the client to update and maintain the site as much as possible on their own. Any modern web design company will have embraced the idea of a CMS years ago, because like using web standards it’s the right way to build websites. We tend towards robust, open source content management systems (one of our current favorites is MODx), as a way to protect our clients’ investment while allowing them to get the most out of their new website.
Finally, we launch. And then we do a post launch wrap with the client. After launch, we’re available on either a retainer or as-needed basis to make any changes needed that can’t be done by the client.
