Home
>
Web Design
>
Getting Along With Your Web Designer

Getting Along With Your Web Designer

You're all ready to get started creating your web presence and you've found a skilled web designer to build your website for you. Do you know what he needs from you to do an efficient job? Good web design requires cooperation between the architect and the user to create a product that will serve its intended function, and you don't have to be an internet expert to do your part. There are a number of things you can do when working with a web designer during the building and maintenance phases to smooth communications, reduce confusion, get work done faster, and get the results you want.

Building a New Site

If you're starting from scratch, your first job as a customer is to define what you want the designer to build.

Start by doing some research on the internet to see what kind of sites your competitors have and how they are organized.

Look at different layouts and navigation styles and decide what you like best.

Know what colors and text styles you like and provide good, high-resolution copies of your logos and company graphics.

Decide what kind of information you want people to find on your website. Do you only want to sell stuff, or do you also want to provide technical information about your products, processes, or services?

Discuss with the designer how to organize your information with efficient navigation and page design.

Do you need the customer to provide you with information through the site? Make a list of what information you need to collect and discuss with the designer how it can be collected and conveyed to you.

Do you need to use information or graphics from your suppliers on your website? Get the supplier's permission to use their information. Never use someone else's exact copy without their permission, this is plagiarism.

Write your own content for your website. Remember, you are the expert on your products and services. Even if you are a bad writer, draft the information you want to present on each page and hire a professional writer to polish it for you.

Define when the website will be considered completed. At some point, the initial design needs to be considered finished, and any additional changes from that point forward should be considered updates to be billed separately.

There are also some things you shouldn't do:

Don't ask the designer to start over with a completely new design in the middle of the project or when it is nearly complete. Nothing irritates a designer worse than when you approve a design, then change your mind three weeks later and decide you don't like it anymore after the website is more than half finished. It creates a lot of extra work and will often cost you more money. It also delays the designer in working on projects for other customers, making everybody unhappy.

Don't keep adding to the design requirements as you go along, making the project bigger and bigger. This is called mission creep, and it hinders the designer in knowing how a project is going to be completed and giving you an estimate of duration and cost. Sometimes changes are unavoidable, but it's best if you can lay out all your plans at the beginning and stick to them.

Don't make the designer guess what you want. Give as specific instructions as you possibly can and you are more likely to get what you want faster.

Website Maintenance

Once the site is completed, you will probably occasionally need to make changes to the site to update information, add new products, or remove outdated or discontinued items. Here are a few tips to make this process more efficient as well:

Be specific, and don't make the designer hunt through your website to find where the changes need to go. Provide the exact page and location on that page for each change that needs to be made. If some pages contain similar information, copy the URL of the correct page from the address bar in your browser and include it with your list of changes. Designers work on a lot of websites and may forget where everything is in yours if they haven't looked at it in a while.

Try to send changes by email whenever possible. Copying and pasting text from an email or Word document is a lot faster than retyping text from a fax or a document sent by mail, and adding a graphic that is already in a digital format (.jpg or .gif) saves time over scanning it from a brochure and cleaning it up first.

If you are making small changes within a body of text such as list, a restaurant menu, or a description, highlight the changes with a different color text so that they can be found with a quick visual inspection instead of a detailed reading and comparison with the old version. If you need to remove text, make sure you show what is to be removed. If you simply omit it from the new copy you send, the designer might not notice that it's gone.

If you think something may be broken and needs to be fixed, describe exactly the steps you took after entering the website to recreate the error. This helps the designer pinpoint the source of the error faster so he can proceed with fixing it.

These are just some basic things you can do to forge a more effective and profitable relationship with your web designer. If you can do your part to make his job more efficient and be an easy client to work with, he will be more happy to serve you in the future, and you'll get what you need with less trouble and less worry.

Stacy Clifford is the founder of chilipepperweb.net and has spent four years assisting customers in understanding how their web services work.

efficient cleaning crew Mundelein ...

In The News:

Black Friday deals are already drawing scammers who use fake delivery notices and gift card payment requests to steal your personal financial information.

Apple's iPhone Duo reportedly outlasted the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 by over three hours in battery tests, but its weight and repair costs raise concerns.

Florida Polytechnic University's Jetson ONE eVTOL police vehicle named Astro still awaits FAA authorization before officers can fly operational patrols.

OpenAI's new locked chats feature lets you protect ChatGPT conversations with a PIN, Face ID or Touch ID, but there are key privacy limitations.

A phishing email disguised as an Evite fooled a man even after he emailed his friend to verify it, revealing how compromised Gmail accounts aid scams.

Microsoft's AI diagnostic system identified 83% of complex medical cases in a study, more than doubling the 36% accuracy of generalist doctors.

Account takeover threats go beyond stolen passwords as criminals exploit session cookies, SIM swaps and MFA fatigue to bypass your login security.

SpaceX is reportedly pursuing access to 80,000 cell sites to turn Starlink into a major wireless carrier rivaling Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile.

Tech advocacy groups warn that foreign nationals at AI companies like OpenAI and Google pose a national security threat amid a lack of federal oversight.

Singapore researchers built the world's first touchscreen woven into clothing, surviving 50 machine washes while displaying images and responding to touch.

The Fox News AI Newsletter covers the latest artificial intelligence technology advancements, including the challenges and opportunities AI presents now and for the future.

A startup founder woke to $449 in unexpected OpenAI and Anthropic charges after stolen API keys were exploited during the "Black October" cyber wave.

Educational Testing Service hackers stole millions of California student records, but families who moved out of state years ago may also be affected.

Apple's iPhone Duo screens are cracking near the hinge just days after its $1,999 launch, and iFixit's CT scans may reveal what's going wrong.

Travel expert Katy Nastro says 50,000 American Airlines AAdvantage miles vanished from her account after someone redeemed them without permission.

Google AI Overviews can't be permanently turned off, but adding -AI to your searches and using the built-in Web filter can help bypass AI summaries.

Attaxion researchers found 30 fake Texas campaign merchandise stores traced to just two sellers hawking gear for competing Republicans and Democrats.

GM plans to debut eyes-off driving in the Cadillac Escalade IQ by 2028, but safety testing reveals how long distracted drivers take to regain control.

Data brokers assign labels predicting your health, finances and religion based on browsing and purchases, then sell those profiles to businesses.

Elon Musk says he'll give one SpaceX share to every kid in America in 2027, but key details about eligibility and distribution remain unclear.

ClearSpace UK's robotic spacecraft with giant claws will chase down dead satellites at 17,000 mph, with a 2029 launch from Scotland planned.

A fake Social Security statement phishing email uses the SSA logo and a convincing layout, but the sender's domain instantly exposes the scam.

A clean credit report doesn't mean your identity is safe. Six ways criminals can steal from you without triggering a credit monitoring alert.

Carolyn Marvin, a 78-year-old retired professor, was arrested after blocking an Uber Eats delivery robot on a Philadelphia sidewalk for months.

The Midnight Mimosa malware campaign hides inside cheap Android phone firmware, giving attackers powerful access before owners even turn devices on.