Web Design
If you pick up a newspaper or read articles online you’ll easily find articles of companies and industries talking about fiscal performance from last quarter, or last year, or last month to now. One of the main things that big companies keep their eyes on is their money. Money that they take a lot of time forecasting how much they’ll make from day-to-day, week to week, and so on. I even believe that this is their number one priority and what they spend most of their waking business hours contemplating. This is because they are rated or graded by their track history or performance. Now what about you? Let me explain.
I don’t need to go over why every business needs a website. Been there done that. I also don’t need to explain how more and more people are losing their jobs and careers and NOT sitting around waiting for a new one – but instead becoming entrepreneurs and small business start-ups. I’m even not going to ask you if you think we’re in another dot-com era, or how mobile apps will be even more vital to a business in the next few years. What I am going to tell you is that as a designer (albeit web, graphic, programming, whatever) your market is only going to continue to grow. All of these people are entering your market in droves all across the country. They need business cards, logos, web sites, letter heads, and corporate identities, and they need all of that yesterday. Sure there are numbers about there that suggest most start-ups don’t last more than 5 years before they fail, but I think even that’s going to change due to there being not many other options past “plan b.”
All of these new businesses have something collectively that major businesses forgot. Customer service. I’m sure you don’t have to think back too long when you last had to call an 800 number and got someone who could less about you, hung up on you after you explained what help you needed, or couldn’t understand what you were saying past the script they need to read you. As a small business, all of these “corporate” gripes are remedied when consumers look towards their local providers. They get:
- Immediate customer support
- Local phone number to someone they probably already met in person
- A physical location to get products or services
- A pleasant customer experience that will be praised to all of their friends
As a designer, you can provide all of that and more with almost little effort than a good attitude and work ethic. Good work is good, but great customer care goes so much further. Especially in a world where a customer’s bad experience can be Tweeted or Facebook’d online for all the world to see. Don’t forget that those posts never come down. As long as you have a solid business plan, have a good work-flow, and know how to treat each of your clients like they’re your only one, you’ll survive this recession and plenty years after.
Web Design
Anytime you see something with “legal” in it, it normally grabs your attention. I don’t mean to scare you with this one, but it’s something we do need to go over. A lot of websites out there have images on them. A lot of those images may not be approved from the person or company who actually own the images. There are some heavy consequences if you happen to use them without permission or consent. Similar with plagiarized content.
I remember years ago when I was in high school having to do book reports and essays. ( I won’t tell you how long ago that was though, lol.) Come up with a great 3.5 structured essay, then for the cover I’d search the internet for a picture to use below my title. Back then there wasn’t Google so I’d use Netscape to go to Yahoo or Lycos. I’d use the class printer to print out my picture and staple it to my report and I’d be good to go.
Lets fast forward to websites and blogs of today. Sure everyone has a website. If you don’t have a website, your next phone call should be to us because we’d like to know why not. There are many sites and blogs that use pictures they found on Google images that may have been saved and used without the content providers notice. Now most of this content wouldn’t be sold or resold, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Also, just because an image is found on a search engine, doesn’t make it legal for you to use on your own site. Even if the site you found it on wasn’t the originator or royalty free site.
“Royalty-Free, or RF, refers to the right to use copyrighted material or intellectual property without the need to pay royalties for each use or per volume sold, or some time period of use or sales.” (Wikipedia source)
There’s a whole bunch of RF sites out there for you to use. Some free, but most will have a premium to pay for credits to then use to download images. These images can range from people, events, buildings, vectors, logos, and more. To give you a few sites check the list below.
Free RF sites:
Premium RF Sites:
The last thing you want to happen is getting a cease order in the mail or email about some content you have on your website. Similar to website copy, graphics and images are protected too. And just so that you know, there are web programs and bots that troll websites looking for unauthorized content. Similar to like a facial scan or fingerprint recognition system, these applications work around the clock looking for content that may not be authorized in their databases.
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One of the biggest mistakes I think in this business is to treat your customer as a one time sale. Or even worse, as a number and not a long-term business relationship. This is actually one of our “theories” that a customer is worth more to us than a one time sale.
Now what are you doing as a designer in terms on client retention? Some designers I know have some sort of medium they use to keep in constant contact with their clients. Some of those tools are:
- Email newsletters
- Snail Mail postcards or advertisements
- Facebook messages
- Twitter mentions
- Quarterly phone calls
Those are all nice, only IF you perform them as necessary and with an expected frequency. There’s also a level of engagement that needs to be monitored per client too. For example, if you have a few clients that respond more to snail mail letters than they do with social media, you may want to save your energy on social media marketing with those in particular and engage with them via postal mail.
The real issue though is actually paying attention to what they’re saying or thinking about their design needs. Some things to think about may be
- When was the last time they updated their website?
- Do they have any new services to add to their brochure or print media?
- Is their email newsletter ready for a design upgrade?
- Is their blog up to date with relevant and new posts?
- Do they need more business cards for newer employees?
I can list out a bunch more but you get the drift. The threat with not listening to your clients is that they’ll end up complaining about their needs. Those complaints may not reach your ears, but a competitor’s ear. I’ll confess to a recent story from me. I created a site for a client maybe about 3 years ago. Updated the site after a year to a whole new look and feel. Client was happy. But I never followed up with them to see how they were feeling about their site, how their business was going, how many leads their site was generating them, etc. Now all of those could have been great reasons to sell them more services and I missed out on the opportunities. So as a result, they found another designer that was in closer contact with them (almost daily) and he created a new website, domain, and all for my client. Unbeknown st to me, the client was since then promoting their new site on all their media. The new site was horrible mix of flash, dated design and layout, and sub par graphics, and using iframes pulling content from the site I had created. I almost fell out of my chair in disbelief on how my client could have preferred this over my work.
Moral of the story is to keep in contact and close ear of your current clients. Their businesses are growing just like yours, and just as your needs change so will theirs. As you add-on more services, pass those service options to your current clients. Even if they’re not in the position to utilize them now, chances are they will be in the future OR know someone who can now and refer them to you. At the end of the day they’d prefer to work with someone they trust over having to start over with someone new.
Have any experience like this in your design firm? Let me know in the comments below.
All Posts, Web Design
It doesn’t take years of being a designer before you can complain about “designer’s block”, or lack of inspiration to work on the projects you’ve got to get finished or started on. We’ve all been there. Browsing other designer sites trying to get inspired or ideas for elements, layouts, and color patterns. Gripping our hair in our hands as we hold our faces in our palms staring at the fresh wide-screen monitor you swore would never cease to inspire. Don’t beat yourself up about it, it’s totally ok, I know exactly how you feel.
Do you remember the last time you had that burst of creativity? You know, where you could easily work through the night with nothing more than a few glasses of water, grilled cheese sandwich, and maybe a banana. Harming your bladder because you don’t want to pull away to use the lavatory. You’re on top of the world in those moments. Everything you think of, your hands can draw, or your mouse can trace. For me, its like that huge victory moment close to the end of a movie. Redemption for all the hard work in the previous scenes are now paying off.
But what about when the pixy dust runs out? What do you do then to get yourself going? Well for me it comes down to a few things.
- Atmosphere and Surroundings. I mainly work from home. The same home with my wife and kids. And sometimes I just can’t get motivated to work, or when I do I have to work extra hard to flush out the distractions. It helps to leave from time to time to a coffee-house or public place with wi-fi.
- Time of Day. This is a bit crucial because I truly feel like it could be ingrained in my psyche that either early morning or really late at night are my most productive or best times for inspiration.
- Music. This one is common among all my design friends. I’ve got a few choice playlists that instantly get me going. On the times I can’t get in the zone I spend about 30min getting new music via Grooveshark, Spotify, or iTunes. (Though when I say new, I mean new to my library for old school hits)
- Get in Good Company. Get a hold of some of your associates and fellow designers. Organize a quick #TweetUp at someone’s house, order some food, and everyone pick a corner and get working or collaborating.
So these are my top things that help get me in the design mood to get my projects done when I really don’t feel like it. I think it goes without saying that checking your bank account usually will create a mood to work if all else fails. Hehe. So what do you do? I’d like to hear and I’m sure others may appreciate the diverse tips. Let us all know in the comments below.
All Posts, Web Design
One of the things we web designers often talk about when we’re around each other is our client stories. And while I won’t get into most of the topics or details, I do want to highlight a few important ones that are pretty common. Those being, clear understanding of responsibilities of the designer, of the business owner, on-time deliverables, and contract and payment.
I like to refer myself as a junior web designer. This because I haven’t been around for over a decade doing web design, but I have been around long enough to experience the highs and lows of the industry. Especially when it comes to my responsibilities as a web designer. First and foremost, I am to be the authority on such a subject matter when it comes to my clients. I must assume they know nothing, and take the time to adequately discuss anything that doesn’t make sense to the client. I’m not saying that non industry people are handicapped at all. But I do think its unfair to talk a bunch of techno babble under the pretense that a client understand everything I’m talking about. I also believe I have a responsibility:
- To return phone calls or emails in a timely manner.
- Clearly explain my prices and estimate for work to be done
- Ask questions about what the client would like to see done
- Get existing examples of websites & designs that the client likes
- Secure a deposit before work is started
From a client’s side, there can be quite a few things needed that may not become clear until deadlines are approaching. One example is “content.” It is always the business owner’s responsibility to provide content for their website. As a designer, we can easily charge for copyrighting if necessary, but otherwise it’s up to the client to take the time to write out their bios, services, products, prices, and even provide the graphics and logos for the site. In a lot of cases this is where pricing for websites starts to climb. What at first seemed like a $1,500 job has now turned into a $2,600 job after creating graphics, artwork, content, research, and implementation. I can’t stress how important this is because of how it will seriously drag a project that would normally take 2 weeks into several months of back and forth missed calls and unanswered emails.
Milestones for each web project will vary, but each project has them. From getting a contract signed with initial payment, to full site testing and launching, there are some goals that need to be tracked and reached before further work is started. Most designers will keep the client informed with over estimated time lines. This is not because we’re lazy or anything, its to give enough time to get things in order or received from the client with a realistic turnaround time for completion. If we think we’re going to be late on a deadline, its our responsibility to inform the client. If the client can’t seem to finalize something – they need to understand how that affects the overall time line for their project.
My last point is securing a contract and payment. Let me skip to payments because this is dearest to just about every freelancer out there. We need this upfront not because we need to pay our overdue light bill. Its more so because we need to get you truly interested in getting us the materials we need to really undertake a project. If we don’t secure a preliminary deposit from you, we’ll most likely be waiting for months before hearing anything from you. I won’t generalize that statement to everyone, but I will say most. Each designer has their own way of breaking down a project’s payment percentages, but their important to sticking to the deadlines.
Now as for a contract; this is important to all parties. A working contract protects the designer for their work, what is fully expected of them, and also the client for what is eventually owned/owed to them.
All Posts, Web Design
I’ve been in business for over 10 years as a freelancer and start-up owner. My first business was computer repair and maintenance. I learned early off with that business that the key to being successful was how I interacted with my clients. I’d get calls with questions about how they got a virus to why was their computer working fine the day before but not today. The one thing that had to remain the same was my level of patience to explain to them in layman’s terms, what the problem really is. This tactic didn’t change when I moved into designing web pages and graphics.
I had to say this, but most people who say they want a website, really have no idea what type of website they’re looking for. I’m not even going to get into the argument on whether or not they need one. Lets just focus on some key elements that may save you some headache in the terms off your website project as it progresses.
- Explaining all the elements and content you need from the client for their project to be started and completed. This usually starts out as a “no problem” from the client. Somehow it turns into a 3 month volcano because they’re dragging their feet yet pressing you for a launch date.
- Have them understand exactly how many times they can order a redesign without being charged, and what a “re-design” actually means. In most contracts that I’ve seen, a client is only allowed 2 revisions. Once they cross that, they’re supposed to be charged. However they don’t fully understand what a revision may be. Asking for a font change and color change in one email constitutes a revision.
- Fees and payment schedules. If you have a signed agreement for how your project is going to go, stick with it and constantly remind the client of upcoming fees. Otherwise they may resent you for the unseen charges, even though they clearly signed in 3 different sections of your agreement.
- Problems and setbacks. They don’t need to hear techno-babble. Explaining to them that the images they gave you were too large to fit due to pixels or file types makes no sense to them. And trying to explain why your coding looks great in Firefox but won’t accurately line up in IE or a mobile browser has to be explained with care.
- What exactly YOU do. If you’re just a graphic designer, don’t get wrapped into a project that started out as a logo project that turned into a website redesign project – and you’re not a web designer. Main reason is because you won’t be paid for what you’re doing extra, and second you could risk damaging some other work that in the end will cost you your own time and money to restore.
For me, my very first client was this post’s learning experience. I went through just about all the examples above, got paid very little, and frustrated a heck of a lot. I’d love to hear your experiences!
