Tips and Tricks of Working with a Web Designer

Five Steps for Working Successfully With Your Web Designer

Tips and Tricks of Working with a Web Designer

Web designers and web design firms like the ones at Get The Clicks Orlando are really good at making websites attractive and functional, but they often have trouble keeping projects on track and on time. This means your website, that was promised to be completed in two months, may be late with many setbacks.

We work with designers like Web Wizards in Perth all the time and have developed a few internal tricks that help us make our relationships with these valued partners run more smoothly:

  1. Lower your own expectations & loosen your timeline. We’ve yet to meet a client that doesn’t want its website 100 percent complete as soon as possible, but we all know that can’t happen. In our experience, if a designer gives you a timeframe of 8 weeks from start to completion, go into it with the expectation that it’ll actually take 12-15 weeks. It’s not that they’re lying. There are just so many moving parts, new ideas and technical complications that arise on just about every project.

  1. If possible, meet face-to-face. We’ve found that meeting in-person to discuss your expectations, how long the project should take, contact information, etc. is the best way to get a good “read” on the designer’s confidence in his timeline and what our clients are asking for. Also, find out the best way to reach the designer if an emergency web issue arises.

  1. Stay in touch regularly, but don’t hound. Lack of communication is the chief complaint between web designers and clients. Make sure to keep in contact with the designer during the process, preferably through regularly scheduled update calls, but don’t hound them either – that could push them away and amp up your frustration.

  1. Use an online project management system. Set the entire project and all involved parties within your organization up on web-based project management system. Our preferred tool is Basecamp, which offers to-do lists, wiki-style web-based text documents, milestone management, file sharing, time tracking and a messaging system. Mark down deadlines with automated reminders and keep all login info here, too.

  1. Be prepared. Channel your inner Boy Scout or Girl Scout and always be prepared. In fact, make sure that you’re more prepared than the designer is. Provide as much content, photos, logos, etc. to the designer upfront as you possibly can to keep him from asking for it later.

  1. Make it formal. Just like with any type of business, draft an agreement or contract that both you and the designer sign that explicitly details your expectations of who’s doing what, timelines, etc. Without this agreement, it’s easy for a website project to devolve into a seemingly endless loop of fingerpointing if something goes awry.

 


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