Intuitive Designs

Planning Your Website – Questions to Ask Designers

Naomi Niles — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 14:02:28 +0000

Here are some questions you may from a web designer once you have established who you are interested in working with.

If they are available and interested in working on your project (logically!).
If they have any other clients that are in your industry. A lot of times, it isn’t necessary for a designer to have experience in your industry because there should be a research phase where they study your industry before starting on your project, but some designers do cater to specific niches.
If they have a team of people and capacity cover your needs. Some designers are just one or two man shops, but work with other professionals to provide whole website solutions (programming, SEO, copywriting, photography, online marketing, etc.) It’s good to get a general idea of how they work so that you know what to expect.
What their process is. Are they willing to collaborate with you and keep you abreast of updates in a timely manner?
What information they need from you. Often designers will get back to you after reading your RFP document and have additional questions about your project.
Who will you be in contact with throughout the project? It’s good to know if you will be in contact directly with the project manager or the designer. You should expect to be in contact with just one person throughout the process in order to avoid unnecessary communication complications.
If they offer maintenance and training services. Some designers don’t handle maintenance after the project is done. If they don’t provide maintenance services, are they willing to train you to update and maintain your own site?
Will they provide ongoing support of your site after it has launched? If so, what is the support period for bugs and fixes?

That wraps up the planning your website series. If you have anything to add or any questions, please leave a comment below and discuss.

Other articles in the planning your website series:

Part 1 – Before You Contact a Web Designer
Part 2 – Preparing Your RFP Document
Part 3 – Finding Potential Web Designers
Part 4 – What to look for in a Web Designer
Part 5 – Questions to ask your potential web designer

Some related resources you may also find helpful:

Example RFP
The Web Design Process
What to Expect
How to get the best out of your web designer

Planning your website – What to look for in a designer

Naomi Niles — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 04:47:58 +0000

Finding a good designer can be a daunting task. There are many many designers and it’s hard to differentiate one from the other based on work alone. Here are some things to look at when considering a web designer.

If you posted on a job board, did the designer follow your instructions and send you a response that indicated that they read and understood your ad thoroughly?
How does their own website look? Is it professional, presentable, and easy to use and understand? Did they design the site themselves or use an existing theme?
Their portfolio. Do they have a decent portfolio with sites with a wide range of styles and in different industries? A designer with a wide range of styles indicates that they search for the best solutions for each particular client.
Who are their clients? Do they have a decent list of clients and references that you can contact?
Testimonials. Do they have testimonials from reliable sources?
Are they easy to contact? Do they provide several methods of contact and make it easy for you to contact them?
How long have they been in business? Do they do web design full time or are they moonlighting?
Do they have information available about how they work? An outline of their process, what to expect from them, and their policies are good examples of things to look for.
Can they effectively communicate and back up their design choices? A good way to figure this out is looking for case studies or picking a site from their portfolio and asking them about why they did the design for the site that way.
Look for information about their working methods. Do they do valid xhtml/css code and design up to standards? Are their designs accessible? Do they do cross-browser testing?
Do they focus on marketing and sales and know how to focus a web site towards your goals?
How do you feel about them in general? Does they give you warm fuzzies? Do you feel like you’d be a good fit for each other?

These seem like a lot of questions to ask, but it’s important to remember that you will potentially have consitent contact with your designer for a decent period of time and may work together for a long time even after that. So, the same types of things you might ask when you are looking for a partner would also apply here.

As always, be careful who you work with, especially over the internet. A quick Google search on whoever you work with is usually advised.

Other articles in the planning your website series:

Some related resources you may also find helpful:

Example RFP
The Web Design Process
What to Expect
How to get the best out of your web designer

Planning Your Website – Finding a Potential Web Designer

Naomi Niles — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 06:15:46 +0000

Finding a suitable designer for your business is important. Part of your business’s reputation depends on putting your business’s best face forward online. This includes having a good website.

The best place to find a good and reliable web designer is through referrals. Ask other professionals in your industry or other people you trust who their web designers are. Or, contact businesses who have web sites that you admire and ask them who their designers are.

Another great way to find a designer is look through your network of people and see if there is anyone there you’ve had contact with in the past that you connected with well.

If you don’t have a way to get referrals for a web designer or have someone in your network, you may think about posting your job to an online job site. If you do this, be prepared to be very specific about what you need done and the information you are expecting in return from potential designers. Tip! A good way to narrow down potential candidates is to reject the responses that didn’t follow your instructions.

Some decent job sites are the following:
http://www.authenticjobs.com
http://jobs.freelanceswitch.com
http://jobs.webdesignerwall.com

In this day and age, it’s usually not necessary to work with a local designer, but if you prefer face to face contact every once in awhile, posting an ad in your local Craigslist might be another option for you.

Always be careful when you hire someone online. Check references and do a Google search on them to make sure they look reputable. After you have done that, if you’re still not sure, set up a time to talk to them on the phone a little bit and see how you feel about them.

In the next part of the series, I’ll talk about more things to look for in a web designer.

Other articles in the planning your website series:

Some related resources you may also find helpful:

Example RFP
The Web Design Process
What to Expect
How to get the best out of your web designer

Planning Your Website – Preparing Your RFP Doc

Naomi Niles — Wed, 27 May 2009 16:07:27 +0000

In part one of this series, I outlined the information you need to gather before you contact a web designer. In this article, I will show you how to place that information you gathered into a RFP document.

Many agencies and designers provide RFP worksheets for you to fill out that will later serve as your project RFP (Request for Proposal) document. This document will hopefully give enough information for the web designer to give you a proposal and serve as a base point for discussing your web site. If you don’t have one, you may use our example RFP worksheet (doc format) as your starting point.

Some of the things your RFP document should include are the following:

Basic Information:
1. Your project deadline.
2. Your budget.
Your Business Information:
1. Your organization’s name.
2. Your mission statement.
3. Who your target audience is.
4. Who your competitors are.
5. Other applicable information about your company & industry.
Goals of the Project:
1. What do you expect your web site to do for your business?
2. What will make the project a success?
Design:
1. How you envision your site.
2. Other sites you like.
Technical Information
1. What features your site should have.
2. What CMS (content management system) you are interesting in using (ExpressionEngine, Wordpress, Drupal, etc.).
Content Information:
1. Whether you have the content ready or not for you site and if you need the services of a copywriter.
2. Whether or not you need stock photographs.

Here is an example fictitious RFP document filled out for a website for an online marketing consultant.

In my next post I will be outlining possible places to look for a compatible web designer to work with.

Other articles in the planning your website series:

Some related resources you may also find helpful:

Example RFP
The Web Design Process
What to Expect
How to get the best out of your web designer

Planning Your Website – Before You Contact a Web Designer

Naomi Niles — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:02:17 +0000

Do you need a website, but don’t know where to start? The very first thing you need to do is sit down and come up with a basic site plan. Deciding on the type of project and it’s initial specifications will help you pick and start a working relationship with a suitable designer.

Here are some basic tips to get you started:

Figure out what you want your site to accomplish for you: This is the most important thing you need to do before you even think about anything else. In order to increase the chances of having a successful website, you need to clarify your goals.Would you like your website to increase sales, provide information about your products and services, attract advertisers, etc.? Once you have a general goals sorted out, narrowing down more specific goals may provide even more insight. Some specific goals may be:
- I want to increase my overall sales by 30%.
- I want to attract 2 new clients per month through my website.
- I want to get at least 40 new people to sign up for my newsletter per month.
- I want to build my site traffic to at least 10,000 visits per month.
Write down your site pages: Make a list of the pages you will need on your site. Some usual pages for a business site are About Us, Contact Us, Services, etc. If your site is larger, you may find it necessary to do an outline of your site and divide it up into sections. If your site is so large and complex that this isn’t possible, you may want to think about hiring an information architect to help organize this information for you in a logical way.
Decide on site features: Write down a list of features your site should have. Some typical features might be a blog, a forum, an e-commerce shop, photo galleries, community features with visitor registration, etc. These things will help determine the type of site you may need. Here are some common types of web sites:
- Blog: This might be a site with just a few static informational pages and a blog. Wordpress is a good solution for this type of site.
- Informational Brochure Site: Brochure sites may have a series of pages about your company, your services and solutions, photo galleries, your events or other features. The best bet with this type of site is to find a Content Management System (CMS) that suits you. ExpressionEngine and Drupal are both very good solutions for building custom sites out of many. For this, you will most likely need to get recommendations from an experienced web designer to help figure out what CMS will suit your needs best.
- Shop: If you are planning on selling products, an e-commerce shop solution would most likely be an option for you. Some open source software solutions for this type of site include Magento and Zen Cart. Shopify is a popular hosted solution.
- Community Site: This site might have community features like visitor registration, forums, profiles, etc. What software solution you go with on this depends on the type of features you need. You may find a solution that fits your needs out of the box, but it’s also likely you will need help finding the best solution for your needs from an expert for this type of site as well.
Have information about your company ready: Have your mission statement and basic information about your company ready to provide potential web designers. This will help them determine what kind of industry you are in and if they are able to help with your project.
Compose a brief description of your future website: Write a brief sentence or two about your website. Some things to include may be the general purpose and it’s target audience. For example, “My site will give information to stressed out and busy 30-something working professionals on how to utilize my common sense organization methods to free up time in their day to day lives.”
Compile a list of sites you like: Make a list of other websites you like and what you like about each. This will help both give the designer a reference and help you solidify the goals for yourself. These can be sites in your industry or just sites you like the features of.
Determine Your Budget: Having a general idea of the budget you are willing to set for your website will go a long way in determining what type of site is best for you and the best solution that will fit within your budget. A lot of people don’t feel comfortable presenting their budget to designers because they think the designer may automatically present a quote based upon that budget. But presenting a budget beforehand is important. It can save a lot of time on both sides in case you and the designer are not a fit for each other if your budget is smaller or larger than what the designer can handle.If you still feel unsure about sharing your budget, your best bet is getting a good referral from a trusted friend or approaching a designer that you know is reputable. That way you can trust the designer to give you an honest quote or at least let you know if your budget is within a realistic range for the type of website you need.

Once you have this information prepared, you will then be ready to contact designers and send them your Request for Proposal (RFP) document. If your website is so complex that this post doesn’t cover your basic needs or revolutionary that there are no sites or references to compare it to, you may want to consider hiring a web designer that does consultation and scheduling a few hours to go over your plans with them by phone or in person.

In the next post I’ll go over how to organize and present your RFP document.

Other articles in the planning your website series:

Some related resources you may also find helpful:

Example RFP
The Web Design Process
What to Expect
How to get the best out of your web designer

Crowdsourcing and Spec Work – My Thoughts

Naomi Niles — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 21:23:04 +0000

It seems there is a lot of debate lately about whether or not crowdsourcing is evil. New sites are popping up like crowdSPRING and 99designs which allow several designers to compete on the same project and only one gets rewarded a usually small fee.

We have never supported or done spec work ourselves. My partner, Koldo, already had many years of design experience under his belt when we started Intuitive Designs in 2003 and it just didn’t seem fair to give away our precious time, energy, and resources that way. So, our official stance is in support of No!spec.

That said, do I think “spec work is evil”? Not necessarily. Yes, it can be easy for companies to take advantage of students and amateurs. Is it a threat to the design industry as a whole though? I don’t think so.

You know what? There’s a market for just about everything. I buy cheap generic products at the liquidation warehouse. I know the quality is worse, but I just don’t need or want the more expensive brand at the moment. One day when I want the quality item and it’s worthwhile to me, I’ll buy it. Until then, the cheaper option is good enough for me.

I think clients are smart enough to know the difference too. I suspect most of the people who post jobs on those sites realize that there will most likely be amateurs competing for their work and that’s good enough for them. To me it just means that somebody got a cheap website that I wouldn’t have been able to provide them anyway for the price they thought was worthwhile.

This all reminds me of how I feel about worrying about competition. Instead of worrying so much about what other people are doing, just make sure you are putting out work you feel proud of and working consistently to improve it and keep your skills up to date. Market your skills and services so that people know what you do and that you do it well. Sell your good personal customer service and make sure people feel good recommending you to others.

Eventually you and your ideal clients will meet and form a solid working relationship together based upon mutual respect which includes a fair compensation to you for your services. To each his own, as they say!

Koldo Barroso’s New Site

Intuitive Designs — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 03:19:35 +0000

We have just finished up the new version of Koldo’s web site. We really liked his design before, but felt that it wasn’t showcasing his illustration well enough. So, this site is much more simple than the last, but hopefully easier to navigate and look around in.

Koldo has also started his new shop where he is selling high-quality prints of his best illustration work. The shop products are hosted at Zazzle. Prints can be ordered custom by size, Media (Matte Print, Gloss Print, etc.) and Framing.

He’ll also have new Christmas cards ready to purchase some time next week.

Book Review: Personal Development for Smart People

Naomi Niles — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 23:41:49 +0000

I hadn’t be as excited to get something in the mail in a long time as I was when Personal Development for Smart People by Steve Pavlina came. I have been reading Steve Pavlina’s blog for a few years now and I knew this book had to be pretty special.

I decided to read it twice. The first time just for me and the second time to pick out highlights for this review. I avoided reading other reviews of the book online so that I could remain uninfluenced by other people’s opinions.

In general, I think this book is what I was expecting from Steve, but better. The content is very clear, well organized, and carefully thought out. I really like the practical tone of the book and what makes it really different from most books in this category is that it leaves out all the extra sensationalism and fluff.

While reading through it, I had many aha! moments. This book seems to take what you feel to be true subconsciously and put it in common sense terms. It’s like it’s full of things you always knew, but didn’t know you knew. Not to say that there isn’t a lot to learn here though!

Steve has everything categorized into 7 fundamental principles; truth, love, power, oneness, authority, courage, and intelligence. The first three principles; truth, love, and power are the three main principles and oneness, authority, and courage are the sub principles made from connections between the first three. Finally, intelligence is what you get when you combine all of the principles together. This organization makes a lot of sense and really helps you understand the ideas that Steve is presenting.

The book also has tons of productivity tips, tips for having and making better relationships, dealing with money, and growing spiritually. There are also several exercises and things to try to get you started right away. The first day I started reading the book, I decided to implement Steve’s tip on getting your hardest tasks done first thing in the morning so that your day feels progressively easier. I’ve been implementing that idea for the last few weeks and I have to say, that alone has helped my productivity quite a bit. I’m very much looking forward to implementing more things little by little from here on. There’s enough here to keep you occupied for quite awhile, I’m sure.

I also liked the special focus throughout the book on relationships. The idea that we are each “atoms” connected to a larger “body” is fascinating. I think the last several years in particular, people have managed to distance themselves from each other a lot. If more of us realized that we are connected and live with that idea in mind, the world would certainly change for better.

I’d wholeheartedly recommend this book for both people just becoming interested in personal development and to people who have more experience with it. I think it could be a useful tool for just about anyone looking for ideas and ways to improve their life and relationships and one of the best books I’ve read in this field.

Intuitive Designs moves to Bellingham

Intuitive Designs — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 18:53:58 +0000

Intuitive Designs has arrived to the USA! This is the first blog post from our new home in Bellingham, Washington. We arrived here on the 3th of September and we took a few vacation days to establish and know the place a little. So here we are back to work in our new studio and… we love Bellingham!

We are really happy in our new home and ready to start a new stage in our lives and careers. And we are looking forward to working with new clients from the Seattle and Vancouver area, and Bellingham of course. So if you are our neighbor and are interested in working with us, feel free to drop us a line. We are really excited to work with new people and have a lot of illusion to bring our design to this beautiful part of the world!

How to Get the Best Out of Your Web Designer Guest Post

Naomi Niles — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 08:04:12 +0000

I wrote a guest post for the Online Business/Hosting section of About.com entitled “How to Get the Best Out of Your Web Designer”

I go into detail about what to do before, during, and after your web design project in order to maintain a good working relationship with your web designer. Here is a short excerpt:

Getting a successful website design can be tricky business. But, what many people new to the Web design process don’t know is that a successful project is very much the result of a good collaborative effort between both Web designer and client.