Designers work in a complex world. If you’ve hired a great web designer, you’ve probably hired him for both his design skill and her experience in turning that design into a highly functioning website. So he has a lot on her plate to pull off for you. Here are some keys to making sure your experience works out perfectly.
Key #1: Micro-Manage Not
A designer does best when you give him plenty of space to put his creative juices to the task. It’s one thing to give your ideas and opinions, but it’s another thing entirely to tell the designer exactly what to do. And, in actuality, if a web designer senses that he’s going to be told what to do in a project in every detail, he’ll likely forgo the job.
Why? Because micro-managing doesn’t work in the creative world. A designer needs freedom to think outside the lines;,to paint with new colors, to think and to invent. If you happen to need to micromanage your website project (or you happen to be a solid micro-manager in personality), consider hiring a webmaster who can take step-by-step directions from you to create exactly what’s in your mind–not design something for you.
Key #2: Be Prompt
Often, a designer is juggling between several clients. What this means, is that if the designer has to wait awhile to get something back from you (like photos, content, or whatever), he’ll likely start working on an aspect of a different client’s project. Inevitably, that means that the longer you wait to get the needed information to the designer, the longer it will take for him to get back to working on your project.
Being prompt allows the designer to stay focused on your design longer…and get it done faster!
Key #3: Limit Your Changes
We once had a client who gave us a pretty cut and dried job–akin to basically copying another site. At least it was initially that way. Then, once we’d created that site, all the changes started coming in. They were all small things, like change this font on this bit of text here, to changing color in a couple places, and so on. But after 2-3 months of these changes, it all started adding up big time. The website could have been up and published and getting our client customers, when instead, small and insignificant changes were eating up everyone’s time and resources unnecessarily.
So, keep your changes to only very important things that are certain to make a significant difference to your conversions, or to your overall message.