11 tips to help you get the most from a web site redesign

Are you getting ready to re-design your website? Here are eleven tips to help you start your project off on the right foot.

• 1. take time to meet with your designer ‘face to face’ – either at a mutually convenient location or via Skype. The ability to see and meet your prospective designer will help you discern compatibility and the ability to communicate!
• 2. know your ideal client: think about who you want to see your website and be able to describe that person clearly in your mind and to your prospective designer. Beyond demographics, think about what is important to your client. For instance, what are your ideal client’s favorite shops, books, e-books, mobile applications, movies, etc? What keeps that client up at night? What are your client’s motivations, dreams, hopes and yearnings and what does that client need? If you aren’t absolutely sure who your ideal client is – take the time to find out. I highly recommend working with Laurie Foley who will ease you through this process. Check out Laurie Foley’s website and free e-book entitled “The Inner Brandifesto.” You will find this is time/money well spent.
• 3. decide what you want your new website to do. Do you want your new site to provide information about you or sell products or offer a platform for a blog or all three? Knowing what you want your site to do will help your web designer share information about tools that may work best to help you maintain your site long after the project is complete. For instance, Unify is a great, affordable, easy-to-use tool that installs in your website’s root folder and provides an easy to use portal for you to update parts of your site that you think will change over time. So, whether you’re a musician with a changing schedule of concerts or a professional such as a consultant offering workshops, you can use Unify to update your website without having to contact your web designer every time. If you are planning to blog or you have a site that will need new pages and room for growth, then you may want to have a WordPress site or some other content management system such as Joomla or Drupal. There’s a bit of a longer learning curve with these content management systems but, like Unify, they offer you, the website owner, the opportunity to update content, add pages and upload images without having to contact your web designer.
• 4. share your favorite web sites and, if possible, think about why they are your favorite sites. Do you like what you see on the site or do you like what you learn on the site? Is it easy to find your way around the site? What do you think of the site’s colors and photos? What does the site look like on your mobile device?
• 5. share sites that you hate (and I mean hate – the stronger you feel about a site – the better!) What irks you the most about these sites? Is the color off putting? Do you hate the photos or is it just a topic that annoys you?
• 6. think of your favorite color, typography, photos, vacation experiences, fashion trends, gardening preferences, home decor, artwork, music, movies, theatre experience, TV shows, books, magazines, blogs, e-books, Mobile Applications, food/dining experiences, including any art/creative endeavor you value for inspiration and share them. Your designer may not always use the exact same typeface that you share, for instance, but what you share, even the tiniest tidbit of information, will help inspire your designer to create something that feels like ‘you’ and also helps you reach your ideal client.
• 7. think of your least favorite color. Do you have a story about a color that you hate? One designer tells the story of a client who hated green passionately because it reminded him of a quilt that an ex-girlfriend had. That is useful information to have so that the designer won’t, in this case, use green as a predominant color in the web site. As you think of the color you hate, please also refer to the variety of creative and artistic categories noted in 5 above and share those that you dislike or hate. These will offer more clues to your designer in his/her effort to create something that will meet your expectations in your quest for a new website.
• 8. find out the design principles that define the designer’s work. As you look at examples of the designer’s portfolio, listen to the words s/he uses to describe the work and decide if those words resonate with you. For instance, does the web designer say that, “austere, subdued, and subtle” are the words that describe his/her design sensibility and does that resonate with you and your business? Or does the designer use words such as “simple, elegant, and unique.” If those words are meaningful to you and your prospective designer, chances are you will both see eye to eye as you move ahead to redesign your website. However, if you find there’s not mutual appreciation of design principles, you may want to find a better fit with a different designer.
• 9. think about how early in the design process you’d like to see your designer’s work. Some clients like to see rough sketches of concepts and then collaborate with the designer throughout the entire process. Others prefer to see more finished ‘comps’ of the project. I had a client who did not want to see early sketches. She said she had worked with artists and other graphic designers who showed their work early on and she found it hard to see the finished project from a pencil sketch. Either option is possible. I suggest that you think about what will work best for you.
• 10. if you like a designer’s aesthetic and interpersonal capabilities but you’re wondering about technical proficiency in the latest technology on the web whether it’s that Flash site your teenager showed you or proficiency in WordPress, talk with your prospective designer. Due in part to continuous revisions to standards for the craft of creating websites and the introduction and wide acceptance of all things mobile (phones, tablets, etc), web design and development are going through rapid change. There will always be something new on the horizon that your designer may or may not know. Resourceful and reputable web designers will talk with you about their capabilities, will always be refining their craft, will willingly search for new ways to solve web design problems and openly discuss the advantages/disadvantages of a particular approach and, if necessary, collaborate with others in the field to make sure your project is done well.
• 11. get a plan in writing including a price range and schedule. Designers and ad agencies call this plan a design brief but the document can be as simple as an email. There is tremendous value in having a written document act as a guide or a reference for both you and your designer as you forge ahead to create a new website.

How can I help? What would you like to know about redesign?