Language is a tricky business, you know what you want, but the draft design you’ve seen doesn’t feel quite right. Now what??
If you aren’t familiar with website design (and why would you be?) it can feel like a new language that you’ve supposed to be fluent in. Here are our top 3 phrases that could cause eye rolling from your design team and how to work around it.
How to Brief Your Web Designer
“Can you make it more edgy?”
On person’s edgy is another’s inappropriate. Design will always be subjective, how about giving more details along these lines:
- Spacing – layout of information, text, images, use of white space
- Colour – contrast, brightness, accents, palettes
- Font – too thin, chunky, bigger, smaller, modern, vintage, corporate
- Images Style – real life, abstract, info-graphics, size, position
“I don’t think it will take long”
Often batched up with “I’ve had a look and it seems pretty simple.” Design takes time and effort and both you and the creative team want to be proud of a good job done. After all, that’s why we hire professionals.
Your designer spends time reviewing your web briefing document and understanding your brand personality, what your business is all about and what makes you you.
At the beginning of the job, the design team should prepare a time frame, based on their experience and knowledge. Trust them!
“It needs more Wow Factor”
Web design is based around your content, what works well for magazine content – striking images, quick fire articles, lots of fresh content won’t work so well for a professional services company where the content will stay pretty much the same – apart from maybe team updates, press page and legal updates for example.
It’s easy to see exciting layouts, but are they appropriate?
There will be moments when things could be tricky through the journey, but having clear communication throughout, makes for better understanding.
Often it’s stepping back and thinking about the emotional value of your brand. Why would someone choose you over the competition?
Think through your goals again from your website design brief. What’s missing, added, is it still necessary, has it changed as you’ve gone through the process?
Reviewing other industry websites is useful, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be a trail blazer!
Download our Website Briefing Form to help get your ideas and goals organised.
Related Articles
Why We Love Website Briefing Forms and You Should Too!
Professional Web Developer vs. Do It Yourself
Want To Invest In Your Website? 6 Question To Ask
