Hiring a website designer or getting in touch with a web design firm is just the first step in a long process to create a website, but when the time comes for the actual project, you’ll probably be asked for your ideas about what you do or don’t want from your final site design. Do you have information or thoughts that your web design company will be able to use to fashion a great site for you or are you currently stumped?
The good news is that if the latter applies to you, this post should help to give you some inspiration. It’s all of the most important things that we would suggest you share with your chosen web designer.
Brand assets
By ‘brand assets’, we’re referring to the kind of things that you would expect to see in an organisation’s brand guidelines document: all of the essential information about the company logo and how it is to be used, as well as the brand’s typefaces, colour palette and associated imagery.
If your company doesn’t have any such guidelines – and don’t worry about this, as it’s much less common among smaller firms – it will nonetheless help your web design company if you gather whatever items will make it easier for them to get a ‘feel’ for your brand.
That might mean giving them your logo – ideally in vector format, such as a AI (Adobe Illustrator) or EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) file – along with brochures, leaflets and links to pages of your current website that help to show the colours that constitute your brand. If your company consistently uses specific fonts or has its own image library, it might be useful to share a few of these with your designer as well.
Favourite aspects of competitors’ sites
Have you always admired certain aspects of the sites of other organisations in your industry, such as the simplicity of their navigational menus or the distinctive feel of their photography? If so, you’ve got a great opportunity to articulate this to your chosen web design company, so that its designers can build something that combines all of these best elements for your own organisation.
Don’t fret about using the right design ‘terminology’. Web designers are accustomed to listening to business owners with extensive website design expertise or none, and can read between the lines to pick out the details that will help to make the difference between a merely decent and a great site design.
What if you genuinely have no idea?
Don’t worry: even if you’re unsure what you could possibly say to a website designer, when you make PENNInk Productions your web design company, we’ll work closely with you as part of a true partnership approach.
In formulating an action plan for your new website, we’ll tease out all of the greatest priorities you have, whether you’re bursting with ideas or struggling to decide what does or doesn’t matter to you.
Discover more about what you’ll need to get started with us, as well as how our collaborative and creative process works. Then get in touch with the PENNInk Productions team by calling 020 8144 7931.
Edward Solomon has over 30 years’ experience in project management, technical education, computer networking, web design and development and is a Digital Business Consultant for PENNInk Productions Ltd.
