How to Request Your Website Idea to Designers

The Marketing Beast is sharing an important subjects for those requesting a service: How to Request Your Website Idea to Designers. We always try to reach our client’s expectations, mainly when designing and developing a customized website because it is not the type of information people tend to know about.

First thing the web designer and web developer need to know:

• Do you have a logo?
  If you say YES then GREAT! Lets see it and start trying to connect the dots on what matches with it
  If you say NO, then that would be the FIRST THING we would need to focus on and The Marketing Beast can help on that: “Your Online & Visual Identity”
• Do you have the domain name?
  Knowing this would save time reducing amount of changes. If you don’t already have one and cannot purchase the one you expected to have, The Marketing Beast will help you find the closest and best domain name which will work for you.
  
• Do you have the content for the website?
  Many people think that the content comes after the design is done and ready. It is doable but the more information about the website and the more content is supplied to the web designer or web developer the closest it will be to reach the customer’s idea. In case the customer does not have this information, The Marketing Beast can offer the content writing service and send it for approval with possible design samples connected to the content given to the customer.
  
• Do you know of any websites that carry what your are looking for? It could be different samples with different options that you would like to be added to your website.

   Steps through the creative process.

1. Brainstorming how your website will be and what it will do:

Writing a detailed list of everything, and, anything you want on the website is really important and this can be done by yourself or getting together with a a Marketing Beast team member and look for everything you are interested in for your website, even write items in there which you would like to have, but don’t necessarily need. Then, when all the writing and brainstorming is completed, you can ask us two important questions:

• Can you do all this?
• Which of these take the most time to complete?

These two questions help you, and The Marketing Beast, giving us an idea of what the most expensive requests are. For example, if you’d like to set up multiple admin levels with complicated workflows, add an extensive Search Engine Optimization (SEO) service instead of the basic, etc, may be appear too costly to implement at first.

It also helps with negotiation. If you’re receiving quotes outside your budget, ask us which elements could be skipped for a lower price.

2. Choose the right Content Management System (CMS)

This is important to determine when asking The Marketing Beast for its help. We mainly use WordPress for most of our work, mainly Dynamic Websites. We also use Zen Carts and Magento for E-Commerce sites. You can compare every CMS with CMSMatrix.

3. Create a Mockup

Having a clear idea of what you want your site to look like in terms of functionality is as important as its content for you and The Marketing Beast.

We (including you) would like to know:

• How many page ‘templates’ do you need? (e.g. home page, category page, article page, checkout page, etc.).
• What do you want to include on each page? (value proposition, logo, content, multimedia, etc.)
• Where would you like the navigation menus? On top? On the side?

The Marketing Beast will spend its time drawing and designing the site to your like. The first few drawings can be done with you while you tell The Marketing Beast team member the details of what you would like to get, or draw out your ideas on paper during our first meeting. The Marketing Beast would recommend you to use a wireframing tool if you plan on showing us an example done by you to later be fixed and optimized by us.

Doing this ensures us you and the designer see eye-to-eye from the very beginning. This will also set expectations straight for both sides, saving a lot of back and forth on little things. The Marketing Beast’s designer can then take these rough ideas and create a branded user experience, while keeping in mind the core functionality, goals and expectations of the site.

4. Write a list of expectations

The list The Marketing Beast asks for should include your design preferences, sites you like, and a list of involved parties.

If you have existing marketing materials, be sure to include them as well so designers can help maintain your brand.

We really recommend this web design brief sheet (PDF) by Limeshot Design which covers everything necessary for effective implementation.