Posts Tagged ‘website design’
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010
Just a few years ago I would have considered myself a perfectionist. No work of mine could leave my desk until it was as near perfect as I could get it. I would painstakingly go over it and over it until I had exhausted myself. Needless to say, it was not a fun process.
So what changed? And why am I writing on perfection today? Well, what changed is that I was so stressed and so anxious that I was driving myself and everyone around me nuts. I mean absolute nuts! Through a series of serendipitous events, I went to a workshop that changed my life and has taught me how to release that intense need and pressure that I apply to myself. And the reason I am writing on this topic today is because I see so many small business owners doing exactly what I was doing to myself a short time ago.
There is a fine line between perfection and paralysis when it comes to getting yourself out there. Believe me I have dealt with my fair share as an artist and writer. I have fought many a demon as I prepared to release my soul to the world.
As a business owner, you want the world to have a certain perception about your company and product, however, if you can’t let it go out into the world because it has to be at the highest standard, they won’t have any perception of you anyway. Not to mention the valuable time, energy, and resources you are wasting.
As a business that helps other businesses, we have seen many a client who couldn’t put their site “live” because it had to be absolutely PERFECT. Now don’t get me wrong, we strive for the highest quality in all our work, but in life, there is NO PERFECT. Especially when you are dealing with numerous browsers and varying opinions. What you see as perfect may be very different from your customer’s perfect.
So who is most important in the grand scheme of things? Your need for perfection and this pie in the sky perception you are looking for, or your customers? If you said anything else besides your customers, maybe you should rethink your whole vision. At any rate, yes it’s your customers and I can guarantee you that as a consumer myself, I do not rip apart most websites or won’t do business with a website because they had a typo or because the picture they have up is not the perfect size or shape.
Think about what is most important to your customers . . . the right information and a site that is appealing and easy to navigate. Have you got that? Then good, get out there and start selling. The best thing about websites, they are always a work in progress and you can make changes as you go. It’s not like print materials that must be set in stone because once it’s run, that’s it, no going back.
Tags: small business counseling, website design
Posted in General Business, Web Site Information | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 9th, 2010
Life has a comical way of illustrating points for us when we focus on them. Last week I blogged about creating a ”blueprint” for your website before you go to a web designer to create it. A day or two later, as I am helping a friend of mine create a website for her fitness company, I asked her about the content for her site. I wanted to show her how to upload and manipulate the content and place it into the site. This was her response - “I guess I haven’t put much thought into all of this. I just thought I could get a website and start writing and it would just magically appear the way I wanted it!”
Talk about a good belly laugh! This is exactly what I was getting at in my last post with how people approach their website projects, “I’ll have someone build it first and then I will start writing the content or thinking about what goes into it. ” And that may work in a limited amount of cases, but it would save you money and your designer time to have the content written and your must haves thought out and outlined beforehand.
As with just about everything in life, there is a trade-off. It’s called time or money, which one is more important to you?
If your time is more valuable, you can hire us to create a site complete with content. This way you are focusing on what you do best, your job and we will focus on what we do best, creating an aesthetically pleasing, easy-to-navigate, compelling website. BUT, and this is a big BUT, if you hire us to create the content, you will still have to give us direction and help us to understand your market.
If on the other hand, your money is more valuable, then I suggest sitting down and delving in . . . grab a pen and paper or your favorite word processing program and sketch out your content, what you want to convey to potential clients, images, quotes, and anything else that you have to have on your site.
Either way, the more information your designer knows about the project, the less it will cost you in both time and money and the happier you will be with the end result. In my next blog, I will provide you with some questions to consider and resources that will help guide you in building a content rich, relevant site.
Tags: business websites, content design, content writing, corporate websites, graphic design, website design
Posted in Web Site Information | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010
I don’t know about you, but I love stories and I love to use stories and metaphors to illustrate points that I am making. I find that I learn things easier when I have an anology or metaphor to help me relate to my current situation. . .
I think maybe because the internet is a relatively new “space” and also because as we understand things or we deal with the same things day in and day out, we sometimes forget that others do not see things nor understand them the same way and often the little details are overlooked. So I’d like to share a sort of metaphoric story to illustrate something I see often in the design industry.
Imagine for a moment that you are wanting to build a house. Your family has grown and the space you are in is just too contricting. You and your significant other begin talking about building this house and thinking about all the various things you want in your new house and if you are like me, you sit down and start sketching out where you want the kitchen and how the master bedroom will be positioned in just such a way that the picture window will have an awesome view of [insert your perfect view here] behind your property. After you have sufficiently daydreamed about this house, you contact a few architects to find out what it will cost and so forth. After choosing the “right” fit for the job you wouldn’t just say ok make me a house and leave it up to the architect to figure out what features you absolutely can’t live without, right? Maybe some of you would, but most people would want to sit down with the architect and tell them how many bedrooms, 1 story or 2, an island in the kitchen, etc. they want in the house.
It works the same way for building websites. Just as your architect can create the perfect blueprint of your house with your special features, the right specs and building codes, a web designer can build your web site to fit your style using web standards and principles of design.
So when you meet with your web designer, make sure you have a pretty good idea of the features you’d like as well as, the content you want on the site. The more information you provide up front and the clearer you are on the direction you want to go with your web site design and it’s functionality, the easier the process will be and the better the final result.
Tags: content, features, Website, website design
Posted in Web Site Information | 2 Comments »
