Category: 1. Preparing for your web design project

You may be working on an exciting new web project, an existing website, or perhaps the next iteration of the website for your business or organisation you work with. Whichever position you find yourself in, you have realised that your project has a higher probability of success if you employ the services of a freelance web designer or agency.

My name is Paul Edwards, I am a Web Consultant and Frontend Developer and I’ve been working in the web industry since 2005.

In this blog post, I will pick apart the process of creating a design brief for your web project. We will look at what a brief is, what is should and shouldnt be, as well as the benefits a brief will bring you and how to easily create a document that will increase the chances of picking the best web designer to build or redesign your website.

If you have already started talking to prospective web designers or agencies about your project, you may already have received requests for a web design (or project) brief. If you have responded by saying that you don’t currently have a brief you may have been met with a lacklustre response. That is because a web design brief is much much more than a just a useful document.

Your web design project is unique, so if you feel that you have any unanswered questions I would be happy to steer you in the right direction. Call me today on 01903 527927.

Jump to content

Introduction

• What a web design brief is
• What a web design brief is not

What to include in a web design brief

1. Introduce yourself
2. Introduce the end users
3. Project goals
4. Deadlines/timelines
5. Project budgets
6. Competitors
7. Style and continuity
8. Available assets
9. Technical requirements
10. Content generation
11. Accessibility
12. Ongoing management
13. Conclusion

What a web design brief is

OK, I may have misled you into thinking that a brief maybe some kind of magical artifact. It isnt. But the reality is that a well written and structured brief holds more significance and value than the sum of the words within it.

A brief isn’t only a collection of words, figures or graphs, it is:

• a sign that you, as a potential client, have thought about what your business and your clients need
• an indicator that you are ready to employ a professional to move your project forward
• signalling to your prospective web designer that all parties will know what success looks like
• proof that you’re methodical and likely to be a person/organisation/company that can be worked with positively
• most importantly, an opportunity for prospective web designers to test and feedback upon your stated requirements. Both parties will get to see how each other respond to queries and issues.

If you search for the term ‘what is a web design brief’ in your favorite search engine, you will likely be presented with this defintion provided by elementor.com

A website design brief outlines the web design process, requirements, and timelines. Its purpose is to provide both parties with a clear understanding of what’s expected in terms of project workflow, deliverables, and post-launch services

What a web design brief is not

Over the last fifteen years, I am sure you can appreciate that I have read a lot of web design briefs. I am always heartened when a new client can provide a well-considered web design brief. To be blunt it makes the roles of client and designer just much easier when both sides know what goals are in place and how performance will be measured.

Unfortunately, sometimes a brief is created without structure or clear purpose and becomes a vehicle for little more than the expression of the personal goals and beliefs about the project that are held by the person who wrote the document.

Likely, the person writing the document is not the only stakeholder in the project if they are even a stakeholder at all. Just to be absolutely clear, this is a red flag to many web designers

When a document is written in this way, the goals become satisfying the person that wrote the document and not the goals of the company or organisation. The end-user is the person we are ultimately supposed to be creating a website for, to allow them to complete specific tasks, as efficiently and quickly as possible.

When briefs are written from the perspective of the person writing the document what often accompanies the personal nature of the writing is something we call ‘prescriptive direction’.

Normally a project brief will clearly outline the goals, important information such as branding, and any special considerations which need to be taken into account. However, the route to achieving the goals is often left open to discussion based upon the specific skills of the professional you have taken on board to deliver the project for you. The reason for this is that having gone through the process hundreds of times, your web designer is better placed to guide a project and suggest the method of implementation and the tools used to do it based upon the criteria in your brief, the budget and the timescale for delivery.

If you use a brief as a method of dictating how a problem is solved you wont benefit from the skills and experience gained by the team you are going to work with. The potential success of the project becomes limited by the knowledge and experience of the person writing the brief. What a waste!

What to include in your web design brief, step by step

Enough waxing lyrical about the potential, good or bad, for a web design brief. You aren’t the kind of person to fall into the traps we have discussed. You know who your clients are, what they want and what you want to achieve with your new site, and you know to ask for help if you don’t have the specialist skills yourself.

Time to put all this information into a short and very useful document. A design brief will make your and your designers work so much easier.

With a design brief, you and your designer have a common goal. You both have a document to refer to, to stimulate discussion and which will enable your designer to provide you with a solution that meets your requirements.

If you have done all the leg work and understand your company and your customers then writing a design brief is a simple and quick way of not only recording your findings and goals but an effective way of reflecting upon them. The process of putting your goals into words is a great reality test and you will be able to grasp quickly if your goals are realistic.

1. Introduce yourself

You’ve spent lots of time researching which web designer to employ. Now its time to tell your web designer a bit about you. It’s really important to tell a bit of backstory and conjure up an accurate image of who you and your company is.

• Explain who your company is and what its values are.
• What does your company sell, products? Services? Write briefly about what your company produces.
• How big is your company? Give some information about the size and structure of your company.
• What markets does your company supply? Is your company UK based, Europe or perhaps Global?
• What is your company’s history? How long have you been doing what you do? Give a brief timeline.
• Try to describe your company in single words. Try and give approximately a dozen words.

2. Introduce your end users

Although it is important for your web designer to know a lot about your business, products and stakeholders, it is arguably even more important to gain a really solid understanding of who your end users are. End users are the people who will actually be using the website that collaboratively you and your designer will build. It has been commonplace for many years now for web designers to ask clients to complete ‘persona profiles’ for each of their customer types. Essentially this is a form that captures key information about each of your end user types such as salary, technical ability, age, needs, wants etc. Building a profile of your desired or typical customer helps both you and your designer to choose correct vocabulary, tone, and will influence colour choice, text size and much more.

The web design industry never sits still however and although persona profiles are very useful you may now hear people talk about empathy maps, user journey maps, and possibly other tools/methods too. I encourage you to spend some time in your favorite search engine to understand what these tools are and how they may work together to help you with your project.

Ultimately, you and your designer are going to be building or improving a website that helps these people. Understanding who they are, what motivates them and what they are trying to achieve will contribute hugely to the success of your project.

3. Goals of your new website

If you are to get the best out of your designer you need to be sure about what the goals of your new site are. In addition to this, you must outline the features you expect, the feel of the site and what role you see the site taking. This should be easily done by now as you will in an earlier guide worked out you’re your clients are, what they need and how it is to be delivered.

• What is the goal of your site?
• Why will it exist?
• Who is the target audience?
• Has your client changed or developed since the last site was built?
• Describe who your client is so your designer can have them in mind when designing the site your customer will use.
• What is the unique value position (UVP) of your company and/or the product/service they are selling?
• What sites will yours be competing with? Provide some examples?
• Are there any ‘must have’ features that your website must offer visitors. What tasks must users be able to carry out?

4. Deadlines

Simply put, when do you need/want your project to go live? Giving a reasonable expectation for the project to be delivered is incredibly important for your web designer as it will indicate to them whether:

• They have the capacity to carry out the work for you
• Whether they will need to involve more staff or sub-contract some elements of the project
• Whether the budget will allow your projected timeline
• How to manage the project and whether to split the project up into multiple elements

It is important to communicate if other things are dependent upon the delivery of this project. For example, that a marketing campaign is set to launch on particular date that uses the proposed website as a resource.

5. Project budget

My clients know that one of the first things I talk about with them is budget. Discussing budget is hugely important for the success of your project and allows you to find the right web designer for your project. Budget will dictate:

• Who you can afford to work on your project
• What solutions your chosen web designer will offer (software, hosting, maintenance)
• Hold a mirror to your requested features and reveal whether they are deliverable as requested or whether they will need reconsidering
• Allow you as an employer to have an even playing field for gathering quotations.

The most difficult conversation to have with a new client is often about money. To make matters more difficult, if your chosen web designer is doing her/his job, it is a conversation that happens early on in the relationship. There are practical reasons for discussing money so early on but also it allows your new designer to test the water. What do I mean by test the water? Asking a client “what budget is available to this project” allows us to get a very quick idea of how much thought has been put into the project by the client before we started our conversation.

Discussing budget early on in the design brief avoids putting time into relationships which arent well matched and is the best ‘reality check’ for the project requirements. If you want to read a much more in-depth blog discussing this issue, please have a look at this post ‘Why does my web designer want to know my budget?‘.

6. The competition

When I am talking with a prospective client, one of the things I always ask about is ‘the competition’. I like to know who the half dozen most significant competitors are to any business I work with. The purpose in seeking this information is to:

• See how or if this prospective client differs and differentiates themselves from their competition
• Get a better understanding of the marketplace by seeing what the competitors think is important in terms of content and search engine optimisation (SEO)
• Use the competitors sites to generate questions about the industry and to deepen understanding of the prospective clients marketplace (is there anything they arent talking about, or are talking about a lot)
• Identify any conventions in terms of visual identity, site layout or the way content is presented. Conventions exist for a reason and it isnt always wise to stray too far from convention
• So I can present the websites of competition to the prospective client as a talking point. A lot can be revealed this way.
• The competitors have likely done a lot of research, lets not waste that opportunity!

7. Style & continuity

Visitors to your web site must find something which is familiar. What I mean by this is that the web site should reflect the corporate style your company uses, familiar colours, logos, fonts etc. Any advertising, marketing material including the most basic items such as letterheads and business cards need to tie in with the style of your web site. Often a company will have a professionally produced set of brand guidelines and a style guide that incorporates web as well as print.

I absolutely love it when a client hands me a style guide. The presence of such a document largely reduces potential conflict and issues about look and feel and saves a lot of time. Sometimes though, a style guide simply isnt fit for use on a screen. Font types may be dictated which dont work well on screen or the brand may simply be very out of date. Where a brand/style isnt appropriate for a website it may be appropriate for some branding work to be completed prior to the project kicking off.

• Have you seen other web sites which you like?
• Where you have real-world examples of things you like its very helpful to be able to say to your designer, “ oh I like the catalogue system used by IKEA on their UK web site “ or “I love the minimalist design of the New Tate Modern web site”.
• Try and give half a dozen examples of sites you like, remembering to explain what it is you like about each one in particular.
• To assist the designer in this process it is so very useful to provide him/her with copies of your current marketing materials, business cards etc. Include them with this brief as a guide to how the web site should be styled.
• Do you have any content which is ready to be put into the web site?
• Are your intentions to use the text from your existing web site or to write new and vibrant copy for your new project?
• If you don’t have the text already produced then do you have the staff or agency that can produce text for you?

It will help your designer greatly to receive a few pages of sample text. It is really important for the designer that he knows how word-heavy your site is going to be as this can greatly affect the structure of the site.

8. Analysis of your digital assets

So far you have introduced your company and given some background information. Your web designer now knows a little about you. Now its time to explain what your designer has to work with. Outline the assets your company has in place, don’t worry if you don’t have a site already, that’s just as important to explain.

• Do you have a web site already? If so explain where it can be found.
• What does your company like about the web site it already has? How has it succeeded?
• In what way would your web site benefit from improvement, are there any specific areas of the site which have not worked or performed as desired?
• How old is your site? Was it built in house, or did you employ someone to do it? Do you still have any details from that project which you could present?
• Do people visit your site? If so present some of the statistics here, your designer will need that information as it will impact how the site is built.
• Is your site used as a sales tool? If so how effective has it been? Has it become more or less effective. The use of web sales statistics would be helpful.
• Who is responsible for updating the site? What are their skill levels etc?

Add any further details which will be of interest to the designer.  If you aren’t sure what assets you or your organisation already have, consider employing a web consultant to carry out a pre project digital asset audit for you.

9. Technical requirements

Do you have any special technical requirements?

This may sound a bit vague and perhaps unimportant, but there are going to be some fundamental things about your web site which fall into this category.

For example, is your web site going to be produced for use internally on a network (an intranet), or is your site going to be produced for consumption by the public (internet site)? If your company is producing a site designed as an intranet are there specific things that need to be communicated, ie. Does your company run a windows pc network or an alternative? Is there any specific technology/software which is to be integrated or accessed through the intranet site?

Conversely, if your site is to be an internet site, does your target market have any specific requirements or technical limitations. For example, is your target audience in a developing country which may use access the web primarily using smart phones or telephony enabled tablets?

Do you intend to remain with your current hosting company for your web site or start a new contract with an alternative? Do you have a preferred supplier for such services and if you do, do they run windows or Linux servers? Are you restricted to which languages can be used on your server?

10. Content & content generation

• Who is responsible for generating and providing the content to be used in your website?
• Are there any pages that your website must have?
• Do you have a sitemap roughed out that your web designer can use?

You may already have content from an existing website or you may be planning on writing your content in-house or using a third party to provide content for you. This needs to be made clear to your web designer so they can factor this into the project timeline and available budget. It is worth pointing out that content creation has been the single most common cause of project delay on most projects I have worked on.

Having a robust plan and named individuals who have responsibility for content generation is incredibly important. Be aware that most web designers will prefer to have the copy for a page prior to designing it. Although it is possible to design a pretty box to put unknown content into, to really make a page effective and suited to its content, we need to know how much and what type of content needs to be displayed so we can create a suitable structure and layout.

11. Accessibility

It is fair to say that the web industry has been slow to give accessibility the attention it deserves. However, once you start working on projects that have a requirement to consider accessibility of its content, it is hard to imagine not thinking about it on every project from there on in.

As a company or organisation and depending upon your target audience or specific industry requirements you well may have a requirement to meet certain minimum accessibility levels. You can find out more about them at the W3C website.

It is commonplace for there to be a minimum requirement on a project to satisfy WCAG 2.1 AA level and ensures that many attributes such as contrast of text is readable to as wide an audience as possible. I recommend you check what requirements your organisation has either comitted to internally, or whether there are requirements imposed by you being linked to or a part of local government or being part of a group or association that has minimum standards for its members.

As well as there being legal requirements for accessibility your end users may have additional or very specific needs when using your website. If that is the case you should outline these needs in your brief.

12. Ongoing management & maintenance

Many people and indeed large companies tend to launch a new web site and then completely fail to support it after that point. A web site is organic in the sense that its success and its rankings in search engines depend heavily on the site being frequently updated.

Often a site isn’t updated for the simple reason that a company doesn’t have the staff to dedicate to providing small and frequent updates. The task gets set aside and ultimately forgotten until one day it is mentioned that the web site isn’t performing.

Who is going to be responsible for updating your web site? Do you have staff who will be providing content on an ongoing basis? It’s quite possible for example that you have plenty of content but you lack a staff member with sufficient IT skills to be able to update your site. This is in itself not a problem if it is addressed. You could for example use an external contractor like myself to make frequent updates to your site. This is a cost-effective way of keeping your site fresh and useful to your customers without the burden of having to employ, or re-task an existing employee to carry out the role.

13. Conclusion

At the end of your brief, you should conclude by summarizing the points you have made and outlined in detail what you expect of your designer.

• What information do you need communicated back to yourself and when by?
• What criteria will you be using to select a web designer?
• When will you let the successful designer or agency know your decision?

It is typical for a designer to return a full proposal to you which will give you enough information to manage not only the time elements of your work but also the budget elements.

You should now be ready to write a design brief for your web designer, however, your situation and your project is unique. If you would like some help in creating your design brief please don’t hesitate to give me a call.

Call me today on 01903 527927. I look forward to talking with you soon.

I have met very few clients that ‘like’ paying for research or discovery works. Essentially this is pre-project web consultancy and many people see it as lost money, money that could be spent on building the website or delivering the digital project in some real tangible way.

My name is Paul Edwards, I am a Web Consultant and Frontend Developer and I’ve been working in the web industry since 2005.

In this blog post I will discuss whether it is prudent to cut costs by asking your chosen web designer to remove the research phase from project estimates. In order to make an educated appraisal of this commonly used tactic, we will look at what is typically included in a project research phase and the potential opportunity cost of not carrying out research.

Your web design project is unique, so if you feel that you have any unanswered questions I would be happy to steer you in the right direction. Call me today on 01903 527927.

Research phase? Isn’t that just another way for my web designer to get more money out of me?

And there is the problem. The perception of the research and discovery exercise as something unreal that is used to pad out project costs. Not only that but some clients see that phase of works as obstructive. A barrier to actually getting on with things, which is about as far from reality as you can probably get.

Your project may on paper look like it is going to cost you more but let me be clear about this. Research and discovery phases in a project save you money.

Not only does research save you money I will hand on heart tell you that by doing research and development work before the kick-off of the main project you will also make MORE money. The benefits don’t stop there. Not only will you make more money, but you will also reduce greatly the chances of your project performing poorly or missing your goals entirely.

Let’s look at some of the purposes and reasons for carrying out a research phase before commencing a web design project.

Asset Auditing

Companies have churn or turnover in their staff. Often as staff members arrive and leave, information relating to marketing assets get lost, forgotten or deleted. As part of a pre-project discovery phase, I often carry out an asset audit where I attempt to discover any live or mothballed social media profiles, hosting accounts, websites and more.

you would be surprised at the sheer number of old accounts, websites and social media profiles which a company has which it may not even be aware of

I assure you, you would be surprised at the sheer number of old accounts, websites and social media profiles which a company has which it may not even be aware of. Often these accounts have been set up for previous (and now concluded) marketing campaigns or have been mothballed prior to a company rebranding exercise. These accounts can sit live but be off-brand, off message and display things that the company no longer wishes to be public.

The outcome of having old accounts live which are not being updated is that the viewing public may mistakenly think that the company has closed down due to the lack of posts that have been added in x amount of years or months. Old accounts can also get hacked or hijacked and do damage to a brand.

Focus Review

Often when clients first come to me they may or may not have a project brief. Project briefs are great things but they can be both a benefit or a hindrance depending on how self-aware a client is and how well they know (or think they know) their client base.

The reason I mention this is because there is a good chance a client has a firm idea of what they ‘think’ they need. They then produce their project brief with a flourish and proudly drop a weighty tome upon the meeting table.

Don’t misunderstand me, I am always happy when a client has a detailed project brief. It shows organisation, thought and the kind of mindset which is likely to lead to a successful project. Sadly however the project brief is often too focused. To the point where the client is prescribing the solution to the problem. This presents several problems to a person such as myself. 15 years in the industry has afforded me the privilege of having seen enough projects to be able to accumulate a lot of knowledge which can help my clients. When a client prescribes the solution they remove a great deal of my ability to be able to help them by using my knowledge and experience.

There is something more important than this though. With reasonable frequency, I find that a client who prescribes a solution focuses on that solution and completely misses what the goals of the project are as well as who they are trying help.

There are two tricky conversations that it is my job to have with a client early on in a project. Firstly, discussing budget and secondly discussing the fact that the project isn’t about ‘what they want’. The project isn’t for them at all. It is for their clients or for those that the website is designed to enable.

you would be stunned how many companies don’t realise where 80% of their income comes from

Often, to ensure that the project focus is correct, it is essential to revisit what the clients’ goals are, who their clients actually are (you would be stunned how many companies don’t realise where 80% of their income comes from) and to then rewrite the project brief, removing prescriptive information which may often cause a project to go in completely the wrong direction and which ultimately will lose the client money and fail to meet project goals. Often a client will be the architect of the failure of their project if the web designer they employ is unable to challenge assumptions and seek data to back up the assertions of the client.

Another issue with comprehensive briefs is that sometimes they are in part re-issues of briefs used for previous projects. This can result in a document that contains historic information which isn’t important to this project or which talks about adherence to standards which are now outdated or completely irrelevant. Without care, attention to detail and the desire to challenge information a web designer can end up working within artificial boundaries which can hinder the project’s chance of success and were unnecessary all along.

At its worst, a project brief can doom a project before it starts, at its best it guides and informs a web designer and provides focus against measurable objectives. It is always nice when both a client and a web designer are using the same criteria to know when they have succeeded.

Technical Audit

It isn’t just important to know what accounts and websites a client have out in the ether, it is important to know where they are registered. What country are the services hosted in? Is this the country and the region that the asset is going to be viewed in? Is the hosting being used fast, well supported, fully-featured and appropriate to the task the asset is focused towards?

I often find that when auditing client websites that the target market is a completely different country in which the website is hosted. Often this is the case because the client purchased a cheap shared hosting account, didn’t realise the impact on server location in terms of website load times etc or simply that the hosting is an account set up by a third party over which they have no real control.

Sometimes clients actually have ad campaigns running on assets that are no longer relevent or for compaigns which have long since concluded.

After carrying out an asset audit I provide a report to suggest how these assets can be rationalised in order to minimise risk to the business and ensure best possible performance. You may find that the reduced costs from rationalisation of assets can be fed back into your project or will at least contribute towards the ongoing maintenance costs of your website.

Competitor analyses

Just what are your arch rivals up to? Looking at your competitors websites can tell you a lot about what might be worth considering yourself in terms of content and strategy.

The reasons for assessing your competition are many, but most significantly is the fact that they have likely already carried out the work that you find yourselves embarking upon now. Why not look at their site, analyse it and see if there is any information that you can use to your advantage.

1. see what keywords and keyphrases your competitors are optimising their sites for
2. see what content of theirs tops the results in search engines, is there anything of thieres that you can do better and use it to leapfrog their position in the search engines?
3. look at their site structure
4. see if their content and site is well recieved
5. does their site do so well that it would proclude you from using certain keywords and phrases?

Brand and style usage guide

Your client may already have a style guide and indeed a usage guide alongside it. However, is that guide suitable for the web or was it designed and produced primarily for print?

Site map

Modern websites are normally designed well enough that visitors dont need a map of the site in order to navigate around and find what they want. Intuitive navigation, breadcrumbs and site search functions have largely replaced site maps in aiding visitor navigation.

Your site will however still require a site map although the requirements are now slightly different:

1. XML sitemaps are created to guide search engines through your website to make indexing your site easier
2. An agreed site map will aid in the production of site content
3. A site map will help your web designer create the pages that will be needed
4. Site maps help a company manage their assets and keep their content focused

Strategy summary

A digital asset audit (technical audit) when viewed alongside an agreed sitemap, well constructed project brief and competitor analysis allows for the construction of a digital strategy document.

Everyone likes to know when they have done well. Goals help that kind of assessment.

The digital strategy is essentially a summary of the agreed strategy and will allow both the web designer and the client to align their purpose in seeking to meet agreed goals which have a date and quantity attached to them. You will find that an agreed strategy summary will help both sides of the project gain momentum and focus activities around goals rather than personal feelings. All activities are aimed at and measured around business goals.

Measure twice cut once

The old phrase “measure twice cut once” is appropriate here and is a great way of expressing the use of a research phase when preparing for a web project.

The cost savings from carrying out research come in terms of the potential opportunity cost of not carrying out research and enduring a project failure. It is important to measure the potential cost of getting things wrong and taking this into account when deciding whether to accept the advice for carrying out pre-project research.

I assure you that research will be enlightening, improve the chance of project success, improve knowledge and greatly reduce risk and potential losses.

There is a lot of work that is involved with research and I have only really touched upon it here. If you would like to know more then I would love to have a chat with you. Call me today on 01903 527927. I look forward to talking with you soon.

I’m sure you have experienced it, you approach a bunch of web designers or design agencies for quotes for a website and they want to know every detail. Then the question comes where they ask you about how much money you have. You, stall, avoid the question and just ask for their best price.

My name is Paul Edwards, I am a web consultant and frontend developer based in Worthing, West Sussex. If you feel that you have any unanswered questions I would be happy to have a chat to you about your specific situation. Call me on 01903 527927.

Today I answer the question:

Why does my web designer want to know my budget?

Difficult Conversations

The most difficult conversation to have with a new client is often about money. To make matters more difficult, if your chosen web designer is doing her/his job, it is a conversation that happens early on in the relationship. There are practical reasons for discussing money so early on but also it allows your new designer to test the water. What do I mean by test the water? Asking a client “what budget is available to this project” allows us to get a very quick idea of how much thought has been put into the project by the client before we started our conversation.

Sometimes budgets are allocated, goals are documented and all decisions have been based upon solid statistics and research. Sometimes, the opposite is true and asking about budget gives a very brief insight into how much extra work will fall onto the designer on this contract in terms of client education and potential consultancy requirements. The outcome of that simple question could even be that the project should be paused until the proper pre-requisite research and strategy has been completed.

Every web design project costs money. It doesn’t matter if you are starting the project internally or using an external agency or freelance web designer to complete the works. Their time costs money. Not only that, there will be costs and expenses that don’t relate to time expenditure too.

Do you have a budget?

So how much should your new website cost?

Ah, that old chestnut. Whenever I am asked that by a prospective client I answer with one of a few analogies, firstly:

If you were my architect, and I asked you to build me a house, how much would it cost?

The response is always the same, either a look of enlightenment, which is difficult to see on the phone, but which I swear still has its own unique sound or silence perhaps.

At that point, it becomes very clear to the client, what they have to pay is going to largely depend upon what is needed. What is needed is dependent upon the client’s goals, the needs of their users and of course, the available budget for the project.

You can see that the question about the budget really is important. The solution that is to be delivered by your web designer is entirely dependent upon budget. If you want a reliable estimate for a project that is based around a solution that you can afford to actually implement, you have to reveal your budget.

But if you reveal your budget won’t I just spend it all?

Short answer, yes. Unless your budget is so large that the best possible solution can be picked every time and leave surplus funds.

New clients, in particular, smaller companies or sole traders, are always worried that if they reveal their budget for a web design project that they will be ripped off by the people that they contact for estimates.

Some of the issue here is one of perspective and I try and address this early on by being very upfront and clear to my clients. I tell them this. “I will spend every penny that you allow me to”. I also then explain that my motivation is to provide the best possible solution that helps my clients achieve their goals as quickly as possible. To do this I have to implement the best possible solution available within their budget. If your budget is £500 or £50k please let me know.

But isn’t that taking advantage of clients’ honesty about the budget?
Absolutely not. Working to a budget is the height of responsibility. You, as a client, should reveal your budget freely, quickly and honestly.

Why should you reveal your budget when seeking estimates for web design?

It allows freelancers and companies to quickly ascertain if they are a good fit for your needs. Budget quickly gives rise to an idea of potential manpower requirements and the likelihood for specialist skills. This reduces the chance of being picked up by a designer who ends up feeling undervalued and unmotivated to do their best work.

Revealing your budget allows those returning estimates to price in solutions which are achievable within your budget. There is no point getting widely different estimates which provide very different solutions to your project, some of which may not be possible within the budget you have in your mind. By hiding your budget you don’t pick the best firm to carry out your work, you simply end up picking the one that made the right ‘guess’ about your financial capacity when you spoke initially. This doesn’t allow for proper differentiation between contractors when making your choice.

Revealing budget allows a more accurate estimate to be formed, with much more detail about how a project will be delivered. More information reduces the ‘unknowns’ and therefore reduces stress levels and anxiety about a project on both sides of the contract.

I will provide the right solution based upon your declared budget and if your budget is insufficient to allow us to reach your goals in one step it allows me to then suggest a phased approach or prioritisation of your project delivery get you as far as you can go for your money.

Revealing your budget shows trust and starting a relationship in a way that demonstrates this trust will cement the relationship quickly and build more of a partnership approach and the sharing of goals rather than an adversarial relationship where both sides compete to reduce either delivery of funds or labour.

Want to work out a budget but not sure where to start?

I wouldn’t be fair of me to say that working out a budget is simple. There are so many factors that come into play when setting a budget but to get a really quick and simple starting point lets assume that whatever the projected yearly turnover created by your new website is, take 10% of that as a starting figure.

Projected annual income generated by new website * 0.1 = starting figure for website budget

Let’s assume that your new project is projected to turnover £500k in its first year. Using the formula above, we end up with a starting budget of £50k.

Now, 50k may sound like a huge amount of money, and let us be honest here, depending upon your project, how it generates its turnover and lots of other factors that figure may be either too high or too low. But let’s also try and remember that your investment should be split out over the useful life of your new website, which in most cases is about 4 years. (see this blog post about website life spans)

For the sake of the argument, it gives us a starting figure and teh very fact that it will either offend you or seem quite cheap is very revealing and useful. It gives you your first gut feeling about the project and allows the sum to be divided up between the cost centres. For example, not all this cost may go to your web designer, it may be split between your internal content team, IT department and your chosen web professional.

Some projects have very low costs, others much higher. Some of the things that you will need to consider when amending this budget figure may include the following:

• domain and hosting fees
• web consultancy
• research costs
• web design and build
• ongoing website management
• ongoing website maintenance
• content generation
• software license fees
• cost of integration with internal sales and stock management systems
• legal fees for terms and conditions, GDPR etc.
• community management
• marketing
• user testing
• % margin of error for extra unforeseen expenses
• translation into multiple languages
• search engine optimisation

Once you consider all of the above items you may find that your new amended budget will be quite different. However, you now have a figure that you can present to those that you wish to receive estimates from. A figure which your chosen web designer or agency can look at and use to ascertain whether you have sufficient or insufficient funds to reach your goals.

What if your website isnt going to generate income directly?

Your new website may not be an ecommerce site and as such may not directly generate revenue, however, there are other ways to take a good guess at a starting figure for a budget.

• Will your new website provide a function or service that is currently costing you money to provide by another route?
• If your site is going to be a lead generation site, do you have projected figures for how many leads you require it to generate? Do you currently have an average cost per lead that you can use in your assumptions?
• Will your new website be saving you costs elsewhere?

By using the approach above, you can start to get an idea of the financial value of your website which will then allow you to substitute the turnover figure with a figure generated by cost savings and added value. This will help you get started in calculating your budget figure.

Assuming you have enough budget to reach your goals, the provision of a budget figure will allow your chosen web team to start to work out exactly what kind of solutions to offer you.

the provision of a budget figure will allow your chosen web team to start to work out exactly what kind of solutions to offer you.

By being upfront and honest about your budget you will make better appointments, stand a better chance of reaching your goals and cultivate a better and more effective relationship with your internal and external web teams.

Still need more help?

If you feel that you need more detailed guidance to work out a budget for your web design project please get in touch with me on 01903 527927. I am very happy to offer advice and guidance that will help you in your particular situation and get you on the road to achieving your goals.

Summary

Finding a good web designer, developer or a competent person to maintain your website can be a difficult task. This guide contains advice which will help reduce the chance of you employing the services of an unreputable company or freelancer who isn’t up to the job.

Together we will focus on your goals and prepare for the design process. Reduce the chances of making a poor decision and have a much more intuitive feel of what will contribute towards the success of your project.

By Paul Edwards

Hiring a web designer is a journey

The process of hiring and working with a web designer is a journey (bear with me on this). Like any other journey in life in order to be successful, we need to have a firm understanding of what we want to achieve and where we want to get to. When we know our task and destination we can easily select the most appropriate route to get there.

For your web design or digital project journey,  you will need to ensure you have some basic information:

1. Knowledge of where you currently are and what resources you have at your disposal.
   This should be considered in terms of not only the budget but also the time you or the responsible person will have to dedicate to the project.
2. An understanding of where you want to get to, and when you want to get there by.
   Quantify everything or you or your web designer will never know if you have succeeded in your goal.

Understanding points 1 and 2 will help you plan how to get to your destination in a way which will please the people you want to without wasting resources.

I know how simple this sounds but believe me when I say that a surprising number of businesses don’t really know who their clients are, or what motivates them. A really good agency or freelancer will guide you through this process but it takes time and costs money. You can greatly assist the process and potentially reduce costs by having done a bit of deep thinking prior to talking to a web design company or freelancer.  Do you know what assets you have? What wasn’t working out for you with your previous website or web designer? What goals were you failing to reach?

  A surprising number of businesses don’t really know who their clients are, or what motivates them

Without a sound understanding of location, destination and route, as an employer, you are seriously handicapped in your ability to employ a web designer. Fortunately, there are web consultants out there who can assist you with pre-project consultancy should your firm not have the knowledge of expertise to do its own research.

If you avoid pre-project research and employ without any knowledge of what you are trying to achieve, success becomes a matter of luck than judgment. Fair warning now, if you ever ask a web designer to cut costs by cutting out the research phase and they agree, run away very quickly. No project will ever succeed without the due diligence and research and no reputable designer or agency would agree to this because it is not in the best interests of you.

Where are you now?

The goals that you want your new web designer to help you achieve will vary tremendously upon your role in your organisation, how long you have worked there and also the kind of role you occupy. It is important to remember that different stakeholders may have different goals and exposure to different elements that you will need to consider. Try and ensure that you poll these stakeholders or at least let your new web designer know that they exist and how to contact them so that they can do this on your behalf.

It is important to remember that different stakeholders may have different goals and exposure to different elements that you will need to conside

You may be self-employed or the owner of your own business. If that is the case you will likely have a handle on everything. You know all about your website, whether it works, whether it doesn’t, who made it, when they made it and what your reservations were at the time.

You know if it has performed and you will know why, if it hasn’t.

The same isn’t necessarily true for those in larger organisations. You may be an employee who doesn’t know where the IT department is, let alone who was involved in making the current website. Its purpose may be difficult to fathom if not impossible. You may be in the unfortunate position that you do not have the big picture of what your company does. In such a situation not only would we recommend pre-project consultancy but we would also recommend a full digital asset audit prior to the commencement of the main web design project.

It is important to take stock of thinking in your organisation:

•  What are the goals of the company/organisation/department?
•  What are future developments in the pipeline?
•  Do you have a corporate style?
•  Does your organisation have a particular work ethic or moral code?
•  Who are your customers? What are their values? (this will be featured in another guide)
•  What marketing assets does your company already have in place?
• Will your web project be servicing any particular country or community that may have its own needs, requirements and sensitivities?

This list is by no means exhaustive and each point you will think of is too big on its own to be dealt with here. Some items such as defining who your customer is can be addressed during pre-project consultancy or you can locate on the web and download ‘persona profile’ templates. Filling these in will help you greatly.

Defining your customer is perhaps the single most important thing you can do and should not be underestimated. Where you are going and how you get there, will be affected most heavily by this one factor.

The purpose of this section is that after considering the above, you should be able to produce a list of requirements and considerations which are important to this project and that will shape its growth and direction

Make a point of writing such a list or pinning a large piece of paper on the wall to map important factors. If you would like further guidance on this process please do contact us and we will be able to walk you through a pre-project questionnaire which will ensure you don’t miss out anything important. Call us on 01903 527927.

Where do you want to get to?

Your mind map or pre-project consultancy with stakeholders will suggest potential destinations, the things you added to the list will give you an idea of what your customers and therefore your company want, when by and whether they have moral and legal obligations about how they can achieve it.

Your mind map is going to be reflected on the website that you will be making. You would be amazed at how many companies embark on designing a really important asset like a website and then months later totally change their corporate style. Such a big change is likely to be known about by some of your colleagues for months and months. Seek them out before investing time and budget. Don’t forget that once a style does change that all your digital assets will need to be audited to ensure continuity of tone, message and style.

You would be amazed at how many companies embark on designing a really important asset like a website and then months later totally change their corporate style.

The goals of your organisation, what it wants to achieve, when fully understood by you will be an amazing tool in selecting a web designer or design company. You will come to know quickly if the personalities that you meet share your values, have experience in delivering the solutions you are looking for and whether they are capable of projecting your company in a way which will meet your goals.

What route are you going to take to success?

OK, time for the gritty part. Remember we discussed customers? Well, whatever your organisation type, Limited Company, Self Employed, Academic Institution, Charity or NGO (we work for all of these). You will all have customers or end users of some sort.

Let’s take some time to think about your customers or users

Just who is your customer? It helps to imagine your average customer as a single person, give them a name. Think about what they like, what they don’t like. What are the things they insist upon? What are the things they will run away from screaming? Add all these details about your customer to your mind map, or if you prefer, make an additional one.

Your new site or the re-alignment of your existing website is all about them. Your website serves your clients. Whoever you choose to make your website must design it for your users, and not for you. This is a major stumbling block for many employers. They start to impose personal taste upon a site which is not designed for them. Try to think as your customer and dare I say it, trust your designer. He or she will design function and form that is tailored to your user, their needs and the tasks they want to complete.

Your ethics and moral standpoint, as well as other factors like the size of your company and what your customer likes will probably have determined by this point whether you are looking to employ a company or a freelancer to do the work for you.

Do you want the personal service and lower cost of a freelancer? or do you want the perceived benefits of employing an agency? Both have benefits but one will likely fit more with your brand or organisation ethics. For example, as a virtual agency, we have lower costs than bricks and mortar agencies but deliver a huge amount of expertise across a number of digital disciplines.  Using our tools you can check on our progress 24 hours a day, collaborate and share files, see edits in real time and make suggestions, conference call with us using Skype and much more.

Each company or freelancer will have a profile or personality. For example, we are known and recommended for being quite blunt and to the point, not in an effort to be rude but to be efficient and to be absolutely honest and truthful with you. It’s a matter of selecting the right shaped block to fit in the right hole. And please, don’t be secretive about a budget. A good agency or web designer will ascertain your budget quickly and give you the best solution you can get for your investment.

If you have found a good fit then whoever you are speaking to will give you an indication of what you can get for your budget, what they would do if you had more, and what they would recommend if you had less. They will discuss with you the best way to split your budget and what work will take precedence. If this doesn’t happen, then, perhaps you should consider looking elsewhere.

Some final thoughts

The personality of your chosen web designer will have a big pull in how your website is delivered. Each company or designer will have their preferred methods of creating and styling a web site. Your site will need to be delivered in a way which your client feels comfortable with, has the technology to view and the knowledge to use.

Let’s imagine for a moment that your end users are predominantly in developing countries. Your clients may not have access to computers in the traditional sense at all and may only have access to the internet via smartphones. They may be older models with lower screen resolutions and more limited processing power. Ensure your designer knows how to meet these unique challenges.

Alternatively, your clients may all be web designers who will be impressed by nothing less than bleeding edge technology. However, a relevant point is made, and who you employ will impact heavily on end result and total cost.

Conclusion

Know yourself or your firm. Know your customers. Learn the limitations and specialisations of your prospective web designers or web consultants and you will naturally pick one who shares your values, understands your customers and knows how to convert their interest to sales.

This guide has given a really brief introduction to what there is to consider in picking a web designer and indeed the work that has to be done before you get that far. Thank’s for reading it and please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us if you have any questions you would like answers to by calling 01903 527927 or by filling in our contact form.