Best Web Design Request

Darkewolfe

Alright, so a company I associate with is contracting to a professional web design company for a complete redesign of their site. It's the usual corporate level stuff, they'll take bids, etc. etc. I'm overseeing part of it in terms of creative content, and I find myself unsure of the usual method for this.

So the question is (and the best sorts of people to answer would be those who know this from professional experience) what's the best way to present the project to a design company in order to get an accurate estimate of the initial costs, get the site the way we want it and not cause the design company to hate us for micromanaging.

Do most people provide mock-ups of each page? Would you normally say, "I want space for an X by Y graphic in the upper left corner, a 400 word block of text in 12 point next to that, and seventeen links?" Or would you be more general than that? Any advice is appreciated. This is going to be a very large project, for whatever that matters, and we're expecting to pay for a decent chunk to get a company that will do it right.

Seguer

As soon as you begin to dictate things like that, you're going to end up restricting the design choices available to the designers.

General wording would be better, such as "we need a link on this page that goes to this one, but it has to be this image of product x".

Try and think about what the objective for the redesign is, and try and get that across to the designers.


I'll let actual designers add more.

Szechuanosaurus

This topic is too big to explain properly in a post.

I suggest reading this book.

Essentially, you should be approaching design agencies with business objectives, not design requirements.

Darkewolfe

Perfect, thanks. I am over my head here, but the theory is that everyone is over their head at some point. That's how I'll become proficient at this. Additional advice will be appreciated.

Willeth

Make sure you communicate what you want the site to do. For example, "I want to present these six services that my company provides, and I want the site to utilise our corporate colours of puke-yellow and bloodshot-eye-red on a field of Spandex-pink. The user should be able to contact us but it should not be immediately obvious."

What you don't want to do is start saying that you want the logo here, a menu here - at least, not at first. Let them decide what works. You want to supply them with the audience that you expect will be using the site and what information they want to get from it - that's it. They're a design company. Let them design it.

Darkewolfe

I was going to go with something like: Front page should link to X pages, dedicated to Y topics. Front page needs to feature these two logos somewhere prominent, and should have space for X and Y. Strong preference for entire front page to be viewable on a certain size resolution without scrolling.

Then go on to say that I need pages for A, B, C, D, E and F. Give the written text for those pages, and suggest places where certain pages need to link to other pages.

Willeth

That seems okay to me, but I'm nto a web designer. I would probably not specify a resolution, though, and rather, supply your expected target demographic and what you expect their resolution to be. If you can provide reasons for your spec it'll make it more robust and will only help the designers.

Don't forget that sites can be designed to easily incorporate multiple resolutions. A site that's full-screen at 800x600 is going to look terribly small anywhere else unless it's scaled properly. Let the designer figure out if you need that.

Also, ask about options for mobile device browsing if you think it's appropriate. iPhones and Blackberries are almost ubiquitous in certain business areas, and if your site resizes well enough - or even better, has a mobile version that phones default to - that can be a great help.

Szechuanosaurus

Darkewolfe wrote: »

I was going to go with something like: Front page should link to X pages, dedicated to Y topics. Front page needs to feature these two logos somewhere prominent, and should have space for X and Y. Strong preference for entire front page to be viewable on a certain size resolution without scrolling.

Then go on to say that I need pages for A, B, C, D, E and F. Give the written text for those pages, and suggest places where certain pages need to link to other pages.

Really this is still doing the design company's job for them. A lot of companies will take this level of guidance and happily charge you for doing their work for them but if you approach the project that way, you won't get best value for money from an experienced, competent design team nor necessarily the best site for your company.

The book I linked goes into more detail, but generally ask the question 'Why are we redesigning our site?' and 'What are our business objectives with this site?' The answers to these questions should connect; you have some business objective, say 'sell 46% more wonder-widgets in the next quarter' and you want to get your website redesigned because you do not feel it is helping achieve this objective. You may also identify certain areas where the existing site is under-performing in relation to this goal (a good design company may be able to help you analyse the existing site to figure out why it is under-performing).

This then leads to a creative brief for the design agency, a marketing manager might write something like this; "We need to increase sales of wonder-widgets by 46% in the next quarter and believe a website may be able to help us achieve this goal as part of a wider marketing and sales initiative. Our existing site under-emphasises the wonder-widget, has a high drop-off rate at the checkout, doesn't encourage visitors to make further enquiries and our sales team have reported back to us that it is not a useful sales tool for them. We would like our website redesigned to place greater emphasis on the wonder-widget, increase successful purchases through the site, generate leads via enquiries from the site and provide our sales team with useful and relevant information to show potential customers when speaking to them".

It will be longer, it should cover target demographics and so forth, but the basic concept is there. You have a business goal, the thing that is actually relevant to your company, the thing that you want to achieve with or without a website. You have an assessment of where the current site is hindering attempts to achieve that goal and you have business-related objectives that you believe will help you achieve your goal. It's the web designer's job to figure out exactly how to design a site that will contribute to supporting those objectives and hopefully result in your company reaching it's goals.

The design agency should be able to determine an optimum structure and layout for the website as part of their research and design process, it shouldn't be necessary to present them with a site map. They will also likely re-write the brief in more detail as part of their initial estimate to you.

Hypatia

Make sure that you list out for yourself and for the company what areas you're going to want on the site. If possible, list it out by content like: A place for our contact info (address, phone, e-mail, etc), a place to say our mission statement, a place that lists all of our employees with their pictures and a paragraph about each one, a place that tells what services we provide broken down by machines, etc.

The more you can tell them about what your goals for the site are and what content is going to need to fit on the thing, the better they'll be able to lay it out and come up with something.

The last thing anyone wants is for them to come up with a design, information architecture, etc etc and then have it found out that really you need to cram an extra 20 more pieces/sections onto the site and that really your target market is "the boss's wife".