Communicating Your Vision

Posted by Krista Jones on November 5, 2010 in:

I can’t tell you how important it is to clearly communicate what you want to your web designer at the start of a project. The majority of frustrations over a web design happen because the designer didn’t understand what their client wanted. Sometimes this is the designer’s mistake, but more often than not, the designer wasn’t given a clear understanding of what the website should and shouldn’t be.

The Design Brief

 Design briefs are one of the best ways to begin a project. A design brief is an explanation you give to your designer to outline what you’re looking for. Design briefs often contain information about your company, your industry, what your want your website to do (for example, generate sales), your target audience, your budget, your competition and design preferences.

Many designers have a creative brief they will send to you to fill out, but in case your designer doesn’t have one, or you’d like to download one ahead of time, I’ve included a sample one here for you to download.

Download a sample design brief.

Be Specific

Try to be as specific as possible when you’re filling out a design brief or communicating with your designer about your project. For example, if you’re making a website for your beauty salon, it would be important to communicate where your business is located, your typical cliental, how large your salon is, the average price for services and your competition.  Based on those factors, we would expect the website for an upscale Palm Beach salon to look entirely different than the website of a Brooklyn barbershop.

It’s also important to communicate what you’d like your website to do. Should it list your services and prices, allow customers to book an appointment or list staff information? 

If you’re not sure what features you’d like on your website, try looking at your competitors and other websites from companies in your industry.

Send Samples

Designers are visual people. They need images and examples to understand what you’re looking for. It’s a really good idea to send samples of websites you do and don’t like. These samples may come from your competition, places you shop, news sites you visit regularly or a design gallery. Try CSS Line, CSS Elite, Dribbble or CSS Heroes. Try to send as many samples as possible to give your designer plenty to draw from when they start your project.

When giving samples, also indicate what you like and don’t like about each one. Is it the fonts, the colors, the layout, the images or something else? The more detailed you get, the better the designer can understand your preferences.

Trust the Expert but Ask Questions

You probably hired this designer because you have no idea how to create a website but you want something polished and professional. Your designer is an expert in the Internet industry. Trust them, but don’t be afraid to ask questions about why they’ve added certain elements to a design. Designers understand that you probably don’t know exactly what goes into making a successful website and most of them are more than happy to answer your questions. 

Conclusion

As you and your designer work through the designs, remember to be specific, to keep your audience in mind and to ask questions.

Good luck! 

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