Web design: recommendations to the customer

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The design of a corporate website is a significant and often underestimated factor in the success of a company's business. In order for it to work at full power, the customer must not only competently select the performer, but also actively participate in the project. How to properly build relationships with the performer?

How to build a website competently? How to choose an artist who will be able to fulfill the task of developing a web design that fully corresponds to the corporate style and mission of your company? A potential customer should adhere to the following criteria when solving such simple, at first glance, questions.

First, the design of the site should be entrusted to a company professionally engaged in web design.

Secondly, during its existence, the company must accumulate a lot of experience in performing interesting, real-world projects.

Thirdly, the performer must submit a portfolio of his works that can make a good impression and please the customer.

Where to start

From the very beginning it should be understood that the creation of a site with a design adequate to ideology and content is a serious and painstaking work of the Wallpapers of the parties, which requires not only high professionalism of the performer, but also a certain level of the customer's preparedness. If the performer readily agrees to work with the abstract statement of the problem, "do me a good site", this indicates his lack of professionalism.

Result of such "works "Will be a formal business card containing only contact information, a description of the company's activities, but not decisive tasks of its positioning in the information space. In addition, there is a high probability that to facilitate its task, the contractor will offer the customer one of the previously obtained "successful" Design templates. In this case, to say that the design is a continuation of the corporate style and graphic embodiment of the mission of the company, clearly not necessary. Also, do not seriously take a company that promises to make a site in two weeks. As a rule, the average term for developing an online representation of a customer in a serious company is approximately sixty working days, but the customer will receive a guaranteed quality result.

Website design: development stages

The very process of developing a website design can be conditionally divided into several stages, each of which is a close interaction of the artist with the customer:

Creating a task by the customer
Setting the task to the performer
Website design
Presentation of website design

Creating a task is a process that takes place "inside "Customer. The customer even before the choice of the performer must precisely determine for what purpose he needs the site, and clearly know what result he wants to get in the end.

Before communicating with the future creator of the site, the customer should understand that the corporate site is a communication channel that must inform the public about certain information. The main issues that need to be addressed are what kind of information and how it should be presented to the site. A correct understanding of these issues will provide an effective solution to current and long-term business problems. Turning to the example of Western companies, we will see that any commercial site fulfills, among other things, the function of controlling the situation around the company, i. E. Is a tool for managing reputation.

The process of organizing information should be based on an ideological basis. That is, the company must have a clearly marked mission, "self-positioning". Many Russian companies now only pass the stage of the formation of these concepts. The mission of the company is an integral component of the corporate culture, its "self-consciousness", an indicator of reaching a certain qualitative level. On the western stock markets, a company that does not have its own internal culture has a low chance of success. An integral part of the corporate culture, its expression is corporate identity as a combination of graphic elements and ideological techniques that are uniquely associated with the company, creating a recognizable effect.

It should be remembered that the mission of the company is the basis on which the design of the future site will be built. By itself, web design is nothing more than the structuring and design of already available information with the involvement of certain visual images and graphical techniques. Moments that relate to mission, positioning, corporate culture and corporate identity set the rules for the design of this information are the "starting point" Construction site.

The availability of such information will greatly facilitate the interaction with the performer at the stage of setting the task, help to avoid the loss of time and resources. But the practice is that the mission of the company, elements of corporate style are often determined directly at the meeting with the performer. In this case, all the necessary information is generated jointly, but this takes some time.

When ordering an Internet project, the customer must consider the existence of his own internal structure, which will also influence the concept and content of the future resource. It is not at all necessary that the individual elements of this structure (departments, units) have similar interests. Marketing department, PR department, personnel department - it is obvious that all these services will be using the site to solve their own tasks. The CEO, who heads the company, has its own, "strategic" vision of the current situation and further prospects. Representatives of all interested internal departments of the customer should be given time and get together to work out common requirements for the future Internet site and its design in order to present to the performer the "collective vision" Resource, develop a statement of the basic problem. After the formation of a working group consisting of people representing different units, the senior of this group should be appointed. This person should manage the decision-making process, have the authority to set priorities within the group, bear full responsibility for the project on the part of the customer and, interacting directly with the executor, promptly provide all necessary materials and data.

We continue the conversation with the designer

It is desirable to document the developed requirements, so that in the future they remain unchanged, because in case of any changes at later stages, when work on the site is already launched, it is fraught with time loss. Changing the finished design under unexpectedly discovered circumstances is a complicated technical task.

When all the necessary information is received, you can proceed to the next stage of interaction with the executor - perform the task statement.

Setting the task to the performer. When the customer has decided on the goals of creating his site, he meets with the executor, during which the task is to design. This is a fairly important stage, which should take into account several characteristic moments.

First, do not impose specific design decisions on the performer. It's better to show on specific examples what you like and what does not. In the future, designers will take into account these preferences in their work. Do not forget that a team of professionals will work on the project, which has been dealing with such problems for more than one year. If you have entered into an agreement with them, it is implied that their level of competence a priori is not questioned by you. It is much more effective to explain what a website is for and how it will work in the future, and the performer himself will decide what means these tasks will be implemented. Of course, the customer has the right to demand a specific solution, but it may just be impractical for the goal. After trying a large number of "their "Decisions, in 90% of cases the customer himself returns to the option originally proposed by the contractor. If the customer can clearly articulate what he wants, or give concrete examples of design that he likes, it will help to save time in the production of the site.

Secondly, it is necessary to determine in advance what content will be to the site. The design execution depends on what graphic materials are received from the customer. It is desirable to give the performer quite a clear idea of the information that will be posted to the site before the stage of setting the task. For a successful solution, the performer must know what kind of information he should work with - text, graphics, tables, photos. The task of the designer - using the fullness and visual capabilities of the material provided to create a balanced and simple, from the point of view of the visitor's perception of the site, visual compositions. The design decisions are also directly affected by the amount of information posted.

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