Don’t you just love it when things run smoothly? It becomes clear that a harmonious working relationship, like any relationship, involves input from both parties.
Without equal effort from the client, and the team they have hired, business relationships can often deteriorate. Recently at Distilled the design and development team have had the pleasure of working with Hannah and Stephen from Potters Fields Park. But what was it that made this working relationship so pleasing? What can we take from the smooth running of this project? And how can we apply what we have learn’t to future projects?
I believe proceedings ran smoothly because of the 3 C’s:
Communication
Co-operation
Compromise
At Distilled we run projects in a few clearly defined stages…
Step 1 – Requirements and Wireframes:
This phase is really about realising what information needs to be included and working out how it should be categorised.
Hannah came to Distilled with a very clear idea of what they wanted their website to do for them. The site map was quickly pinned down, as was the target market. They also brought previous marketing material with them so it was easy to see what their brand identity was and define how it could be developed into a website which continued this identity, image and branding.
Hannah and Stephen already had a lot of the content for their website written when they approached Distilled, and also had a clear idea of how they thought content should be categorised. Distilled supported Hannah by helping to point out the best way this information could be displayed to potential visitors to the site, and Hannah in turn understood and took note of Distilled’s advice.
To organise the information in the initial stages we create wireframes to display the content in its most basic format.
Step 2 – Design:
The design was pinned down during a kick off meeting. As the designer, I left the meeting with a clear idea about the style of website I was required to design.
With so many ideas buzzing around in the conception of a website design, it is easy for a client to forget that the most important thing to think about is how user friendly a site is. Will a user be able to find the information they are looking for quickly and easily? As Distilled deal with websites everyday it is almost always easier for us to see the best way to make a site user friendly, and Potters Fields were confident enough in our expertise to trust our advice.
Of course, personal taste and ideas are always taken into consideration, and a site will always reflect the opinion and concept of the client, but by taking the advice of the experts they employed to design their site, Potters Fields ended up with a site that not only looked like they wanted, but was extremely user friendly, and easy to navigate.
- Trusting the company you have hired –
As mentioned above, Distilled are experts in Web Design. This is why clients hire us. In many cases clients do not have a vast knowledge of the internet and how websites are built. Certain elements in the build phase can often seem confusing, for example:
Why does my website look different in different browsers?
Or at different screen resolutions?
Why can’t I use any font I want on the site?
Often clients can find the answer to these questions difficult to digest and can ask again and again for un-fixable issues to be changed. A lot of time can be spent explaining why there are certain things that we simply cannot do, because this is the way the web works.
What made the Potters Fields project run so smoothly was that Hannah and Stephen immediately took on board the advice Distilled gave them (that system fonts differ, screen sizes can change the amount of background viewed on a website, etc) and their trust enabled us to proceed without delay.
Working together led to a coherent easy to navigate accessible final design.
Throughout the project following these guidelines led to a great result:
- Concise structured feedback – bullet pointed lists not long rambling emails.
- Once a decision was made it was final.
- The willingness to listen and take on board advice.
- Well prepared content delivered promptly in the correct formats.
- Content clearly labeled and supplied to Distilled in a few concise emails.
- A polite and upbeat attitude.
- Humor and taking an interest in the person behind all the work, boosting morale and making the working relationship more personable.
- Communicating primarily via email, but not hesitating to reach for the phone to discuss any tricky topics, helping to iron out any miscommunication or confusion before it happened.
Step 3 – The Build
Hannah was not just the perfect client during the design phase – when talking to Andy (the developer for this project) he mentioned:
“The bottom line is Hannah and Stephen really let us do our job – they realised that we are the experts which meant they listened to our advice” Andy Davies
“As Account Manager I often find myself as the website agony aunt, as I am the go to person for problems clients are having with their websites. And although I enjoy being able to help clients, and solve their problems, it can still be a joy when a site design and build goes smoothly. Hannah (and Stephen) always replied promptly to emails, queries etc, and didn’t get bogged down in unimportant issues, which meant we were freed up to give our attention to ensuring the site was the best it could be, and the client was happy. As a result, Leonie and I often use the Potters Fields site as an example to new clients of a site that is not only attractive, and well designed, but also functional and user friendly.” Lucy Watson
We continue to work for Potters Fields Park and also run an email marketing campaign for them.
The result, a coherent user-friendly well designed website.
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