Working with web designers - a client's guide

As an agency we spend a lot of time reading articles titled "top 10 ways to improve your website conversion". Our clients - often marketing managers, systems managers or communications officers - frequently ask us for thoughts and guidance around design, especially in the early stages of the relationship. Those articles intended for designers generally don't help them very much.

Instead, they want us to help them understand how to work with an agency in a way that keeps budgets and timelines in check, creates the right end result and keeps stress to a minimum. Here are a few pointers we'd like to share.

Briefing

The briefing process will vary between suppliers. But how 'creative' should your brief be? The answer is - don't feel pressured to provide lots of detail about look-and-feel: colours, fonts, horizontal or vertical navigation etc. If you have a brand guidelines document already, make it available to your designer. If you've seen sites that you like, list them and try to identify why. But the most effective design briefs tend to focus on the non-aesthetic stuff: what messages are you trying to convey, who are your audience, what do you want them to do on the site? You'll know this stuff better than your agency will. A good agency will document the brief for your sign-off, or ask you for a written version.

Options

Some agencies will provide a single design concept while others will provide several - it will depend on their own processes. There's a hidden danger with multiple options though: mixing n matching. Taking "a bit of this" and "a bit of that" from each option will generally result in something woolly and less than the sum of its parts. A better approach is to pick the option which you generally think most effectively meets your brief, and start there.

Feedback

Feedback can be tricky. The first rule is to refer back to your brief. If the design you're looking at isn't exactly like the picture in your head, don't panic; think about whether it ticks all the boxes on your brief. When giving feedback to the designer, be confident (you're the client), be specific ("There's too much content in the footer" rather than "I don't like the footer"), and be organised. Take the time out to note it all down - don't feel like you have to respond (positively or negatively) within 5 minutes of receiving a design submission. You might also have a number of people in your organisation who need to give feedback on the design; if this is the case you should try to filter and organise their feedback before conveying it to the agency, rather than lumping it all in a list. This will reduce contradictions in the feedback and will encourage you to relate it back to your original brief.

Technology

Web design is an engineering exercise as well as a creative one, especially when you are working with dynamic systems. While most modern technology platforms give you a lot of flexibility, bear in mind that there might be technical implications to design decisions which you might not think of, and which might become expensive if you decide to insist on them! You might want a highly graphical design for your navigation, but does that mean it will be difficult to add or change the menu once it's in place? It's the agency's job to explain these things to you - if they do, think carefully about the implications.

Managing Flexibility

If you've never worked on a website project before, but you've had some experience in print or direct marketing, one major difference you'll notice is in the flexibility you can achieve within a web project. Don't be afraid to change your mind - a good agency will be able to discuss the options to suit if you do. A common mistake is to spend too long in the design process accounting for every eventuality, where it's normally more efficient to tackle this during development.

So in summary:

Focus your brief on your business and objectives, not the fine details of look-and-feel

Mixing and matching design ideas often creates woolly results - try to

Be organised and specific in your feedback - refer back to your original brief

If you have multiple stakeholders in your organisation contributing to the design process, try to filter and organise feedback rather than simply aggregate

Recognise that design decisions have technical implications

Look for ways to take advantage of the flexibility in the web process

One final one: if you've got yourself a good agency, you'll see far better results if you trust your designer than if you try to micromanage them. This is probably the most difficult bit!

Kat Elliott
New Digital Partnership