eTapestry

The customer-designer relationship can be uncertain and confusing at times. The customer pays the bills but designers don’t operate in a vacuum, no matter how much money you throw at them. The customer has expectations that the designers are required to meet but how do you as the customer make sure your expectations are met? A great place to start is to change your point of view from employer-employee to partner-partner. Like a good friend (or as State Farm Insurance identifies its brand, “like a good neighbor”), a design team is there to help and guide you through your development process as much as you are there to help them understand the message you want to convey to site visitors and potential donors.

Many organizations use full-service marketing and branding firms or advertising agencies. However only the largest of agencies, like Omnicom, BBDO, or Merkley & Partners offer what could be considered true full-service: every piece of media generated by an organization from flyers to television to web is created by these large public companies. These companies are also the PR providers for organizations like Apple, Coca-Cola, and any major airline. The majority of advertising companies handle smaller accounts, or specific brands within a company, and even then will often sub-contract pieces to other agencies and firms who specialize in a particular niche of marketing be it viral, guerilla, television, print or web.

Chances are if you’re reading this, you’re part of a small-to-medium-sized not-for-profit organization with a small in-house communications staff. Or you manage your communication through external partnerships. Software companies like Blackbaud’s eTapestry solution are typically partner agencies with 501(c)3s or their representatives, specifically handing the public face of online communication and digital fundraising. If you’re too small to warrant a third-party to handle your brand, you’re going to be working directly with a web design team. The following are some tips on how to make that working relationship manageable and even enjoyable.

To start, understand that your design team is like a well-trained dog or an obedient child. They’re only going to know what you share with them and they’re going to be hesitant to venture off on their own without your permission. Establishing what you expect from your relationship with your design team from the start will help to alleviate any negative feelings during the web site development process. Do you have a solid idea of what you want your site to look like and how it should function or do you only have a vague notion of what it should do? Are there other websites that you are fond of or are you a complete neophyte when it comes to the web? These are all things that you should communicate with your design team from the beginning so they understand where you’re coming from and what you’re expecting.

Unless a design team has a copywriter on staff, and this is something you should know before you sign a contract, expect that you will be providing all finalized text, documents, graphics and photography for the project. Or that a third party will be supplying them and that the design team should work with this party.

There is an old adage in our field: form follows function. A design team needs to know what’s going to be on the site before they can begin to conceptualize how it will work. What you provide for the site will determine that.

Typically, the look and feel of a website is established through a series of mockups before formal construction begins. Having your finalized content ready before the sketching stage gives your design team all the knowledge they will need in order to provide you with the best website for your money.

During the planning stages a company like Blackbaud will provide you with what’s known as a creative brief. A creative brief is a document that establishes what the website does, who it’s targeted toward, and how the site should go about doing so. The creative brief asks the following questions:

• What is the objective of your website? Is it to raise money, enhance awareness of your cause, provide information, or some combination?
• Who are your core online audiences? Can you rank them? Who has the most to gain from visiting your website and who do you want to draw to your site? Who do you imagine is your typical donor?
• What sort of colors should be used on your site and what should be avoided?
• What kind of tone or mood should your website establish in the visitor?
• What kind of images or thoughts should be evoked from your visitor about your organization?
• Do you have a specific color palette the design team should use? Is it “web safe” or should the design team be permitted to make suggestions and allowances for color balance and harmony?
• What kind of websites do you like? Who are your competitors and what are they doing? What can you do to take your website out of the box and truly make it shine amongst dozens of other organizations vying for attention? What kind of websites do you like to look at in your off-hours? Do you like websites with lots of pictures of motorcycles or a few curvy images of kittens? Do you like websites that pop out at you or do you like a more sedate approach?
• What’s going to be on your home page? A calendar? A mission statement? Upcoming events and announcements? This is the first page any site visitor will see so you want to make it have a lasting impression.

Your design team will take your creative brief and, after discussing it with you, begin the process of putting ideas to paper, or more likely, to the screen, and begin mocking up a collage in either Adobe Photoshop or raw HTML code. Once ideas are submitted there’s typically a period of back-and-forth discussion as the final design takes shape. It’s important to not overlook any details as going back to the drawing board after you give a design the OK can cost time and money. Don’t be afraid to give your designers your honest opinion but be open to their ideas and concerns. They do this for a living and typically have many great ideas that you never considered or have even heard of.

Work with your design team to create a site map. Your team will expect you to provide the first draft of the site map but you should then be open to alternate ideas in terms of how content is structured throughout the site. Your site map is a critical piece as it acts as the “skeleton” of the website so you want to make sure it’s right before you begin adding the “muscle.”

Once you give the design your approval it’s time to build your website. Getting your content together and organized neatly is a cost-effective way to streamline the development process. Place your text into Microsoft Word or plain text documents and clearly label each document in a way that makes sense. It’s usually helpful to name a document after the page on the site map in which its content should be placed. If you have internal links in your text, be sure to indicate them as full URLs so there is no confusion. Try to avoid formatting the text with embedded URLs whenever possible as the design team prefers to simply copy and paste your content into the website without having to untangle the URLs from the formatted document. Feel free to add photos or notes to the document to indicate where graphics should be placed but photography should always be provided separately and in as high of a resolution as possible, typically a JPG. Remember: it’s easy to shrink a photo down but it’s impossible to enlarge one so make sure you aren’t using small, low-resolution graphics. Vector graphics, such as logos, should always be provided as EPS files or as PNG files with transparent backgrounds. This permits the designer to scale the vector graphic as needed as well as place it on any background without worrying about a big white or black square behind it. GIF files can be used but only if the image does not need to be resized.

Indicate in your text files where links to PDFs, spreadsheets, and other documents should be and provide them in separate folders when possible. You can always place your content in folders and sub-folders and “zip” them for easy delivery.

Once your design team has all of your content in hand, they should have no problems using it to build your website in as effective and efficient manner as possible. Your team should provide you with a development link which will allow you to view progress as its made.

Finally, working with a design team requires lots of communication. However, in order to avoid confusion, be sure that as few people in your organization are involved in the communication process with the design team. If you need to bring in extra hands to get a second opinion or work with your board of trustees, make sure you collect their opinions from the start and present them to the design team for consideration. Let your associates and supervisors know that while their input is always valued and appreciated, you will be making the final decisions on how the website project will be conducted.

Be sure to respond to requests from your design team in a timely fashion and expect your design team to do the same. Even bad news is better than no news so be sure that your design team is talking to you and you are doing the same.

Keep in mind that your design team members are people like you. They typically have many other projects and clients (as well as bosses!) and may not always be able to drop what they’re doing immediately to assist you. They also have office hours and home lives, just as you do. Be courteous, set appointments and keep them and expect the same of your design team. Also, be aware that hold-ups and delays will inevitably happen with even the best laid plans. So be sure to give yourself a buffer for the sake of flexibility. If you have a drop-dead date, aim to have your website completed two to three weeks in advance of that date in case any problems arise.

Don’t be afraid to work with your sales or account representative if you feel you are not getting the service you deserve. Your representative may be able to present you with alternatives you hadn’t considered.

With a bit of preparation and a clear goal, working with your web design team can be a pleasant and rewarding experience. And who knows? When the next big project comes your way you may want to work with them again! It’s always easier to work with those you know and trust than to test out a brand new team.