Website Lessons

Other than “How are you?” and “Would you like to join me for lunch?”, what are the top 10 questions you would ask your clients before a project begins? Getting the right information for a client’s project is crucial to its success and building a better business relationship with your client. Asking relevant but ineffective questions will waste time and worst scenario, annoy your client.

I’ve not found our real top 10 but I think we’re getting very near it. In 10 questions, we learn about our clients background, their behaviour, their customers and the requirements for the project. Aren’t you curious what we ask our clients?

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Starring as the user we have world reknown Bob, and co-starring along his side are the expectation and the control. Bob plays your average Internet user browsing a website and would like to fulfill the task of finding the location of an office and visit the office. The expectation and the control are weird characters who can work together to help Bob but sometimes find themselves arguing who is right and who should lead Bob.

View the image below before you continue reading this entry.

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If you’ve listened to RickDees through Hitz.FM on weekends, you’d have heard them say the reason they can distribute expensive prizes is because the show has “Nooo budget!”. In other words, there is no planned budget or no limit of spending on the radio show.

For a website on the other hand is different, a well planned budget for a website can take you a long way without hurdles or a shorter way with a few stops. What I hope to do today is clear the murky waters of pricing and share with you the dangers of not planning your budget.

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A web designer or website designer is really a general term to acknowledge an individual who build websites in their job. Being called a website designer doesn’t nominate you as a specialist or does it denominate you as a designer for the Internet. There are different types of web designers now that each of them have a specialize field.

I’ve found a few types of web designers and hopefully you’ll be able to find which you belong to or want to follow on your journey of being a successful web designer.

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Whenever we take on a project for a customer whom will be our friend after, one of the basic things teams and clients don’t pay attention to is the timeline. Half the time teams pitching for a project concentrate too much on the quotation and ideas that can be offered but not the timeline. This is a basic but important factor involve in taking on projects especially if it’s part of marketing campaign.

It’s important to be able to get a rough deadline from the client. At least that way, you can prepare a better proposal inclusive with all the ideas that you have. It’ll also help you eliminate second priority ideas you have for the customer’s website.

The timeline is a basic tool that many overlook because half the time it’s hard to be punctual and many have made the mistake of dragging it too long as well. So let’s strategize better here.

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One of the things I’ve tried accomodating my clients with is the analysis of their existing or proposed site architecture. The site architecture is better known as the sitemap of your website. In Google its define as; the structure of the website.

Like a skyscraper or an office building with as many offices like KLCC, there are several levels or offices to visit in order to process a certain task. It becomes a headache if you needed to pass through so many office doors to find the right person sitting in the office you need to request a proposal for them.

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Ever since I had the opportunity of using the Internet around 1994, I’ve seen almost all possible website navigation menus to this day. The navigation menus were placed top left below the corporate logos, they were placed horizontally below the banner, the top right corner replacing the empty banner space, on the right side to allow focus on content, and now even experimenting by placing it just above the fold.

Without a doubt website navigation menus have come a long way since then and with Flash, it makes navigation menus more experimental than ever. But as experimental or cool as it can be, it still should be practical to the website target market.

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During a disucssion with a client, I not only note down their requirements for their website or try to decipher what really is the client looking for in their website. Clients will most of the time know exactly what they want for themselves and their business, but do they really know how their website fits into their company strategy?

So speaking of website strategy (not website marketing strategy) most of the clients I’ve met don’t really have one in place for their project. One of the things a website strategy involves is the aesthetics of the website itself; the website design.

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Being without a doubt the most important page to any website of a purpose, the landing page is the first page you visit on your mission. If you were visiting Google’s search engine, their landing page is the huge logo and field for you to type that search.

Seth Godin who’s a reknown speaker and author of many books shared his mind about landing pages today. He mentions about the actions normally called in a landing page today. I found some really surprising opinions from him about landing pages but I believe he’s right to see them as the ideal landing pages.

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