Trust Your Designer. If You Want It To Be That Good, It Has To Be That Simple.

You know what you sell, you’ve totally got some pictures of it, and you’ve had a favorite color since grade school. Why waste time with a designer, right? You have everything you need to make a web site happen! Well…almost everything. You might not know exactly how to combine all those pictures and words into something that makes sense, something that people can relate to, or something that people are willing to shop from. But that’s OK, because a designer knows, and they know how to apply what they know rather perfectly.

Today’s Boot Camp Session on “The Importance of Good Site Design” with Marc Manfre, a Graphic Designer at Solid Cactus, Inc., explained that what you see when you arrive at a really amazing site was not a gift of chance. A lot of creativity, knowledge and work goes into well-built sites, but it is essential creativity, knowledge and work – and your designer needs your help to make your site the most it can be. The first step of good design is to fill your designer in on the key components of your business. As is the case with almost all projects, taking the time to get all the essentials explained from the beginning will build an infinitely better end result. It is then up to your designer to combine all the necessary elements into a site that is visually optimized from every angle, which is precisely why they need all the ingredients before they start their work. Imagine if you had just put the last sprinkle on a beautiful birthday cake and someone handed you a forgotten egg and asked you to mix it in. Yeah, it’s not going to be pretty. Don’t give your designer a last minute egg.

Your site has to be appealing. This may seem simple, but think of all the horrible sites you’ve seen that simply weren’t! It also has to emotionally engage the customer, make them feel as if this is the right place for them – the place they feel aligned with and will return to again. It has to be geared toward driving sales. The prettiest site in the world isn’t going to sell a thing if people don’t know how to use it or have to scroll high and low to find what they should be able to locate instantly. It has to be relevant to your industry, and easily identifiable as such. It has to promote your agenda – let people know who you are and what you stand for. Quite simply, it has to make a fantastic first impression. There are likely countless other sites that sell exactly what you do. If you haven’t rather quickly given someone a reason to choose you over them, they’re already busy clicking away somewhere else.

So what can you do apart from filling your designer in on the most important aspects of your business? You can supply your site with regular doses of fresh content and images. You can fill your customers in with important information about you and your site, and keep them updated as things change and progress. You can regularly monitor your own site and industry to be sure your site is exactly where it needs to be.

Designers aren’t simply creating art. They understand that your web site literally cannot afford to sit there and look pretty. And that is the key component that separates a designer from someone who has a good eye for color and layout. There is much more to good design than a universal visual appeal, and good designers know this, and know what it is. They research your industry for modern color trends and photography. They know which graphics are going to create that click with a customer and instantly assure them they’ve found the right place. They know which language to employ to carry out your agenda. And they know the wheres and whys of placing all those important features – from the mailing list to the search bar – for ease of navigation. A designer is going to combine an artistic eye with a business-oriented mind to create the total package. And that is good. Good design.