Designing is taking your life and transferring it to a visible medium. Often times when people are looking to build a website they forget to infuse their personality into it.  Then you are left with a site that looks generic, uninviting, and lacking a reason for customers to choose you versus your competitors. Often times most web designers are mum on subject. They want to get paid as fast as possible and if you like it, they love it. It’s important to know what you want and communicate it clearly to the designer.  Do you visit the car dealer and say, “ I need something with wheels that starts”. Ok maybe that’s a bad example for some, but you get the picture. Preparation is important. Below are some ideas to help you gather / organize your thoughts before developing your website.

1. Beware of Fantasy Island

This is a dangerous place where the two permanent residents are Mr. No Budget and Mrs. High Expectation.

Create a budget for your project realizing that an average website will cost about $600. Don’t be afraid to call around and get quotes and cost breakdowns for your perspective project. Yes, you can find a web developer that will charge you $200 for everything, but you will get what you pay for. Four hundred more dollars is a small price to pay for good work and professionalism.

Even when your budget is set, don’t think you can get everything you ever wanted. Depending on your project maybe you can, but most of the time some things may be just out of reach, and that’s okay. Most websites are built so you can always go back and have the designer add features months down the road.

It’s important to have great expectations for your website, and even try to be innovative, but don’t be ridiculous. Don’t decide that a key function of your site is to have them smell your product before purchase. Although the technology is currently being developed  (Scent Scape. http://bit.ly/gCAVYt ), its not realistic and readily available. Granted you may not know all of the current limits of technology, but common sense, and a good designer can help you in this area.

2. Who the heck are you?

Think about what makes you who you are. What do you love? What’s your ideal color palette? Are you shy or over the top? Your website is your digital first impression. If your website its poorly designed, doesn’t work, and lacks substance, guess what you are telling your customers. I don’t care about you; I just want your money. So take the time and think about you, your products and your target audience.

3. Shades and Text

When deciding on a color palette for your website, first and foremost it should tie into your logo. If you don’t have a logo, get one immediately. Most web designers have packages that include websites, logos, business cards, and more. If you start with your logo, you will have a color palette and a basic aesthetic that will make up your site. This will save you time and money down the road.

There are just as many fonts as there are colors if not more. You can spend hours surfing the web and downloading fonts and trying to get super edgy and cool. Don’t stress your self out. Save the cool grunge-techno style font for your logo. Make your website content easy to read.  Pick from some of the standard web fonts (Windows & Mac Font List). This will be a good base and ensure that users are able to view what you’re written. A good rule of thumb is have no more than 2-3 fonts (readable size) on a page that contrast well with every part of your website. There are exceptions to this rule, but your designer can lead you down that road if your project calls for that level of design.

4. Graphics and Images

A friend of mine used to say, “ You catch more flies with honey”. This is true in any context. Every product / idea can have visuals created for it if they don’t exist.  Make your visuals stand out throughout your website.

If you own a chicken restaurant, take a quality picture of the biggest, juiciest piece of chicken you can cook. Make sure it’s covered in a nice beurre blanc sauce, adjacent to your best version of fire grilled potatoes and asparagus.  You want dinner now don’t you? Those were just words describing food. Imagine the impact of a couple great images.

Your web designer should handle a good portion of this, but make sure you have visuals that reflect your brand. Have any photos taken or graphics developed prior to the actual start of your website. You can give these to the web designer to plug in or even allow him or her to add their style to it. As we said earlier with the logo, this will save you time and money.

5. Surf the Web.

There are so many websites that have been created, and unless you have a new product with twelve different patents, someone is doing what you trying to do. Visit your favorite websites, and think about what makes them your favorite. Is it the high-resolution images, the navigation, the use of white space?  Its okay to take design cues from other sites. Your web designer should be able to take parts of your favorite websites and make those ideas unique for you. What if you don’t have favorite websites? Just visit Google and you should find some things you like fairly quickly.

Regardless of the type of website you are creating the steps above will give you a great head start. Below are links to a few things, we like to use. Enjoy.