8 great questions to answer before starting a web design project

Without question, a new website is a big investment in effort and money. If you want to kick the project off in the best way, here are eight questions you should already be able to answer at the initial meeting with your web designer.

1. Why are you building this website?

All too often a web redesign is planned because the site “just feels old” or “it’s not working as well it should for us.” But what do you mean by that? Why are you really going to all this effort? How does your web strategy align with your overall business goals?

Possible answers might include:

• We want to grow advertising revenue, so we need to increase our page views.
• As a not-for-profit, we rely on donations. We want to increase the number and size of donations we receive online.
• The site should become a “lead generation machine” for our business, and should also help convert leads into customers.
• Our mission is to raise awareness about the issues that are important to us, so our primary online goal is to increase the influence and reach of our organization.

Your answer(s) will directly affect your website’s design strategy.

2. Who will use the website?

Your web designer will likely spend time reviewing the kinds of people who come to your site, so as to better understand your visitors’ needs and habits. It’s very important to structure your website to entice your visitors to take the specific actions you want them to take.

One method is to create user personas, which represent the types of people you’ve identified as having some specific interest in your organization. Before your web design kickoff meeting, segment your site visitors into representative “types”:

• What are their goals and aspirations? Their key issues?
• What media do they read, watch and listen to (magazines, TV, music, books, websites, blogs)?
• Is it possible to segment your site visitors by gender? Age? Income? Geography? Education level?
• Are your visitors technologically sophisticated? Are they early adopters?
• Are they on social networks like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn? Are there other more targeted communities (online or offline) where your visitors can be found?
• What words or phrases (lingo) do they tend to use? What sorts of imagery or language appeals to them?

Think about what you want each user persona to believe or learn about your organization. What actions do you want them to take?

3. Where is the content?

As web standards maven Jeffrey Zeldman quipped, “Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it’s decoration.”

Is your content ready? In part? If not, who will create it? How quickly and frequently can new content be developed?

Do you have a “content matrix”, which can simply be a spreadsheet that lists every piece of potential content on your site, along with where it will be located and who will be its owner?

You may consider developing content specific for each of your user personas.

Beyond just text, do you also have photos or video you want to include? Are there “non-web page” elements you might think to include, like white papers, e-books or webinars?

In their best-selling book “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die“, Chip and Dan Heath describe six attributes that make for great (online) content:

• Simplicity — Prioritize what ideas you want to get across. By trying to prioritize everything, nothing is a priority.
• Unexpectedness — Use surprise to grab people’s attention.
• Concreteness — Avoid speaking in abstractions.
• Credibility — Is your content believable?
• Emotions — Tap into emotion rather than just intellect.
• Stories — We get people to act on our ideas by telling stories.

4. Which keywords are important for search engine optimization?

We all want to show up #1 in Google search results for relevant search terms. Before you start writing your content, it’s critical to identify the keywords you want to optimize your site for.

Good search engine optimization starts by putting yourself in the shoes of somebody actually looking for the kinds of products or services you are selling. Brainstorm the keywords that you think would bring you the best traffic, not necessarily the most traffic. If you are an attorney, trying to optimize on the keyword “lawyer” is pretty pointless. Currently, that keyword brings back 404,000,000 results. Anybody who promises you they can get you a first page ranking for such a generic term is going to have some trouble delivering without resorting to black magic and legal grey areas.

It’s much more relevant to optimize for something like “real estate attorney new york city” (assuming you are a real estate attorney in New York City). Also, any traffic you get on that term is much more likely to actually become a paying client, since clearly this was a visitor searching for something quite specific.

Your web designer should be able to help you create a more robust keyword plan, but it’s enormously helpful to start the process having already brainstormed a dozen or so relevant keyword phrases.

5. Do you have an established brand identity?

Some organizations have done a tremendous job of creating a brand identity and visual identity system. A website design for such organizations is a relatively straightforward process.

However, without a strong grounding in an established brand identity, web design becomes more ad hoc, frequently resulting in extra guesswork, increased cost, and poorer results.

Sometimes when we’re first starting with a new client, they tell us that they are going to be a fantastic client because “the sky’s the limit.” They tell us that they have no preconceived notions about how the design might go. There are few constraints.

We quickly explain that, while exciting, this provides a larger challenge. First, before we start doing any actual web design, we first have to engage in, at the very least, a short branding exercise to develop a design palette. Without the constraints of an agreed-upon design palette there is just too much uncertainty, and getting to any kind of consensus on the final design becomes much more difficult. In addition, creating a “Brand Book” (a document that defines the guidelines for all design work for the organization) enforces a design consistency throughout all marketing materials.

If you don’t have an established Brand Book, Creative Brief, or similar document, at the very least it’s helpful to walk into the kickoff meeting knowing your:

• Logo and tagline – Do you have a final one that you’re happy with? Does it need any change?
• Color palette – What is your primary color? Do you know its Pantone or hex value? What are your secondary or accent colors?
• Fonts – Do you have a set of standard fonts? There are best practices for web fonts that are not always entirely in sync with standard corporate fonts (for example, conventional wisdom would suggest that body text is preferably sans-serif). Will this be a big problem?

Your web designer will walk you through all of this, plus a number of more advanced design issues. However, your project will get off to a smoother start if you already have some of these answers ready.

6. Are you prepared to invest in the site post-launch?

Even as you first get started, it’s important to understand that there will be lots to do post-launch, including:

• Create and post new content
• Analyze what’s working and not working
• Testing (A/B)
• Optimize the site based on what you learn
• Add new features
• Participate in social media
• Build inbound links
• Support promotions and offers
• Distribute email newsletters
• Etc., etc., etc.

We addressed this in a former blog post, “A Website Is a Process, Not a Project“:

“It’s fine for a company to fund an initial web build-out in a capital budget, but companies are really sabotaging their web investments if they don’t put together significant operational budgets for the constant changes and improvements that a compelling and effective website requires.”

7. What is your competition doing?

Make a list of your competition, or others that do something similar to you. Check out their websites.

What do you like about them? Hate?

What features would you like to mimic?

Does every single one of your competitors use some shade of blue as a primary color? Do you want to do the same? Or would you prefer to differentiate yourself?

If you’re a bit more technologically inclined, it’s also useful to create a spreadsheet of your competition, tracking metrics such as their Alexa ranking, their blog URL, the number of pages in Google’s index, the keywords they’ve optimized for (if any), and the number of inbound links to their websites.

If you’re unsure how to do this, your web designer should be able to get this information for you.

8. Have you reviewed your analytics?

Google Analytics is a free website analytics package that seems to be ubiquitous. Most of our clients use it as a way to track important information about their website traffic. As a starting point for your web design kickoff meeting, at the very least you should know:

• Where is current traffic coming from? (Social Media? Ads? Google? Blogs?)
• Which content is the most popular?
• Are your site visitors sophisticated technologically? You can get a sense of this by looking at metrics such as browser version and screen resolution. For example, if a significant percentage of your website audience is still using Internet Explorer 6.0, you do not have a technologically sophisticated audience.

Best Practices for Ranking #1

Curiously, though perhaps not entirely surprisingly to experienced SEOs, the truth is that on-page optimization doesn't necessarily rank first in the quest for top rankings. In fact, a list that walks through the process of actually getting that first position would look something more like:

1. Accessibility - content engines can't see or access cannot even be indexed; thus crawl-ability is foremost on this list.
2. Content - you need to have compelling, high quality material that not only attracts interest, but compels visitors to share the information. Virality of content is possibly the most important/valuable factor in the ranking equation because it will produce the highest link conversion rate (the ratio of those who visit to those who link after viewing).
3. Basic On-Page Elements - getting the keyword targeting right in the most important elements (titles, URLs, internal links) provides a big boost in the potential ability of a page to perform well.
4. User Experience - the usability, user interface and overall experience provided by a website strongly influences the links and citations it earns as well as the conversion rate and browse rate of the traffic that visits.
5. Marketing - I like to say that "great content is no substitute for great marketing." A terrific marketing machine or powerful campaign has the power to attract far more links than content may "deserve," and though this might seem unfair, it's a principle on which all of capitalism has functioned for the last few hundred years. Spreading the word is often just as important (or more so) than being right, being honest or being valuable (just look at the political spectrum).
6. Advanced/Thorough On-Page Optimization - applying all of the above with careful attention to detail certainly isn't useless, but it is, for better or worse, at the bottom of this list for a reason; in our experience, it doesn't add as much value as the other techniques described.

10 Photography Tips from a Self-Taught Photographer

I’ve been taking pictures ever since. However, I’ve switched to a digital camera now. Today, I’ve had my work published in fashion magazines, I’ve done a few photo shoots, and I cover some of my city’s best nightlife events.

Now, I won’t pretend I’m an expert — or that I know everything there is to know about photography — because I am not, and who does?

However, being self-taught helped me learn some valuable lessons the hard, painful, torturous way and therefore, guaranteed that I never forget them. I’d like to share some of those lessons with you.

For those of you who are just starting out, or would like to take their photography to the next level, hopefully, this set of tips will help you in one way or another.

Though most of you are designers and digital artists, a popular additional profession for creatives is photography because it’s handy in many situations. For example, instead of relying on stock photos, you can take your own photos and infuse them into your work.

1. Read Your Camera’s Manual

I’m not the first to say this, and I won’t be the last. It’s because reading your camera’s manual is that important. The first camera I bought was a used camera and it didn’t come with a user’s manual. After I saw the first few rolls of film I had developed, it made me wish that it did.

By the time I got my second camera, I was really getting serious with photography. And although I was at a point where I thought I was familiar with the workings of most cameras, I still sat down and read the 300+ page user’s manual that came with it. Cover to cover. And when I was done, I read it again.

You might be thinking you’re too good for the user’s manual. But let me tell you, reading your manual is important for a couple of reasons:

• You need to become familiar with every aspect of your camera.
• The more familiar you are with your camera, the sooner it will get out of your way.

The last thing you want to do when taking photos is to have to fiddle around with your camera when you should be composing your shot or studying your subject. Not only will you look foolish, but you will most likely kill your photo before you even get a chance to take it.

2. Find Something to Shoot

There’s no point in having a camera if you have nothing to shoot. You will waste a lot of time and energy trying to make sense of the hundreds of dollars you spent on your fancy new camera if you don’t have a subject.

The beauty of photography is that it has a certain urgency associated with it. No photo gets taken without the need for it. The moment comes, you have your camera, and you make a decision to press on the shutter release. That’s the nature of photography. The photo is contingent upon a need for it.

Even if you create the need (e.g., fashion shoots, culinary photography, actively going out into the world to take photos), what you’re actually doing is actively creating the conditions in which photos must be taken. You create those conditions. It is an active choice for the photographer.

The act of finding your subject is important. Your subject says more about you than you think.

Your subject tells people that you were there and that’s what you saw and that’s what you chose to take a picture of. As a photographer, you not only record moments in a story, you record moments in your story. Your photos place you in space and time and, to some extent, you become your subject.

3. The Camera is Just a Camera

Sure it’s made of super cool materials like magnesium and glass and plastic. It has so many buttons and dials and doodads and thingamabobs. It may seem like your camera is some kind of super gadget ready to be sent into space, able to do magnificent, unfathomable things; but really, it’s just a lightproof box with a hole on the front.

No matter how technologically advanced a camera is, it still needs a photographer setting its dials, pressing its buttons, and pointing it at something interesting.

Actually, come to think of it, NASA did send out a couple of cameras into space called Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. Those actually were technologically advanced enough to be sent into space, and yet they still needed instructions from people here on Earth.

What I’m really hinting at is that the camera doesn’t make the photographer. It doesn’t matter if you use a plastic toy camera you found in the discount bin at your local store or if you use a super expensive professional grade, nuclear-powered DSLR that also works as a beacon for your mothership.

The bottom line is, when a person looks at a picture, and that picture is judged to be good or bad, they’re not judging the equipment you used. They’ll be judging the photographer who took it.

The principles of photography haven’t changed that drastically since it first emerged in the 1860’s. It’s still about controlling how much light is allowed to pass through a lens and onto a recording medium.  And yet, there’s still that misconception that the technology is what’s responsible for good photography. The technology was just the spark. The flame is kept alive by the photographer.

4. Learn About Exposure

Exposure, simply speaking, is the combination of three main variables that control the amount of light that is allowed to interact with your camera’s sensor or film. These are:

• Shutter speed
• Aperture
• Film speed (or ISO)

The right combination of these variables is at the heart and soul of every photograph that has ever been taken.

However, exposure is an infinitely nuanced topic that belies its seeming simplicity. Entire libraries have been written about the subject of exposure and even more books are being written on the subject as you read this.

That’s because most photographers who have even a modicum of experience under their belt will have their own opinions about the subject and all of them are right (or wrong, depending on whom you ask).

Even I, with barely a couple of years of professional experience, have my own opinions about exposure (hint: it’s magic!).

Therefore, my suggestion is to find a way of understanding the fundamentals of proper exposure and learn it on your own terms until you are able to apply it to how you personally take photos.

Read a book, take a class, or learn it with a friend. In any case, you must learn how to expose properly so that you know which rules to break and how to break them for your own purposes.

The technical aspects of photography — the parts detached from the “artistry” and the aesthetics of photography — is a broad pool of knowledge filled with numbers and meters and measurements and science and rules. And while there is a purpose to all that knowledge, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it will all apply to your own work as a photographer.

5. Learn Composition

Learning to compose a shot isn’t merely about framing your subject within the four corners of your viewfinder (although it is that also). Composition (at least to me) has a lot to do with emotion, motion, feel, color, and a million other variables.

You can take all the photography classes in the world. You can do everything right. You can follow all the rules about taking a good photo. However, if something is not right in your photo, then something is just not right. If the photo looks good, then it’s good. The photo doesn’t lie.

Therefore, my suggestion is to learn the fundamentals of composition (e.g. the rule of thirds, etc.) and find a way to adapt it to your own work. Know it, understand it, and then use/abuse what you need to make your work great.

6. Take Your Time

With the way cameras work these days, it’s easy to get caught up in the notion that photography is about catching a fleeting moment. Even camera manufacturers sometimes highlight this notion in some of their ad campaigns.

This is misleading for a couple of reasons. First, a moment is only fleeting when you’re not ready for it. Secondly, as a photographer with a purpose, your job is to always be ready.

There’s an old saying that photojournalists use that says, “f/8 and be there.” This means that you set your aperture at f/8 — which is considered by many to be a magical f-stop in which most of your frame will be in sharp focus — and that you are there in the scene.

Now, being there isn’t just a geographic distinction. I’ve also taken it to mean that it is about being mentally, emotionally, and psychologically there. It means taking your time setting up the shot or taking your time preparing yourself.

When you’re there and you are ready for that so-called “fleeting moment,” then time is no longer a factor. The act of taking a photo no longer is a product of luck, but rather, an act of will.

Even those “lucky” shots that some photographers will tell you about aren’t really lucky shots if you think about it. They were there, they had the presence of mind to know what they wanted out of their photo, and they made an active decision to take a shot.

This is one of the most painful lessons I learned. I used to rush when taking photos, thinking that I wasn’t going to have enough light during an outdoor shoot or I felt pressured because so many people were waiting on me. I was chasing after that “fleeting moment.” The resulting pictures were always underwhelming.

I’ve rushed through enough photo shoots to know that even if you feel you have very little time to get the shot you need (e.g., when the sun is about to go down, etc.), you actually have more time than you need if you slow yourself down and think about what you’re doing and what you want.

It only takes a split second to actually press that button, which is why you can spare a few minutes to set up and get ready for the shot you want to take.

7. Turn Around

This is something I learned when I first started taking photos. I was so focused on what was in front of me that I missed out on everything else that surrounded me.

One disadvantage of photography (or endearing characteristic, depending on how you look at it) is that it forces the photographer to see our boundless, 3-dimensional world, through a rather limited, 2-dimensional box. This is enough of a challenge that sometimes that’s all we’re focused on doing and we miss out on everything else.

So when you’re staring through your viewfinder just itching to take that perfect shot, take a moment and look around you. You never know what you might find.

8. Smile

When you think about it, a camera is a very threatening object to a lot of people. That’s because cameras represent the possibility of an invasion of privacy.

The camera captures people’s actions, candid moments, and things people might not always want recorded. In other words, in front of and around a camera, people often feel vulnerable and exposed.

The camera doesn’t discriminate. It does not censor itself. It captures everything you put in front of its lens. That’s why it’s up to the photographer to make their subjects and those around him feel at ease in the presence of his camera.

One way of doing this is to smile sincerely at your subjects and those around you.

I take a lot of photos of people I don’t know. Now, I’m a nice guy. I’m funny and I’m always up for an interesting conversation. But most people I meet and take pictures of don’t know that about me at first glance. Add a camera into that equation and it makes for a lot of awkward moments.

That’s why, in these situations, a smile goes a long way. It shows you’re friendly and that you won’t abuse the privilege of taking people’s pictures.

Even on photo shoots with paid models whose job is to be in front of a camera, a smile, and keeping them at ease, helps with having a more relaxed and pleasant photo shoot.

9. Join a Club or Shoot with Someone

I’ve never had the opportunity to shoot with someone else. It’s not something I’ve sought to do personally. However, I can definitely see the appeal of shooting with like-minded individuals.

We all have different experiences when it comes to photography, sharing those experiences with someone else can be very enriching and mutually rewarding. Just like in a class environment, we often learn more through discussion and other people’s experiences than if we had studied alone.

10. Keep Shooting

The last thing I’ll say is to just keep shooting. Nothing beats experience. You can take all the photography courses you want, read every book about photography, talk about it, and read terribly long-winded articles like this one, but nothing will help you take better photos than just going out there and doing it and learning your own personal lessons.

The more you shoot, the better you’ll be at taking photos and the more insight you will gain into how you can improve.

Sure, there are fundamentals in photography. There are rules and guidelines to being an effective photographer. But going out there and just shooting is the only way to master them.

And once you’ve mastered and understood those fundamentals, you’ll be better equipped to bend or break them when you find yourself needing to create something truly unique and good.

What are your experiences with photography? Do you have your own tips or insights you’d like to share?