These words came from one of our current clients, during the early wireframe phase of his first website. And although we make the process as easy as possible for our clients, it remains a valid point. Your website is your company’s public face after all, so you really do want to make sure that each and every detail is just right.

The process can be overwhelming for the uninitiated. If this describes you, read on. What follows is a basic, plain-language checklist for getting your organization online.

1. Purpose

Before you do anything else, you need to create a plan… and this plan needs to be centered around the question: What purpose do you want your website to serve?

In essence, you need to develop a proper job description for your website. What do you want it to DO for you? Will it be a simple informational marketing tool and point of contact? Will it serve as an online community, gallery or forum? Do you want an online storefront with e-commerce capabilities? Do you want to position yourself as an authority in your field through the provision of news and resources? The requirements for every website are unique, so you will need to decide which functions best serve your organization’s specific needs.

2. Web Host

A web host is not the same as your Internet Service Provider (ISP). Your ISP simply provides access to the internet. If you want a website of your own, you will need to effectively “rent” the space for it on a hosting company’s server.

A hosting company owns and maintains X number of servers. On each server, X number of websites is stored. With that in mind, there are three common options for hosting:

• • Shared means that you share a server with several other websites, and is the cheapest.
• • Dedicated hosting gets you a server all to yourself, and is the most expensive.
• • Semi-dedicated reserves a server for a very small number of clients.

For most websites, shared hosting with a quality hosting company is more than adequate. If you anticipate high volumes of traffic or bandwidth, however, you will want to look into dedicated or semi-dedicated hosting options. Keep in mind that servers are just like your own computer… if it is overloaded, outdated and neglected, it will perform slowly and inconsistently at best, and crash and fail at worst. Most bargain-basement hosting companies are able to offer cheap rates simply by squeezing as many accounts as possible onto a single, often outdated server. And then there’s the human element… when your email and website are down, quality customer service suddenly becomes very important.

Bad web hosts are a dime a dozen. It is imperative that you do your research, and choose a hosting company based on reliable measures of quality rather than gimmicks, sales or ad campaigns. Widely advertised does NOT equal quality. We both use and heartily recommend the pros at Fused, but always encourage clients to do their own research before deciding on which host best suits their needs.

3. Domain Name

Now that you have a home for your website, you need a relevant, easily identifiable address. The domain name (DNS) is the address that appears in the address bar in your web browser, excluding ‘http://www’ (e.g., our domain name is ‘sagemedia.ca’). Unfortunately, nobody owns a domain name for life. You need to register it (usually through your web host) to start, then renew it every year. If you don’t, someone else can and will buy it up, and your site will be rendered both nameless and inaccessible.

Choosing a domain name is a frustrating, but important process. It is frustrating because of the simple fact that if it is a recognizable word, chances are someone has already registered it… even if they’re not using it. There exists a scourge on legitimate online businesses everywhere known as domain squatters… these people buy up thousands of domain names, and simply sit on them until someone comes along who wants a name so badly that they are willing to pay an exorbitant price to buy it from the squatter. Squatters also buy up versions of existing business names and fill the pages with pay-per-click ads (known as link farms) so they generate ad revenue for themselves by capitalizing on well known companies. Your choice of domain name is nonetheless important – it needs to be relevant to your company (containing your company’s name), easily remembered, and easy to spell. Once you’ve committed to a name, you’ll want to stick with it.

4. Target

Further to your initial plan, it is important to decide exactly who you want to communicate with online. Your target audience should already have been established in your business plan. In planning your website, you need to keep in mind what THEIR needs are. Are they looking for information; Do they need a problem solved (hint: the answer is always yes); Do they want to be entertained, educated, or simply served? Combined with your purpose (and as you’ll see, intertwined as well), a sharp focus on the target audience is central to your website strategy.

5. USP

Following from the previous items, your website will need to emphasize and reinforce your USP, or Unique Selling Point. This is the reason why people will choose to come to your site (and your company) rather than your competitors. Note you can’t get to this point without first developing an understanding of your target audience. The USP is the answer to your customer’s problems.

6. Budget

As the single most important online marketing investment your company will make, you will need to determine a realistic and appropriate budget for the design and development of your company’s website. Plan to invest well into four figures for a properly planned, well designed and expertly executed business website. Rates vary wildly between providers – the web design field is largely unregulated, so be sure that you look for qualifications, reviews and referrals, and know exactly who you’re hiring. This includes confirming precisely who will be doing the actual work, as many ‘design’ companies are simply middlemen outsourcing contracts to unqualified overseas labour farms.

7. Content

Given this article is being written by a designer, it may surprise you to see content weighing in first. The fact is, effective design relies on high quality content to provide context, depth, and relevance. If you think of your design as a restaurant, your content would be the food. Note that content is also not limited to the text within your pages; it also refers to images and brand materials (like your logo, for example). These are things that your designer should be provided with upfront, so they can move forward with context and purpose.

8. Persona

Refer back to the parameters covered in previous checklist items – namely your purpose, USP, and target audience. These items will help guide you in narrowing down a personality for your website. As part of a more thorough consultation, any reputable designer will ask you fairly early in the process to provide them with a mood-board, or a selection of exemplar sites that portray the sort of image you want for your business (in addition to industry relevant examples of what you explicitly do NOT feel represents you). Obviously, the purpose is not to find something to copy, but rather to better define the mood and theme for your online presence.

9. Website Design

This is the fun part, though it doesn’t quite start out that way. Clearly, you’ll need to research and choose a qualified, reputable designer. Find someone you feel comfortable with, review their portfolio, look for customer reviews, learn about their company and philosophies, and enter their name into a search engine. Finally, be sure to review the design company’s terms and conditions. There are many designers whose terms specify that they (not you) retain ownership of all materials in perpetuity, placing restrictions on your usage. Remember, you will be investing a significant amount of time, trust, effort and capital in creating your website, so it is most certainly worth your time to ensure you really are choosing the right professional for the job.

Following your initial consultation and scope development, your designer will generally develop a wireframe for your approval. This serves as the skeleton for your site, establishing general placement/layout and structural presentation of site elements. It’s boring, but it is important. Spending a little time here now will save a lot of time later on.

The wireframe will be followed by a visual concept presentation for your homepage. If all of the preliminary steps have been covered thoroughly and thoughtfully (by both the designer and yourself) and communication has been clear, this will generally serve as the starting point for your site. Of course, you may want to tweak some colours, graphic treatments or images to make the design perfect in your eyes. Remember though, your eyes are not the important ones… it is the eyes of your customers you really need to consider. And it is your designer’s job to communicate your message with your target audience squarely in mind.

The design phase finishes with your visual layouts contained within PSD files. If your designer is also your developer, the transition to the next step will be seamless.

10. Website Development

If your website designer and developer are the same person, they will already have been provided with the required functionality and content for your site. If you are going with a separate developer, you will need to provide them with PSD files for the site (provided by your designer) as well as a detailed outline of exactly what you want each part of the site to do, and an outline of your content. They will then turn your visual design into a fully functional, working piece of communicative art (in code).

Like designers, web developers are not created equal. Not by a long shot. Web development is a rapidly changing and ever-evolving field, with different technologies and techniques being created, updated, and rendered obsolete on a daily basis. Web standards are important to ensure that your website looks and works as it should for the maximum possible number of visitors, though even that is no guarantee. Your developer will also need to test the site for cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility (because not all browsers follow standards). The way your site is coded is incredibly important for usability, accessibility, and will have a strong impact on how your site ranks in search engines. So choose someone who really knows what they’re doing.

11. Launch

While there are certainly other considerations insofar as pre-launch marketing goes, at this point your website is technically ready to deploy. Your developer will want to migrate your site onto your server for you (the one that your domain name points to, provided by your hosting company), and then complete one final set of tests to make sure that everything continues to work the way it should in its new home. This is another reason your choice of hosting companies is important – the software installed on the server needs to be up-to-date so it can support the latest standards in development.

12. Corollaries

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is an entire industry unto itself, with intricacies that extend far beyond the scope of this article. At minimum, if you want anyone to find your website on a search engine, your developer needs to employ best practices in organic, white-hat search engine optimization. Organic simply means that the optimization is contained within the code, content and build of the site itself. White-hat means that the methods employed are not prohibited or frowned-upon by the search engines themselves. Google et al WILL blacklist any website it finds that tries to circumvent the rules through unscrupulous SEO techniques.

There are additional SEO tactics you can (and should) employ yourself to maximize your exposure. Search engines rank sites higher if they have regular updates with new content, and a good number of quality inbound links. This does not mean link exchanges necessarily, as search engines often penalize sites that offer little in the way of actual content. Basically, the more high-ranking websites you can get to link back to your site, the better.

Social Media

These days, everyone and their mother has a profile on Facebook and Twitter. Professionals will also have a profile on LinkedIn. Setting yourself up with a presence on social media can draw visitors to your site, IF handled properly. In order for this to work, you will need to invest time into keeping your profiles up to date, and you will need to make sure your contributions are relevant, appropriate, and suitably engaging for your visitors.

Offline Marketing

The web is an incredibly important medium for marketing your business. However, you should not make the mistake of ignoring classic offline marketing techniques and resources. Be sure to update all of your promotional and corporate materials to include your website address and branded email. This includes just about everything that has your logo on it, including your business cards, stationery, signage, advertising, packaging, etc. If a customer sees an ad on the side of a bus as it rolls by, they will be significantly more likely to retain a website address than any other method of contact advertised.

Your Browser

While your website will have been tested and developed to function in older browsers, it cannot be optimized for them. Current best practices and up-to-date techniques are simply not supported by many obsolete browsers, requiring secondary options and workarounds. So, open whichever browser you prefer to use, and update it to the latest version. It’s free, it’s easy, and it has the potential to improve your online experience exponentially.

Although this article has been fairly lengthy, it really is just a primer on the most important fundamentals of launching a new website. If an effective result is to be expected, the process becomes an involved one that requires considerable investment and effort on the part of the client and the designer/developer. It also requires a high level of expertise. As always, research is important. Hopefully this checklist will have you well on your way.

Providing exceptional design is not the full picture of what our company does. For a professional firm, quality of design should be a given. What keeps people coming back is the combination of high quality work product, and excellent customer service. And the same is true with any business.

Last week, my husband scheduled an appointment for me at my favourite spa. I’d been working such long hours that I hadn’t had time for a haircut since last Canada Day. I had forgotten how unbelievably nice it is to walk into a quiet, warm, lovely smelling room, have the receptionist stand up, take my coat, welcome me by name (AND pronounce it correctly) and get me a nice hot tea. And my hairdresser is not only genuinely friendly but also exceptionally talented, so it provides the full experience for me: quality plus service. As a result, I didn’t mind too much when they last raised their prices.

So what does this have to do with your business?

Simple. All other things being equal, great service standards give you a key point of differentiation from your competitors. You just need to commit to it, and make it an integral part of your organizational SOP.

A Few Things You Can Do…

Share the Love
A great service experience starts with consistent affirmation that your client made the right choice. It does little good to make a big fuss over prospects, only to forget about them once they become customers.

Create a Comfort Zone
People are resistant to change, and working with a new company makes people nervous. You can get rid of any ambiguity or uncertainty by explaining what your clients should expect. This simple act of letting your clients know how things work is called “Future Pacing”. Through knowing what to expect in working with you, your clients will have a higher level of comfort and security in their decision.

Be Predictable
This follows from future pacing. If you know what you’re doing (and you should if you want to stay in business) you’ll have a set of proven processes in place, to ensure consistent and predictable results for your clients every time. Your processes reflect your professionalism. Promoting your processes fosters trust in your abilities, and respect for what you do.

Take Nothing for Granted
I wrote another article about this not too long ago. The little things all add up, so don’t neglect them. The more consideration you give the small details in your service experience, the more valuable you will be to your clients.

Up Sell
Clients come to you because they have a specific need. As they work with you, they’ll likely realize that they have other, related needs you could also fulfill. You need to make it easy for your client to purchase other services from you. You don’t need to give them the hard-sell… doing your job well and providing excellent service does that for you. It can be as simple as a sell-sheet that lists all of the services you provide. Something for them to keep in mind, just in case.

Better to have it and not need it…
than need it and not have it. My mother’s favourite saying when we argued about bringing umbrellas to school on a sunny day. The reality is, problems happen. A smart business person will anticipate them, and have a plan in place should things go wrong. Let your clients know what to do when they have issues or concerns.

Be There
Service providers are busy, even when they’re not. In the minds of clients, this could be construed as being flaky, inaccessible, or apathetic. Make sure your schedule allows for peak service periods, and that you are both accessible and engaged when your client needs you. Be organized, and come to meetings fully prepared. Connecting with your clients means just that.

Embrace Client Reviews
Don’t fear the social media machine. Feedback, reviews and testimonials hold far more weight than any advertising campaign. Ask for feedback after each project, both positive and negative. The positive will help you establish credibility, and the negative will help you improve.

Eliminate Surprises
You need to be fully transparent in your work. This includes billing (which is very important for clients). Your invoices should be timely, itemized, and free from hidden or unexpected upcharges. There’s nothing that irks me more than having a waitress ask if I want a particular side dish with my dinner, then being billed extra for it at the end. It’s not the extra dollar or so that bothers me, it’s the sneaky factor. And the result is the dissolution of trust. If something is not included, tell your clients beforehand.

Mind Your Manners
The phrase “thank you” is simple, it’s free, and it has the potential to have a profound effect on your business. Be genuine, and thank your clients often. You are fortunate that they are choosing to work with you. You are not simply entitled to anyone’s patronage. Voice your appreciation whenever you can.

Creating an exceptional service experience makes your business more profitable, and infinitely more referable. There is no advertising quite so effective as a base of loyal, satisfied customers.

Thanks to Michael Huggins for the blog-fodder.

I often wonder why so many of the business owners and brand managers who approach us are so obsessed with the overall machine, without giving so much as a nod to the cogs that make it work. I’m not talking about employee recognition here (that’s another topic entirely) but rather, the less tangible qualities that impact the customer’s experience in doing business with you.

How many times have you avoided returning to a restaurant with a shoddy bathroom? And how wonderful is that free tea or cappuccino at your favourite spa?

In another analogy, building a successful business is in many ways like building a house. You start with a plan and an overall vision, but there are a million little things that need to be done (and done well) before you’re anywhere near having a habitable and stylish abode. So too in business must you “sweat the details” in order to achieve a big picture worth hanging on the wall.

The following list outlines just a few of those little things… specifically, the equally minute and influential details that may have passed your notice, but won’t go unnoticed by the customers who walk through your front door.

Your Store / Office / Restaurant / Physical Space

1. Clean Exterior with Clear, Visible Signage
2. Thoughtful Lighting (not too dark, not to bright, with focus in the right spots)
3. Neat, Clean Interior
4. A Pleasant Smell (clean, fresh, VERY subtle, appropriate)
5. Comfortable Seating
6. Up-To-Date and Well Maintained Decor
7. Appropriate Background Music (genre, type, and volume)
8. A Comfortable Temperature and Noise Level
9. Breathing Space (wide aisles, clean lines, elbow room)
10. Impeccable Bathrooms
This is a big little thing. Bathrooms need to be clean, functional, relaxing, not treated as storage or a decor afterthought… and for the love of god, don’t skimp on the toilet paper.

The People You Employ

11. Smiling and Friendly
12. Well Groomed (clean-shaven, minimal makeup… they should look like they care)
13. Clean
14. Knowledgeable
15. Well-Spoken
16. Involved
17. Attentive (they don’t just hear, they listen)
18. Committed (passion shows)
19. Appropriately Dressed (i.e., if you’re selling jewellery, jeans won’t cut it)
20. Nice Smelling (this means little to no perfume, with any halitosis kept in check)

Your Business Away from the Office

21. A Modern, Simple, Useful Website
22. Pleasant Surprises (little extras have minimal cost and big payoff)
23. Up-To-Date Materials (an old card with new address in pen doesn’t inspire confidence)
24. Clear Vision
25. Quality Papers (cover stock with gloss for your catalog, or that thicker business card)
26. Free Perks (works in the office too; free refreshments while waiting make a big impression)
27. Impeccable Writing (no spelling errors; appear knowledgeable, authoritative, positive)
28. Brevity (say more with fewer words)
29. Takeaways (something keep-worthy to take with them, and hand out for you)
30. Understand Your Customer (and more importantly, make sure they know it)

None of these should come as big shockers, but it’s surprising how many times things like lighting, smells and toilet paper are overlooked. Success in business is closely tied to success in life, and your customers will reward you for a consistently enjoyable brand experience that speaks to them, and makes them feel good about doing business with you.

Remember, a happy customer is often a return customer.

It has also become an uber-brand that represents intangible, un-buy-able values (peace, love, joy, family, selflessness) simultaneously with supreme commercialism.

I love Christmas: hot cocoa, a roaring fire, home cooking, decorated trees, lit up streets, friends around, and the overall heightened consideration of other people (which really should be more present year-round). And of course, the unavoidable and remorseless spending of money we don’t necessarily have.

I like shopping as much as the next red-blooded woman, and I love choosing gifts for people I care about, BUT I loathe the chaos that is the holiday shopping experience. Firstly, running a fully booked design firm means I am impossibly busy, and it’s hard to find time to brave the traffic, find parking, and wait in obscene lines at the counter. So I shop for a lot of gifts online, which doesn’t seem particularly festive to me. Something is lost.

Smart online retailers are starting to catch on. In the same ways that a brick and mortar store would decorate their shop for the holidays, internet based companies are learning to create a more festive atmosphere for their customers. We all know that emotion sells. And the experience you’re providing for your customers online can be just as lucrative as one you might create in your physical store.

Now, my customers aren’t looking for the same thing as holiday shoppers. You’re business folk, and it’s not likely you’re going to hire a corporate designer as a gift for a loved one. But, I still felt like I should give a subtle little nod to the holidays… so I created a festive little holiday variant on our logo in the upper left corner. Even for those of us who aren’t selling a product, small efforts like this one show a human side that customers often appreciate.

If your business does happen to be one that caters to holiday shoppers, there are a few things you can do to improve your customers’ experience, and boost your online sales this December.

Intelligent Use of Colour
Humans are deeply and predictably influenced by visual stimulus, particularly the experience and use of colour. If you’re going to ‘decorate’ your website for the holidays, do it tastefully. Blinking flashy strings of rainbow christmas lights as text separators are not going to help your cause. A rich feature area with two or three cohesive colours in a consistent palette will create a pleasing experience, which will make your visitors want to stay and browse around.

Good Bone Structure
If your website design sucks, then no amount of tinsel is going to save it. Before you even think about holiday branding strategies, you need to make sure your base materials are solid. You need an impressive and credible visual image, a strong homepage with obvious calls to action, a simple and clean interface, an intuitive navigational structure, and a minimalist shopping process. Your visitors should not even have to think about how to use your site – you want their focus on your products, not your overcomplicated shopping cart software.

Holiday Sales!
This is a no-brainer. It’s the holidays. People expect special price offers. And if you’re not offering any, it’s nearly guaranteed that your competition is. On a recent trip to Home Depot, my husband noticed there were a lot of two-for-one sales on power tools. He wondered why one might need two of the same tool, but it was actually a pretty obvious holiday sales tactic… buy something you might have wanted for yourself anyway, and get another one free so you can tick a name off your holiday shopping list. It’s a double incentive on high value purchases that might otherwise be put off. His reaction? “That’s brilliant.”

Know Your Market
If you’re catering to a niche market, then your promotional decor should be appropriate to their tastes. A sporting goods retailer would take a vastly different approach to a high-end jeweler. Acknowledge the reasons people come to your website, think about what they want to get out of their visit with you, and adjust your design accordingly. Remember, this is about THEM, not you.

Time For Change
In Q4, users give advertisers 30% more of their time when compared with any other time of year. If you’re going to roll out a new product, new campaign, new feature or benefit announcement, now is the time to do it. On December 31st, advertisers get an additional minute overall to engage their audience. You have their attention. Don’t waste it.

Decorate Tastefully
Cut the clutter. If you have something important to say, don’t drown yourself out with background noise. In trying to say too much, too many end up saying nothing. Focus on a few big drivers, and organize yourself thoughtfully. Your customers come to your website because they want something specific from you, so make it easy for them to find.

Flash is Overrated
A little bit can be nice, but usability is much more important from a shopper’s point of view. The trick is to combine ease-of-use with a visual atmosphere that gives your visitors a good feeling about shopping with you.

Luckily, in amongst the world of digital photo frames and web based magazines, the paper industry is taking notice and finally stepping up to the plate. Recycled paper has been around for a while, but as with any buzzword, use of the word ‘recycled’ doesn’t necessarily mean a whole lot. It could be as little as 10% recycled material, added to the fact that the raw materials are such a small part of the whole picture.

The more clever and responsible paper companies are re-examining their manufacturing processes, from the collection of raw materials right through to the mill floor and who provides their electricity. They’re not focusing blindly on steps allowing them to use the word ‘recycled’ alone, but are taking larger scale steps to manage their overall carbon footprint and corporate contributions to (and subsequent limitation of) greenhouse gas emissions. The quantity and type of energy and chemicals used to manufacture the paper are also determining factors, and the end result is a much wider range of ecologically responsible choices for those of us in the business of designing materials for print.

But how do you know which option to choose? The Environmental Defense Fund is a good starting point. Their online paper calculator takes all of these issues into consideration, and compares the overall environmental impacts of a wide range of different papers across their full lifecycle. While they can’t possibly include all of the paper manufacturers at any one person’s disposal, they do paint a clear enough picture of the sort of questions you should be asking when in the position to choose your stock.

Carbon footprint at EDF is calculated by kg equivalent of C02/MT and broken down into four major impact factors:
• Extraction of Wood
• Transportation / Waste / Disposal
• Manufacturing Energy
• Fibre Procurement

They also provide specific paper comparisons to North American averages for both 100% recycled papers, and standard virgin papers.

You can check out the EDF Paper Calculator at www.edf.org/papercalculator

At minimum, you should be looking for paper that is 100% post-consumer fibre, processed chlorine free, and manufactured regionally using responsible energy. In Canada, look for the Environmental Choice and FSC certification badges.

Personally, I rank selling myself up there with paperwork and taxes. I’d rather be doing actual design work than making a sales pitch. I’d rather be doing just about anything else, for that matter. But success in business demands we master not only our own craft, but also those fields that we depend upon to stay afloat (and prosper). In my case, I’m helped along quite a bit by way of the fact that I also happen to have a university degree in psychology, so I’m able to mesh what I know about design with what I know about people.

And what I’ve learned about people is that they like being sold to, just about as much as they like selling. A lot of marketing firms like to aim for the lowest common denominator, which I find not only insulting and ineffective, but outright unnecessary. Screaming “BUY ME, DUMMY” at someone tends to have the opposite effect.

Writing good sales copy for advertising purposes is even more difficult. You need to compress your ten-page sales presentation into a few brilliant, effective and easily digested words.

Now, a lot of new businesses can’t afford a professional copywriter, though it’s not an area that should be overlooked or underestimated. IF you’re taking it upon yourself to craft your own sales copy, there are a few basic points to keep at the front of your mind.

Sales copy should be genuinely compelling.

Grab your audience’s attention with an effective, well thought out headline. What you’re saying is just as important as how you say it. Your message needs to be clear, attractive and relevant. And for heaven’s sake, don’t SHOUT.

Offer a clear incentive. This is your call to action. What do you want your audience to do? And just as importantly, Why should they? You need to be forthright and to the point, without being demanding, narcissistic or desperate.

Sweeten the deal. It sounds trite, but people love freebies. I’m not saying you should give away a free TV with every truck you sell (we actually did get a free TV with our vehicle – it’s a piece of garbage we could do without), but be sure to point out any added-value offerings that would make you stand out from your competitors.

So boiled down, we’re looking at three components:
• Entice
• Engage
• Extend

Think about the last ad that actually made you want to follow up, then deconstruct it.

Remember, your audience is you.

Naively, I took everyone at their word. The nature of my own well-meaning and fairness-oriented personality made dealing in the often cut-throat world of business somewhat challenging.

Unfortunately, I found myself working all the time (averaging 18 hour work days along with regular all-nighters) and yet somehow I was still struggling just to pay the rent. I was winning awards and getting new contracts every week, then borrowing money from family to buy groceries. People loved me and they loved my work, but Ontario Hydro doesn’t accept second-hand love in exchange for heat.

Over the years I’ve learned a lot of lessons the hard way, including contract and deposit policies to (at least partially) protect me from con-artists and deadbeats. That said, one of the most important skills I’ve had to develop has been the proper and ample usage of the word “no”.

Don’t get me wrong, I do hate having to say it. And it’s not easy. But it’s as vital to your professional success and personal well-being as the air we breathe.

Here are a few questions I almost always say ‘no’ to:

1. Can you show me a mock-up to help us choose a designer?
Spec work. I used to fall for this one all the time. I even used to participate in design “competitions”, which in essence require a large number of designers to invest work hours into a project, for which only one will actually get paid. A lazy customer wants an off-the-shelf design that they don’t have to invest much time or effort into, so they get a diverse group of naive designers to work for free with the intention of only paying one for their time. I would often “win” these competitions, but it always left a foul taste in my mouth. Time, talent and ideas are our product – we don’t give them away for nothing. It’s NOT like “test driving different cars before choosing one”… it’s more like asking the salesperson to GIVE you a fleet of cars, and then only paying for the one you like best. Even if you never use the other cars, the salesperson doesn’t get them back.

2. I saw someone online selling logos for $99 – can you match that?
Yeah, and you can buy designer handbags in China for a buck. I do unfortunately get this question once in a while, and the response is always “no”, without exception. You can find stock and cheap design easily enough. The tradeoff is… wait for it… it’s crap. And if it’s not crap, it’s royalty free, which means you can’t trademark it, and anybody else with $99 can use the same design for their brand. You would think that more people would realize that you get what you pay for.

3. Can you give me a deep discount?
This is similar to number 2, but in this case it may be a long-standing client asking the question, or just someone who loves your work but can’t quite afford it. I get this question all the time. People are always out to save a buck, and while I’ll quite often apply a loyalty discount or an agency rate if you’re giving us regular work, it’s never more than X percent of our standard rate. I almost never agree to flat rate projects – they will suck you dry unless you’re VERY specific about the inclusions. Remember, this is your livelihood. It’s your mortgage, your grocery bill, your family’s expenses, AND your company’s integrity.

4. I really like X by Y company – can you copy it for me?
This comes up more than you’d think. A client sees something they like, and they want it for themselves. It’s only natural, but a line has to be drawn. You can use existing sources for inspiration, guidance, general style and the like, but a carbon-copy is immoral, unusable, illegal, and relegates the designer to more of a drone than anything else. Nothing good will come of it.

5. Can I have your home number?
I’ve given this out to precious few clients. It’s hard enough to keep that fragile line of sand that separates work from home from blowing away in the wind of my hectic schedule. While I work very long hours, and I always have work “with” me in some form or another, I do make serious efforts to be as fully present as possible, in whichever context I find myself. If I’m at work, I’m at work and I am immersed in it. If I’m stealing a few precious moments to have dinner with my husband, we both deserve to have that time to ourselves. If you don’t maintain some sort of balance, you’ll be looking at an early grave – or a mental hospital.

6. Can you design X for free in exchange for advertising or stock?
Um, no. I’ve reached the point where my company gets all the advertising it needs through word-of-mouth. Everything I do that’s not covered by an NDA (and that I actually like) goes into my portfolio or my Flickr profile, and websites I’ve developed link back to my website from the design credit area. This is my career – I’m not your neighbour’s kid with a stolen copy of photoshop. And while I do appreciate the offer of stock, and I wish my clients the best, it’s rarely a wise investment on my part.

7. Can you do this by tomorrow?
I always have at least a dozen or so contracts on the go at once, with each one often having a multitude of different tasks to complete. All tasks go into a queue, with a constantly changing order based on an algorithm involving time, priority, skill, effort, urgency, overall project scale and client seniority. Note that urgency is only one part of the equation. If I can do it, I will, but please don’t ask me to stay up all night to get it done. I’ll often do that on my own, but the generosity can end rather abruptly when you start to make assumptions. Remember, the more you bend over for a client, the more they’ll expect you to bend in the future. That’s not to say you shouldn’t do good clients a favour now and then (you should), but be mindful of the slippery slope.

8. Can I just pay the whole amount when I’m done?
I’ve been burned by far too many deadbeat and dishonest clients to fall for this one. All new contracts require a 50% deposit before any design work begins – and it doesn’t matter how big or small the contract is. At the end of the project, finals are only delivered AFTER final payment has arrived. The majority of your clients will be honest, and the majority will pay in full provided you’re good at what you do. But you always have to account for the jerk factor. These people don’t care about the time and effort you poured into the project. They don’t care if you can’t afford to eat because you devoted a month to a project that would never be paid for. Don’t fall prey to it. I do have long-standing clients on monthly billing schedules, but only agree to do this once you’ve developed a trusting relationship with the client.

So there they are, but remember, there are no absolutes. Depending on the situation, you may have different answers (and I may too), but the take-home message here is that you need to develop the ability to say no to your clients. The customer is not always right, and when they are wrong, your personal and professional success will depend on your ability and willingness to tactfully tell them so.

As a consumer, how do you protect yourself and your company? The answer is more simple than you may think – all you have to do is a bit of homework.

1. Self Analysis : Your Creative Brief

A proper commercial design firm will work with you in defining your organization’s requirements, but you should still have a basic idea of what you need, and what role the items will fill within your organization. In order to find a design firm best suited for your project, your organization should be aware of the following:

• Your intended audience
• The intended scope and goal of the project
• Your anticipated budget (be fair and realistic here – remember, you get what you pay for)
• How the project will fit into a larger marketing/corporate scheme
• The individuals/departments within your organization responsible for the project
• The specifics of each of the items you want designed

Once you have determined these initial requirements, document them and use them as a basis for evaluating each design firm. This document gives you a common yardstick to measure each design firm you will be contacting. Similarly, a professional design firm will respect the fact that you are taking your project seriously, and would ask you all of these questions (and more) anyway.

2. Generate a list

There are a number of ways to search for a design firm. Each method has its own strengths and weaknesses, so a combination of the different approaches will be your best bet for finding a design firm to match your needs.

OTHER COMPANIES: Find at least five good examples of other companies whose image materials you admire or would like to emulate. What do you like about each one? What do you not like? How do you see elements of each of these as relevant to your brand? These organizations may be your competitors, or in related or unrelated industries. Again, this is something that a good design firm will help you with or at least ask you about. In order to create a quality, relevant design for your company, they will need to know what you like, what you dislike, and who your most successful competitors are. A good design firm will include research into the development phase of your project.

REFERRALS: Ask business acquaintances, friends, and family which design firm designed the materials for their respective organizations – but only IF you feel their materials are exemplary. Be inquisitive. Find out what the individuals responsible liked or disliked about working with the various design firms. Some firms are better suited for taking a project from start to finish. Others are more inclined to work from an existing concept.

Once you have gathered a list of potential design firms you are ready to pare them down to a shortlist.

3. Create a shortlist

From the list of potential design firms, your organization’s goal should now be to create a shortlist of 3-5 firms that are best suited for your project. In order to determine which design firms are most appropriate for your project, do the following:

EXAMINE THE PORTFOLIO

This is the absolute Number ONE item. A good design firm should have an extensive portfolio available online for you to view, with a wide variety of design concepts and applications. The work displayed in the portfolio should be excellent, and should display a consistency of quality.

You will also want to look at the design firm’s breadth of experience – they may be able to address your immediate needs, but will they be able to provide solutions 6 months down the road, or 1 year later, or 5 years later?

Thanks to the distributed nature of the Internet, some of the best design firms have implemented systems that allow them to work with organizations across the globe as easily as organizations across the street. When reviewing the Web site of a design firm, note the geographical locations of their clients. A design firm that has worked with clients in many geographical locations will have a more global approach to your designs.

ANALYZE THE PROCESS

Does the design firm have a clearly stated design process? Do they spend enough time understanding your goals and planning how those will be achieved? Avoid selecting an individual designer, on a freelance basis, to design and develop your organization’s materials. It is rare to find a single person capable of handling the combined visual and technical elements that make an effective brand image. Additionally, by depending on an individual, your organization is at risk of losing its investment should anything occur to that one individual.

DETERMINE WHAT OTHER SERVICES THE FIRM CAN OFFER

What kind of value-added products or services can the design firm offer? Internet marketing and promotion? Newsletter or email campaigns? Professional printing discounts or fulfillment services? If your organization is not currently dealing with a print design agency, for example, this might be a factor for dealing with one group over another.

SPEAK WITH A REPRESENTATIVE FROM EACH FIRM

During this stage, your organization should make contact with the potential design firms that are on your shortlist. Does the representative conduct themselves knowledgeably and professionally? Are they quick to respond to your emails? Do they know what they are talking about? Don’t be afraid to ask questions… who will be managing your project? Since this is the person you would be working with, then this is the person you should be speaking with now. How long have they been working in the design field? Which of the items in the online portfolio was done by them or their current team? Can they provide references?

While a lot of consumers may prefer speaking on the phone, it is a better idea to communicate with your design firm by email. This way, both you and your firm have a written record of all questions, answers and instructions should any conflict arise in the future.

4. Get proposals

Once you have selected your top Web design firms, send them your creative brief (the document you created in step 1) and request that they send you a proposal. Ask that each design firm include a description of their development process and a price breakdown for the various aspects of the project.

5. Evaluate the proposals

Start off by examining each proposal individually. Before dealing with the content, evaluate the format and presentation of the proposal. The winning design firm will be creating your organization’s image materials, viewable to hundreds, thousands or even millions of current and potential customers. How do they present themselves? Do they communicate with you using their Web site and digital documents?

Maintain a list for each proposal, consisting of its strengths and weaknesses, and the strengths and weaknesses of the respective design firm based on its other materials (web site, portfolio, brochure, case studies, etc.).

After your organization has reviewed all proposals, compare them with each other. How do they fare in terms of presentation? Do they present upgrade paths for your project, going beyond the needs of the immediate goals outlined?

6. Pick a Winner

Once you have made a decision, contact the winning design firm and let them know the good news!

Sage Media is an international corporate design firm based in Ottawa, Ontario.

As a general rule of thumb, you have three seconds to make an impression on those walking past your display. Your overall design that includes each trade show booth graphic and sign must be simple and meaningful enough to compel attendees to walk in and learn more.

The content on your signage should simply and very clearly communicate — in as few words as possible — the benefits of your product. It is also wise to consider the impact of other important elements such as lighting, and even smell.

If you are hiring a professional design firm to create your tradeshow graphics for you, you should look for the following:

1. A style of creativity that is both engaging and clean
2. Understanding of materials and how they are best used
3. Ability to communicate ideas clearly and precisely
4. Understanding of structure
5. Understanding of graphic techniques (typography, photography, etc.)
6. Understanding of technical requirements for large scale print
7. Awareness of marketing trends and their relations to your objectives
8. Ability to effectively research your target market for the event
9. Trade connections in the print industry always help!

Of course, if you’re doing it yourself, then you should have the above all confidently checked off in order to come away with a successful result.

Sage Media is an international corporate design firm based in Ottawa, Ontario.

Your materials should all send the same clear and positive message about your business. For your corporate and marketing materials, this means that every item in the “wardrobe” should match… not in terms of looking identical, but rather each item should complement the other and when placed together, it should be obvious that they are two pieces in a cohesive suite of well thought out and professionally implemented design. This includes your logo, stationery, packaging materials and labels, signage, web site, email signature, window displays and office decoration, PowerPoint presentations, giveaways and specialty items such as mugs, t-shirts or pens.

Your trademark or logo needs to be professionally developed, and used in a consistent way. Don’t be tempted to change the font or colour randomly or without obvious cause. Of course you can have several versions of your logo, but keep the number of variants low, and be sure that you have one primary version that is recognizable as the “official” logo.

Your stationery should all be the same colour, finish, and quality of material. Ideally, your basic corporate identity package (business card, letterhead and envelopes) would be developed as a set by a brand designer with experience in creating cohesive stationery systems for business. And when printing documents on your shiny new letterhead and envelopes, use the same font consistently.

Project Taste and Success

You care about your business and take a lot of pride in the quality what you offer, so make sure you show it. Use high quality stock and finishing when creating your materials… go for the thicker stock, the satin or high gloss finish, and the best design company you can afford. In designing your materials, simple is always better. Yes you can have airbrushed murals printed on your letterhead – but please, resist the temptation to go too exhuberant in this area. Look at Apple; people love clean and simple. It’s just nicer, and people will take you more seriously as a business.

And as for your business cards, again you want to avoid the temptation to purchase an Avery kit and spit them out of your deskjet printer at home. The paper is lightweight, and the printing process is far from professional, so it ends up looking cheap, the ink will smudge, and it’s not durable. Have your cards designed professionally, and opt for offset lithographic printing on at least 12pt card stock (I prefer 14 with satin, or one of the more artistic options such as plastic or metal). The end point is that your card, and all your materials, should create a positive, interesting, and lasting impression.

And remember, these items don’t just apply to your corporate materials; apply them to the way you do business in general and you’ll reach the same result: an impression of competence, and success.

Sage Media is an international corporate design firm based in Ottawa, Ontario.