11 Mar What Happens in a Design Consultation?
For many, being invited in for a design consultation is a bit daunting and you may find yourself thinking “why can’t I get a quote on the phone or email?” None of us want to get into a salesy situation where they feel pressured to buy. While we appreciate that some companies may use the hard sell in these initial meetings and that puts people off, we still like to sit down with prospective clients at the start of each project and here’s why:
We want to get to know your business
The most important thing for us is that we understand your business and where it wants to go. Marketing online is not ‘one size fits all’ and in order for us to do our jobs properly we need to identify what the ethos of the company is, it’s target audience and what makes it stand out from the crowd among many other things.
Once we have this information we can translate it in the website’s we create. What works for a corporate accountant website isn’t going to work for a dog grooming business. We will tailor our designs to suit your business.
We need to identify what you want the website to do
One thing we need to know is what functionality does the client require? Websites can do anything from simply delivering information to integrating complex booking systems or e-commerce shops. The latter takes considerably more time to set up than a simple brochure site and we therefore need to allocate more hours to the project which usually results in a higher price. As it’s important to be upfront about our costs from the get go, it’s really important that we are on the same page as our clients about what the website will do.
We want to know if you have a design in mind
Although we are designers and love to come up with new ideas, we always speak with the client about how they imagine the website looking. Often we work with sole traders and business owners who have built the company from the ground up. It’s only right that they should have a say in the style of their company’s online brand. We will go through colour palettes, general style concepts and look at other websites that they may like the general style of.
By the time we have spoke over these topics with the prospective client, we have a pretty good idea of what they want and how long it will take to deliver. From here we will provide a client with a quote (usually within 2 or 3 days) and we take it from there.
See, not so scary right? If you would like to schedule a consultation about your web design project, get in touch with Blue Coo Creative on 01382 918525.