It’s the universal issue for a small business – lack of resources. We’d all love a designer on hand to put into images what we’re trying to say, and with the arrival of marketplaces like Fivver and DesignCrowd on the internet scene, it’s very tempting to skip the pain of paying for a graphic designer and start a logo design project with someone halfway around the world. In fact, as the owner of a company with my biggest overhead being their wage bill, would not a jaunt of a website such as these be far easier than paying for designers to sit in our office? One of the biggest obstacles that arise from working with designers online is important aspects of your business that you want to convey is lost in translation. I’m not referring to language barriers, but in that, it’s hard to communicate the important things you want to get across, and less important without having a face-to-face meeting. Designers pick up on the nuances, emphases, and enthusiasm of a business owner when they talk about their business that often even the business owner doesn’t even know they’re doing. But for those small businesses that don’t have a trusted designer that they can call on, then here are some tips for getting the most out of a designer online.

Look out for pricing pitfalls

As with many things on the internet (and in advertising in general), often the stated price is actually the ‘starting’ price. It might cost you five (United States) dollars to get your project started, but which designers are in the lineup at that price? The more qualified designers begin in the hundreds of dollars, so be sure you have a clear idea of budget versus your expectations. Many of these sites also offer a money-back guarantee. Ensure you read the fine print. You may not get your posting fee back (which is another cost to consider).

Have a (really) clear understanding of where you want the design to be used

When you look at something in isolation, for example a website design without your content and photos in it, or a logo that’s been supplied with a Photoshop effect (embossed on paper, and on a jaunty angle), it’s hard to really visualize how it will look on invoices or a website header. Print the logo out, on white, and shrink it down to the size of a business card. See if it works as a wide, skinny (horizontal) logo on the top of a website header. Print it in black and white and see if it is still legible, and has the same impact and feeling as in colour. Finally, put it on a coloured photo and see if it holds its own.

Know your market, know your business and stay true to your values

Have you ever gone to the supermarket to buy bread and milk and walked out with ten other things? There is a reason the milk is at the far end of the supermarket - to make you walk past all the other options on display. It’s easy to get so tied up in the design process that when a designer shows you a ‘really cool’ design, you buy on emotion, instead of weighing up if it actually suits your business, as opposed to just being a shiny, exciting new object. Give your new design the grill down. Does it really appeal to your target market? Does it reflect your values? If it’s a wishy-washy, pretty logo, does it suit you as a car yard? Does your tagline work with it? Will it work on a dark background? Is it an improvement of what you already have?

Know what to do once you have the files

Nothing new, or bleeding edge is perfect right off. We know it takes time and determination (and a little luck) to build a great business. But those ‘lucky’ businesses got it right by building relationships not just with their suppliers, but with their customer as well. Are you making a transaction or building a relationship with your customer? There seems to be a distinction that businesses make between a ‘customer’ and a ‘client’. I’ve always assumed a customer is someone with whom you determine the value of a one-off transaction with, while a client is someone who’s long-term spend is calculated, and valued and therefore someone you build a relationship with. It’s far more economical to make multiple sales to one client than to spend money chasing new sales which make building a relationship a far more sustainable business model, even if you don’t see the profits straight away.

Finger pointing vs problem-solving

Another distinction in the ‘transaction versus relationship’ subject is reflected in your business model. For example, I had a client that had an issue with a sign-writer that they had chosen themselves. When something went wrong with the sign printing, instead of focussing on solving the problem the sign-writer was focussed on finger pointing. The issue was caused by an uneducated mistake on the client’s part, in that they sent the low-resolution file instead of final art work. But the finger pointing really started when we suggested that they might have noticed the file was low res and asked the client for a better file. The signwriter’s words were “I just hit print four times (for the four signs), it’s not my job to check the files”. This is an example of a company basing their business model on transactions, rather than relationships. The fear of not making a profit on this transaction through, as he saw it, no fault of his own, blinded him to the need to keep the customer in a relationship.

Be the professional

If the difference between successful brands and the lesser ones is about relationships. The accountant, lawyer, web developer, or graphic designer are paid by the client to be experts in their field. With regards to the sign-writer example, if the sign company based their business on relationships than their processes (of checking files, for example) would reflect that in having their client’s back. The ‘all care, and no responsibility’ that is given to clients by professionals in too many service-based industries in that they want to ‘help’ but not own the outcome in any way to me means they should be ditching the ‘client’ term in favour of a customer transaction.

Relationships are about the good times and the bad

The Profit’s Marcus Lemonis is a man who knows what works in business. But even more, he’s a man who knows which people work, and how to make them think differently to succeed in business. I’ve been a recent addict to NBC’s The Profit, where Lemonis buys into a failing small business in order to turn them around. He is often spending up to $500,000 per business, he has more than a passing interest in making them succeed. However, his main condition in buying in is: he is in control. Though his business acumen, systems, and know-how are what makes the business able to be turned around for the better, the biggest change he makes is with regards to the business owners attitude. In fact, much of the criteria, other than they have a viable business, is in the personality of the owners. Through each episode, there are the personality clashes and direction arguments that come with requiring ratings, but the biggest changes come when the owner is willing to be ‘coached’. The business owners learn to stick up for themselves, or the opposite, pull their heads in as they are either bullied by staff or family, or the owner is the bully themselves.

Adjust your own business role

In each episode, the owner’s attitude does a full one-eighty as they learn to look at their business in a different way. They learn to respect themselves – and what person wouldn’t when a millionaire believes in you, you learn to believe in, and respect yourself. With new attitudes comes a bigger vision for the business. The end business may not be what the owner imaged when they made the call for help, but that’s exactly the point. What they are left with is a business in which the role the business owner adopts plays to their strengths, while they delegate the roles that they are not so suited to.

Think in a different way

In one episode, Los Gemelos, a tortilla manufacturer, had an old factory that was not up to code. Their product had survived a large player coming to the market but was losing more and more of their hold, and profit, every week. While the owner’s mindset was that they needed a new factory, Lemonis’ solution was to contract another manufacturer, to use their recipe to produce the tortillas. This relationship then brought about an additional relationship, where complimentary salsas were created, to the owner’s recipe, in another manufacturing company. An additional relationship and partnership were in enrolling comedian George Lopez to endorse the brand.  The company was then able to create an unlimited supply of tortillas, that their existing factory would not allow for, and open the door to supply larger chain stores their product, as well as leverage off a known ‘brand’. 

Be real about what you’re selling

In the case of Murchinson-Hume, a household cleaning product, the owner is an ex-magazine editor who has created a line of natural cleaning products. She had beautiful labels that looked like they should be on a range of high-end wine and not on a toilet cleaner. There was a huge disconnect between the way the product was presented, and what was inside, leaving too much to the customers' imagination for them to make the connection and pay the too high price tag. The business owner was not honest with herself about what she was selling – cleaning products – and her point of difference focus was on the brand and the labels. Where, in reality, she had off-point labels and no brand leverage to speak of to gamble her whole businesses future on. In a flooded market, wine, for example, is bought on the combination of the reputation of the maker, the branding, distribution and price point, but cleaners need to operate on a whole different business model. Lemonis’ intervention and the influence of the staff had no effect on the business owner, who could not forgo the pretty labels for the sake of the business, and the two parted ways.

Extend your reach

The design process of your website is the exciting part of creating a new website as you are lead through a process of discovery, brief writing and design. Once you're past that initial phase, however, you're often flummoxed when the project is deemed 'done' as far as the web developer is concerned, and it is thrown to you to ‘provide content’.

Let's be honest, it’s blimmin' hard to write content about your own business. I know, because I often struggle with writing about my own ’stuff’, and I do this for a living. Then it gets even harder when you then have to figure out some new software in order to upload said content to the site.

Technology has now caught up with what we want our website to do for our clients. We develop the ‘map’ and design of the site at the same time as the content. With this strategy process, we can then tweak pages to work to our advantage, and not be constrained by a framework that has already been created, signed off and charged for…

PLUS the price is far less than the traditional staged approach because the strategy fits hand in glove with the content and design. So you get a finished (yes, completed, launchable, written) website for the same, if not less than an empty shell.

Let's get to the nitty gritty

OK, so you’re still with me – then I think you’re on board with what I’m saying so I can be a little more open.

I’ve had a month of people approaching me for website content. The site framework has been built, and the agency has thrown the job back to the client to ‘please supply the content’. This approach is a bit like building the framework for a house, then asking someone to come in and move it to a different spot. A house is planned, designed and then built to incorporate the needs of the customer, plus the section it will stand on, the budget of the customer and also allow them to put their personal stamp on it. Sure, you can move a house later (usually), but it’s always going to be a bit glitchy.

In this digital age, why are we creating websites by building a framework for them, without even looking at what it need to do? If you’re trying to capture people's attention, it’s not going to work if your site looks like a spreadsheet because it’s too hard to engage the images with the content.

We've broken the web developer mould!

You can then understand my excitement now that we’ve broken down the secret IT walls of the web and can now assist our client with website creation services – from the planning to the foundations, to the build, while approaching it with an organic and realistic process to best reflect your business online.