Owning your own business can be an extremely rewarding experience. You are actively molding and changing your company, especially in the early stages. Nothing, from the logo to the company motto, is yet solidified in stone. Figuring out what works and what doesn’t is often something that just takes time.
In website design, as well as anything else that requires the input or fulfillment from a third party, often a project will linger or drag out as the client’s time becomes scarce. It is the fallacy of our attention spans that passion for a project wanes. There is no set time or clock, but every man or woman is subject to it. I pondered this just this morning over my 12 oz of strong brew coffee (to which I am a prisoner with a strong case of Stockholm).
Projects are much like a fire. Too many projects are started with too little fuel (content), but they burn brilliantly and far too quickly. The team rallies around the idea and stares in wide eyed fascination like children watching a baby chicken slowly emerging. The idea slowly starts to push it’s way into life as the team is hanging on each chip of the shell as it falls away. The romance soon fades as time drags on and the brilliant fire that once was burns out quickly. It is this stutter step of most projects that hinders a great end result. Rekindling that fire is much more difficult than sustaining the flame, and often the flames burn less brightly.
For clients that want a great end product, I want to suggest that you have everything ready before you even try to create sparks. Know what content you want and how you want it. Hire a copywriter if needed to help you flesh out your ideas, before starting the web design project. Give enough content for some of it to even be left in surplus. Basically make sure that when you hire a design team, you give them all the fuel they need. In the end you’ll be much more satisfied with the project that kept the flame hot than you will be if you slowly acquire the content as needed.
For us designers, it is equally important that we push the need for all content upfront; We require the content before we crack open the sketchbooks, and gloss them over in Photoshop mocks. So that we can burn as brightly as possible from beginning of the project to the end. We can’t change human nature, but we can harness it.
–John Riddle