Expectations

We always make sure our clients have the proper expectations for their website. One of the most unrealistic most first time website owners have is that the moment their website is launched they will be listed on Google on the first page. In fact, it takes a little bit of time to come up even for your own company name – it isn’t immediate.

Another huge expectation is that by simply having a website up means that business will flow in. Just having a website is not web marketing – you still need to get your website in front of people to attract new visitors.

Responsibilities

We can’t do everything for your website – although we’ll certainly try so the process is as easy as possible for our clients. Depending on the project scope, clients may need to provide the website outline, content, images and other materials. There is always an emphasis on getting these materials together sooner rather than later as 98% of the projects that take longer than expected are a direct result of our clients not being able to collect materials on time.

Timelines

We like to make sure that every client knows what we’re doing for their website and when to expect to see deliverables. We feel it’s important, especially for the first timers, to have a good understanding of the whole website process and how long things can take. We like to establish a base timeline for things like when the first design comp will be available, when the HTML templates will be built, when the content management system will be setup, etc.

Of course, a web design timeline is fluid. Going back to repsonsibilities, a timeline can easily get extended when clients don’t provide materials in a timely manner or something unexpected comes up on our end with another project.

Effective Communication

With all communication, it goes both ways. Often times we will request materials from a client and not hear anything for several weeks. It really helps the web designer to coordinate multliple projects when there is at least an estimated time to receive materials. For us, we are obsessive about working efficiently as we like to respond to client requests as quickly as possible (and ideally within a few minutes of receiving the request – yes, I said minutes, not days). If we know when we will have what we need to move the project along, it helps every project we are working on including yours.

Another important aspect of effective communication during the web design and development process is to make questions or concerns known as soon as possible. In some cases, we’ve had a client who kept quiet about their approved design concepts missing a key element they were hoping for. They thought we would implement as we were building the site. Not until we were moments away from launching the site did they chime in about the missing element. It was no problem for us to go back and fix it, but this pushed the website launch back several days and could easily have been avoided. Our goal here at AshWebStudio is to make sure you are absolutely happy with what we are creating for you so if something is off definitely say something. We’re more than happy to make things perfect for you.

At AshWebStudio, we can definitely vouch for this. When we are able to respond to a request from our website within an hour or two, those prospective clients are much happier and like talking with us. They seem quite excited that someone actually responded right away since apparantly many web companies don’t like to respond for several days. Sometimes we get busy and can’t get back right away, and there is a noticeable difference in their willingness to talk with us, discuss their project and eventually become a client.

Type of Company

There are many different kind of web design companies ranging from 1 person doing everything to 150 employees. Having worked for a larger company, I know that things go much, much slower and often cost a lot more (they have to pay for all those employees and office space!). If a large company is offering something on the cheap, it is likely because they make money on quantity, not quality. They mass produce websites and thus likely mass produce terrible websites.

If you find a freelancer, be aware that one person is responsible for everything. This means should he/she get really busy, then your project timeline will start to stretch out. Should that person be away on vacation, you’re pretty much hung out to dry until they return. The other downside is that many freelancers have their main job and then do websites on the side.

AshWebStudio is a mix between a large company and a freelancer – although all the web stuff is handled by me and business stuff handled by Erika, we do have trusted people who are exceptional at design, development and copyrighting which we bring in on a regular basis whenever the project requires it. As a result, we have the advantage of being able to handle every aspect of a website from small content websites to large-scale development projects. We also take care the extra stuff beyond just making your website like web hosting, email setup, print design, etc.

Location

In the web industry, location is not really a factor. We have had clients from everywhere in the US and even international. Phone, email, instant messaging, and video conferencing really makes location a non-factor when deciding which company to choose. Even when we have local clients, we typically don’t ever meet in person. Quite honestly it is typically a lot more time spent driving to meetings than what is actually accomplished at the meetings.

Experience

Has the company you are looking for developed a similar website that you are hoping to have created? If not, they may not know some of the intricacies of your specific situation. Now this shouldn’t be a deal breaker, especially if the company has a lot of experience in general – they’ll likely be able to plan for these unexpected things to come up and know exactly how to deal with them. We’ve worked on many, many types of projects. We understand what it’s going to take to put together what you are looking for. Because of that experience, we can provide you many different options to accomplish your ultimate goal.

Reputation & Customer Service

Speak with some past clients, see what they say about the company. Customer service is an important aspect of this industry – after all, we are creating websites for you not for us. At AshWebStudio, we are very happy to be able to say you could contact any client in our portfolio and we know they would say good things about us. Our #1 goal is to make sure every one of our clients is very happy with not only their website but their experience in working with us.

Cost

Everyone is worried about cost. However, in this industry our experience is that you get what you pay for. As mentioned, there are cheap companies that mass produce websites for $499 each with poor customer support and quality. There are companies that can create e-commerce solutions for $50,000 because they can custom create every aspect of the system to meet your exact needs. Talk to several companies and see what their price is and what they recommend is the best approach to accomplish what you are looking for. Take into consideration the type of company, experience, reputation and customer service.

We are not the cheapest company to work for, but we’re definitely not the most expensive. If you have a budget, we’ll work with you to find a solution that can work within it. We aren’t out to milk every dollar out of your pocket, we want to be able to provide you a quality solution that you can afford. If you’re interested, request a free quote from us and see how we stack up.

We do have set prices for standard websites so we always give the same number regardless of budget. However, when you go beyond a basic website, there are many ways to accomplish the same thing – each with a varying level of sophistication and thus varying price tag. If we know what your budget is, we can find the best solution that does what a client needs at a price level they can afford. For example, we can put together an e-commerce website anywhere from $2000 up to $10,000 and probably even higher. There are differences in the features available at the different price ranges, but at least there are options for different price levels.

Most web design and development companies aren’t trying to max out a client’s budget (I hope), but having their budget in mind really helps put together a proposal that the client can afford.

So what is the difference between graphic and web design?

The first difference is the most obvious – a physical piece compared to a digital piece on a computer screen. With graphic design, you end up with a physical piece like a brochure or business card while a website is on a computer screen. With a print piece, a person looks at it, reads it and that’s it. With a website, the user can interact by clicking links, filling out forms, etc. A web designer needs to make sure that all elements of a website are usable – meaning people don’t get confused about how to interact with the website. A graphic designer never needs to worry about this except for making sure any text is legible.

Graphic and web design have very different restrictions. Graphic design is usually limited by the size of the brochure, business card, etc. and the designer knows exactly how to accommodate a design into his restrictions. With a website, every visitor views it from their unique setup of operating system, browser and monitor size meaning there are literally hundreds of variations a web designer needs to consider. A web design needs to be built using HTML so it renders in browsers properly and there are design decisions that need to be made because not every design can be built into a website. Also, when the site is built, if it is overly graphic it may require a lot of images and thus a long download time for users – something that causes poor usability and thus a poor website.

Here at AshWebStudio, we are web designers first and graphic designers second. Do we offer graphic design services? Yes, but typically only to our web design clients who like working with us and are comfortable with our process. We also tend to price our graphic design projects accordingly since it is not our primary service.

Designing for the web has a lot more restrictions than some other design media such as print. With print, you know how a person will be viewing your final piece. With a website, you don’t know what kind of computer, operating system, browser and screen resolution a person is using – each one of these variables could affect how the website is displayed to the end user. These days, we have figured out most of the quirks and differences between operating systems and browsers and how to overcome them. When it comes to screen resolution though, we have to make concessions.

Most users keep their monitor resolution at the default factory settings. A few years ago most monitors were set to 800×600 – meaning that you could see 800 pixels wide and 600 pixels high within the monitor frame. Nowadays, most monitors and almost all users have their resolution set to at least 1024×768.

So what does this mean for designing websites? These numbers dictate the width and height a website should fit into before a user has to scroll. Every website should fit within a users browser window without having to scroll horizontally – so width is the key factor web designers take into account. Previously it was also considered very important to keep vertical scroll to a minimum, but it has been proven that having vertical scroll actually has no effect on users and their interaction with a website.

So, to start, we have 1024 pixels to play with horizontally. However, browser windows have a frame of a few pixels and the scroll bar takes up a few of those pixels – so we really have about 1000 pixels now. Another thing to consider is that most users do not have their browser window fully maximized to the full width and height of their monitor – people like being able to still see the desktop. This is another issue we need to take into consideration, but exactly how much is hard to say. Within the last year, AshWebStudio has adopted a policy of starting most designs at 900 pixels wide. If a website has minimal content, we’ll make it more narrow. If it a design will really benefit by being another 50 pixels wide, we’ll go for it. However, we definitely have an absolute max of 1000 pixels.

Another option some designers take is to make fluid layouts – this means to make the website scale to match whatever browser window size the user has. We avoid fluid layout designs for usability reasons. If someone is on a larger resolution, the browser window could be really wide. As a result, the flow of text on the website could become very long. When lines of text are really long they become harder to read (it’s hard to visually move your eyes a long distance and find the next line of text). Another reason we avoid liquid layouts is that it limits our design because every item must be able to scale – it’s nice having at least little control over how a website is displayed.

So when clients say they can see extra space, it is because they have their resolution settings higher than 1024×768. Is that space being wasted? Not if you care about usability. Is there a perfect size that every website should use? Of course not, every website has a specific goal, target audience and other factors which every designer should take into consideration when they begin every website design.