Website Projects are always detailed and interesting and need a lot of communication to ensure we know exactly what you need and want from your website, here is an example exchange that takes you through the project consultation phase through to the website design phase
[Essex Website Designers] Look forward to seeing you for our initial website project meeting, please try to remember your related website account details (hosting / control panel / google account)
It was good to meet with you today and look forward to going forward with you to give your website a complete overhaul to make it work for you, ultimately bringing in more enquiries / clients and money for your business.
Here is my notes from today:
Delicious Webdesign needs:
1 need previous website hosting company username password to transfer the domain (or simply ftp details to use current hosting)
2 google account details (to see / check adwords info)
3 psd format (layer format) of your logo
4 More Treatments Added and existing ones ‘re-written’ (keywords added) with new key search terms added (location and treatments)
5 New images (decision on how many galleries required)
6 Confirmation of service names and give them in priority order.
7 More example website frameworks you love
8 Start looking for new stock images
9 Give Testimonials from previous clients
Immediate action points for us on your Website
1, review content – remove duplicate content
2, identify content for services that is needed
3, create new content
4, create new pages for new content
5, optimise new pages and then optimise existing pages
6, review your google local place listings
7, review google adwords
8, install google analytics
Requirements
To get the website working and bring in clients
Less reliance on PPC payments that are currently about £500 per month
SEO project /rewrite / redesign
Single page newsletter with cms
Blog Creation and Content adding
[Website Client] Work has been good this end so I should be able to go ahead with the new site very soon. Two things, Firstly, I have spent some time looking at web designs and like the look and feel of black, sleek and understated websites. Secondly, can you confirm what the cost of managing the PPC would be please?
I have pretty much dropped off the page with non management over the last 6 weeks so need to get back on track as soon as possible.
[Essex Website Designers] Glad you emailed as was reviewing September’s work schedule last week and was thinking about your website project.
In general I love black based websites. The example website is a full ‘flash’ website that has no ‘substance’ as it is a big brand it doesnt need it but if you are saying use the example website as a basis for your new one then that would be good, the look and style of some pages is great.
I have two reservations though and that is the colour black and your website’s name, meaning I dont think they naturally gel (i imagine pink and red on white is more natural) but after looking I found another one that looked good on black (see my list below). The other reservation is that your logo wont work on a black site and it would need to be white to work properly.
We need the site to be able to display lots of text as well as images as the optimised text is what is going to bring your site visitors (via higher rankings in Google, Bing and Yahoo search engines)
PPC – Would want to give your adverts a free healthcheck initially as promised but to manage the campaigns would charge 10% but would really want you to spend less and less on PPC as your ‘organic’ and ‘natural’ rankings take off and bring you more ‘free’ visitors over the period after we complete your site and relaunch it.
[Website Client] I will have a look at those sites later on, thanks for your feedback. Please clarify, 10% of what? And yes I fully understand that the idea is to get natural listings and stop the ppc all together, but this will be a journey of many months so I cannot write off PPC in the meantime.
[Essex Website Designers] 10% of PPC advertising cost but happy to do a free healthcheck on it first. Also happy to do a couple of hours work on it and simply hand it over to you. As you know the sooner we start your website project the sooner the PPC ‘reliance’ can be lowered. Feel free to email / phone / drop in to discuss anything that I havent made 100% clear.
[Website Client] Just had a quick look at those websites, I love the first two, hate the last one. 10% will be fine. I shall phone my previous website designer and ask him to do this ASAP.
I will have a proper look at the list tomorrow. I would like the PPC to be back up and running at position 3 to 5 (as much as possible) until the new website is up and running.
I think you have gathered I am a bit chaotic, so please remind or highlight anything that is needed immediately. Have you sent me your BACS details so I can make the down payment to you?
[Essex Website Designers] Controlled Chaos is good:) I can do an invoice later with bank details and details of what we are going to do. The key is the hosting details (to allow us to get your website and to transfer it).
[Previous Website Design Company] Please find attached artwork folder containing the logos supplied to me previously. I’ve also got many GBs of image files and various other stuff collated over the years but that will need to go on a DVD by post – let me know if you want them.
Your website and email hosting are held within my own personal account, so they will need to be transferred to your own LCN account. I’ve set up an account for you and will transfer the domain and hosting over which I believe should take 24hrs. James may prefer to use another hosting company but your current hosting runs for another 3 months so you may as well continue with it as it’s already paid until then. Your domains expire in 3 months.
[Essex Website Designers] Got to say this is probably the most easy to follow and straight forward website handover email I have ever got, so thanks for sending everything including the artwork and making it in a format that is easy to follow, sometimes this process takes weeks and involves 10 emails! Your efficiency is impressive indeed.
Just checked the hosting account and they are not there yet so will check again tomorrow, as your previous webdesigner says it may take 24 hours. You have 5 email accounts. When we transfer do you want all 5 re-created? Additionally if you give me the passwords to these accounts I can set them up with these passwords to avoid the need to change them.
You will however need to change the incoming and outgoing mail server names (full details of that will be sent or we can do it for you remotely) Do you want to transfer the other domain in your account, you didn’t mention this domain before.
We Received your disks and am in the process of putting your website project together for commencement shortly. We could only read one disk that contained your photo stock images, the other 2 are either blank or corrupt (or perhaps they are in mac format)
[Website Client] Just the main info@ email account is now needed. The discs are in MAC format, do you have all the info you need? I’ll ask my previous website designer about the passwords. Do we need to transfer the other domain before we initiate using it? If so, then yes.
[Essex Website Designers] I can transfer both your domains now once you give me your email passwords I can set your new accounts with this new password and then issue you with a new setup document for your email accounts ( I can also set this up for you remotely from here)
Assume you have imail / outlook / windows live mail email clients that you want resetting up after the transfer?
Don’t have a Mac at our offices here so will see if I can get hold of one, do you have a laptop? are you passing this way next week?
Got your text, no reply from the passwords for the email accounts, this will just make it easier for you once the transfer happens, do you have a ‘private’ email account I can have to contact you when the transfer is taken place? Can chat when your free this afternoon.
Created your logo with your fonts – Do you Like them? We spent about 2 hours getting those fonts how we thought you would like. Any changes are east at this point so feel free to ask us to tweak it / change it.
We wanted your existing passwords so when I change your email accounts over you will have less to update, if you dont know it then I can change it manually to your standard password but you will need to update your email client yourself now to ensure you keep getting emails.
Email – Attached Email setup document and your email is now setup from our end and your end (on your PC on Outlook) You just need to use the document attached to get it working on your mobile devices. The document is for info@ but there are the same setup details for your other email account.
First thing is we need to organise is your webcopy, we need to create lots and need some input from you.
I will supply a list of your pages, we need to know if you want us to just add to every page here or add new services or concentrate more on one service over another, I will insist on a lot more FAQs to make the page a bit more like the resource it should be to enable us to fit in lots of questions on one page.
Our Webcopy specialist is now waiting for your answers, I will tell her start investigating your business sector but will await your final decision on the pages names / headings for before the text can begin
Reference – Webcopy. We are not sure you have ever replied to the email to confirm your categories for our webcopy specialist to begin work, she has begun work already using your existing categories.
We have provisionally installed and configured your news page (blog) its not customised yet (that happens later) but you can add posts / photos and learn about it already
Hopefully its quite straight forward to post your info but will attach some Instructions
How to write your first post. I have created some categories for you please ensure every post has a relevant category selected.
Images
ideally the images need to be resized before uploading I use an image resizer program but there are 100s of ways of reducing photos depending on your computer. It really is easy to insert an image but I know the first time it can be a bit confusing, feel free to read these instructions that will help you.
Depending on how many photos you have you can email me them or if you have lots and they are large you can send them via dropbox
Here is a draft for your comment. The photo at the top is just a complementary one and not a full resolution one, do you want one like that anyway? if so do you want to find one on a photo stock agency website? or are you happy for us to find one and get it for the site.
I personally would think your site would look / work better with a white background and its correct to have the same ‘theme’ running through your flyers/ cards / website
Obviously the site wouldn’t look ‘exactly’ like your flyer but we could either continue with the current design / re-work the current design / create a new draft design based on your flyer design
[Website Design Meeting] In general the client didn’t like the initial draft of the website, started to consider going to a totally different look (see attachment) but we talked about it for a while and think we can continue to work the current design, things that need to happen so she can re-review it:
1 Remove top and bottom design graphic
2 Use a flock image type background (use any you have and if she wants we can point her in the direction to get a slightly different design)
3 Use real text from webcopy
4 Create a page called business associates.
5 Use relevant images on the front page (not the signature) and if you use the association use a transparent png
6 Some images that revolve should be close ups of eyes / lips (see flyer)
7 Can you some text from that poster to put on site (maybe good for headings?
also for more inspiration she likes this website example. The client wants to meet again on Tuesday so would be good to show her the updated draft before then.
[Website Client] Hi, just taken a brief look at the design and copy. Really love the design but to get my further ideas it may be a good idea for us to have another meeting, I am free and can come to you Wednesday or Thursday this week, Tuesday next week. Loving how this website project is progressing, you are making it so easy, thanks
Need to agree on design and content presentation.
Seo – national as well as localized, we spoke briefly about this but never clarified how to move forward Multiple addresses and how large companies overcome and master that and how we can market all addresses
Webcopy – Love the style and quality so far but we need to speak in person about the extra content and how we can proceed
