your responsibilities for your web project

one of the most common misconceptions about hiring someone to design and program your website is that there’s not much for you to do, except review mockups and say “take this website live!”.

this just is not true.

content
unless you’ve hired someone to do the writing for you, content is going to take you just as many hours (or more) to write as the website will take to design and program. even if you have hired a writer to do all the writing, you’ll still need to review, revise, and approve everything from each page’s content to the naming of menu bar, the footer, and the sidebar. think about how long you assume content will take to write, then double it, then add a couple more hours to that. that’s actually how long content will take.

client assets
before a web design project can start, a designer will need a lot of details from you. have handy items on your end that they will need (see the “be prepared” section on this post): your logo in vector format, any/all photos (in high screen resolution), your username and password to your domain registrar, your username and password to your hosting account (both the server and the control panel), and your list of what elements go on what pages (or wireframes).

approvals
for most projects, you need to be available to approve every step of the process. so if you’re going on a 10-day meditation retreat half way through the project, you’re holding the project up for 10 days. be there to review and make change requests on wireframes, typography choices, colour schemes, mockups, navigation nomenclature, user flows, programming, and functionality.

testing/debugging
prior to launch (see my launch guide), you’ll need to go through and click everything to ensure things are hooked up, linked up and flowing correctly.

—

on many projects, i’ve finished my deliverables before the client has the content ready. in writing this i’m hoping to drive home the truth about what you need to do, as a client in a web design project, in order to get the site from concept to launch. so before you plan out and hire someone to create a new or redesigned site – ensure you’ve got a lot of time on your end to make the process smooth and timely. and the more wisely you budget your time, the better you can get to the amazing thing known as “launching”.