How to give your web designer valuable feedback

How to give your web designer feedback

Where to start!

Unless you are an expert, outsourcing your business’s web design is a positive move, but choosing to hand over the public perception of your business to another person or agency is always a difficult step to take — will they understand your brand? Will they portray the image and ethos that you want to demonstrate? What if they miss the mark?

 

There are several ways that you can help your web designer understand what you want to achieve with your project, and being precise and clear isn’t something you should shy away from. Web designers would much rather be given a strong brief from the outset than waste hours designing a site with only a vague idea of what is required.


Give examples

To start with, open conversation with your designer by offering examples of sites you like the look of. Give a clear brief and be specific with regards to the features you need on the site. As your website begins to take shape, view it with a critical eye — the little things that bug you right now will be more apparent later down the line.


It’s all in the design 

Your font, colours and branding may look amazing on your packaging, but not fit well on a website; if this is the case, feed this back to your designer — they are working within your brief and so implementing the aspects of design you have provided. Suggest alternatives; discussion and brainstorming are tried and tested ways to spark creativity, and your designer will be open to discussing strategies and new ideas. A decent agency will take your vision and implement it into something that works, tweaking along the way as and when you feed back to them.

 

Set your emotions to one side — you may like particular colour palette, but will your target audience respond positively to it? It’s these people you need to keep in mind throughout the process, letting go of any attachment you may have to a particular colour or pattern. Don’t tell your designer you don’t like something; give positive alternatives; for example, I would like that headline to be in a larger font, or, can we draw attention to the image on the right?

 

With these pointers in mind, you and your web designer will be able to work together to create something that not only reflects your business but also appeals to your target audience.