Sue Bailey

When I make websites for other people, one of the hardest parts of the job is often getting the client to express just what it is they’ve got in their head as their vision of the new site. The client who tells you, “oh, I don’t care, you should just do what you think”, is usually incorrect: though they might not be aware of it, they do know, they do care, and if they don’t exactly have a vision of what they want, they know what they don’t want. Sod’s law says that the first thing you make them will be a pretty close approximation to what they don’t want. “But I don’t *like* orange!” Fortunately, that only has to happen a couple of times before you start learning the questions to ask first.

The flip side of this is the client who knows exactly what they want. “One like this” – usually pointing to their competitor’s shiny new site. And then we figure out what’s so good about the competitor’s site, and what we can do better. Finding sites you like – and sites you don’t like – is a good place to start.

Many people don’t care to give it that much thought: “My logo’s red; make it red.” “Oh, just pretty-up OSCommerce and sort the checkout out.” “Make it match my eBay Shop.” Fair enough… if just a little bit dull to work with. The more involved the client is with the process, the better the result is likely to be.

And then some people are a gift. Dan is one such. Here’s what he sent me as inspiration:

A cigarette sign, Hillary-as-communist-icon, a beer bottle and a scarf: really, was anyone ever given such fun things to work with? Add in DailyWP’s gorgeous Brightness theme, and here’s what we came up with. What do you think?

Edited to add: that amazing Hillary image is by Tony Puryear.

Tags: blog design, inspiration, web design, WordPress themes

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 19th, 2008 at 8:52 pm and is filed under internaute.